The Virginity Project

The age of innocence...

This put a smile on my face….

Its not all about me...

Today I shall turn the reigns of power over to you, the readers of and contributors to ‘The Virginity Project. In short, I got bored of the sound of my own voice so I decided to let someone else do the talking. Power to the people and all that. I'm not the only one with an opinion. To this end, I sent the following story to some of the people I am lucky enough to correspond with. It'll be interesting to see how they reply to Darcy's dilemma.

Story today. My panelists and their replies tomorrow:

'Dear Kate

My name is Darcy and I was born in 1991. Virginity Loss: TBC.

I recently found The Virginity Project and it's actually boosted my confidence considerably. I'm still a virgin and feel a bit of a freak if I’m honest. I've never been bullied or sexually abused or anything like that so I don't see why I have the feelings I do about sex.

I think, deep down, it may have something to do with my religion. I was raised as a relatively strict catholic, so I feel very guilty when I even think about sex. I have never even...er...’self-helped’...and if my boyfriend does anything like that for me then I don't particularly feel any kind of sensation - mental or physical, apart from ‘oh...this is happening’.

The actual idea of sex doesn't scare me. I think I probably would have sex with my boyfriend (of four months) if he asked me, because it may make him happy and I wouldn't feel like I've missed out on a teenage milestone. I just don't know how I'd deal with the guilty feelings, and if everything went wrong, the feelings of regret.

I think the way I end up loosing my virginity will matter immensely for all my future relationships and my future thoughts on men because I've only ever had two boyfriends before. I've also been researching around the topic to try and get some answers to my problems and what I decipher thus far is this: women are told they will get nothing from their first time apart from pain or possibly pregnancy. They are told they will bleed and that the boy will probably freak out if he's bled on and then they will be labeled a 'slut’, so nothing really fills me with confidence.

I had a conversation recently too with a friend of mine, and she said that for a first time it is advisable ‘for the girl to be on top because then she can control what happens. Missionary is just plain painful’ but I don't think I'd have the confidence to go ‘on top’, so I'd just have to deal with whatever pain comes my way (And I don't really fancy bleeding on anyone!)

If you haven't got bored of me ranting about my status, then thank you for reading this far. It's nice to be able to write all my 'V-thoughts' and rants down and tell someone how I'm feeling about it because I really don't know what to do. And if I talk to anyone properly about it then they could just say I'm making a big deal out of nothing. It's nice to know you're not alone with these things.

 Thanks again,

Darcy x'

Sunday service…..

This story speaks for itself. Its owner wrote me last summer to tell me about her search for love and companionship, a search that her family thought she shouldn’t make due to her sexuality. Luckily, Sadie* is a pioneer. I don’t suppose there are too many daughters of Christian Evangelist preachers who are prepared to go against the grain and stake the claim over the life they instinctively feel they should have.

 Which brings me to my next point. Lately this blog seems to have morphed into a one-woman mission to insist on the most basic of human rights. I can’t help it. Instinct should triumph over dogma. Marriage or not, gay or not, whatever or not, we cannot deny ourselves the most basic of needs. A sex life has to begin somewhere and that usually begins with the loss of virginity. Read on…

 Sadie. Born 1973. Lost virginity aged 35.

 ‘Hi Kate

I'm back again....finally with the rest of the story.

First of all a poem was what started some of this for me. It was the thought: ‘If I died today, what would I have most regretted I didn't do?’ And for me it started with kissing. I didn't want to die having never kissed someone. And then it progressed to ‘I don’t want to die having never been loved physically like that’.

As you know from my earlier story, I had no interest in sex with men because I'm gay. For years I wasn't able to seek out relationships with women because of my religious beliefs and because I kept trying to heal myself i.e. not like girls.

About two years ago I asked my counselor if he thought I was healthy in general and he said ‘yes’. I had been in counseling for years and I suddenly decided I was wasting my life trying to fix something that wasn't fixable. I finally started to accept myself and my love of women as something that just was.

The result of this is that I started dating for the first time in my life. I went out on dates or ‘friendship outings’ as I like to call them because a lot of these were just ‘get to know you’ events. I got to know myself a bit as well. I developed more confidence that someone would actually want to date me.

To skip ahead, a couple of months ago I met someone who I wanted much more than just a friendship date with. I was looking for someone who had a lot of the same religious things in common as me. We are both Christians, I can go to church and hold her hand, God and gratefulness is important to us both. Both of us would only like to be intimate in a committed relationship so soon we were dating.

I am still stunned that I lost my virginity. You asked ‘how does a lesbian lose her virginity?’ I think it's the first time you are fully naked and physical with someone. I asked my girlfriend and she said it's both oral sex and any type of penetration.

My strongest thoughts afterwards were: The church/Christians have totally lied to me. The church has made sex sound like crack. Something so powerful that you will be addicted. Something that is evil and then magically becomes good the moment a priest says something over you like ‘your married’. That is all a lie and I think it does a disservice to tell people or even hint at these things.

Sex and intimacy was sweet and playful. It was lovely. We were gentle and fun with each other. We talked a ton about it before. We talked about the areas of our bodies we felt insecure about. We talked about what we wanted and hoped for. What we had heard. And then we also talked during and after just checking in on how emotions and all were doing. It was really helpful and healing for me to talk like this. And she was so sweet. We are well matched sexually because we both have similar wants.

People told me I'd be scared, I wasn't. People told me they shook. I didn't. I had thought through this decision so much that I think when the time came I was just fully ready. I learned that I am an Aries lover. This is something I totally didn't know about myself until this. I thought all that stuff was junk. She said she was surprised I was a virgin because I didn't act like it. But I think the reason why is found in a poem by E.E. Cummings that says ‘the body has an intelligence of it's own.’ I did not need to train it. It knew what to do.

Our relationship is still going great. I do not feel any different. I do not feel guilt. I do get in some way why it was a great thing for me to have sex in a committed relationship. I think when I was younger I would have had some self-judgment due to the religious voices I'd heard through growing up. But here's the thing. Those same religious voices won't let me get married because I'm gay. So the best I can do right now in seeking to live the life I want is by keeping sex in a committed monogamous relationship.

I know I'm a rare breed. I was a virgin until just before my thirty-fifth birthday in order to figure this out. The decision to have a more spacious and wholistic understanding of sex than the church’s literal and confining view took me a long time.

The church has made being anti-sex it's own God. The church, especially the evangelical church in America judges the body as evil. It may not say this outright but it does come through. I think I've heard more about the evils of sexual temptation than any other topic. But in the end, sex for me was nothing to do with temptation. It was a choice to live instead of kill everything in me that was embodied.

Besides this, I have told three very open and accepting friends and it will stop there. But in needing to tell someone about all my years of working towards this and all the crap I had to figure out for myself, I wanted to tell my story somewhere. If I ever told my story in a Christian community I would be soundly renounced. I get that. But you know that just keeps the fear and lies about sex in play. 

One more thought. I am so glad I didn't force myself to date, marry and have sex with a man. I know another girl who did that. She has to drink alcohol to have sex with her husband. She stayed a virgin until she was married. And now she is basically stuck. I definitely am glad I didn't do the same as her just to ‘look good’ for the church.

 *Name changed to protect identity. Part one of ‘Sadie’s’ story was published on September 10 last year.

To have and to have not....

Sometimes a story’s interest lays not so much in what it does say as what it doesn’t. This is a curious little tale with some large holes. I was going to wait and post it once its author filled the gaps but I can’t hold back.

He raises a subject not often mentioned: the male urge to have sex with virgins. I was going to try and dress that up a bit but what’s the point? This is what I mean to say. Since the dawn of time, the virgin woman has held a certain allure. This is beyond the need for verifiable paternity so that the correct children inherit the correct wealth and it’s also beyond the concept of virginity as commodity, something to be traded via marriage for upward social mobility.

This is virginity as fetish. The idea that the virgin woman imbues us with something magical that cannot be gained elsewhere. Youth perhaps? Or even a cure for Aids? This may seem a preposterous idea, but in this day and age, children in some parts of the world are suffering under the tragic and misguided belief that sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS.

Virginity is a powerful and potent symbol. As ever, I turn to Hanne Blank and her book ‘Virgin: The Untouched History’, for some clarity. She says this:

‘In eroticizing virginity, youth, physical nobility, ignorance, inexperience, fragility, and vulnerability are objectified from the perspective of someone who, by definition, is none of these things. The erotic charge of sex with a virgin rests on the interplay of the sexual aggression of an experienced partner and the sexual submission of a virginal one. It champions sex as a vehicle for completion and transformation, and it insists that a person who has sexual access to a woman automatically claims or colonizes her, body and soul.

Virgin territory. Perhaps that’s what its all about. Is it that deep down, man needs to plant his stake, so to speak, upon virgin soil, previously unsullied by anyone else? Who knows? The owner of our story certainly isn’t sure. ‘I am not a religious person’, he tells us, ‘but I may have been influenced by religious thinking’. He then finishes by telling us ‘my obsession with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general’. This is a large statement with no conclusion – yet. Watch this space and let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of one of The Virginity Project’s most perplexing challenges yet.

*‘Brady’. Age unknown.

'Hi Kate,

Wow, have you ever set up a good website. The topic of virginity has consumed my life. First of all, I am male. I abstained throughout high school, figuring that there was ‘one for everyone’. I soon changed my mind and thought that I would have to have sex because nobody seemed to have any morals whatsoever and that if I were to be seen as ‘cool’ by the ladies then I would have to lose my virginity. This logic does not make much sense as I write it. I didn't have it, but to have it, I had to have had it previously: the paradox of virginal thinking!

Anyways, my friend hooked me up with a ready and willing (drunk) girl at the bar one night, and we did it. Unfortunately, she was not expecting a one-night stand and ran off upset. I also did not feel that much better about myself for having done it. It really seemed like nothing had changed, besides perhaps feeling a bit more superior to another girl, my first serious girlfriend, who had just broken up with me.

Still, there was a yearning to have meaningful sex. The one-night stand didn't do much to make me feel like I'd accomplished anything besides thinking ‘Yes, I'm cool, girls. I've done it’. Then there was another paradox: I was desiring a virgin so much, but then thinking why had I decided to go ahead and lose my own virginity?

Since then, I've had a series of girlfriends, both serious and not, from near-engagements to one-night stands. Yet still, I long for a virgin. I believe it is the only way I can find pure, everlasting love, and form a pure, unbreakable bond with a girl. I am not even a religious person, although I may have been influenced by religious thinking. Where I got my beliefs from is a whole other question; some guys don't seem to think virginity is an issue at all.

My obsession, (as I will call it) with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general. It's a depressing cloud that covers me. I try to find happiness in the girls that I'm with, yet I confront them, I challenge them, and make them feel guilty for what they have ‘done’. It makes me wonder if I can ever be happily married or love my wife the way I know I could. So, I'm waiting, sometimes to the point of hopelessness and despair, for the girl who will pledge herself and her love to me and make me feel like a whole, complete human being.'

*All names changed to protect identity.

Everything but the girl…

Perhaps you think that as a non practising Christian, I have something against god. Perhaps you think that I believe that people should throw caution to the wind and the rest of you be dammed. Actually I don’t. But I will tell you this: I am irritated beyond belief by the ways in which religion controls women.

Whoever invented the contraceptive pill was a genius. Could he, (for in a lovely twist of irony it was a he) ever have dreamt what a tidal wave of change would wash over a world that kept women chained to the cooker/home/bed simply because they couldn’t control their own fertility? I am oversimplifying the facts but this is what it really boils down to. Women used to need men and now they don’t. Except for the things that really count in life: love, companionship, warmth and protection. All the things that men need too.

We are all singing from the same song sheet, so why the fuss? Why do people persist in telling other people what to do and dress it up as something else? Its 2008 and women (and men for that matter), must be able to make basic choices for themselves without the burden of guilt.

Here is a consummate lesson in ‘owning your own sexuality’. No muss, no fuss, this is the story of a girl who asked the question, ‘who makes the decisions around here’?

Me, god, or the judgement of everyone else?

I think you know the answer.

Lynette, Southern California, USA (Born 1985)

I was the ‘everything-but-sex’ girl for a good six years of my sexual maturity. My first kiss came from a boy who pushed me up against a wall and stuck his tongue down my throat.....not all it was hyped up to be. He'd come over while my mom was at work and we'd make-out for hours. I'd let him put his hand up my shirt but that was the extent of it, after all, Jesus was watching.

One day he thought himself clever and slipped Mr. Happy over to the side of his shorts and I very accidentally came into contact with the most disgusting, wrinkly appendage I'd every felt. I was pretty much over it right then and there.

Boyfriend # 2. I'm sixteen now and everything-but-sex now includes my hands and his hands and a crazy, messy blur of clothes and mouths and ‘everything-but’. I asked if he was ready. I was scolded for even bringing it up and we continued on as if nothing had happened. I got to hold on to my v-card and assume the Christian mould and he got to continue being a weenie.

For years I pulled out the 'waiting till marriage' speech every time someone asked, when secretly, it was merely by chance that I hadn't blown it at sixteen. It became this crazy, inner struggle between what the church had told me was right and what I really felt. This continued until I was twenty. Enter Mike. Four years older than me and very much not a virgin. Beautiful piece of man. Incredible, charming and seductive. I knew he was a bad idea the second I laid eyes on him.

I let him take me to dinner. After a month of make-out sessions with me saying ‘no, no’ and him saying ‘I won't, just let me *stay* here’, I finally gave it. I'd like to believe I ‘gave in’, but truly he had one foot in the door already.

It was amazing. I went home that night and stared at myself in the mirror for an hour. I felt like something in me had shifted and like it should have shown on the outside...it didn't. But I had been changed; I had taken charge of something that for so long had been controlled by something other than myself. And it brought me closer to the thing I had feared for so long, that maybe God's not so concerned with whether or not I'm wed before I'm bedded. Maybe it's about being aware of myself and things that I'll stand for. My happiness, my confidence, my self-respect came from being that much closer to understanding the inner workings of myself.

God still loves me, and now so do I. And seriously, everything-but? It all came down to owning my own sexuality and allowing it to grow within me without being told how to do it.

Laugh? I almost spilt boiling water all over my....

I have struggled to make you laugh at times. Heck, I have struggled to make myself laugh at times. It’s been a challenge. Virginity loss isn’t all fun and games. But it is a bittersweet combination of comedy and drama. And therein lays the fun. I have searched high and low for that ‘laugh out loud, you could not make it up’ story and I think I may just have found it.

Granted, it’s a lot to do with perception. I don’t think the owner of this story thought it was funny at the time. But time, as they say, is a great healer. It even heals scars. Scars caused by the application of boiling hot water. I shouldn’t laugh, but I did. Read on – and weep...courtesy of the excellent hownottogetlaid.com...

Going to California….

There are lots of things you could say about this story. You could comment on the fact that its author is technically a minor. You could also point out the last line - the smartly penned assertion that her virginity has ‘got lost in the mail’, but mostly what I love about this story is the way that even though I don’t live in California and even though I am no longer seventeen, this young woman has allowed me to get right underneath the skin of her life. Intentionally or not, Aimee builds intrigue and suspense right from the first word she writes. It’s never clear which way this story will go. It still isn’t.

Reading her words puts me straight into the shoes of a seventeen-year old world. I can hear the slam of shuttered porch doors on warm dusty streets and I can feel the late night walks around quiet neighbourhoods and the first kiss from someone you love. Aimee has shown us an episode of her life but one way or another, the story will continue to be told whether we have a subscription or not.

Aimee. Born 1991. Virginity loss TBC.

‘I'm only seventeen years old but I grew up fast. I was invited to take courses at Stanford University in California when I was in 4th grade. I graduated high school at the age of sixteen and I am now a full time student while I save up for University.

I met my boyfriend at my job just a month and a half after my sixteenth birthday. He was actually one of the assistant managers and he had just been transferred to our location. I was instantly attracted to him but never acted on it because, well, he was technically my boss and older than me. We worked together for four months before he was promoted to general manager and yet another location.

I was hanging out with my best friend and we decided to invite him. We were all hanging out at her house and he said he wanted to get something out of his car to show us, (it was his old school ID and it didn’t look anything like him). He asked if I wanted to help him and I said sure. When we were at his car he said, ‘Aimee, I really want to tell you something, but you can't tell Mary-Beth.’ Mary-Beth being my best friend. I of course said I wouldn't tell her and then he said he was head over heels for her.

Of course I was hurt, but what was I to expect? Mary-Beth was nineteen, almost twenty, much closer to his age than me. I said I wouldn't tell her and I agreed to help him. If I couldn't be with him, I wanted to at least be his friend. We became really close. We talked everyday on the phone and hung out at least every other day.

Then while we were walking at about eleven o’clock at night, (he worked late and not in town so we would hang out once he got off), we started talking and he was telling me how I was his best friend and he could talk to me about anything and he was really comfortable around me.

At this point I liked him a lot, I had gotten to know him and he was so sweet and amazing. I'm not to let my feelings be known to someone because I fear rejection among other things. I didn't want to ruin our friendship by telling him how I felt. But before I could tell my mouth no, I heard these words pop out of me, ‘What if I were older?’ I just stopped walking and froze. I couldn't believe what I had just said!

Alex stopped walking also and looked at me. All he said was, ‘What did you say?’ I couldn't pretend like I didn't say it, so I just said, ‘What if I were older? What if I were eighteen?’ He didn't say anything for a moment and I felt myself freaking out. He walked closer to me since we were standing a good ten feet away from each other. He looked into my eyes and said, ‘You would be Mary-Beth’.

He leaned down and tilted my chin up with his index finger and kissed me. It was only my second kiss ever. It was the most amazing moment. We had only been friends for three weeks and all of a sudden we were kissing. We talked for at least two hours about the situation and had come up with the only logical solution. We would remain friends until my eighteenth birthday then we would date. We weren't sure if we could resist the temptation of each other’s bodies so we had to have boundaries. Since I was a minor and he was not, he could get in a lot of trouble.

But even being just friends, it didn't quite work out. We were basically dating, and eventually we just said we were. He then asked me if I would be his girlfriend. I of course said yes. I had never had a boyfriend before. Unless you count the whole ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ thing in 5th grade where you sit together at lunch.

It was amazing. He was so sweet and wonderful, and nice. He would do little things that would make me smile. He would open the car door for me, he would walk closest to the cars when we were walking, he would randomly surprise me with a rose.

He said ‘I love you’ first, and about a week later I said it to him. I had never said it before and well, I didn't really know how to. Since I only had had one other kiss before him I obviously hadn't done any other type of sexual interaction with another person. But he was really sweet about all of it and I found myself exploring his body and allowing him to explore mine.

We didn't take the physical stuff very slow. Well, all the stuff leading up to actual sexual intercourse. Within a week I was comfortable enough to have my top off, but it took about three weeks until I was comfortable enough to even have him touch below the belt, but it took me a few days more to let him look. It all was fun and new experiences for me.

After dating for two months, I had decided I was ready to lose my virginity to him. I told him and he asked me all sorts of questions so we could decide if I was emotionally ready or if my hormones were just telling me to do it. After figuring out why I wanted to and things like that we both agreed that it was something I was ready to do.

But once we go to the actual act, I got extremely nervous and tightened up. Needless to say, your body won't let anything in when your muscles have closed the opening! He was really sweet about it though, telling me it was okay and that he will wait until we are ninety if that's what I need. We just layed in bed naked and held each other.

I lived with my mother, and only three months after we began dating, Alex moved in. We tried to have sex every once in awhile but it always hurt too bad. It's now five months after he moved in and six months after our initial try, and we still have yet to have sex. So even though I'm still a virgin, I find myself not feeling like one some of the time because of my relationship and what we have done. But I definitely see myself losing my virginity to Alex. He is the man I hope to marry one day and the only man I wish to sleep with.

Hopefully soon will we be able to do the deed, I can't wait to share the experience with him. Even though he is not a virgin, and hasn't been for many years, he has remained supportive and does not pressure me in any way. My ‘virginity’ may still be intact but my heart has been given away, and the gift of my virginity might have just temporarily been lost in the mail

Sincerely,
Aimee,
California, USA’

Sign me up...

Having spent a lifetime not recognizing quite basic forms of flirtation from the opposite sex (note: for any potential suitors, you may have to make yourselves obvious, when I say obvious, I mean installing green traffic light signals outside my house type obvious), my heart goes out to this week’s story teller. Nineteen year old Christopher is a teenager. He differs in no other way to you or me, except that he is Autistic.

This is a condition that amongst other things, affects the perception of quite basic non verbal communication. The ‘playing hard to get’ routines of the average teenager would be lost on the Autistic youth. The casual signals that you and I (usually) read would be invisible to the Autistic eye. Christopher explains it thus:

‘I have trouble with women. They tend to be very subtle which of course is entirely lost on me along with their non-verbal signals. I have difficulty recognising the significance of expressions and gestures as well as the more implicit language features – intonation and stress, etc.’

And we think we have a hard time!

Christopher has adopted what some may consider a radical solution to this problem. He has taken the bull by the horns, saved up some cash and taken the short cut. Christopher chose to lose his virginity to an escort. I applaud his brave, pragmatic approach. These qualities will serve him well as he prepares to leave home and go to university, a bold step by anyone’s standards. Here is his story…

‘Dear Kate,

I've been considering sending you an e-mail for some time now but have only recently plucked up the courage.

Until the 25th of May, 2007 I had never had a girlfriend, never kissed a woman, never held hands, never touched, and never came close to having sex. On this day I had a two hour appointment with a beautiful twenty-five year-old escort who went by the name of Dannie.

I've always struggled with social interaction, particularly with the opposite sex. This is due to having mild autism and also having suffered extreme levels of bullying throughout most of my life. I am generally considered very handsome and do not have a shortage of women interested in me but I don't have the social skills or the confidence to do anything about it - although I am working on it and feel my virginity-loss experience has helped immensely.

The idea of using an escort for my first time had been in my head for about a year but I had not seriously considered it until my eighteenth birthday on the 4th February 2007. Roughly a week before meeting Dannie, I phoned the agency which she worked for. They were friendly and put me on to the escort I had selected (which I wasn't prepared for and, unfortunately, nearly hyperventilated just speaking to her).

The day came and I took a taxi to the city where she was based. I arrived at her flat and took about ten minutes to bring myself to ring her door bell. When I did, I was greeted by Dannie who was even more stunning in real life than in her photos. Five foot nine tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, very soft features, and large, supple breasts (I hope that doesn't sound crude, if so I apologise).

She greeted me warmly with a kiss on the cheek, (the closest I'd ever got to a woman) and invited me inside. I handed her the envelope of money (£250), she invited me to sit down and offered me a drink of wine which I accepted. She went to the kitchen to pour the drinks, and presumably check the money also.

Dannie returned with the drinks and we talked for about fifteen minutes; just general chit-chat. She asked me to come to the bedroom, but I sheepishly asked for another drink which she obliged. When pouring the drink she asked 'Christopher . . . are you a virgin?' I answered that I was, something which I'd never admitted to anyone before and had always vehemently denied when previously questioned. She talked to me reassuringly as I drank and then led me to the bedroom.

I won't go into details but the rest of the appointment was amazing and intimate though we were basically strangers, we spoke more during and after which was, again, very intimate and personal. I left the appointment having received one last kiss, and wearing a grin which didn't fade for a few months and still returns when I reminisce.

I was extremely relieved to be free of the bonds of adult male virginity. As clichéd as this may sound, I felt like I had removed the weight of the world from my shoulders. I have since become much more confident in communicating with people. I still haven't had a meaningful relationship with a non-paid woman, though I have seen two other escorts since which, though not as special as the first, have served to make me more confident with women.

Although I was only eighteen at the time, and am only nineteen now, I could not and cannot see myself ever having had sex or a relationship without having seen an escort; I needed this. I will be going to University in September and hope to have a fresh start and, hopefully, forge new friendships and pursue a meaningful relationship with a woman. I will never forget Dannie and do not regret my decision to pay for the experience.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher, 19 years old, from England'

Given the prevalence Autism, I had to ask Christopher what advice he might offer to someone else considering this course of action. He answered with the following nuggets….

‘I would say that it's important to keep an open mind and be willing to learn, or more importantly, be willing to be taught. My first time I left my socks on and was jokingly scolded for it, we laughed and I didn't do it again. So, yeah, I'd say don't take things too seriously; be light-hearted in your approach and humility never hurt.

I'd also advise to aim to experience a variety of different women, not just one age group, ethnicity, background, et cetera. I've been with a tall blonde twenty five year-old, a medium height black-haired thirty year-old, and a short brunette thirty eight year-old. All of them brought a new and totally different experience.

Finally, I'd say if you're looking to use a sex worker to gain experience/ lose virginity/ whatever, then be sure to research them. Check previous clients' reviews, the reliability of the agency/girl, and remember that you generally get what you pay for. Also, I'd recommend a minimum booking of two hours, particularly for your first time; it gives you more time to relax and get to know the woman on some level.’

Wise words.

However you feel about Christopher’s choice, it is interesting to note that despite the fact that he lives with a condition that excludes him from the bore of standing on social ceremony, he is still prepared to go to great lengths to rid himself of his virginal status. He goes on to say this:

‘Now that I'm not a virgin I feel much more confident and happy in all aspects of life. As bizarre as this no doubt sounds, the moment I stopped being a virgin was the moment my confidence and general happiness increased ten-fold.’

You can’t argue with that.

Note: all names changed to protect identity.

Fear-less and fancy free..

When Donnie first sent me the story in the previous post, I wrote back…

‘Wow. That is one big story and you tell it so well. It illustrates so beautifully what a powerful experience the loss of virginity can be, coming as it often does at a time in our lives when we are so 'in the moment', everything is new, we have nothing to hold back from because we don't understand the concept of holding back, holding back from what?’

As I read this, an image from a television program I once saw springs to mind. The presenter made his point by setting a sweet chubby baby down on a glass floor. Beneath the floor was a big fat nothing. Infinity. Space. Nada. Was the baby fazed? Of course not. Why would he be? Fear is a learned response. The millions of adults who have purchased ‘Feel The Fear And Do it Anyway’ will testify to this.

Beyond ‘innocence’, people have often found it difficult to articulate what it is that they think they are losing when we talk about ‘virginity loss’. But perhaps ‘loss’ is the metaphor for something more profound. Maybe it is the fearlessness that we miss the most.

When we fall for the first time, we often fall hard. To compound the dullness of the thud, some of us, well, Donnie, managed to time this with his first sexual experience. True to form, he finds the right words to describe this bittersweet collection of feelings…

‘Thanks. You're exactly right about us not holding back. I think that's what people REALLY miss when they talk about the loss of innocence. It's not the innocence they miss at all - I certainly don't - it's the willingness to throw oneself entirely into something with no regard for the consequences.

That's the most beautiful element of youth. And it's that feeling, the loss of it - that is really what we lose. That's the idea I think is so beautifully captured in the Eden myth. I remember in the months after she and I fell apart, I read ‘Paradise Lost’ for the first time and I was blown away by how brilliantly Milton captures just that feeling. Adam and Eve are in the full flush of youth, absolutely unafraid and perfectly in sync. But after the fall:

‘They sate them down to weep, nor onely Teares
Raind at thir Eyes, but high Winds worse within
Began to rise, high Passions, Anger, Hate,
Mistrust, Suspicion, Discord, and shook sore
Thir inward State of Mind, calme Region once
And full of Peace, now tost and turbulent:
For Understanding rul'd not, and the Will
Heard not her lore, both in subjection now
To sensual Appetite, who from beneathe
Usurping over sovran Reason claimd
Superior sway.’

Yikes! If you needed a reason to regress, there it is.

Through the past darkly....

Coming as they do, at a point in our lives when we are ‘unformed’, free from the adult shaped shackles of ‘holding back’ or ‘being sensible’, the teenage years leave us free to throw ourselves fully at our first sexual experiences with no holds barred. Heart and all.

In response to Donnie’s story, I wrote back and told him that I will never forget the first time that someone really hurt me. Not that it matters now, but I can still recall its smell, taste and feeling. For Donnie, this bittersweet event collided with another ‘first time’ – the first time he had sex. Ouch. Like many of you, he expresses his feelings clearly. Furthermore, with hindsight, he has learnt to appreciate the past. Good or bad, all our experiences have their parts to play. This is as powerful a story as you will ever hope to hear…

‘If I pause for even a second, I won't send this to you, so I am just going to send it as I wrote it before I have a chance to change my mind:

It was ten years ago this month that I lost my virginity and the experience has left me with memories at once beautiful and bitter.

I was in college, working at a bookstore where it was my job to catalogue all their books for sale on their website. I had a key and often worked late at night and this meant that I and the girl I loved had a place where we could go and be away from the dormitories and our roommates. To say that I loved her would be a pale word for a feeling of radiant brilliance. I savored her. Every angle, every facet of her mind and her words and her eyes seemed to infuse me with an energy that I had never experienced before. When I was with her I felt that blessings were falling around me in a circle, shielding us both from a grey and chilly world.

One night, late in the dark store, after talking about Joseph Conrad novels, we kissed more and more deeply, and everything began to spin around me; all the square angles of the books and shelves blurred like a cartoon as I removed the lace from the curves of her body. It was hard to believe she was real—that anything could be so beautiful. Of course I had seen naked women before in pictures, and that had somehow infused the whole idea with a degree of unreality that now seemed to surround us.

We were laying on the floor between shelves of old books, and it all seemed like magic rather than reality; like music rather than sounds. I remember how her heat surprised me. I remember how her legs felt when they moved up around my ribs. I remember something she whispered to me—a whisper I sometimes still hear at night. I remember when I climaxed, the feeling rising up in me in a rush of heat: not like the feeling it had been when I was alone.

I remember playing with her hair afterwards, as we lay together panting and hot. And most of all I remember the feeling much later, as the sun was rising and we left the store. She was wearing my coat. And everything in the world was different. I noticed it instantly—as though the world had changed color; as though everyone had been speaking in a foreign accent and now suddenly switched to my own. I felt connected with the earth and the trees and the animals around me, and, of course, with her. It was truly a revelation.

I felt redeemed; saved somehow from an emptiness of which I had once had only a vague notion. In the ensuing weeks, as we made love more and more, I felt as though I had discovered a spiritual salvation of which religion had always seemed a bland imposter. I had never been a religious person, although I had appreciated religion's emotional aspirations. Now I was part of those aspirations.

It was only weeks later that it ended for us, under peculiarly painful circumstances. We tried briefly to salvage what had been, but it did not work. I was faithful; she was not. My heart was truly broken, as it has never been before or since. I fell into a depression and a year later decided to kill myself. I lay on my bed holding a knife and staring at it. I put it to my skin, but did nothing else. I won't go into what happened next, or describe how my desperate attempts to salvage what she and I had were rebutted with two painful betrayals. Suffice to say that I put my life together, and in the decade that has passed since I have made a successful and happy life, one of which I am deeply proud; one which makes me so glad I did not take my life as I so seriously considered then.

Six or seven years ago I saw met up with her again at a restaurant on the East Coast. She was with someone else, and after our lunch, I was able finally and at last to let her go. At home, I threw away my mementoes of her. Since then I have found a woman I love with all my heart and this summer will be our five-year anniversary.

My college girlfriend has married, and I hope she has found a life of tranquility, and that her husband fills her heart, as evidently I could not. Although the pain she caused me can never be washed away, and can never allow us to be friends, I am still intensely grateful for what she gave me, and I am able now to look back on that night and the other nights with magnanimity and fondness.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking of her and I am reminded of lines from my favorite poem, Tennyson's ‘Ulysses’: ‘I am part of all that I have met; / Yet all experience is an arch where through / Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move.’

I told her then that I would always love her, and, for better or for worse, it seems to be true.'

Donnie, from the United States