The Virginity Project

Jungle love...

The Virginity Project began with a conversation a little like the ones that the contestants of ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of here,’ had yesterday.  Clearly I wasn’t in a jungle when I decided to do this but I was on El Matador beach in Malibu which is almost as exciting.

I also wasn’t hanging out with a bunch of B list celebs and I didn’t follow the conversation up by eating kangaroo balls and sticking my hand down a dark hole to see what might remove my hands but I’d still argue that my adventure has been just as exciting….

Perfect shmerfect...

I was just about to post this story yesterday and blather on about how good it is to seize the moment but then I got sidetracked by an email from my ‘born again’ virgin friend, who try as he might, has still not persuaded me that this is a path worth following but it did get me thinking about why, lovely as he is, he really gets my goat?

First things first, born again virgins believe – and this is official blurb that I have pulled from a website, that ‘secondary virginity, or being a ‘born-again’ virgin, is when an individual who has had premarital sex chooses to ‘start again’ and wait until marriage.’ Which is all well and good, I have no problem with this. I have met all sorts of interesting people and encountered many vexing theories and this is one of the more interesting ones.

In fact, I have a certain admiration for people who, given how much pleasure one can get from doing the do, have the sheer force of will to forego sexual intercourse until they meet ‘the one’. Nope, this isn’t the part that winds me up. What really twists my melon is the idea that life should be perfect and that this is what we should all be holding out for. Life is not perfect and nor should it be. What would we learn about anything if we drifted through the days in a series of scenes reminiscent of ‘Little House on The Prairie?

Because where is the grit and the grub and the edge that we need in order to really learn stuff? And where is the inner grit and the skills that we need in order to develop into healthy functioning adults who can go with the flow, roll with the punches and if necessary, put up a fight if the occasion calls for it? You’re not going to get that by foregoing sex until you meet the person that you want to marry.

Its like all these kids that suffer from asthma related conditions because their parents got so obsessed with Dettox’ing every single surface clean when they were young that they actually have no immune system whatsoever. Exposure to dust and dirt renders them completely helpless. This is not good. We cannot live a homogenized, vacuum packed existence. It doesn’t help anybody, least of all ourselves.

And so it is with our virginity. Waiting for perfection is not a good use of our time. You’ve got to get down and dirty and make a mess of things because at the end of the day, if you have been allowed to develop some degree of self awareness then hopefully you will also have the ability to choose a nice partner - someone who will listen to you, support you, be your biggest cheerleader and hopefully have some top quality hot sex with. Can we ask any more than that?

Phew, I’m glad to get that rant off my chest and while I’m here, I’ll say this. When I get into bed at night, I close my eyes and I thank god, my maker, my intuition, whomever or whatever you want to believe in, for all the experiences that are bestowed upon me. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Because I appreciate them all, I learn from them and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Which leads me to today’s story, a goodie from a girl with her head screwed onto her shoulders the right way round. She does ask that question – ‘should I have waited for someone I love?’ And who wouldn’t? It’s the most natural question in the world. But she follows this up with some good old-fashioned pragmatism. It might not have been the greatest experience in the world but it certainly wasn’t the worst, heck, she spent most of it laughing, not many people can say that!

I’ve said all this before, and no doubt I will say it again in another post, and in another way but I can’t help it. We are human beings not robots. We are supposed to grow and mature as we get older, not go backwards. We all have to roll with the punches, so why not learn how to do it at the earliest opportunity?

Fern. Born 1989. Lost virginity aged 19.

Before…

I always had an image in my head of how it would go down. In every mental movie, I was in love with the guy. But after nineteen years of waiting, and no such guy coming along, I grew impatient.

I went to Israel for the summer and one night I met up with a few friends for some drinks. My friend Teja brought her beau Yoni who brought Daniel B and Daniel L. Daniel L was hitting on me all night, and what nineteen-year old girl can resist a sexy Israeli soldier?

I couldn't. But I didn't lose it to him. As Daniel L. went to the bathroom, Daniel B. made his move. I gave him the come hither look which he picked up on immediately.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

‘Nothing…’ I responded coyly.

‘Oh really?’ he responded as he grabbed me by the nape of the neck and pulled me close to him. Our lips were millimeters from touching, my eyes were closed and I waited. Nothing. ‘Was that what you were thinking? he growled in an Israeli accent, as I opened my eyes. I just smiled and then went in for the kiss. There I was at a bar by the beach in the heart of Tel Aviv. The music was pumping, the people were pulsing and I was ready to get out of there.

We headed to his car only for me to discover that we had to give Daniel L. a ride home. Awkward. Finally we make it to his place. His brother stares at me from their couch and I scamper away into the bedroom. I made it clear that we weren't having sex that night, but he asked anyways. I repeated ‘No’ and he replied ‘Okay. It's no big deal.’ But that sentence echoed in my head. ‘It's no big deal.

And it was then and there that I decided that it wasn't. That maybe this trip to Israel, which changed my life in more ways than one, was the meaningful part of the experience. Not the man but the place and the time in my life.

And with that, I changed my mind. ‘Okay. Let's do it.’ And we did. 3 times. I was clumsy and I laughed more than I probably should have. But we had fun. I tried to see him again, but some confusion in dates and some miscommunication prevented that from happening. I doubt I will ever see him again. 

…and after

Since sleeping with Daniel, I’ve had a mixed bag of emotions. Part of me feels relief that I don’t have to wonder what my first time will be like. Part of me is happy that I had such a unique and relatively positive experience. But another part of me is sad that it wasn’t with someone I loved. And I can’t figure out if this is because society tells me that is how it is supposed to happen or if I actually believe that doing it with someone I loved would have made that experience any better?

The guy I am dating now knows the story and sees nothing wrong with it, so maybe it’s a female perspective to regret something like that? Who knows… all I know is the overall reaction when I tell people is a kind of high-five, ‘way to go’ reaction.

Also, as far as ‘virginity’ goes, I think virginity is almost self-defined. Heterosexual culture defines it as an act in which there is a chance the girl can get pregnant. I think the definition should be more along the lines of the moment in which you physically give your whole self to another person. How ironic then, that for me, this happened on July 4^th, 2008 -Independence Day.

 

Ooh la la…

The man that I lost my virginity to was French and he was absolutely divine. He was so shockingly good looking that I made the very backward (and teenage) assumption that this meant we were going to have fabulous sex. Fabulous sex? I barely knew how to kiss, let alone have sex.

But he could walk on his hands and he was on holiday without parents. This alone was the absolute end as far as I was concerned. It didn’t get much better than that. By day, we sat on the beach drinking beers and white coffee - ‘Una cerveza por favor?’ and ‘Café con leche Senor?’ How grown up can a fifteen-year-old feel about ordering drinks for herself? Very. Believe me.

Later on, after my captors (the grown ups) had fallen asleep and I had fled from the villa overlooking the sea, we smoked copious Fortuna cigarettes together and danced to Laura Branigan as she sung the words to ‘Self Control’….

Oh, the night is my world


City light painted girl


In the day nothing matters


It's the night time that flatters


In the night, no control


Through the wall something's breaking


Wearing white as you're walkin'


Down the street of my soul

For the love of god will you listen to this song and tell you it doesn’t move you in the way that it might move you if you were a fifteen year old girl?!

We would end the night back on the beach, kissing and smoking other combustible products that can be purchased in Spain. Sometimes we would take ourselves up to the hills above the town and lie on a bed of pine needles whilst listening to The Cure on his crappy old cassette player.

Fumbling around with him under the moonlight in his sleeping bag, I still remember feeling what a man felt like for the first time and being pretty freaked out about it. This really was naught to fifty in about five seconds. I had barely kissed a man up until that point. But I didn’t want to miss my chance. I didn’t want to miss my opportunity to lose it to Adonis beneath the trees in Spain. Even if I was labouring under the illusion that looks really do matter that much.

Needless to say, when the moment came, it wasn’t much to write home about. No matter, because that’s not what I remember now. I only recall the sights, sounds and smells of a truly unique time in anyone’s life.

These days I am touched by something very different I am pleased to say. Kindness, patience and humour all add up to sexiness in a way that looks never could. Not that that aesthetics don’t matter. Of course they do, it’s just that deep down, bona fide sexiness comes from somewhere deep inside and it’s all about a feeling, not just a look.

All this is a long way of telling you that today’s story is from a French man. Perhaps he is my French man but fifteen years older. Perhaps he too is still transported by the smell of pine trees at night, or the sound of a song that echoed across the Mediterranean in the summer of ‘83, and maybe not to a time when he had the greatest sex of his life, but to a time when he was writing life-changing history. His own.

Virginity loss. You can’t beat it for invoking memories.

Big Tom. Born 1953.

Since I met A, I lost my virginity. For sure she was the first one. I had been in love with others. S. was a kind of first love because she answered to my desire. Other nice girls did answer to it, some rejected it, but we didn't make love. I wanted to be loved and I was afraid of the thing itself - touching, being touched, taken, wounded, leaving my amour, defenseless, that was my idea of it.

What I mostly remember is - excitation – a quickly ending voluptuous sensation - a smell that I would keep on my hands some days before washing. I left girls quickly those days, or they left me unsatisfied, wandering.

Then I met again gals and eventually got married because B. was pregnant. We were together since winter holidays, my mother had bought us our mattress ... it was a matter of weeks. I'm a grandfather now, happy to live with her after all these years.

But now, since I met C. I have a new idea of my virginity. It's not as if we never made love. All the contrary, as I met freedom and joy and lightness and oneself's gift with her. Once again.

All of a sudden I was absolutely a virgin, anew, just beginning to learn something about our bodies and how they met. Now I was - I still am - in longing, craving and amazement. My sensations have gone deep, under my skin, next to my heart inside.

C. wanted me, I didn't say no, she said she loved me, I knew I would not love here enough. She wanted to be an accomplished woman, a mother.

I did write about that to C. We're not making love any more as I was feeling like split in two, unable to fondle more than one woman at that part of my life. Did she understand? Maybe, she still adores me, but did not tell much about the subject.

This is not a miracle, not new, nor rare. I just wanted to write about it. And I'm sending it to you because I realized it was like that for me, that virginity sensation, only when I read, amazed, your project site, dunno from what random clicks.

Born in France 55 yrs a go! Thank you Kate for what you do.

Big Tom

 

Bye George!

The Virginity Project is cock-a-hoop with JOY!

What better way to celebrate the departure of George Bush and the election of Barack Obama than by listening to Alice Cooper?

I can't think of one.

On behalf of every single person in the UK, I wish to thank America for doing the right thing.

The age of innocence?

The Virginity Project has been a busy bee lately doing actual work. Don’t my employers understand that I have more important things to do than so-called real work? Like document your stories? Clearly not. The good thing is that plenty of you have been on the case and as a result, I have a rather nice back catalogue of stories.
Since the nights are drawing in and winter is whispering around the corner, what better time to settle in for a spot of ‘period drama’ than now? Sorry Dennis, I don’t mean to jest about your age, it’s just that it’s a rare occasion indeed to hear from the older generation - the whole seventy-four years of you! It’s also a great opportunity to reflect on just how much life has changed in a relatively short period of time.
Our parents really did live in an age of innocence. They remained childlike for longer because they didn’t know what sex was. It wasn’t alluded to in advertising, nobody had televisions and the Internet wasn’t even invented. Childhood lasted a lot longer than the perfunctory ten minutes we are granted today. If you are interested, Rafael Behr writes very well on this subject in the Observer Sex Special.
Meanwhile, pull up the blankets, light the fire and settle in to listen to a story that has more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing. Bring a tissue. I don’t mind telling you that I shed a tear or two whilst editing this story….
Dennis. Born 1934, lost virginity aged 24.
‘I was born in 1934, the first born to working class parents who themselves had not experienced penetrative sex until after they married at twenty-nine and twenty-eight years of age.  My father had been a soldier, posted overseas for eight years during their engagement but I have no problem in accepting their celibacy as fact. 
I was brought up to the same tradition, my father often telling me that if a man had any respect for a woman, then he would naturally honour her womanhood.  I remember when I heard German prisoners - working on a nearby farm - use the F-word in regard to what they thought of the Russians. I asked my Dad what they meant and his reaction was to box my ears so hard that I was knocked across the room and I was told never, ever to use ‘that’ word again.  And so it still is, now that I am seventy-four. 
Certainly, I went through the schoolboy ‘dirty stories’ phase - but it was what I heard, rather than me actively joining in.  I remember joshing around with schoolmates and comparing ‘hard-ons’ but at 16, I still had very little idea of what this was about.  Accidentally discovering masturbation came as a shock but it was something which I was to make much of in adult life.
I had girl friends but never got fresh with any of them.  One girl friend lasted through 6th form until I was well into National Service.  I used to visit her house on weekend leave and we were left alone in the best room to chat... but nothing more.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have felt quite so stunned when I heard that she was getting married to someone very much older because she was pregnant by him.     
I also remember all the barrack room banter about what the other men had got up to at the weekend. ‘Did you get it away?’  ‘Were you on the nest?’  ‘It looked just like a peach when you take out the stone’.
I was twenty-one when I started university and student nurses were the main outlet for amorous feelings.  I ‘went out’ with one but we just found ourselves holding each other, hugging, kissing and getting very breathless together but nothing more.  
Then my brother died suddenly - found dead at work in a toilet cubicle from a massive epileptic fit - which shook me rigid.  The summer following his death, I was determined to have a holiday like no other and chose a Club Med straw hut holiday in Sicily.  I had never been further than Paris before and this was an eye-opener for me, to feel incredibly free ... the unlimited wine, superb cuisine, the sea, sand, sun, with people from all over Europe, and sleeping in the most basic accommodation: straw huts.  A lot was ‘going on’ for sure ... but oh so discretely and not in your face at all.  
We were just having the time of out lives... at least, I was.  It was here that I met the girl I was to marry, some three years later, although our ‘relationship’ (HOW I HATE THAT WORD!!) didn't get under way until we met again, quite by chance, the following summer. 
She was Scandinavian, a high-powered international secretary, from a farming background.  At the time, she was working in Brussels.  We had New Year together in Copenhagen.  She came to England for Easter, we holidayed Club Med again and the next summer we got married - a huge affair, at the farm, which went on for most of a week!!  She had rosemary sewn into her wedding veil, a sign of purity, as she - like me - was still a virgin.  She had an upbringing as rigid as my own and, although working abroad ever since graduation, she had deliberately kept herself chaste.  
I don't think we consummated our marriage on the wedding night; after dancing until 4 am, we were taken to a hotel for the rest of the night ... being called for soon after 8 am to return to the farm for breakfast to speed the parting guests.  The hotel room had two single beds, fixed together, as is the custom in Scandinavia.  We were too tired for more than closeness and bodily contact and the floor of the room was covered with rice the next morning from every pocket and crease in our clothes.
There followed two more days of partying and late nights, then three nights with my relatives in Copenhagen, before they returned home.  We achieved full intercourse - just about - only on our first night in Copenhagen, but the real pleasure did not happen until we were on honeymoon in Greece.  And so it continued for the rest of our time together – twenty-three years - until my wife could no longer do so, because of a colostomy arising from surgery for ovarian cancer.  Sex for us was always good and it was very rare for both of us not to experience an orgasm. 
When she died, she was the only woman I had ‘known’, in the Biblical sense ....and there was no way I could even think of taking another woman.  I was distraught for months afterwards.  I felt that our marriage had been perfect in every way, in spite of one of our twins having very severe learning disabilities - from oxygen starvation at a difficult birth - and then the cancer.  Her prognosis had been very bad but she persevered through four years and four months of hideous chemotherapies, two major surgical operations and radiotherapy.  I was with her at every treatment and I nursed her, at home, in her own bed, through the last three weeks of her life.  She died in my arms. 
For most of the following year, I drifted.  I gave up the job I loved. The stress levels were enormous and no longer made sense, so I opted out and worked in administration in a charity hospital, a job with little pay but zero stress!  Throughout my wife's illness, I had received a lot of support from a gay man.  When things were really bad, I would take my lunch sandwiches to his flat, from which he ran a small business supplying clothing to gay shops.  I was aware of his sexuality and didn't think being with him and his friends would have any effect on me. 
I went to his clubs and so gravitated towards the company of men, finding it impossible to relate to women.  Then, one such evening, in a gay bar, a man came straight up to me and kissed me.  I reeled back - why had I let him even near me?  ‘Why did you do that?’, I asked.  ‘Because you look so sad,’ he said ... and that was it.  I broke down completely and hugged him. 
After that, I got deeper and deeper into the hard-core leather scene and S & M, with my own full leather of the best and most expensive quality.  While once I had just my own darling wife, I now found myself in bed with ten ... fifteen ... maybe twenty men over the next nine years.  I even had a man living with me for some four years.  I was always a ‘top’, hating the submissive role; I couldn't understand ANY man submitting of his own free will to another - I loathed being penetrated myself, it was too painful and made me feel dirty to allow this to happen.  But whatever I had been doing Fri/Sat evenings, I was always in church Sunday evening. Through everything, I kept my faith.  Invariably, I ended each service a broken man and in floods of tears.
Then I joined a church group for an Alpha course and, during an evening learning about ‘The Grace of God’, I suddenly realised it was ME for whom the Grace was intended... and I ‘came out’ to the group.  From then onwards, I turned away from the gay scene.  Through a college friend I joined a ‘pilgrimage’ to The Holy Land and there met a delightful widowed lady.  We were South (me) and North, so our meetings were perhaps once a month and, after a year, I had proposed and we decided to marry. 
We were soon sharing a bed during weekends together and it was she who led me into sex again – and for a while, it was good; it was so easy to bring her to a very wild and noisy orgasm.  But I was already sixty-nine when we married and had had a TURP some years before.  So, not long into our marriage, I experienced erectile dysfunction and resorted to Viagra on prescription... the headaches this induces are nearly unbearable!!  I have done a little better with other, similar medication but, gradually, we have come to do without penetrative sex - just closeness and lots of hugs.
When we are on holiday, I am much more open to sex and have even managed to perform without the pills.  I think my problem is psychological as much as physical, as I despise myself for giving in to full sex before we were married.  I am so ashamed of myself for this premature behaviour, although it was encouraged by my wife-to-be and it was already clear that we would marry in due course. 
I can honestly say that I have not been anything more than sociable with men in the past eight years and I do love my second wife.  I try not to compare or contrast ... but this is time round just so different and I long for something of that other marriage, even if only a shared appreciation of fine things for our home, and a neatness which living with two dogs and a cat will never allow.  It is sad to say that, so often now, I am just about ‘hanging on’.  I have had so many hard knocks in the past 5 years that I swear simply would not happen where I lived before.   I guess that I just don't ‘do’ North!!’