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.
Having sex doesn't make you a man. People make mistakes, but it bothers me that some people are proud of what they've done. I never watched the first season of this show, but on (I think it was) the first season of MTV's (a channel I don't watch anymore) The Real World there was a guy called Jon Brennan and now, years later, he's in his mid-30s, still a virgin, and proud of it. Now that's a man!
Posted by: JS | August 19, 2009 at 08:30 PM