The Virginity Project

Honor thyself...

 

Today's account is a rather emblematic tale of conflict in a modern society. It is the story of a young woman who is torn between the sharp confines of her beliefs and her religion and the very real yearnings of her heart. We all want love, intimacy and union with that special somebody. Life is tough enough. We seek shelter and hope in our relationships. We seek a place to stop and express ourselves…which frequently, let's face it, involves sex. 

Because sex is a way of demonstrating how we feel, of reviving and of pleasuring ourselves. All pretty essential components of a healthy, happy life. Make no mistake then, that deciding to remain a virgin until the day you get married is a tall order in today's society. Throw religious confusion and a sense of duty into that pile and you've got yourself a real dilemma.

And I'm not trying to be flip when I say that today's story revealed a conflict of my very own. I set about 'correcting' this story with all the zeal of a person who believes that every single sentence ever written in the English language should begin with a capital letter. I mopped up those 'i's and corrected those 'the's' in a fit of grammatical self righteousness that left me exhausted, so tired was I from scooping up all those dropped capitals. I just cannot get with this trend to un-capitalize the crap out of everything. Until I had a little revelation of my own.

This story, in the rush to make it sound 'better', had gone and lost its power, its resonance and its poignancy. Instead of sounding like the voice of the person who had written it, it had begun to sound like me. 'Corrected' it may be, but homogenised it had become. The ticks and the nuances that add the flavour, the style and the feeling of the story had all gone. Times change, language changes and ultimately, the way that people communicate with each other has changed, and so, dear reader, I decided to get over myself and un-correct the so called corrected.

Ok, so I left in the full stops. Let me have some full stops. I like my full stops. But everything else remains the same. And it feels better. More importantly, it sounds like the human being that wrote it. I can hear her voice more clearly and that’s the most important thing.

Perhaps, in the spirit of modern communication, you might have something that you want to say to Honor? Can you offer her a solution, or some comfort for her dilemma? As a modern woman in the 21st century, I found it very hard to put my own feelings aside when I replied to her email. But then I am not religious so what do I know. I only have me to answer to, and that’s hard enough as it is. Imagine having to answer to god as well.

honor

from london UK

'virginity' is a very sensitive issue to me. i am twenty two and still a virgin. the reasons for this involve both religious and personal reasons. how i have kept it for so long in this time and age still shocks me but i have. the journey has no way been easy for me. i have been through so many boyfriends as well as heartache, because of my unwillingness to have sex. i do get involved in other sexual activities but just not penetrative sex. i have had so many moments where i have doubted myself and felt that it was fear holding me back, i have been brought to tears on this issue on several occasions (including this very moment).

i decided to keep my virginity because of my faith (religion). it does not encourage sex outside of or before marriage. other reasons for this is that i don't want to start having sex with one guy then break up with him and end up having sex for the wrong reasons like anger, just in the moment kinda thing or a drunken moment.  i have alwayz thought of my virginity as a gift, one i intend to give my future husband. my ex`s have all said to me i am in lala land if i think i would find someone who will wait and called me naive and scared. but i am 110% sure that i do not have fear of the sexual act. if i have any fear then its fear of having regrettable moments involving sex.

needless to say, the teary moments are what gets me. i have met guyz i have thought to be perfect for me but i fear the relationship ( if any) would be based on sex. i met a guy who for the first time since i started dating, gave me all the fairytale moments. he was my friend and more. and like a friend he was honest to me and told me he wouldn't be able to be with me without sex, he said he loved it too much. this caused so much confusion for me because i really liked him - all of him and he wasn't even my type which made my attraction to him stronger. he said i was perfect for him but he didn't know if he could wait and not cheat on me.

of course everyone told me that it was all bull but i was so into him that i didn't care and stuck with him, tellin him how much i adored him everyday. On valentine`s day this year i wrote him a poem. i could tell it touched something in him because he was more attentive to my feelings and all the sweet talk we used to do initially came back only much stronger. but i had to know he wanted to be with me so i kept my distance and gave him space to show he wants to be with me. i stopped callin him and eventually he called me after 2 weeks saying he has been trying to call me but i didn't get any missed calls, till today a couple months after and he hasn't contacted me and vice versa.

i miss him so much but i cant force him to be celibate because of me. till today i get moments where i just want to sit down on m my bed and cry my eyes out thinking if im making a mistake keeping my virginity. right now i want to call him but i fear that time has created to long a bridge for me to cross and i have already lost him as a friend and more.

i am tired of doing this over and over again but there is nothing i can do. my reasons for keepin my virginity still stand but my heart weakens every time i turn a guy down and its like every time that happens, he takes a piece of me and i am completely lost. my greatest fear is that pressure from today's society and my sexual urge for release will lead me to lose my virginity for a reason much worse that if i had choosen to have sex with one of my ex`s.

oh and i'm catholic by the way, very strict religion, especially on the issue of sex but apart from that my mum ( bless her soul) takes pride in knowing i'm a virgin, my younger sister isn't and told my mum and i could tell my mum was heartbroken about it and yes i know its my life and not hers but she wouldn't want the wrong thing for me and i take pride in the fact that i could keep myself this long. the idea of giving my hubby this precious gift of mine is still strong and possibly the strongest reason i have but i fear that i might lack experience to keep him home when the time comes.

actually i have two thoughts about my 'wedding night', i either want to shock the socks of him by giving him the greatest sex he ever had or giving him the gift idea. 'sigh', like i said, im in two minds about this.'

 

‘This heinous man….’

What to say about today’s story? Well, I knew it was going to be a good one when I clocked the author’s use of the word ‘heinous’. Heinous is such a great word. Not so great when it’s used in conjunction with a story about virginity loss but a great word nonetheless.

‘First of all, I want to say that your blog is absolutely hilarious. Secondly, I also have a relationship blog that includes the story of how I lost the trusty V card to a heinous, heinous man. It's actually quite humorous in the aftermath.’

‘C’ makes a pertinent point and one that has struck me a lot over the years of story collecting. Time really does teach us a thing or two about perspective. I am frequently asked if I have any funny stories and to be honest, I spent a while chasing my tail trying to find one. I wanted something so ridiculous, so slapstick, that you could barely have made it up if you had tried.

In time, I realized that number one, anything can be funny if it’s relayed in the correct manner and number two, time enables us to see the humour in pretty much any situation. Even if there was nothing to laugh about at the time.

This story isn’t a side splitter. This is a story with a gentle humour, one that has had time to come to fruition, like a nice pear or a bottle of wine. If you had asked the writer to tell you the same story the day after it had happened, it wouldn’t, as they say, have happened.

But today we can appreciate the comedic qualities of a heinous man. Of a man who couldn’t give a monkeys if we went home with our breasts hanging out. Or indeed a man who thinks that using a banana-flavored condom is an acceptable pastime.

I rest my case. Of course it also helps that today’s writer is a cracking story teller. That never hurt anyone either.

Read the story here… 

 

 

Manhattan Transfer....

When I received this story, I wasn’t sure what I was more excited about. The hark back to an era of history when men mostly looked like Al Pacino’s ‘Serpico’, i.e. hot, beardy and pounding the 1970’s streets of New York in a febrile sweat, or the story itself, a wonderful little slice of a boys life. Boys to Men actually, and that age-old story of travel. The journey from childhood to man hood with the assistance of Times Square’s finest, the helpful hooker.

Someone asked me an interesting question recently. ‘What is it that you’re trying to achieve?’ They said. ‘Did you have an awful virginity loss experience that you’re trying to make up for somehow?’

On the contrary, my experience was no more boring, interesting, good, bad or mad than anyone else’s but the question did make me think. In the first instance, I am motivated by the same desire as anyone else. I like to read about other people’s experiences so that I can compare them to my own. It is this need to know that we share our frailties with other human beings that motivates us all. But it is also something more than that for me: I love stories.

And what story is more evocative than the one in which we ‘come of age’, becoming a woman, becoming a man, becoming whatever it is that we are shooting for at such a tender age that we are unlikely ever to forget. You don’t have to dig too deep to write a decent story about virginity loss, even if the moment itself was nothing to write home about. There is always a rich picture behind it. A cast of characters, a plotline, a series of events that gets us from a to b. And it is this detail that propels the story through to fruition so to speak that really gets me going. The cultural detail is the icing on the cake. And this story is chock full of cultural detail. The Italian, the hooker, Times Square in the 1970s. It’s all there. There is a reason that people make films full of these cultural references and that’s because they really do exist.

Perhaps that is what I am. A frustrated filmmaker. Maybe one day all these stories will get regurgitated into a rather strange film. Or maybe I will leave that to Quentin Tarantino. But for today, keep sending those stories, and don’t forget the sub plot, the cinematography and the script.

Gabe*. Born 1962. Lost virginity aged 14. 

I just found your site and read the story ‘Hair today, gone tomorrow’.  Like him, I lost my virginity to a prostitute.  I was born in Upstate New York and every year, my high school organized a two-day trip to New York City.  On the trip, we would attend a Broadway play and a baseball game.  We could tour the city using the subways during free time.  I was a freshman in high school at the time and my best friend *Alan and myself decided that we wanted to tour Times Square. 

Times Square back then is not the Times Square today.  Today, it is up-scale stores and restaurants.  Back then it was adult bookstores, XXX-Rated Theaters and whore houses.  We walked around in amazement.  We were two naive boys from a small town.  The two of us worked up the nerve to go to an XXX-Rated theater.  We each paid $5, no questions asked.  We spent two hours watching people fucking on film.  Afterwards, we decided it about time to get back to the hotel and left.

Before we walked out, we looked around to be sure there was no one watching that we knew.  We walked about ten feet and this Italian guy grabbed us and said ‘You two want to go upstairs? Don't worry’, he said, ‘you'll be safe.  There are girls up there for you.’ 

We looked at each other and we were both shaking.  The guy looked at us and said, ‘You're both virgins. Don't worry that's cool; we get a lot virgins your age, that's what were here for.’  He handed us both a card that said ‘Virgin discount’.  ‘Normally, we charge $20 for 20 minutes; with this card, we will give you special treatment. $20 for 30 minutes; show the lady the card upstairs.’ 

The two of us went upstairs still shaking and we handed the lady the card and $20.  She gave us the card back and said ‘Go in, find a girl and give her the card’.  We walked through the door and there was about eight to ten women standing naked and we could hear women screaming in the back room. 

We each went up to a girl and gave her the card.  Mine took me by the hand to a private room.  She asked me how old I was and I said ‘14’ and she just smiled.  She said, ‘I like virgins and I will take care of you, just relax’. 

She laid me down on the mattress and began to undress me.  She took a towel soaked in warm water and washed my dick.  She started to rub my chest and belly and said ‘Relax, I will show you a good time’.  I remember her staring at my hard-on with her mouth open and she proceeded to give me a blowjob.  Within two or three minutes, I blew my load in her mouth and she spat it out into a tissue papers.  She asked me to get off the mattress and she got on, spread her legs and said ‘You can have your way with me’.  

I then played with her breasts, fingered her and I got hard again real quickly.  After about ten minutes of this she said, ‘let's fuck’.  I quickly mounted her and we fucked away.  She was screaming and I was breathing hard and then I blew my load in her.  We cuddled for about five minutes with her rubbing my chest and belly.  Then she kissed me and said to me, ‘you will remember me until the day you die.’ 

I went back out and my buddy was waiting for me.  We went down and the Italian guy at the door patted us on the back and asked us how it was.  I remember saying ‘Fucking awesome’.  The guy said, ‘you went in there two boys and came out men.’  We thanked him and went on our way.  My buddy and I swore ourselves to secrecy.  The last thing we wanted was anyone else knowing about this because if the teacher heard this, we were afraid our parents would be told.

We took the subway back with a smile on our face.

*All names changed to protect identity.