The Virginity Project

Those summer nights...

 

I cannot think of a better way to spend ten minutes than to read these four fabulous stories, all inspired by the theme of ‘summer encounters’. Funny, touching, perfect. Enjoy...

The Virginity Project has been larging it on a beach in Greece for the last few weeks and it’s been brilliant. I spent much of my teenage years visiting a Greek island called Anti-Paros when unbeknownst to me, paradise was right next door!

Sifnos - yes, it does sound like a sexually transmitted disease but I can assure you that its not - is a sensational island. Of course I would have been bored out of my mind if I’d come here in my twenties, ‘paradise’ being such a subjective concept. But right now, at this stage of the game, it’s pretty much like crash landing in heaven.

I’ve finally got what Otis Reading was talking about when he wrote ‘Sitting in the dock of the bay’. Is there anything more pleasant to do than watch large ships pull into a tiny harbour, unload some people, cars and chaos as an overexcited port policeman motors around trying to direct them all into their correct position and then collapse back into the sand once its all over, grateful that all I have to do is watch and eat an ice cream? I don’t think so.

Actually I did do some sensible reading whilst I was away. I’ve read it before but every morning before it got too hot, I went and re-read a chapter of Anka Bernau’s brilliant ‘Virgins – A Cultural History’ on the steps of the Greek orthodox church. There was no particular point to the location, just that it was shady with a nice view. Some mornings there were ladies in the church jabbering away in a language that I obviously don’t understand and I had the vaguest sense that they might be talking about me.  Like why does that woman come and read a book about virginity loss on the steps of this church every morning?

On the days when I didn’t get up early enough and the sun had already moved around past the church, because let me tell you, on some mornings it was 32 degrees by 9.30am. Yes, 32 degrees…I moved up to the Old Captain’s Bar, a shady spot on the beach run by a charismatic man called Theo. Here I sat and read my book with a cup of tea and some assistance from Theo’s rather camp cat, Zaza...

Other highlights of the trip included eating cream pie and this is not a euphemism for anything except eating cake. Cream pie, or Bougatza as it is known, asides from civilization, is clearly one of the best Greek inventions ever. I have no idea what they put in it but it smells like sugar and cinnamon and vanilla and when you sink your teeth into the crispy layers of filo pastry and reach the smooth custardy but not too sweet centre and finally round yourself off with the white dusty icing sugar on the outside….you may just as well utter a round of cliché ridden expletives about dying and going to heaven, discovering things that are better than sex etc etc etc blah blah blah….funnily enough, the only vaguely attractive man in the entire town also worked behind the counter of the pie shop.

On the days when we weren’t reading, eating sweets or watching boats, we amused ourselves with the following conversation. Bear in mind that it was usually 38 degrees by this point.

Stacey: ‘I’m feeling a bit nippy, how about you?

Me: Absolutely freezing. Do you want to borrow one of my jumpers?

S: Could I? And can I take some of those woolly socks and scarves as well?

Me: No problem. How about we light up a bonfire, pop on some extra layers and I’ll send Celia down to the taverna for some hot soup?

S: Capital idea. Then once we’ve layered ourselves up with scarves, gloves and extra thermal gear, how about we climb the 330 steps up that dry, arid slope to the church over there, say, at around 1pm?’

Oh how we laughed. You had to be there. It was very hot.

When nighttime came, some of this was involved too: 

But nothing like the old days. Partly because Europe is so expensive right now and paying 10 euro's for cocktail doesn’t feel like a paticularly healthy pastime but mainly because early morning in Greece is so beautiful that I didn’t want to miss a single moment of it...

 

Sunshine on a rainy day...

If you’re sitting at work staring into space and thinking to yourself that sun really should be enjoyed whilst actually sitting in it…as opposed to observing it through a pane of glass, here is a Grade A, top quality virginity related distraction. This will keep you quiet for a good ten minutes. It has all the charm, pathos and shock value of the mighty Post Secret but without the visuals.

And you can probably tell that I wrote that a couple of days ago when I was a. at work and b. The sun was actually shining. As opposed to today when I am contemplating a trip to a field in Somerset and the celebration of a friends birthday in a large tent alongside the promise of rain. What it is to be British. Virtually a moment goes by when we feel we can’t possibly continue unless we mention the weather.

No matter. I am off to Greece on Monday for my holidays but before I go, here is an interesting little story that I found when I was searching on ‘gay virginity loss’. I was actually looking for a rock solid definition of virginity loss and whilst this story doesn’t supply that, it is still a beautifully crafted little tale with some vivid imagery.

Definitions have been on my mind lately as I work on the chapter of my book that seeks to define virginity loss. If anyone has anything to say on the matter, email me, I would love to hear what you think.

Is virginity loss a physical process? Or is it more of a spiritual or emotional matter? And how much does our definition of it change over the years? i.e. would you say the same now about virginity loss that you might have said twenty years ago….or do we refine our  definition of that ‘loss’ as we grow and change and become more reflective about the past?

Your contribution could be vital – please email me on katemonroe@yahoo.com

Happy Holidays!

 

The first cut is the deepest....

Whew, the Virginity Project has been swept away lately by absorbing ‘educational’ courses, more work than you can shake a stick at and my first trip out of London, tragically, for almost ten months. One does have a nasty habit of staying put and then wondering why one is so sick of the sight of one’s own surroundings. That is all, thankfully, to change soon as a trip to the motherland – Greece – is in the offing.

All the while, small things sustain me and they are often to be found in books. Two have amused me lately. The first was ‘Diplomatic Baggage’ by Brigid Keenan. I bought this book for my mother because it is a first person account of a diplomat’s life, as told from the view of the wife, or the ‘trailing spouse’ as she was known in days gone by. My father was a diplomat so my mother knows only too well how it feels to be a trailing spouse. In her case, trailing with three small children in a highly complicated country: Beirut, in the 1960’s - a hotbed of diplomatic activity if ever there were one.

When I gave my mother the book, she said ‘Oh I read that ages ago dear’. And I realised that I had actually bought it for myself.  I shan’t go into one here as its not the point of my post but if you are looking for a decent, heartfelt and highly original book – and you are probably a woman, after all today’s post is rather woman-centric – you could do a lot worse than to read this very smart book.

Brigid has lived a life that is so very different to the rather stationary, well, at least in geographical terms, life that I live right now, that it takes the word ‘peripatetic’ to a new extreme. Can you imagine moving, not just home, but country, every two years for the rest of your working life? Dropping into entirely different cultures, customs, social circles, climates and geographies, whilst ‘trailing’ your children, your pets, your furniture, your pretty much everything from one place to the next?

The beauty of this book is the humour with which she observes these changes and the vast array of characters that come into their lives, frequently in the form of ‘help’, or servants as we might have called them way back when and the nebulous, ever changing landscapes in which they find themselves in. Humour, as ever, saves the day and our author possesses this quality in bucket loads.

I was thrilled to discover, upon finishing the book (which I was gutted about by the way), that Brigid Keenan and I are two ‘acquaintances’ away from being friends. That is to say that my boss’s partner and Brigid occasionally work together. Whether or not she might like to be my friend is quite another matter.

But if you think that ‘Diplomatic Baggage’ sounds like a woman’s book, wait until you hear about this one. To be perfectly honest, I only ordered this book because it is based upon a similar concept to my own. Take one universal truth, one experience that a vast tract of the population is likely to have experienced and then get people to compare stories. In this case, a woman’s first experience of her monthly period.

Eeek, I thought, do I really want to go there? Could it be that interesting? Is one story not much the same as another? Apparently not and frankly, I should have known better. Having worked my way through myriad different virginity loss experiences, I think it is safe to say that no two people have exactly the same take on either of these potentially life changing experiences.

Besides anything else, these accounts are not only about our first time experiences but the acknowledgment of the passage of time and how much our lives have changed over the last eighty years. Here are stories from the present day and from a time when some young women had absolutely no idea what a period was and subsequently suspected, occasionally for months on end that they may just be bleeding to death.

There are also stories from other countries. There is one from a young Polish woman, fleeing persecution from the Nazi’s on a train in 1942, the border crossing strip search tragically timed to arrive at just the same moment as her first period. And the shocking realisation that the economic disparities in our lives are huge. Many young African women still stay at home when they get their periods because they cannot afford simple sanitary protection. That is one lost week of education, every week, for the entire duration of your school years.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are comedy moments aplenty and truckloads of familiar observations…the memory of those curious boxes of wrapped paper objects in all different shapes, sizes and formats that were kept under the sink in the bathroom. ‘It’s like living in the house with a spy’, my own mother was heard to exclaim when I had checked out the contents of these boxes one too many times.

And then there is the remembrance of all that yearning and the longing for that moment to arrive, because much as it really doesn’t make sense to look forward to bleeding once a month, there is still the overriding urge to belong. To have joined the club, to have become an adult, much like the many voices we have listened to who have said the exact same thing about virginity loss.

These are landmark moments that punctuate our lives. These are events that divide our lives into ‘before’ and ‘after’ stages. These are the instances that make us feel like we have stepped through a door into a new stage of our lives and they are important to acknowledge.

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, the eighteen year old author of this book has made a great job of gathering stories from literally every nook and cranny you can possibly imagine. She takes us on a journey, through the lives of other women, through history and most importantly, through ourselves. I thought a lot as I read this book, in much the same way that I hope people will one day think when my own book is published. I went on a very poignant little trip down memory lane whilst I read this book and you can’t say fairer than that. Period.

 

And your point is....

Once again, theres a first time for a whole bunch of things. I found this out to my advantage on Tuesday night when I went Salsa dancing for the very first time. Could I feel like any more of a twat than I did for the first twenty minutes? Probably not. But at least I wasn’t the only one.

I have been putting this off for months and as the proud instigator of these shenanigans looked on - my talented dancing friend Lydia – I fumbled my way through the moves as twenty men and women facing each other in a trembling line attempted to put one foot in front of the other and make sweet music together…remind you of anything?

Learning something new is hard at any age but take it from me, it’s much more of a stretch when you’re older. Which is a good thing. It’s nice to keep challenging yourself. Learning to drive, learning to ski, learning to write…I have done all of these things to varying degrees of expertise in the last five years and I have loved all of them….but it was always an effort to get started. How awkward can you feel? Even now when I get into a car that’s not my own, everything feels like its in the wrong place. I feel nervous, tentative, a bit scared to touch anything in case I blow the whole thing up….remind you of anything else?

Actually I had no intention of comparing all sorts of daily activities and skills to the losing of virginity and the subsequent having of sex but the parallels are hard to ignore. We all feel tentative and scared when we step onto new territory, however far ahead we might feel like we have got in life. Every new partner we meet can make us feel like it’s the first time – and that’s a nice thing. Everyone is different. What works for one person might not work for another and the only way to find out is to develop a genuine sense of intimacy by learning how to communicate with each other.

No, what I really wanted to write about today was this. It occurred to me as I glanced around the room on Tuesday night that people dance for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes men come to clubs like this because they want to meet women – I encountered a few of those on Tuesday night. And sometimes women come to clubs like this for the very same reason. But that was not the overriding impression I got as the syncopated throng of arms and legs moved elegantly around the room in time to the music.

There was something really beautiful about what was happening in front of me in this grotty dive in Charing Cross Road as people from all walks of life gave in to the urge to dance with each other. Most of them don’t know each other from Adam but that didn’t seem to matter. You could see how much they needed to do this. Perhaps to escape the reality of daily life in all it’s boredom, routine and credit crunch related stress. But there was something more poetic to it than that. There seemed to be something deeply satisfying in this unique combination of music, mind and movement. This coming together of different personalities – and bodies – to create something quite unique.

And it can’t be repeated. As we left the building, two old dancing partners of Lydia’s arrived. The taller of the two insisted on a dance with my friend before we left. He was no looker but boy could that man dance. This sounds judgemental but I have to mention this because despite the fact that he was no Brad Pitt, there was no doubt in my mind that he could have piqued the interest of any woman in the room. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

‘It doesn’t matter how many times two people dance the same dance together’, said his friend, ‘they will never dance it the same way twice’.

And what they did do together was astonishing. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t choreographed but it was two people doing something very fluid and very intimate together that didn’t involve any sex. Its close, its hot and its sweaty - but it goes no further than that.

At least in the case of these two. I’m sure that many a dance on this dance floor has danced right off the floor and into the nearest bedroom but it doesn’t seem to be the point to me. And actually, when I come to think of it, I don’t really have a point today. Does everything have to have a point? Is it point-less if it doesn’t reach a conclusion? I hope not. Just like the dance itself, sometimes one just has to do something and enjoy the moment. It doesn’t need to go anywhere. You can do it just for the hell of it, or just because it feels good. The ending doesn’t really matter.

 

Happy Blogday me...

The reverberations from last weeks ‘anal cherry’ story can still be felt. I loved this short, but very sweet email I received from a regular correspondent….

‘Well now, Kate, I was shocked speechless by the anal pegging virginity loss story. Wow.’

What are you laughing at?’ Someone asked me at work the other day as I read this email….’Nothing’ I replied. I didn’t think this was the right time to introduce them to my blog.

But I tell you what, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I got this email from my partner in crime, Therese over at The American Virgin. You know how I often try and name posts after Steely Dan songs? And you know how last week I named my anal cherry post ‘Peg’, after the official name chosen to illustrate such an activity…..? Imagine my surprise to hear this little nugget of information from Therese…

‘Here's some trivia for you, courtesy of Wikipedia:

There is a depiction of pegging in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch. The dildo used in the scene is called a Steely Dan III, and is the source from which the musical group Steely Dan takes its name.’

My turn to be surprised.

Changing the subject, I realized last week that I had let an important date slip by. It’s been two years since I started blogging and I can hardly believe the time has passed. I had no idea what an adventure I was about to go on when I started this blog. I had no idea how many wonderful people I would get to communicate with. It’s all very well me sitting here telling you stuff every week but really, this blog would be nothing without your contributions.

Thank you to all the fascinating, brave and talented people who take the time to put pen to paper and write to me. A lot of people get a lot out of reading your stories. And so do I.

 

 

 

 

Bog all to do with virginity loss...

Every once in a while, I spaz out about stuff that isn’t related to virginity loss  – and get the urge to post it. I can’t help it. There’s a whole bunch of stuff going on out there that needs to be talked about. So in the time honoured tradition of other bloggers, I decided to make a feature of it. DJ Kirkby has ‘Wordless Wednesday’, Andrew Sullivan has the wonderful ‘View From Your Window’….the Virginity Project now has ‘Bog all to do with Virginity Loss’. And its today. But don’t expect it to be regular, I’m way too disorganized for that.

To kick things off, here is one of the neatest little ideas I ever heard of. The Black Cab Sessions. This almost sounds like one of those ideas conceived after a particularly hefty night out on the razz, like, ‘why don’t we just ask our most favourite musicians in the world if they would like to perform a set in the back of a black London cab? And we’ll film it. And put it on a website. And people will love it.’

And they do!

I’m one of them. And its not just any old body that agrees to do this thing either. Brian Wilson has done it. The Kooks have done it and good old Seasick Steve has done it too. I’m loving Seasick Steve right now, so here he is. Watch it all the way to the end.

I also dug this at the weekend. Being Valentines and all, The Independent ran a feature about the concept of ‘desire’. John Walsh and Catherine Townsend write about the very interesting results of some research conducted by Meredith Chivers of Queen’s University, Ontario.

The research involved hooking up various parts of men’s and women’s bodies, (not together!) to various bits of machinery and asking them to watch what amounts to pornography in various different permutations. i.e. men watched gay porn, straight porn and footage of Bonobo apes getting it on and women did the same. Needless to say, the results are enlightening. 

Finally, for those of you who don’t live in the UK, it snowed the week before last. Not just any old snow but great big white bucketfuls of the stuff. It was bloody brilliant. I could barely sleep the night before because it was snowing when I went to bed and it was still snowing when I got up in the morning. By this point, grown men were rolling around the street in front of my house throwing snowballs at each other. People everywhere took the day off and stayed home and enjoyed themselves.

For a moment there, we all forgot about the dismal endless array of credit crunch related news stories that we are constantly subjected to. Russell Davis, whose blog I like very much, writes beautifully about it here.

And that, folks, is that, at least for the moment….

 

Happy Monday

Because its Monday, the sun is almost shining and I am sitting in the library, desperate for an excuse not to get down to the real business of work, I am going to post some links that have done it for me lately.

The first comes from 'Dooce'. In case you are not aware of her presence, according to an article in the Observer last year, Dooce is number five in the ‘50 World’s Most Powerful Blogs’ list. That takes some doing and it is not without foundation. Dooce routinely gets upward of a 1000 comments when she posts on her blog and it happens for a reason. She speaks from the heart about issues that matter to everyday people. Not only that, but she does it with style and wit.

I revisited a post she wrote last year about her dog (she does that a lot), which cracked me up. When I re-read it last week, it had the same effect. So here it is again, complete with detailed pictures of an escaped racoon:  ‘Chucks heightened sense of AWESOME’. Tell me you read this and didn’t love it and I simply won’t believe you.

Next up is this little nugget from Salon.com. In a new fortnightly series, Salon.com features people doing what I love them to do the most: telling stories about their lives. In this case, the subject matter is specific and one that is inextricably tied up with the theme of this blog……love, actually.

In this week’s story, eighty three year old Paul Pesce tells the almost inconceivable story of how he came to be married to his wife of fifty-five years. It’s a corker.

Finally, a news story that gives me a renewed sense of rightness about the world that we live in. Obama has repealed the ban on funding for organizations that offer advice or perform abortions in the US. This is a good thing. Denying women the right to control their own fertility is going backwards. Backwards is not good. Forwards motion is so much better.

I watched 'Elizabeth' on Saturday night (which is a cracking film). In it, Sir William Cecil, one of the newly crowned queen’s closest confidantes, requests her ladies in waiting to bring him the sheets from Elizabeth’s bed every morning for inspection, because, he says, Elizabeth’s body no longer belongs to Elizabeth, it belongs to the state. Please note, to any one who wishes to challenge me on the above, those days are SO over.

It doesn't matter how you as an individual feel about this issue. Nobody wants to have an abortion but I would defend until my dying day the individual’s right to make this choice for themselves if the occasion befits it. Case closed and long live Obama.

Bum. Now I’ll have to do some work.

Write for your life...

When I first began this blog, I couldn’t bear to push the 'send' button on a post, so paralyzed was I by the thought that somebody might actually read it. These days I don’t think about it so much….but it’s taken me a while to get here.

I wrote diaries voraciously as a child. Writing always seemed to be a good way of working out problems, as well as documenting what was going on around me. But it wasn’t until I went to work at a company called Cunning in 2004, that I was actively encouraged to write.

‘You’re good at that’, said my boss as she read the biography I had written for their website. ‘Why don’t you do it more?’

I didn’t know the answer to that question but I soon got some practice as I started knocking out the company press releases. Then we got sent on a copywriting course and something else happened that had not occurred since my athletic youth – I started to win prizes. That was all the encouragement I needed.

Cut forward to 2009, and I find myself in an unlikely position, helping other people to write their stories – your virginity loss stories. Not that you need a lot of help. It never ceases to amaze me what great storytellers people are. Although given the rich seam to mine that is virginity loss, perhaps this isn’t such a surprise.

And me? I learnt the hard way. Once you begin to blog, you are hit with a stark realisation - you have to fill it with content. I am not lying when I say that I found this scary. Not only that, but by this point I had also given up the sanctity and protection of my day job. All that was left were the four walls of my kitchen and something else that got in the way – myself.

Myself has the capacity to be highly irritating. Myself thinks that it knows how everything should be done and actually…it doesn’t. So I had to learn to think a different way, to bypass all the little tricks and ploys that ‘myself’ had put in place to stop me getting what I wanted - some decent, interesting words that might make sense to another human being.

So how did that work out for me? Did I ever do battle with the monolith that is my own mind? I did. And I am here to tell you that it can be done – by anyone. If you were thinking about writing your own virginity loss story but can’t seem to get started, worry not! Me, myself and I are here to impart the following useful facts to you:

Number one important thing to do – never, ever wait for inspiration to strike. You could be there for a very long time. Life simply doesn’t work like that. The best thing to do is to begin. Start with one line, any line and get going.

Which brings me onto this neat little trick. If the above foxes you, try this. Free write. This is something I got taught in a class and its no big secret. Set a clock for five minutes and begin to write. You mustn’t stop. Even if the only thing you actually are writing is ‘I can’t think of anything to write’. It doesn’t matter. This exercise serves an important purpose because it shuts off your internal editor. You know that annoying voice that asks you ‘how is this going to sound to the outside world?’ Ignore it. Keep on writing. This is your raw material. Spit it all out and keep going. You might be surprised at what you come up with.

Tip two. Like a decent cup of tea, (hey, I’m British), nice writing depends on being allowed to brew. An hour, a day, a month, it doesn’t matter. Distance gives us perspective. Walk away and do something else. I love my day job because it gives my brain something different to chew on. When I come back to the writing, I can eek out the bits that don’t make sense. Editing is the nicest part of the job. Enjoy it!

Tip three – or ‘the all-time top tip for getting to the truth?’ What is it that you actually want to say? Many a time I have sat in front of my computer trying to find a fancy way to say what it is that I want to say. Don’t do that. Say what it is that you want to say, in the way that YOU would say it. Nothing has a more powerful and truthful resonance than YOUR voice. Believe me. Keep it simple. Try it, you will see.

And finally, a little disclaimer for tip one. Sometimes, when all is well in the world, inspiration does strike. I still mean what I said before, don’t wait for it! But on the days that the planets are in correct alignment, your favourite socks are on your feet and the sun is shining brightly, if inspiration strikes, then go with it. Don’t make the mistake of feeling so great about it that you get up and go out for a walk to celebrate. No! Stay indoors and write until you can’t write anymore. Go with the flow. This won’t happen every day but when it does, open up your arms and embrace it.

And finally, I am always here for feedback. I love receiving your stories and I love posting them on the blog for others to read too. But if you just want a second opinion, drop me a line: katemonroe@yahoo.com.  And a final word… writing about the past is an eye opening experience. My best advice is not to hold back. Go with the flow and write what you feel. You might be surprised at the results but you definitely won’t be disappointed.

Go forth and write people!

 

 

It’s the 31^st of December right? And not the first of April?

Just checking. Have a look at this link and ask yourself the same question!

Happy New Year y’all…