The Virginity Project

Back in the 1980’s when I was a teenager and we felt like the first generation of women who could make like a man i.e. have sex with whomever we chose (not without its issues but that’s a story for another time), it wouldn’t have occurred to us to think of virginity loss as anything other than awkward penetrative sex with a member of the opposite sex. This was the demarcation line between cool and not.

On a personal level, wearing a faded pink Fruit of the Loom t-shirt and tumbling in the grass with a French boy with cheekbones like razors on a balmy Spanish evening, I made sure I was cool, even though the physical experience itself still makes me wince when I think about it (the story behind it, however, was enough to inspire a book). My point being that times have moved on. People are freer to define their first sexual experiences in a more personal and frankly, interesting way. To give you an example, a female interviewee once said this to me:

"After a few months of sleeping with my boyfriend, I started to feel the twinges of a possible orgasm. And then he made me come. That’s when I really started to lose my virginity."

THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. Is that not one of the most joyous, evolved sentences you’ve heard? Everyone should be able to put pleasure at the center of their sexual experiences whether it be the first time, the fiftieth time or the last time - and not to concern themselves with the route they took to get there, whether it be trad penis in vagina sex, tongues in all manner of places or the classic dry hump.

And it definitely shouldn’t involve guilt, shame or at the worst, a doctor, politician or religious person who feels the need to define what to this day and forevermore will remain indefinable. There is no such thing as a test that can prove or disprove female virginity. I sincerely hope that one day we will live in a world where the need to even discuss this will cease to exist. Your virginity, or ‘lack’ of, is nobody’s business but yours. End of story.

Today’s story teller drives home, if you needed more reasons, why, contrary to what Susan Sarandon says, you actually DO need to vote with your vagina if you value the freedom to make your choices about your body. Susan Sarandon has enough cash to flee the country and not worry about the outcome of this election if it all goes tits up. If you don’t, close the lid of your lap top now and go and vote.

Hi Kate! I love your blog. Reading about other people's experiences is amusing and interesting. So I wanted to share mine. I'm Samia. I was born in 1995 and I'm from the United States. 

I come from a conservative Christian home. I was raised to believe that your virginity is special, only to be given to your husband. And also that no good guy wants a girl that's already had sex. Youth pastors used horrible analogies to get this point across like ‘Would you want a present that's already been unwrapped? Exactly’.

This scared me a lot. I've always been intrigued about sex from the time I got ‘the talk’ in fifth grade, but I didn't think I wanted to do it until I was married. I even had a purity ring, which sits, dusty, in my jewellery box as I type this. I had also been told by many people that you would experience immense guilt after doing it before marriage. So I felt pretty confident in my virginity pledge. 

I met Evan when I was 16. He was so easy to be around. I never felt uncomfortable or judged by him. Soon after we started dating, the topic of sex came up and it turned out he’d had a pretty crappy experience with it at first. He had been kind of talked into it by a girl he was dating for a few months and didn't enjoy it. We decided it was in both our best interests to wait. 

Fast forward two years later; we were on his bed, getting hot and heavy. He asked if I wanted him to ‘go down there’, I reluctantly said yes and I didn't regret it. It was bliss. 

After about a year of doing everything but intercourse, a few weeks ago, we tried it. 

This huge experience that everyone told me about was finally here. I was anxious to see what my own ‘first time’ would end up like. 

It was pretty bland. It only lasted about four minutes, neither of us finished. It was very uncomfortable and slightly painful. Afterwards he held me and kissed me and told me he loved me like thirty times. I was excited to have done it, and I can't wait to get more practice in. 

The thing is, I don't feel guilt like I was told I would. I don't feel this big emotional connection either; I was already so emotionally connected to Evan. He's the love of my life, and it was simply one of many first experiences we have shared together. 

That is my theory. Sex is what you make it out to be, and for me, it's an experience to share with someone. Don't get me wrong; I'm glad I waited to do it with Evan. But honestly, we had been ready to do it for a long time! Our relationship is strong and solid, with or without sex. And that is what my youth pastors left out: Sex does not make or break a relationship. People do.

The New Normal

 

‘That picture looks like two slugs performing a mating ritual’. I couldn’t disagree with this comment as I sat pouring over a set of interviews I spent a lot of last summer sourcing & editing….and the lurid image chosen by The Guardian to illustrate them.

I was in Athens when the interviews went online. They feature people discussing their sex lives so I was performing wifi gymnastics in a street-side cafe to get onto the website and find out what people thought of them. I love the comments. They’re like an extension of the feature for me.  A bonus piece of ‘content’ if you must. An added extra peep into people’s interior lives’.

Because whomever we may appear to be in normal life: the barista who helped kick start your day today with hot coffee, your dad or a fighter for ISIS, my interviewing world has taught me that every person we encounter has a vulnerable place inside them that needs to be heard. Every single person – no exceptions. Trust me; I’ve collected a book’s worth of virginity loss stories. I’ve been told some stuff and I’ve come to the conclusion that vulnerable places are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’. They just are. May as well wrap your arms around them and make friends. They’re not going anywhere.

And from time to time, these soft spots can be spied in the comments section of The Guardian. I know! But I had my socks knocked off a couple of years ago when they published a feature I’d written about being single. Men and women of all ages had let down their guards and told me how they felt about being un-attached, (with varying degrees of happiness it must be said). Some were delighted about it and some really weren’t.

You’ll rarely meet a more cynical crew than those who inhabit the comments section of the Guardian but reader, they sung like recently dumped canaries.  A nerve was twanged like an out of tune guitar. The response to my interviewees was poignant, tender, brotherly at times. At one point commenters began to counsel each other. ‘Don’t give up mate’ one reached out to another. People revealed their innards to each other in a way that took me by surprise. It is precisely this reaction that inspires me to keep mining. To keep finding out how people think, feel and function in this funny, awful, incredible world. To keep reporting from the front line of what it is to be human.

And when I say frontline, I mean the actual version of our lives and not the curated version that we present in its place, on social media, at the school gate, wherever. Slipping between the slats of these two versions of ourselves is what gets me out of bed. Once I’m armed with this emotional cargo, I attempt to create what social research agency Mass Observation first called ‘weather maps of public feeling’ back in 1937 when they began doing what entire ad agency planning departments do today.

‘The science of us’, Mass Observation named it i.e. finding out who we really are and not who we say we are.

The genesis of last summer’s feature lay in a bunch of interviews I originally conducted about LOVE. I wanted to know how our ideas about the L word evolve over time. I have thoughts on this (actually I have a million thoughts on this). But what would a child tell me? What does the word mean to someone who has not been around for that long? Compared to someone who has been around the block a few times? And what notions do we distill about love when coming towards the end of our lives?

I did the interviews (in the process interviewing a man who had been married for 60 years. He knew some stuff about love), got pulled swiftly in another direction and ended up pitching them to the Guardian as a Valentine’s day piece. It was January at the time so they laughed me out of the room and the interviews are still on my hard drive.

But they did say this: you’re always banging on about sex & relationships Kate, so why don’t you ask people to talk you through their sex lives instead? Yes, just like a sexual CV. The whole shebang, from start to finish.  Go and find out about the bits that people bring to mind when they’re asked to smile for a photograph and the heinous shags they’d rather forget. What makes them so? What is the architecture of a rocking sex life? We want to know it all. Go forth and ask people what they get up to behind closed doors (and other places). Anonymously. That way they can say what they like. So I did.

Well now. First of all, in the pits of a terrible summer, during which my mum retreated slowly away from me in a hospital bed, the ability to journey into the most private part of other people’s intimate lives allowed brief moments of mental flight during the saddest time of my life. There is much to be said for an absorbing project when you are having a shit time. I could have loved it for this reason alone, for keeping me sane and for connecting me to something that is very much about being alive.

But it was also the sheer breadth of people’s experiences. We are so convinced that this post Fifty Shades world is new. It is not. People have always dabbled, had sex with multiple partners or experimented with different genders (ok not everyone and not all the time, but you get my drift); it’s just that now we live in a culture that can have a conversation about it…just.

All of my interviewees bar one wanted to be off the record. People understandably do not welcome the thought of work colleagues/in-laws hopping online to read about their sex lives. But they definitely want a place and a space in which they can chew over their intimate lives. Especially given the highly sexualized world in which we now live.

I’m the lucky person who got to listen whilst they did that. Here are some précised thoughts on what I heard:

I loved the variety and the ways and means with which people found their way quite naturally towards what they wanted, both pre and post internet: ‘back in 1987’, 64-year-old Christopher told me, ‘my partner and I set up a role-play group….we put an advert in a magazine, and a lot of people joined, including trans women.

I am hetero-flexible, he continued. ‘I respond sexually to girls, transvestites and transsexuals, as long as they’re dressed as girls. As soon as they put on men’s clothes, its not working for me.’  And so many more gems like that that I had to cut as I couldn’t squeeze the cascade of information into the frustratingly small word count. Talk about killing your darlings, I could do another book on these interviewees alone.

Sarah was the hardest of all to edit as she talked me through her Revenant-style epic life story via a broken home, the gay women’s liberation movement, a deep dive into the hardcore gay male S&M scene, addiction and now, fully back in the light, working with what she calls her ‘naked men’ (a massage service) and discovering ‘the simple sense of playfulness that gets lost in adult sex’.

How very beautifully put.

‘I’ve had some wonderful experiences of joyful innocent play. And those men tend to look a bit bewildered afterwards.  They sort of go, woah that was really...WOW, thank you. And nothing really complicated has happened. Its just about showing up and in a way that’s possible because its this kind of container…’

What a breath of fresh air.

I hear a lot from the younger generation, raised as many of them are on mainstream porn, about the pressure to come up to the sexual mark, how difficult it is to throw the porn rule book out the window and go on a genuine exploration with each other.  That we often assume we should ‘know’ what our partners want, as if the information might be absorbed just by looking at each other.

That if you have to ask, it might mean you’ve got a problem. That sex is a formula to be followed. Each time the same moves, even if its with a different person…*snore*

As I have found during years of talking to people about this stuff, the people with physical disabilities are almost always the most clued up because they have been put in a position, literally, where they have to experiment and communicate in order to get what they want. They are fearless and way ahead of the game as a result.

‘Disabled people have a blessing in a way’, 28 year old Matt confirmed,  ‘because they learn that there are lots of other things that you can do that are way more pleasurable (than penetrative sex)…..a lot of men have a narrative in their head about how sex should play out, which ends up prohibiting genuine experimentation. I see sex as play’.

Ahh there it is again. The magic word: play. Strangely discouraged as soon as we become ‘grown-ups’. Note to self: get Matt to write a book about sex & play. I know enough about him to know that he would probably call it ‘Crip sex for normals’; or something similar, and that it would be a best seller. I do so love a man who walks the walk with way more confidence than most – with one less leg than most of the population.

My panel were insightful on the emotional as well as the physical. ‘One thing I have learned is to maintain my privacy and not tell my partner everything’, Hattie told me. ‘Not that I’m being deceitful, but having boundaries – whether that’s physical space or not oversharing – is a good thing. There needs to be a little bit of mystery there, too’.

This is a great point. Our current relationship model appears to be built around the idea of being, or attempting to be, everything that one person can be to another: partner, lover, best friend & co-parent all wrapped up in one exhausted unit.

I know lots of people who can live this way, and an equal number who can’t, but try to because we have been hoodwinked into thinking that total transparency is ‘romantic’ and in Hattie’s words; retaining something of ourselves is ‘deceptive’. Crap! And people are surprised when the known becomes dull and sexual desire takes a nose dive. Which is fine if you’re ok with that and not so great if you’re not. FYI, Esther Perel is the queen of this subject. Read Mating in Captivity for further enlightenment.

On other fronts, my male interviewees, both straight and gay slayed myths with lightsaber-like precision. Jonathan on the angst of a commitment-phobe partner: ‘I don’t find uncertainty thrilling; I find it a pain in the arse. The more you feel that sense of commitment, the more playful and expressive you are able to be. A big part of sex is getting to know someone…’  

Paul, on being a young gay man:  ‘people sleep around and it’s not my scene. I remember going on Grindr when I was 16. I was terrified…’

I also liked the way one of my interviewees summed up the BDSM component of her partnership with prosaic simplicity:  ‘It’s really nice to have someone take control for a little while. It doesn’t mean they take control in the rest of our life together. At the end of the day, it’s just an act.’ Nothing more complicated than that.

I mentioned the architecture of a rocking sex life before but let it also be said that a sex life should be whatever you and your partner want it to be: rocking, sedentary, whatever moves you, literally or metaphorically. Christopher likes getting it on with girls….and boys dressed as girls but ‘in the end, it’s the cuddling and the spooning that matter.’ 

Swinging from chandeliers can be fun but finding someone who thinks the sun shines out of your backside is also a deal breaker. Twenty five year old Sadie nailed it: ‘My ex had a look that only certain boys are capable of giving: it’s about love, and who you are, and wanting you because of that, and that’s really hot’.

It really is. We live in a brutally visual world, where we can reject or accept another person with the flippant sideways swipe of a finger across a smart phone. Clearly life has moved on from my mum’s era, when you passed quickly from child to adult hood, got married to the first person who looked halfway decent and if you were very lucky, fancied the pants off each other. But modern life has challenges too. We are liberated, for sure - and lucky to be so – but current sexual mores can be oppressive in their own way. And complicated.

I often think to myself that in a hundred years’ time, sociologists will look back at the late 20^th/early 21st century and think holy smoke, what a tricky time that was for women and men to try and get to grips with each other. Because we are poised on a tipping point between the patriarchal age (literally. Centuries of men being in charge) and something new and different and we constantly make the mistake of thinking that its sorted. Job done. That men and women are on an almost equal footing and therefore, everybody should know what they are doing and exactly how we should relate to each other.

We don’t know. Not because we are stupid but because it takes longer than the evolutionary equivalent of five minutes to work out how to co-exist after such seismic change. Women gaining control over their fertility in the 1960’s was a massive deal. The repercussions of which we are clearly still sifting through today. Simply put, and with increasing frequency, women do not depend on men in the way that our mothers and grandmothers did.

Today’s young Western women can direct the course of their own lives and as a result, we are all shuffling around, occasionally bumping into each other, (some because they clutching their out of joint noses), trying to re-arrange ourselves into new groups in light of this humungous power shift and discovering in the process –thank god – that there are a lot more choices than there used to be. There are all sorts of new ways to fit together. That there is something for everyone. That you don’t even need to identify as exclusively male or female anymore if you don’t want to, let alone tie your sexuality down to boring old gay or straight but it is discombobulating.

It is painful at times. We are very much mid shake down. Men aren’t sure what their role is in this new order and women are impatient whilst they work it out. There is collateral damage as we work our way towards the relationship iterations of the future.

And all of this is reflected in the complexity and color of our sexual lives. It’s all being played out in bedrooms and living rooms as we Netflix and chill, fall in and out of partnerships, raise children in new kinds of families and figure out how it all fits together as we wave goodbye to a generation who for better or worse, often partnered for life. It makes me unfeasibly happy to know how much my mum, like many of her generation, enjoyed her second marriage. She passed on in the autumn, just shy of her fortieth wedding anniversary to my step dad. There is a story that involved love.

We are all headed in the right direction, much as it sometimes feels otherwise. And we are doing it at a speed commensurate with actual change i.e. it doesn’t happen overnight. It happens as it happens, in its own good time.

Whilst that bubbles away on the back burner, talking helps build bridges, between men and women of all persuasions and types, between old ways and new. And if you can’t face talk then doing what you’re doing now, i.e. peeping through the port holes of other people’s lives is the next best thing.

Either way, together we are creating some pretty cool weather maps of public feeling, even here on this blog. We are building the science of us brick by brick, as we walk the walk, dare to talk and play our way towards the new normal, whatever that may be for you.

You can read the full edit here

 

The Virginity Fallacy

What a bind. A chimera, a smokescreen, a ridiculous concept, in fact virginity is. In times gone by, when women didn’t work and men were landowners, it served a purpose. Property got passed from generation to generation and one way of ensuring it went to a legitimate heir and not the offspring of a non-marital liaison was to regulate the sexual activity of one’s offspring. Specifically, the sexual activity of daughters, being as they are the ones that bear children.

The virginity of women served a tangible purpose. In some cultures it may remain so. The argument is more complicated than that. I’m simplifying the facts to the barest bones but you could also say lets be honest. Placing value on female virginity has morphed into a very convenient and highly effective way of controlling women. Mostly to protect the insecurity of men.

Some cultures have navigated the education and advancement of women with relative elegance. There is an understanding that as well as allowing women to become citizens of equality that it also benefits society at large. More working women = a healthier economy. A healthier economy equals better education for more people and so the cycle goes. Some cultures refuse to attempt the change. And some sectors of society that should know better, cough, the American ‘right’, still appear at times to find the empowerment of women discombobulating. 

Some might say its not my business to cast aspersions on the cultural practices of other countries but sitting outside a beach bar on a Greek island, feet wriggling in the sand, catching autumnal rays before returning to my life in London. A life where I get to do what I want to do and not what someone else deems in my ‘best interests’, the so called importance of female virginity seems tedious and selfish at best, despicable and dangerous at worst. It’s enough to make a girl want to change the name of her blog. The Virginity Project may yet become The Virginity Fallacy.

As if to illustrate the point, here is Kat who generously decided to share her story and in doing so, she showcases the hypocrisy of female virginity with heart breaking precision. She is Indonesian.

‘I have read The Virginity Project since a year ago and had been contemplating a lot of finally losing my virginity. I think this Project is very useful for us to share what we feel for this moment. Okay, here is my story:

I lost my virginity just six days ago at 31 years old.  I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed about it. I was born and raised as a Moslem (sic). However, I am really grateful that my parents is very supportive. One of the greatest things that they have given to me is freedom to create my own path and gave me opportunity to learn from my mistakes and be responsible with its consequences. This allows me to respect my personal values and make me to be a strong and independent woman.

However, sex is something that has never been openly discussed in the family. Therefore, in my lack of knowledge, I self-educated about sex. My first time encounter the word sex and porn and knew what are they really mean is when I am 9 years old. It was one of my classmates, a boy, that always talk about it non stop in front of us. 

It was my senior time in high school I became aware of virginity. At that time I was busy dating boys, the good ones and the bad ones. But sex is excluded from my dating game as I found most of the boys I dated is pretty conservative about virginity and most of them really plan to take me seriously and therefore wait for the time to finally marry me, to marry a virgin. 

This also opens my eyes that Indonesian people are mostly conservative and hypocrite. As known the biggest Moslem country, we adopt this "virgin until married" culture. People will always interfere your personal life. There is no tolerance of living together without marriage license and you are considered as slut if you have sex before marriage. 

However, the practice of prostitution, infidelity, affairs and sexual harassment are there. I can say that it is very uncomfortable to be a woman. Added to that, most Indonesian man are pretty hypocrite when it comes to virginity. Many of them already have sex with other woman yet insist they want virgin woman, exclusively. While he himself is not exclusively for her.  

I grew up committed to stay virgin until marriage. There's a time where I am proud of my virginity. And there's a time that I found myself embarrassed to admit it. Especially during my college years in Australia. There were too many times, I was in the situation where I consider to have sex with my dates. But I always have to find a way to get over that thought.

There came a time where I started to think about my virginity. It was when my ex-boyfriend, who want to keep me virgin until he marry me has his way to cheat and impregnate another woman. Life goes on and I manage to move on. 

I finally met my now boyfriend that I deeply in love with. He is very warm, has a kind heart and we share the same weird humor. We've been in relationship for almost 2 years. We do intercourse but not penetration. I don't mind doing my first time with him, but we decided to wait. 

Somehow, later I found out my boyfriend cheat on me to satisfy his sexual need with other woman. The distance (I live in other town) and also the virginity make me unable to satisfy his sexual needs.  I am so devastated, deeply hurt and feel dead inside. Never will I let my commitment with my virginity ruin my relationship again. 

Moving on, I tried to understand and forgive him. I tried hard to pick up pieces of my broken heart and stay in the relationship as I love him so much. Then I realize that my virginity may cost me my relationship and that it means nothing to me anymore. Therefore, I am 31 years old and lost my virginity six days ago to my boyfriend. Yes, my boyfriend but not my husband. 

My experience of losing my virginity is unpleasant. I lost my virginity in the same day my boyfriend confessed that he slept with other woman. We decided to do it when I was in grieving of his infidelity. There was no romantic setting. There was no glow of cherry popping. All I feel is hurt both in my heart and my vagina when he enter me.

Then things getting worst when I don't bleed in my first time even though it hurts like hell, which left us both confused. And then he starts to look at me with that look of ‘are you lying to me about your virginity’. It hits me so hard.

I just get off from the bed as soon as he finished. I wash my face and grab my clothes and then I decided to walk outside to catch the fresh air before I got suffocate by the bitterness of everything that happened that day. I came back an hour later and run to his arms for shelter.

Still confused, I asked my friends and they said that it is normal not to bleed at the first time considering I'm active in sports and that I'm very clumsy and there were many times I have injured myself. 

After all this, I feel happy now. I don’t regret losing my virginity before marriage. And I don’t regret just doing it now and not long ago. I think there's no such right time when you should lose your virginity. There's no right time to say when you are really ready or not. Sometimes it is very spontaneous and out of plan. 

 

I am happy now that sex also makes my relationship better, we are now more emotionally attached to each other.’

Viva la difference

I won’t lie. Last week was a long one and the thought of cuddling up in bed on Saturday morning was infinitely more appealing than arranging to be on the Euston Road by 10.30am.

But I had a ticket for the Wellcome Collection’s Symposium of Sexual Desire, so I got my shit together and I didn’t regret it one bit. This day long symposium promised to ‘delve into the complexity of sexual desire, tracing connections between history, sociology, psychology and neurophysiology’. It did so, with bells on and everything in between.

Two things spring to mind when thinking about this event. Research into an area that affects almost every waking moment of our lives is in its infancy and this fact blows my mind. We have built a rocket that could send a man to the moon but we still know next to nothing about the very reason that we exist in the first place. To illustrate my point, it’s only recently that we have begun to let go of the idea that vaginal orgasms are a myth for most women. It is simply not the way that the majority of the female population get off! But a man with a beard deemed it so sometime last century and culture dictated that these facts were not disputed.

Until now. Things are changing and Saturday’s programme at The Wellcome Collection confirmed this. The day was full of enthusiastic, insightful characters lifting away the layers of our intimate lives and trying to make sense of them. ‘It’s difficult to be scientific about such a subjective area’, said one of the speakers, but they gave it their best shot.

My second point is that at times, I am guilty of being negative about sex & the internet. I am disturbed by the fact that internet porn has become the default sex education. I’ve talked about this before. But the flipside is that the internet showcases a much more nuanced and less black and white model of sex. I see this in my own work all the time. If you’d asked a bunch of teenagers 10 years ago to define their loss of virginity, I’d wager that most of them (the heterosexual ones at least) would have mentioned penis-in-vagina sex.

Not today. Young people are freer to define their experiences on their own terms because they are exposed to more fluidity and choice. They understand that there are lots of different ways to experience sex and pleasure. So if the experience of having your first orgasm with someone meant more to you than having what, let’s face it, can be anti-climactic penetrative sex for the first time, so be it. Sexuality is a wide ranging arena and there are fewer and fewer ‘right’s or ‘wrongs’.  Just what feels right for you.

Asexuality, a phrase that I feel sure is set to become a buzz word for the future, was laid bare by Liz McDonnell & Susie Scott from the University of Sussex as they offered up a palate of asexual persuasions. Susie and Liz illustrated the spaces and places where the so called ‘normal’ sexual world overlaps with the asexual. Once again, who knew that asexuality was so nuanced and colourful? It reminded me of how shocked I was (at myself more than anything) when I first read the account that later become ‘The Asexuality Story’ in my book. Because I realised that asexuality was nothing to do with prudishness or having a personality schism or something that happened to people who had had disturbing experiences with sex.

It was more often about people who, whilst they might lack sexual desire, definitely did not lack interest in romance, intimacy or even passion. That there are all sorts of different ways of ‘being’ in this world and a lot of us are pretty limited when confronted with anything that strays from the norm. Here is some lovely writing on the subject of difference from Canvas8.

Katherine Angel led a fabulous conversation around the language that we use to talk about sexual desire, specifically women & desire because language in this area is mostly modelled on a male understanding and that seeing it solely as something that is ‘urgent’ can be prohibitive. That again, mimicking the theme of the day, there are lots of different ways to experience the D word. She also pointed out that that whilst we take male desire as a given, a story is emerging around women being more ‘unruly’ than is traditionally thought and proceeded to mention a piece of research conducted by Meredith Chivers that I really love.  I won’t go into one. You can read it here. But to summarize, women are turned on by just about everything: men, women, monkeys. Boom.

Kate Fisher delighted us with her collection of historical sex objects that she takes into schools to facilitate conversations with young people about sex, intimacy, body image and consent.  What a genius, not to mention genuinely informative idea.

And author Frederick Toates said that we 'needed more narrative based research’ which as you can imagine was music to my ears because this is what you, the readers & participants of this blog have helped me to co-create at The Virginity Project for the past 8 years.  Whilst I am at it, here is another narrative based piece of research I’ve recently completed.

The day could be summed up by Katherine Angel’s quote: ‘There is no normal; it’s just what is commonly accepted’.  So going forward, can we open our minds and commonly accept something curious and new on as many days of the week as possible?

Which leads me to today’s story.

There is little else to say about it asides from the fact that it’s a good thing that people are born with brains and can work things out for themselves because that’s some serious layers of shite that Kacey was forced to wade through in order to find ‘the truth’. Aka, her truth, the only truth that matters and not someone else’s agenda to push gender relations back to the Victorian era. Big up to Kacey for putting pen to paper and sharing it with us.

‘Hi Kate! I love your blog. Reading about other people's experiences is amusing and interesting. So I wanted to share mine. I am Kacey. I was born in 1995 and I'm from the United States. 

I come from a conservative Christian home. I was raised to believe that your virginity is special, only to be given to your husband and also that no good guy wants a girl that's already had sex. Youth pastors used horrible analogies to get this point across: "Would you want a present that's already been unwrapped? Exactly." 

So this scared me a lot. I've always been intrigued about sex from the time I got "the talk" in fifth grade, but I didn't think I wanted to do it until I was married. I even had a purity ring (which sits, dusty, in my jewellery box as I type this). I had also been told by many people that you would experience immense guilt after doing it before marriage. So I felt pretty confident in my virginity pledge. 

I met Justin when I was 16. He was so easy to be around. I never felt uncomfortable or judged by him. Soon after we started dating, the topic of sex came up and it turns out he had a pretty crappy experience with it at first. He had been kind of talked into it by a girl he was dating for only a few months and he didn't enjoy it. We decided it was in both of our best interests to wait. 

Fast forward two years later; we were on his bed, getting hot and heavy. He asked if I wanted him to "go down there" I reluctantly said yes and I didn't regret it.

It was bliss. 

After about a year of doing everything but intercourse, a few weeks ago, we tried it. 

This huge experience that everyone told me about was finally here. I was anxious to see what my own "first time" would end up like. 

It was pretty bland. It only lasted about four minutes, neither of us finished, and it was very uncomfortable, and slightly painful. Afterwards he held me and kissed me and told me he loved me like, thirty times. I was excited to have done it, and I can't wait to get more practice in. 

The thing is, I don't feel guilt like I was told I would. I don't feel this big emotional connection either; I was already so emotionally connected to Justin. He's the love of my life, and it was simply one of many first experiences we have shared together. 

That is my theory. Sex is what you make it out to be, and for me, it's an experience to share with someone. Don't get me wrong; I'm glad I waited to do it with Justin. But honestly, we had been ready to do it for a long time! Our relationship is so strong and solid, with or without sex. And that is what my youth pastors left out: Sex does not make or break a relationship. People do.'

*the painting depicts 'The Temptation of St Hilarion' (who doesn't look like he suffers an over abundance of hilarity) but you can read more here. He's in the Wallace Collection in London. 

Masculinity 2.0

Years ago, my car mechanic, a man I’ve had many interesting conversations with sitting under the arches of his Latimer Road ‘shop’ asked me ‘but Kate, does a man even lose virginity?’

Probably not in the same way a woman does. There aren’t physical ramifications for men (don’t get me started on the ‘cultural’ ones) but one thing I do know is that men spend a lot of time thinking about it. Not so much in the ‘I’m desperate for that to happen’ way.  That’s a given. I’m talking about the multitude of anxieties and questions that go through a man’s mind as he teeters on the brink of sexual communion for the first time. I may never have known this until I decided to write a book and a blog about it. I definitely didn’t think men would queue around a virtual block to enlighten me about their insecurities, heartbreaks and desires. I was so wrong.

Men have been some of my greatest, most forthcoming interviewees and if I’d ever stopped to think about it, why wouldn’t they be? Women have all sorts of opportunities to share their inner worlds. I have been encouraged to express how I feel my entire life. It doesn’t mean I do it but that’s not the point. The option is there and I’ve never been asked to quash my emotions in favour of ‘being a man’. I have not been told to man up when I am under duress.

I am as angry as the next woman about gender inequality. I’m angry on behalf of my mum who didn’t get to do half the things in her life that I’ve got to do in mine (although she has given it a bloody good bash). I am cheesed off about the mingy playground I played in at school whilst the boys got a big yard because ‘boys need to let off steam’. I’m still irritated by the way that some men were happy to intimidate me out of taking to the pool table as a teenager because it was deemed male territory. Play by all means, their faces said, but we are going to stand here and smirk at your attempts to connect the cue to the ball (until the day I played a lucky shot at a traditional smoky boozer and wiped the table out in one go. My smirking opponent, a stranger who had clearly thought he was going to show me the error of my ways threw his cue to the floor and flew out of the door muttering expletives).

All of this stands, but its important to say that for me at least, it is not at the cost of my empathy for men. In my mind, these two sets of thoughts and feelings can sit side by side and deciding that one is right and the other unquestionably wrong is not constructive. We won’t travel anywhere new by refusing to try and understand each other’s plights. I don’t need to cease being angry in order to try and give men a platform. Because the more men understand how I feel, and the better I package that up and communicate it, the more this translates in to real-time thoughtful behaviour. And vice versa.

Writer Matt Haig met with a barrage of vitriol when he proposed something along these lines earlier this week and that’s a shame. Everyone has got something to bring to the table and suggesting otherwise is unimaginative. Lets lick our respective wounds by all means. I have not stopped licking mine since the day I read this – but lets continue the conversation and attempt to evolve at the same time.

In the meantime, The Virginity Project has been moonlighting on behalf of masculinity. I’ve been back to my interviewing roots and talking to guys of different ages and backgrounds about how they experience being men. In doing so, I hoped to discover something about the way that masculinity has evolved over the last 75 years. As ever, my men folk knocked it out of the park. No one held back. Conversation flowed. Tea was drunk. Feelings were expressed. The (very edited) results are published in The Independent today.

I am also re-publishing a peep into the life of a young man, a virgin who wishes his life were otherwise. I will say no more.

‘I grew up in a very religious house. And I went to religious schools. When I started secondary school, someone asked about sex ed and was told that you would have to do ‘Leaving Cert biology’ to get that. At no point did we get any kind of sex ed prior to that. I did biology (for honest reasons!) and the talk could be boiled down to: ‘Sex happens between married couples. That was the talk. Nothing about safety, nothing about pregnancy.  And if you have sex you will be punished. That was my sex ed.

Making matters worse, when I was fifteen, I developed psoriasis, a very unpleasant, genetic but noncontagious skin disorder, which didn’t help my growing interest in girls and my desire to look cool. I learned how to hide it, by growing my hair long and wearing long sleeves/pants all the time. I kept trying with different girls, but was incredibly self-conscious and would often find myself unable to talk to them about anything more than ‘nice weather, innit?’

When I reached college, having finally freed myself from the shackles of small town life, I decided that was a whole load of crap and resolved to get cool clothes, meet interesting people and try sex for myself. It was a bit of a shock to learn that I still had no clue about talking to women. In hindsight, I can see several situations that I could have possibly turned into something more. Maybe. But I kept trying to break out of the repressive programming of 19 years. And then I had a minor freak-out in a club. Under the strobe lighting, the psoriasis on my scalp and upper body stuck out like day-glo dandruff. And this happened every time I went to a club. I still had the bars and events and college. While studying for my masters, I moved into a house and found myself sharing with 7 girls (all with boyfriends). It was an education and I learned a great deal about women. But always, at the back of my mind, I kept remembering how bad the psoriasis could get.

Ultimately, I finished college without ever having a girlfriend. This is despite my friends, frequent trips out and the numerous societies I took part in. The psoriasis was a constant burden. I learned to cover up a lot of my problems in college.

After college, I was in search of work, and found myself in a few strange places, including India and Russia. The jobs and language barrier made it quite difficult to find people my own age. I eventually found employment back home, in the city I went to college. I knew the streets, I knew all the names, the doormen, I knew the bands; I was set. My job was hard and time consuming, but worthwhile. I ventured out several weekends a month, to different gigs or bars. I got a job with a music magazine, and would often get in for free. I started kick-boxing, along with volunteering at a soup kitchen twice a week. I was spending my days working, my nights hanging out with my new friends, and my weekends getting into gigs for free. It was great.

I was and still am generally happy with my lot in life. Yes, I would sometimes wonder what it was like to hold someone in my arms as they slept, but I would just remind myself of the numerous good things in my life and just say it will happen when it happens. I kept myself out there and did things I enjoyed and believed in. I have few difficulties socially, and can talk to most people, but when I try for something more, I fall flat on my face or miss the cues to act.

After an absolutely hellish week at work, I returned to my flat ready for a nice long weekend of sleeping, listening to music and watching TV. Instead, my flat mates had a few friends over and I got talking to a girl who I’m going to call Jess.

She was pretty; she was funny, she had similar hobbies to mine. After a few hours of listening to increasingly bad music, she looked me right in the eye and said: ‘This is getting a bit much. I bet your room is a lot quieter.’

As I led her up the stairs, all I could hear was the theme to Chariots of Fire. She stopped in the bathroom to do whatever arcane magicks women do to prepare, so I classied up my room a bit. The door opened, and a beautiful lady in just a bra and shorts entered my room. We haven’t even kissed yet. She begins to open my shirt, then paused. ‘What… the fuck? She stepped back, vomited on my bed, and asked ‘What the hell is wrong with you?!’

Psoriasis.

She pulled her top back on and walked out. After everything, after getting my life sorted, after getting someone who wanted to be with me because she liked me, and this was how it ended. I didn’t leave my room for the weekend. I didn’t eat, I just slept and watched porn and slept and watched porn. She was the last girl I approached. I haven’t tried since then, about 6 months.

I only ever told one friend of mine about that night. He recommended I see an escort, and gave me a list of his ‘go-to’ girls. Talking about escorts and prostitution opens up a whole other can of worms, I’m not the biggest fan of it, but I’m not going to condemn the ladies involved, and I can understand why some (not all) people go. He then told me to try the ‘pump and dump.’ Take a guess what that is. If someone, man or woman, wants a string of one night stands, I got no problem with that. As long as whatever happens is between consenting adults who use protection, then you can do whatever.

Trying to bring me around to his way of thinking, he told me about the ‘unholy abomination’ he woke up beside earlier that week. I’m sure there are plenty out there, men and women, who can tell similar stories. Go out, get drunk, go home with someone, cold light of day it’s a Hammer Horror. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be someone’s funny sex story, and I don’t want to have one myself. I’m not looking for true love, or waiting until marriage. I just want someone I care about, and who in turn cares about me. I want to bake cakes for someone. I want to hold someone in my arms until they fall asleep. I want to be with someone who wants to be there, not because they have an obligation or for money.

So that’s me. A 26-year-old genetic abomination who never kissed a girl.

Born in Wales'

Tell me your story...

The Virginity Project is temporarily going in a different direction. A step on from our ‘first time’ stories, I am investigating the arc of our sexual lives for a feature for British newspaper, The Guardian. Virginity Project story tellers past and present, many of you have shared your incredible first time stories with me over the years. Would you now like to - anonymously, no real names will be used in this feature -  continue the journey and explore your years (or months) since the 'first time' and tell me about the following?

When were your best experiences? Or the worst? What is the architecture of these experiences? Is it down to the chemistry between 2 people? Or a particular age/state of mind we reach? Does great sex require a committed partnership? Or not?  What is the impact of those experiences?

How and why does our attitude towards our intimate lives change over time?

How has modern life i.e. online dating, social media and ubiquity of porn impacted our sexual lives? For good or bad? Last but not least, how much does all this matter? How important is a fulfilling sex life? I’m interested in all perspectives on this last question.

Interviews are ANONYMOUS. Email me on [email protected] if you would like to contribute/get something off your chest or if you know someone who would make a good contributor. I’m after all ages, backgrounds, orientations, whether sexually active, asexual etc, I'm open to all perspectives from both women and men. Interviews can be done by email (I’ll provide questions/guidelines).  

Thank you in advance dear contributors!

 

Cock-a-doodle-don't

 …and then it was 2015. To kick off the New Year, I thought we’d start with something silly. The Virginity Project tends towards the serious at times. Much like impending spring time – at least we hope for impending spring time – light relief is always a good thing.

‘Laugh away’ wrote my contributor after I died laughing reading his story. Even if the sun hasn’t found its way to the UK yet, I can assure you it’s the first mention of the phrase ‘my cock was ruined’ this year. If not ever. You’re welcome. Enjoy!

‘When I was 15 years old, I stayed the night at my best friend Toby's house quite a bit during the summer of’ 93.  He lived a 5-minute bicycle ride away from my insanely hot 15-year-old girlfriend, Lisa.  Her father worked, so she would be home all day with no parental supervision. 

In my mind, I knew I was getting closer to a 'home run', as I'd previously made it as far as third base, mostly at Lisa's prompting.  She looked strikingly like Cindy Crawford in her prime, great body, flowing brown hair, piercing eyes.  She always smelled like ripe strawberries and I love strawberries. 

One day during the summer, I rode my bike over to her house and her loud mouth, annoying friend Sarah was there.  This girl was cock-block deluxe.  She would not leave us alone, even when Lisa asked her to.  However, once we finally got her out of our hair for a moment, we began to make out on her bed.  I put my hand down her shorts, and into her panties.  I fingered her for a bit, but of course, loud mouth returned.  She was soaking wet and I was hard as a rock.  She got off her bed, took my hand, led me to her bathroom, turned on the fan, and locked the door. 

We undid each other's button fly shorts.  Button fly pants are the most annoying thing when you're in a hurry. She hopped up on the bathroom sink and I began to stimulate her with my fingers again.  My cock was so hard I thought I was going to run out of skin if it got any bigger.  She began to jack me off. 

Masturbation has always involved some sort of lubricant... up to this point.  See, it had always been my hand doing the stroking, never a girl's.  Because there was no lubrication of any kind being used here, she began what felt like rubbing the skin off my dick.  What was I going to say though?  I had a beautiful girl jerking me off.

This went on for a few minutes before she asked me if I had a condom.  I did not.  She however did.  She asked me to lay down on the bathroom floor before she rolled the condom onto me.  She got on top of me, and guided me in.  She began to ride me.  Kinda.  She was actually hurting me.  The rubber against my rug-burned-cock was painful, and the condom was a bit large for my 15-year-old penis, but dammit, I was having sex!

I never got off.  I have no idea if she did.  When I left, I couldn't wait to get back to Toby's house, so I could rub one out.  I locked myself in his bathroom and used a handful of Vaseline to do it.  My cock was ruined.  It felt like it was on fire.  I remember how disappointed I felt.  Like, that was sex?  I also remember not feeling particularly any different than I did before sex.  Well, other than my dick wasn't on fire. 

My name is Taylor, I was born in 1978.  I live in Wichita KS and I gotta chalk up my experience of losing my virginity as a bad one. 

It's got much better since then.

As a side note, about 15 years later, after we both had kids and had been divorced, Lisa tracked me down, and we had some fun as adults for a few weeks.  We got each other off plenty.' 

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*glowing winter sun in London at 9am this morning

Telling sad stories is a tricky one and as time ticks by, I find it harder. The world is alarming enough without revealing the sad intricacies of people’s intimate lives. That said, great writing overrides that for me. Because as much as these stories might be difficult to hear, this is life and the people who capture it succinctly should have a platform.

‘Into each life a little rain falls’ as my mum once said when I moaned about losing a ring that I loved. She’s right, in the way that mums are. In the scheme of things, jewelry loss is no biggie compared to the big shit. I used to have a friend who said he wanted his life to be ‘perfect’. ‘Blissful’ was the actual word he used and whilst I don’t want to discourage you from seeking bliss, if you want it on a permanent basis, good luck with that. Im not convinced its the best use of your time. A permanent state of blissfulness would soon cease to have meaning or interest because it would become the norm i.e. dull. The mill needs grist. This is how we learn, improve and appreciate the good times. In the first world, that might be the days when we don’t lose jewellery. For a lot of people it will be the days on which they get to eat. With Ally in mind, I'm thinking about the occasions when human beings get to connect with other human beings in a meaningful, safe and loving manner.

I hope there are lots of these on Ally’s horizon.  In the meantime, and in a beautiful economy of words, here is her story.

‘Hey, Kate -

Just thought I would contribute my story, for you.

I'm 34 (born in 1979)

And from Melbourne, Australia.

Here goes:

I think I was about 14, and I am pretty sure I had just returned from one of the first Meredith Music Festivals, to the beach in St. Kilda, where I was living on the streets.

Homeless/Runaway/all of the above. 

I had set up my sleeping bag and teddy bear in the Rose Gazebo at the local Botanical Gardens, but I liked to hang out on the beach, and feel part of life, nature, and people.

One night, I met an 18-year-old boy - Dan - who had just found out he was adopted, because his ‘Dad’ was in hospital, dying. On his death-bed, he told the boy, ‘I am not your real father’.

Dan was pretty distressed.

He wanted to go out somewhere, drinking.

So I sent him down the road, but he came back, later.

Eventually, we were making-out on the beach, and I heard this girl walk past and call me a ‘slut’. That's funny’ I thought. ‘I'm a virgin.’ I began to think about whether I wanted to keep my virginity, or just get rid of it. I was leaning towards getting rid of it.

Dan was staying in the Austin Hospital, in Heidelberg, where his ‘Dad’ was dying. It was pretty far away. 

We wandered around the streets, looking for a bank machine, for what felt like hours. His hand was down my pants the whole time. I had to get used to walking around that way.

We even passed one of my Dad's friends, who was working as a street-sweeper. Awkward.

We got some money, and caught a cab ~ about $40 away. That was a lot, at that time, and I had no idea how I would make it back to my sleeping bag and teddy bear at the Rose Gazebo.

We went up to his room. He was staying in a strange Nurses Quarters, all 'holy', and 'single'; including a crucifix on the wall above the single bed.

I felt him enter me three times, or three thrusts - and then it was over.

'That's it?!' I quizzed The Great Spirit.

And I had to go pee, almost urgently. 

He pointed the way.

He came downstairs with me, called a cab, and gave me $60; to get home, and because he knew I was homeless. 

I thought that was quite nice of him. He may have kissed me goodbye - but I don't recall.

I wished him well with all of his sadness. 

I arrived back at the gardens after dawn. The automatic sprinklers had turned on sometime in the night, and my sleeping bag had gotten all wet. I went to the 7-11, now that I had some money, and bought a packet of BBQ chips.

I sat around by the duck pond, eating them, and thinking about how I felt about losing my virginity.

I felt like at least I had been given money; it added value to me and my experience, somehow.

Because I had heard plenty of horror stories about other peoples virginity. And if I couldn't have Love, then money would do. At least it wasn't violence.

*I am writing a new book on sexual abuse, actually, because apart from that, and a couple of other odd stories, I have still never ‘had sex’. Just lots of rape, and stuff. 

So even in hindsight, my virginity story glows*, in a really strange way...

Much Love,

Ally.’

Coke is the real thing

I’ve been brewing this metaphor for years. Or perhaps the word ‘season’ might be more appropriate. Because its usually around this time of year when, in a fit of pre-winter dread and the realization that my summer short/sandal combo is going to make me look a bit simple within a matter of weeks, I panic buy an item of clothing that I am convinced is going to make me look like a French fashion editor for the entirety of winter. Only to discover shortly afterwards that 1. I hate it and 2. It doesn’t suit me. It doesn’t transform me in the way I imagined. The fashion police are not high fiving me on my way to work. It was a sartorial chimera, purchased in a moment of impulse and insecurity in the belief that it might change my life. In much the same way we sometimes believe a flashy new boy or girlfriend can change our life. Which occasionally they can. But mostly the world doesn’t work that way.

To put this into perspective, a few years ago, I was browsing a cheap high street shoe store when I happened upon a pair of white loafers.  Lets just be clear that up until this point in my life, ‘white’ and ‘loafer’ were two words I would not have enjoyed putting together in one sentence. I come from the 1980’s. White loafers conjured up the wrong associations for my people and I but something about this particular shoe whispered ‘Take Me’.

Or at the very least…‘Try me on. You might be surprised.’ 

So I relented and what do you know? I was transformed into someone I had no idea I could be. The effect was astonishing. I looked polished….but casual at the same time. They looked cool with scruffy jeans. They looked marvelous with a dress. The whiteness – and they were WHITE – lifted and complemented virtually any outfit you care to mention. People commented on them wherever I went. Sometimes they spotted the shoes straight away. Other times they would just look and say ‘You look different somehow Kate. Better. Actually you look really well’.

And to think I could have sailed right by those shoes and never even given them a second glance.

And so it is with relationships, I feel, as I flit amongst the rows of autumn allure in the high street stores.  I often get asked in the emails I receive from young men and women….’how do I find’ - in the manner of someone searching for a needle in a haystack, because that’s how it can feel – ‘the person who is right for me?’ Here is my answer.  You need to look for the human equivalent of the white loafer. Which is to say, expect to be enthralled by the unexpected.

Keep your mind wide open because in my experience, the person who turns out to be ‘right’ is often to be found underneath one’s finely tuned-to-search-for-a specific-type-of-person radar. Which is a tough call in the age of digital romance.  In an era when you can literally swipe someone off the screen of your smart phone and move quickly onto the next individual based purely on a 2 second appraisal of their ‘qualities’. It’s a challenge because what I’m suggesting to you is to think beyond the very thing that catches your eye in the first place and focus on what might give you a more long lasting sense of pleasure. Some of you might be thinking, well, DUH? How else is one going to sustain romance than by looking beyond the obvious? If so, congratulations. If you’re under 30 and you’ve got that sussed then you are ahead of the game because honestly? This was not a concept that was clear to me way back when. I get it NOW. Now I’m older (and only marginally wiser) but mostly I would have thought you were talking a different language if you’d suggested such a radical idea at the age that a lot of my correspondents are.

Now I can speak from experience because a few years back, I got it on with a man I might not have picked out of a line up (of potentials. Not criminals obvs although I’ve had my moments with the latter). Don’t get me wrong, I was physically attracted to Non Line-Up Man but on first blush, he didn’t fulfill my limited idea of whom I thought I should be with. I liked charming, scruffy, rock n roll boys who over imbibed. Non Line Up Man had charisma in bags but he didn’t drink. I spotted a pair of dad sandals in his hallway.  He didn’t care about going ‘out’ on a Saturday night (a.k.a. coming home on Monday morning).  But he did have, I discovered upon close inspection, bigger and much more interesting fish to fry. A life, in short and a purpose beyond the next party. Reader, several months in I realized I was happy with him and it was a shock to me.

I won't lie. Every so often I would – literally. He was a cycle courier – see my past, the most recent waste of space I’d wasted my time with ride by and I’d look wistfully at the dust trail kicked up by his back wheel. But it didn’t take long to realize that I was 100% happier not being spun into someone else’s web of self-destruction and, ultimately, tedium. Whereas this. This was interesting. This was inspiring (and sexy) on a level I’d not experienced before and all because I’d dared to dig beneath the surface and please what felt good inside instead of entertaining my slightly insecure and attention span deficit outside.

It is a curiously contradictory dance that I am proposing to you in order to find something similar. I’m not knocking tinder, Guardian Soulmates or online dating as a concept. I’ve served time at the coalface of online dating and known success in this field but take time to look beyond the obvious. To use the metaphor I began with, I wouldn’t recommend jumping at trophy pieces whether they be human or fabric. Short cuts rarely work, or last. Save your money for cashmere. Of course that may not be what you want, in which case, proceed with abandon!

In the meantime, here is a *story that has very little to do with today’s sermon. It is painful, but it is funny. When I say painful, I mean painful in the ‘I lost my virginity when I tied my dog to my bike, the dog saw another dog, legged it and I fell onto the cross bar’ painful (this actually happened to someone I interviewed for my book btw). But the finish makes me  L O L.

*This story was first published on nerve.com but its owner emailed me and bought it to my attention recently. I’m so glad she did.

Female, 14, New York

The story of when I first had sex with a man and the story of how I lost my virginity are actually different stories. The sex with the man is typical and boring so instead I am going to tell the story of how I popped my cherry.

I was fourteen and had recently struck gold when I found out how to give myself an orgasm. My ventures into masturbation had been non-penetrating up until that night, but like anyone exposed to any addictive pleasure, I looked for a dragon to chase. 

I had inherited my room from my older sister who had moved away to college. There were many phallic objects to choose from, but my sister’s collection of Classic Coke bottles drew my attention. The neck of one such bottle seemed small enough not to do any damage but large enough to qualify as a dragon.

The Coke bottle stood at attention on the floor while I straddled it. After a few up-and-downs, I had an orgasm and finished the exercise unscathed. I concluded that having something to wrap my kegels around while enjoying spasms is much more ideal then just tickling the kitty. I hopped into bed excited that I discovered a new technique within the creative hobby of masturbation. I should have just stayed in bed and fallen asleep, but then I wouldn’t have this story to tell.

I decided to do it again. So once more the bottle stood at attention. This time I felt a little more adventurous so I increased speed and doubled up on the rhythm. But like all zealous and inexperienced teenagers, I had abandoned caution. At one point the bottle slipped out, and as I came back down it hit my pubic bone and bounced its way inside at an aggressive speed and angle, ripping through my hymen.

I had remembered hearing about bleeding once your hymen is broken and how sometimes there can be a lot of blood. Sometimes women panic, but it is actually normal and there is nothing to worry about. But I hadn’t accounted for my hymen breaking under such reckless circumstances, so I immediately didn’t think it was normal.

It was dark in my room, so I didn’t see but felt warm blood gush down my legs. I thought I was going to die. I threw on a robe and stuffed a towel between my legs. I knew I needed help. I went out into the hall and called downstairs for my twin sister but there was no answer. Alas, the only person home was my poor father.

The unsuspecting man was in the shower when I knocked on the door and opened it a crack, asking if I could talk to him right now, because it’s really important. Like a good father, he told me to hold on for one second. He got out of the shower and put on a white towel that he had to hold together with his hand.

He was sitting on the toilet when I came in. I honestly don’t remember what I said, but he definitely understood that I broke my own hymen while masturbating. My father sighed deeply and rubbed his temples. He told me that I was going to be fine. I didn’t think he understood the damage I had done to myself so I showed him the blood-soaked towel so he would realize the emergency. He looked at it and still assured me I was going to be fine.

All I had to do was wear a pad and not put anything else up there in the meantime. I realized that this emergency was not an emergency and that I had traumatized both of us for no good reason. We both sat there in the bathroom silently for a moment. But then the awkwardness became unbearable so my father tried to remedy the discomfort.

I cringed as he told me stories about sex and blood from his experience. Like when he was a teenager he had dry-humped a girl until his penis bled, some of which got on the girl’s jeans. He also told me that his one girlfriend, who had lived with us, was a virgin when they first had sex and it had looked like a massacre scene. My fingernails dug into the palms of my hands. I was mortified and I felt sorry for both of us.

I don’t remember exactly how our exchange ended, but eventually I was sitting downstairs in the kitchen by myself, eating pasta. I had put on underwear and a pad. I felt like crawling into a hole somewhere. My brother came home and sat down at the table with me. I remember thinking he has no idea about the horrific event that just happened to me. And then I burst out laughing. It startled my brother and he asked me what was so funny. I continued to listen to him while smiling.

This has happened to me a couple of times. When I am so mortified that I can’t imagine life beyond that moment, because of the embarrassment that I have to carry with me, but then the whole thing turns into a comedy, which makes life easier, as though it were some kind of evolutionary mechanism. Without this mechanism, embarrassment would drive human beings off cliffs in herds, like lemmings.

That following weekend I was staying with my mother. I pulled her aside and told her my humiliating secret. My mother did something she does only once in a great while that always entertains me. Her face turned red and she covered her mouth. Her whole body shook and very little noise came out of her except once she took a deep enough breath, she squealed with laughter.

My mother got on the phone with my eldest sister and told her the story. My Coke bottle incident spread through the family like wild fire. I remember lying on my grandmother’s bed the following Christmas Eve with a large group of my female cousins, recounting the story while they all laughed. My sister Elizabeth (the previous owner of the Coke bottle) told the entire floor of her dorm room. I was visiting her once and a guy I had never met handed me a can of Cherry Coke. 

I like the idea that I lost my virginity to myself and not to some dickhead.

Chicks dig nerds

‘I stumbled across your blog today after hearing about your book on Dan Savage's podcast. I think your project is a really cool idea. I wanted to tell you my virginity loss story because it's a good one and there isn't much occasion to tell it.’

Never a truer word spoken. How often do you get the chance to regale a total stranger with the story of your first fumbling attempts at sexual intercourse?  Not often enough in my opinion. Not only that, but in another first, we feature that rarer-than-hen’s-teeth-tale today: the amusing virginity loss story. I won’t bang on about it but I don’t get a lot of these so make the most of it.

Finally, in a shout out to nerds of the world, here is living proof of that most thrilling of facts…..chicks definitely dig nerds.

‘To frame things, I'm kind of an introverted nerdy guy, so in high school while I had friends and so on, I was pretty awkward and definitely didn't hit it off with the ladies. I figured I would play a bunch of soccer, play a bunch of video games, do well in school, and try to figure out the whole love thing in college. Then, in the summer between grade 11 and 12, I got this sweet job as a summer camp counselor at a sleep away camp teaching kayaking, Magic: the Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons. I usually leave out these last two when describing this job to people, but I feel here this information serves to make a point. I realize you may need to look them up ... I am a giant nerd.

So in this job, I hung out with a bunch of kids, ran around with them, and nerded out with them. It was great, in many ways the best job ever. Then, I met this girl who was teaching pottery at the same camp. She was hot and smart, and more astoundingly to my 17 year old brain, seemed like she was into me. She laughed at things I said. She asked me about things that other people would try to get me to shut up about. She seemed happy to see me and be around me. She was artistic and so much more outgoing than me. We had fun just joking around and doing nothing. Of course, despite being head over heels for this girl, I had no idea how to proceed to make any kind of move; I had never even kissed a girl. Luckily, she was a couple years older and a bit more experienced.

We were hanging out by the lake on a night off and she confronted me with all kinds of awkward questions, like whether I was into her, whether I had kissed a girl before, whether I wanted to kiss her specifically. Somehow she seemed to find my stuttering admissions and beet red face cute or something. Then we made out a bunch. And she taught me how to be less bad at it. I was spending a lot of time embarrassed, but was I ever loving this job….

A few days later we had an even more embarrassing conversation about having sex. She was so collected. I can't even imagine the look and color of my face. Again however, she seemed to think my inexperience was endearing or some such. On my next day off, I drove the couple hours to the nearest town for a package of condoms and then I waited for the next night we both had off together. Those were the longest two days of my life. My excitement grew and grew until it was finally the day. We waited until well after all the campers would be in bed (2am or so), went down to a very romantic secluded grassy beach near the lake, talked a bit, and made out some more. She explained how I would probably be really quick, being my first time and all, so she wanted to get off first. That seemed fair so I got to learn about how to give oral sex. She seemed happy to give me very specific instructions, which was good.

What seemed like an hour or so later, exhausted in muscles I didn't even really realize my tongue had, I got her to climax and we were ready for my turn. I was so excited. I moved on top of her, we kissed a bunch more, and finally the moment I had built up in my mind, I entered her.

It felt so good. I was in heaven. The feeling of the grass between my toes and the wind on my back, it all just went away.

That's when things went all pear shaped.

After maybe 30 seconds of bliss, there was a brilliant flash and the loudest clap of thunder I had ever heard. I jumped right out of her in startlement. Then we started to hear something falling, but it didn't sound quite like rain. Bigger and heavier and more solid. And sure enough I got hit square in the back by something big, hard and cold. Now I had never been in a hailstorm before, so it took a second to figure out what was going on. (Also, who ever heard of hail in July? WTF!?) And these hail stones were big. Not quite golf ball sized, but not much smaller than that either. And they hurt; a welt raising, bruising kind of hurt. She huddled under me for a few seconds then we made a mad dash pulling on clothes and running for our respective bunks. I showed up back at the bunk in jeans, only jeans. No shirt. No socks.

No shoes. No underwear.

Of course the hail, followed by my getting back out of breath, woke up a bunch of the campers who immediately started asking what was going on,

where I was, where my cloths were, and why I was covered in big red welts. I made up some story about being out swimming in the dark and getting caught in the storm (which the other counselor seemed to know was bull poo). Around this time I realized that inside my jeans my now flaccid penis was still in a condom which had become plastered to my inner thigh and was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. At that point, I just cracked up laughing. I was laughing and laughing to the point of crying, and obviously I couldn't tell anyone what was so funny. I waited out the storm and went back to collect our clothes thoroughly frustrated, but with a certain amusement that comes of the minor train wrecks in life. Those times when you can say ‘why me!?’ but really everything is fine.

Thankfully, we got a few more chances at it before the end of the summer, none of which ended in a hailstorm.

Anyway, that is my first time story. I hope you find it as funny as I do.

Cheers,

Scott*

*name changed to protect 'Scotts' identity.