The Virginity Project

And your point is....

Once again, theres a first time for a whole bunch of things. I found this out to my advantage on Tuesday night when I went Salsa dancing for the first time. Could I feel like any more of a twat than I did for the first twenty minutes? Probably not. But at least I wasn’t the only one.

I have been putting this off for months and as the proud instigator of this funny business looked on - my talented dancing friend Lydia – I fumbled my way through the moves as twenty men and women facing each other in a trembling line attempted to put one foot in front of the other and make sweet music together…remind you of anything?

Learning something new is hard at any age but take it from me, it’s much more of a stretch when you’re older. Which is a good thing. It’s nice to keep challenging yourself. Learning to drive, learning to ski, learning to write…I have done all of these things to varying degrees of expertise in the last five years and I have loved all of them….but it was always an effort to get started. How awkward can you feel? Even now when I get into a car that’s not my own, everything feels like its in the wrong place. I feel nervous, tentative, a bit scared to touch anything in case I blow the whole thing up….remind you of anything else?

Actually I had no intention of comparing all sorts of daily activities and skills to the losing of virginity and the subsequent having of sex but the parallels are hard to ignore. We all feel tentative and scared when we step onto new territory, however far ahead we might feel like we have got in life. Every new partner we meet can make us feel like it’s the first time – and that’s a nice thing. Everyone is different. What works for one person might not work for another and the only way to find out is to develop a genuine sense of intimacy by learning how to communicate with each other.

No, what I really wanted to write about today was this. It occurred to me as I glanced around the room on Tuesday night that people dance for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes men come to clubs like this because they want to meet women – I encountered a few of those on Tuesday night. And sometimes women come to clubs like this for the very same reason. But that was not the overriding impression I got as the syncopated throng of arms and legs moved elegantly around the room in time to the music.

There was something really beautiful about what was happening in front of me in this grotty dive in Charing Cross Road as people from all walks of life gave in to the urge to dance with each other. Most of them don’t know each other from Adam but that didn’t seem to matter. You could see how much they needed to do this. Perhaps to escape the reality of daily life in all it’s boredom, routine and credit crunch related stress. But there was something more poetic to it than that. There seemed to be something deeply satisfying in this unique combination of music, mind and movement. This coming together of different personalities – and bodies – to create something really unique.

And it can’t be repeated. As we left the building, two old dancing partners of Lydia’s arrived. The taller of the two insisted on a dance with my friend before we left. He was no looker but boy could the man dance. This sounds judgemental but I have to mention this because despite the fact that he was no Brad Pitt, there was no doubt in my mind that he could have piqued the interest of any woman in the room. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

‘It doesn’t matter how many times two people dance the same dance together’, said his friend, ‘they will never dance it the same way twice’.

And what they did do together was astonishing. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t choreographed but it was two people doing something very fluid and very intimate together that didn’t involve any sex. Its close, its hot and its sweaty - but it goes no further than that.

At least in the case of these two. I’m sure that many a dance on this dance floor has danced right off the floor and into the nearest bedroom but it doesn’t seem to be the point to me. And actually, when I come to think of it, I don’t really have a point today. Does everything have to have a point? Is it point-less if it doesn’t reach a conclusion? I hope not. Just like the dance itself, sometimes one just has to do something and enjoy the moment. It doesn’t need to go anywhere. You can do it just for the hell of it, or just because it feels good. The ending doesn’t really matter.

The love that dare not speak its name..

There’s a first time for everything. So goes the title at the top of this blog and I never realised at the time how true that was. When I started to blog, I intended to talk only about virginity loss but along the way, I realised that a. we might get bored and b. there are all sorts of first times. This has been a recurring theme ever since.

When you ask anyone about their first time, they can usually pinpoint the moment at which they lost their technical virginity….but ask them about the first time that they actually enjoyed having sex and that’s another story altogether. Occasionally these two momentous events conspire to collide with each other but not very often. Except for today. Today’s storyteller lost his technical virginity when he was seventeen. But fast-forward a few years to his twenties when he had the experience that he considers to be his genuine loss of virginity. This was the first time he did what he felt he should be doing – having a relationship with a man.

This story is a departure for another reason. It is one of the stories from my book that never quite made it. I recorded this interview myself sitting across the kitchen table from Dave, one of many brave friends who agreed to be a guinea pig back at the start of this project. My interviewing skills weren’t all that but it didn’t matter because this story tells itself. It’s an absolute cracker for all sorts of reasons but for me, the magic lies in the last sentence and his very personal declaration about virginity loss: 

'I think it has affected me, I hadn’t actually consciously thought that before now, but it’s changed me. It has defined how I have sex.'

I shall leave you with that powerful thought. And as ever, if you'd like to make any comments on it, be my guest.

Dave Heart.  Born 1967. Lost virginity aged 18 and 21.

The first sexual encounter I had with a girl was on a train station and it’s a bit crude but it was the first time I’d actually tried to use my hands and I couldn’t find it!  She was like, ‘What are you doing?’ and then the train came, thank god.  It was a nightmare. Bracknell Train Station at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night.  Dark, raining and I’ve got my hand up this girl’s skirt and I didn’t want to do it, I just felt like I should do it.

I knew I was gay when I was fourteen years old because I used to masturbate over boys.  I never told anyone, I kept it all inside. I remember the first gay character on EastEnders. My mum was like, ‘That’s disgusting’. I remember sitting there thinking, oh my god, that’s me. My parents have totally accepted me as gay now but sex didn’t rear its head at all in my family.  No, it was a case of any sex on TV, any naked bodies, and my mum would be shouting, ‘Turn it over George. Turn it over!’ at my dad.

I used to have these secret fantasies in my head with blokes I was supposed to be friends with.  One in particular, Chris, was gorgeous in every way. Fantastic personality, fit body, we used to go to the gym together but he never knew how I felt. I used to sit and watch him through the smoky steam room air.  I’d have my girlfriend there with me but I didn’t exude any of the signs of being gay. It was such a weird situation.

No one had any idea that I was actually still a virgin either. The word was bandied about a lot, almost as an insult, ‘Oh so and so is a virgin’, especially if they were not very good looking. I never got called a virgin but I was one. I always had girlfriends and I always had the best looking girls as well.  The problem was with the girls themselves. They would want to have sex with me and I was the one that was always making the excuses, so I would just have to dump the girl and move onto the next one. It was just like a cycle and I kept on doing it.

The first time I had actual sex, I was eighteen years old.  I had joined the RAF and I was living off unit in a house with two other guys.  Her name was Mary and it was really difficult for me. It was a case of having lots to drink first and lots of kissing. I had the smallest room in the house but it was right next to the toilet so I could run in there, get everything working and then run back into the bedroom, jump on top of her, and try to find the right place to put it.  She later claimed that she was pregnant and had had an abortion. She only told me because I saw her crying at the RAF club. That really shocked me. I still went out with girls after that but only to be seen with someone on my arm, I didn’t actually physically have sex.

I didn’t have sex with a guy until I was twenty-one years old. I got sent to Norfolk RAF and as soon as I arrived I met a guy called Matthew. He was an RAF Steward and straight away I thought there was something between us. He was cute and we got on really well.

It was a new base and I’d gone from being in the same place for four years and feeling very secure to being somewhere where no one knew me. So in those first two months, we spent a lot of time hanging out together and I could feel that there was something there, some sort of electricity. It was amazing. But I didn’t speak to him about it because I had no idea if he was gay or not.

We’d made a few friends there and we used to go out together a lot.  One night there was a party in the RAF mess with all the crew and I remember thinking that I might actually be in love with this guy and he had no idea. Then at the party I saw him kissing a girl.

I was absolutely gutted. I was so upset. I made my excuses and left the party. I went back to the base and sat on my own in the TV room. I wanted to cry, I was so pissed off. Suddenly, after about twenty minutes, Matthew appeared and said to me, ‘Where did you go? What’s wrong?’

‘Oh nothing’, I replied, ‘I just wanted to go, I didn’t feel very good’.

He came over and sat next to me and we were just looking at each other and that’s it, we started kissing. It was risky, this was 1986 and it was still illegal to be gay in the armed forces. And we were doing it in the TV room, with the lights on, in an RAF block with windows and no curtains. Snogging as if our lives depended on it.

Then we went to his room and just snogged and clothes started coming off and I remember feeling the heat of another man’s body next to mine for the first time and it was perfect. And that’s when I first had sex with a guy. It wasn’t just doing a deed; it wasn’t just fumbling in the dark with someone you’ve never met before and forgetting about it. It was a build up of two months of tension and it was fantastic. It was a magical feeling. To actually see someone else’s parts, aroused, and feeling them next to you, on top of you. It was just really, really good.

I was in love with him. We had a really intense relationship, partly because we had to keep it quiet. It was a big secret and no one but us could know.  Eventually we decided to move off unit together. People just thought we were mates although I did start to think that they might have their suspicions. And then I got sent to the Falklands for four months, which was awful because we had only been together for a year and for the first time in my life, I was in love with someone and the feeling was being reciprocated.

I used to write to him and tell him how much I loved him and missed him and I can’t wait to, you know, get his cock in my face or whatever, and then one day, he read one of my letters, put it in his pocket and it fell out. It was picked up by an RAF policeman. He read it and because what we were doing was illegal, he went to his boss and reported it.

I had been in the Falklands for a couple of months and I got a phone call to go to the police office. In the back of my mind I just knew that they knew. I went in and sat down with an RAF policeman and he was very nice to me. He asked me how I was finding it in the Falklands and then he said, ‘I have to ask you a question now. We believe you are having a homosexual relationship with a Mr Matthew Knowles’. I remember hearing the words and the room spinning. And then I just thought what’s the point in denying it. There’s no point, so I just said, ‘Yes, I am’.

Our relationship did continue for a while after that but we broke up badly after a year and a half. I came home one day and he had gone. I did see him many years later. I was shopping in town and went into a gay bar for a drink and there he was. There was this guy, the man that I had lost my virginity to, we had changed our lives together. I went back to his hotel with him and it was so nice to see him and we had lots to talk about but I didn’t fancy him anymore, my first love as it were.

My attitude to sex now is that I don’t really like one-night stands. As a gay bloke, I don’t do saunas or get my cock out down at the park. Any important relationship that I have had, I have always liked somebody for ages before anything has ever actually happened. I think perhaps that first experience with Matthew has stayed with me because what I really yearn for is that feeling of electricity between two people. I want the build up of tension. I want to get into the package, you know, to have the box and then actually open it up and see what is inside. I think it has affected me, I hadn’t actually consciously thought that before now, but it’s changed me, it has defined how I have sex.

 

 

Teenage fanclub….

Lying in my bath the other day, reading a magazine and trying to ignore the knotty pinch of anxiety that had been bugging me for days, I was hit by a blinding realisation. It’s not just me that feels like this. Not that I don’t intellectually understand that, but knowing it and feeling are two very different things.

The fact is that very single person has ‘stuff’. Every single person has a cross to bear of some sort. Something that gets to them, makes them feel that special kind of loneliness that only a very personal problem can….Is it normal to feel like this? Do other people feel the same way about X, Y and Z? Or am I the only person on the planet who feels this exact feeling right now?

That kind of thing.

As I lay there in the watery silence, working my mind over this problem, it struck me that the one thing that we all share – this exact sense of ennui, despair, bleakness, this one very certain expression of human kind - is also the same thing that can separate us. That at the one moment that we often need to really share this sensation with another person, we can’t because we feel that what we are feeling is too odd, too leftfield, too stupid to countenance sharing with another human being.

You’d think that I would know that by now, particularly since I write this blog, but the very fact that I am writing this is proof enough that we all fall victim to this same cosmic trick, this bizarre feeling that can make us feel very separate to the rest of the pack. Which is a telling phrase in itself because we are not pack animals. We have a wonderful thing called consciousness. It is consciousness that differentiates us from every other living species on the planet. Unfortunately consciousness is also capable of making us feel lonely and worried.

Am I offering a solution? Not really but I hope that the stories on this website do make a difference, however small. Because as we see virtually every other week, being a grown up is one thing, but being a teenager and potentially confronting your first sexual experience is a rich source of anxiety for many young people. We may live in the 21^st century but there are still so many things that people do not talk about. I continue to write this blog because the power of the shared experience cannot be underestimated. 

Actually I also began today’s post with the intention of linking to this story and talking about the H word….hindsight. I’m not one to give the Daily Mail a big up but this is a really neat idea. Get famous (older) people to write letters to their teenage selves and tell them what they know now…that they wish they had known then.

It’s tough being a teenager. We could all do with a sense of perspective when everything is new and scary. There aren’t any short cuts of course. No one can do your growing up for you. But if you are a teenager, you could do a lot worse than to read some of these stories and find out that generations before you have worried about just the same things as you. Whether this is a comfort to you is another matter.

So as a parting note, if anyone feels inspired to write a letter to their teenage self and send it in to be published on this blog, I would be thrilled to receive them. I think you might be surprised to hear what you have to say to yourself…go on, give it a try.

I shall probably be giving myself a stern warning about my over use of the italicization feature on my Mac book.

Contributions to katemonroe@yahoo.com

Don't be prophetic...

There is a whole bunch of stuff written in the media these days about ‘the law of attraction’. And I don’t necessarily mean the pheromones that attract one potential mate to another, but the experiences that we subconsciously bring into our lives - for better or for worse. We all have a conscious life. And we all have a subconscious life.

The self-help industry has spawned a million books on the subject. The premise is that if we focus fully on the positive, the great and the good with a bucket load of self-belief thrown into the picture, that we can achieve anything that we want. The catch is, that what we believe to be true, we often bring to fruition - whether it be our most fantastical fantasies or our own worst nightmares. Films have been made about this. One could attend any number of seminars on the matter and I, for one, concur. I think it’s also called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Which all sprung to mind as I read today’s story’s. Asides from my obvious chagrin at the lack of punctuation - we will say no more on the matter – what strikes me about this story is how its owner manages to twist and turn the events listed below in her mind so that they end up becoming her actual reality. Her limited expectations for herself have tripped her up. She doesn’t believe that she can lose her virginity to a man who will tell her that he loves her – so she makes sure that she leaves him before he has a chance to say it.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is not a criticism by the way. We have all done it. Heck, I only recognize the tendency because I've seen it in myself.

 The difference at least for this young woman is that she is twenty years old but she recognizes this aspect of herself. In this respect she is five steps ahead of the game. Know thine enemy and all that. We frequently are our own worst enemies but having the foresight to acknowledge this is the first, and probably the most powerful step in the journey.

Aurelie. Aged 20

dear kate

i came across your blog about a year exactly when i was contemplating losing my virginity, but it became all the more relevant on april 13 last year when i actually had sex for the first time. mine is the usual story, one which im sure happens to many. what i would like to share however, was my thoughts on the experience, before, after and now. what i never expected was the length of time it would take for me to understand exactly what it meant to lose my virginity- i guess I never truly will know.

unlike my mother and grandmother before me, i did not lose my virginity to the man i was married to. And not to a boyfriend. but to a boy i had seen for 2 months. it was a purely sexual relationship. he was a decent guy, but our time together revolved around the amazingly magnetic spark that existed between us.

i had sex with him because i was naked in his bed, a little drunk, and he was the sexiest guy i had ever seen.  i thought i was in control of my sexual destiny, that making the decision to relinquish my virginity to this guy was somehow empowering. the sex was amazing but whilst i lay there in his dark room, with his body pulsating, i suddenly knew i would never be there again. i would never be in his room again, i would never kiss him again.

straight after i banished that thought. but true to form it happened as i had imagined. i felt so confused the next week, trying to make sense of it. it was as though some part of me was missing, that i had crossed over a bridge i could never get back from - yet i was aware that it was all a construction of the mind intermingling with my value system.

i had not devalued myself in making my decision but society’s expectations of how you should lose your virginity began to resonate.  i knew i didn't regret it, but i began to wonder if there was something wrong with me in sleeping with a guy who didn’t love me.

sure enough, i broke things off with nick, telling him i liked him and i couldn't just see him casually anymore.  he replied  as i knew he would, stating he didn’t want a girlfriend. at this point i walked away and haven’t spoken to him since, despite him attempting to get in contact with me many times. in this way, i followed my self destructive narrative- i lost my virginity to someone who wasn't my boyfriend, thus i was punished in it not resulting in a relationship and subsequently felt worthless for a long time.

it was only the other day that i realised i had punished myself for not having a fairytale version of this sacred event. it was clear that we both liked each other, but in my misinterpretation of what virginity loss meant, i acted rashly when he didn’t say the words i wanted to hear and I never gave him a  chance.  

i have an idea you can only truly own your sexuality after  losing your virginity. Losing it is like venturing into un-chartered territories where you are not quite sure what you will find. when you do arrive, it might not be what you expect, and so you instinctively use old and ingrained ideas to try and explain this new concept in a way your brain will understand. gradually, when you come to realise that virginity is an individual thing and sex is undoubtedly different to anything you've encountered before, you can create a new set of ideas about it. so i've finally been able to forgive myself for the decison i made to lose my virginity and thus let go of all expectations i never really knew i held. (aurelie, 20, Australia)