The Virginity Project

 

I don’t mean to be flip but this story reminded me of the time that I stood perched over the kitchen sink, thinking about bacon (I hadn’t eaten any for 6 years due to a severe case of vegetarianism) when I suddenly realized that I had completely forgotten why I had ever given up meat in the first place. I ate fish. Fish have feelings too. What was I doing? I couldn’t answer the question so I pulled the frying pan out of the dirty washing up water, washed it and ran to the shop for some porcine purchases. I was sitting at my kitchen table eating a hot bacon sandwich within 15 minutes and it was everything I had ever dreamt it would be.

Furthermore, today’s correspondent fed this intro to me by hand by calling herself ‘the vegetarian butcher’. Nice that this story also ends with cake. All good stories end with cake.

Rachel Pinsky. Aged 25, lost her virginity a month ago.

‘When you wear your virginity on your sleeve like I do, you get a lot of questions. I’d talk about it confidently, not embarrassed, but not thrilled. Yes, I would explain, I was disappointed I hadn’t found the right situation, yet I was still adamant on not giving it up for the wrong one. I got mixed reactions. I had to accept that some people simply didn’t understand. Once I realized that I didn’t actually believe those answers I’d been spouting for nearly a decade, that I too didn’t quite understand what was stopping me, I knew I was ready to let go. 

It’s hard to explain that ‘ready’ feeling that suddenly took over me, but I’d be lying if I said that physical ache for flesh-on-flesh didn’t have something to do with it. I’ve always been a sexual person, so to others, it was unfathomable that I was still waiting. I even sold erotic toys through an in-home party business for two years. ‘She’s like a vegetarian butcher,’ marveled my roommate’s boyfriend.  But weeks before my 25^th birthday, I got that carnivorous craving – I had clearly made up my mind, and all I needed was a partner. 

I wanted to have sex, but I had other life plans to make too. I was prepping for a trip back home, halfway across the United States from where I live in Austin, TX, to be a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. It was going to be a whirlwind trip, so I made contact with a small group of friends to get together for brunch that weekend. The quickest RSVP came from Adam, a friend from my days living in the city. We’d always had sexual tension, flirted, and finally hooked up on my very last night in town and then again during my last trip home.  He expressed interest in seeing me outside of brunch, and I convinced myself that he was the one. He didn’t know it yet, but I was going to sleep with him.

Would I really go through with it? I wondered the week before the trip. I knew I was ready, but was he definitely the right partner? I thought so, but I needed some encouragement. Instead, I got my period.

It was for the best. I wasn’t 100% sold on the idea of Adam anyway and he ended up bailing on brunch, so maybe he wasn’t the right one anyway. But I still had all this sexual energy from even thinking about it and I wanted to channel it. Minutes into Amy’s wedding rehearsal, I had spotted my conquest.

It was so obvious to me from the very beginning– James, the best man in the wedding was a strong, statuesque figure with smooth, dark chocolate skin and a perfect smile. He was young, two years younger than me. He was gorgeous. He was an athlete, 100% man in every way. And he was definitely the one I wanted, so I got to work immediately. I laid it on thick at the beginning, without giving everything away, but once I was sure he knew what I wanted, I let him come to me for the final proposal. James was leaving for another social engagement right after the wedding, and I had late-night plans myself, so I informed him that now was his one and only chance. He agreed to give me a ride back to my car, and on the way, we parked in the back of a shopping center parking lot. Within seconds, his pants were off and my mouth had formed some intense suction surrounding his enormous flesh. It didn’t take very long for him to climax, which I took as a compliment and also relief because we both had places to be.

We exchanged numbers, he dropped me off at my car, and we didn’t waste any time engaging in some steamy ‘sexting’ sessions. The more detailed we got in our exchanges, the more I realized that I actually did want to do the dirty things I said I wanted to do with him – and most of those things involved penetration. This was more than just fantasy with James; I wanted this to be the real thing. When he gave me the news that in a week’s time, he’d be in Houston visiting some family, I could clearly visualize my fantasies coming true. I told him I was a virgin, but I was ready to feel the movement of a man, especially a man like him, inside of me, and he was thrilled. He couldn’t get to Texas fast enough.

When he finally did, he made the three-hour drive to Austin as soon as I had two days off of work in a row. He arrived by noon and came by 12:10. And thus, I lost my virginity. I lost my virginity all damn day and all night, and then much of the next day too. The feeling wasn’t completely foreign to me, what with my experience with toys, but it was definitely…well, way more awesome. I hadn’t expected to like it that much, but I sure did!

I couldn’t have been happier with my partner. He was up for the challenge of a 24-hour marathon, he was very impressive in size, and his position in my life was purely physical (i.e. I didn’t cry after the first time…or the tenth).  We were using each other, and we embraced it, but that didn’t mean we didn’t respect one another. In fact, he turned out to be a pretty great guy after all: responsive, generous, very few sexual partners despite his good looks and local celebrity status (he was a football star in college). In fact, when one of my friends Googled his name to find dirt, instead, she found a picture of him with President Obama!

We had the opportunity to meet up one more time before he headed back home. We decided upon driving to a tiny Texas town halfway between Austin and Houston. I looked up a restaurant in the town, figuring if we drove all that way, we might work up an appetite for something other than each other’s bodies. Nervous about the unknown,  I called  the restaurant, and in the most polite way possible, I asked if I would get any disparaging looks if I showed up to the restaurant with my black boyfriend. They assured me that all would be just fine, but when I arrived to the restaurant a few minutes before he did, something just didn’t feel right.

Luckily, when he folded his large frame into my Cavalier and we drove off to find a secluded spot, everything felt perfect. Suddenly, neither one of us were very hungry. Nestled between some kind of mill building and the woods in broad daylight, we assumed a familiar position for about an hour and a half. Once was never enough with James, for me or for him, but we didn’t have time for too much more. One orgasm filling my mouth and two more filling the only two condoms he brought for the occasion, and we were back on the road. I found it interesting that as much access as I was giving him to my once-forbidden female territory, he couldn’t get enough of oral sex.  I didn’t mind; I’ve grown to really enjoy giving oral sex, but I didn’t want to waste the time he spent erect on an area of my body that can’t orgasm. Fooling around in the back seat of a shitty car – I may not have lost my virginity in high school like plenty of other girls, but I did a pretty damn good job of duplicating the most common experience.

He flew back home a couple days later, and we kept in touch, even planning a trip in the fall to meet up, but I don’t feel the need to maintain a relationship with him just because he was my first – I would, however, really like to have sex with him again because, well, it was really good. I shared my story with two girlfriends around my age who had also lost their virginities within a week of my sexual encounter. They both said about the experience, ‘It really wasn’t a big deal,’ to which I replied that they must have been doing it wrong.

In addition to these two girlfriends, I’d talked about having sex with James to pretty much anyone in my life who would listen. I couldn’t have been more excited to finally have sex with someone I really, really wanted to have sex with, and I found it kind of amusing that after all this time, I gave it to a guy I knew for about twenty minutes. My four coworkers knew exactly what I was doing with my two days off of work that week, and when I arrived back to the office on Wednesday morning, I was grilled on all the dirty details. I was only too happy to share.

There wasn’t too much time to talk about it though – apparently, a lot had happened in the two days I was out of the office, and I had plenty of work on my plate in order to catch up. My boss interrupted my busy workload to insist we have a quick office meeting. We never have time for office meetings, so why we had to complete one when I had other work to do was mildly annoying to me, but I followed along – what other choice did I have?

The three ladies in the office and I piled into the back office, and that’s when I notice the giddy grins on their faces. One of them ducked down under a desk and returned to view, this time holding a large, delicious-looking double-chocolate cake. ‘Congrats on your Loss’ was embossed in decorative red writing, and the middle of the cake featured a delicate white flower. One of my coworkers pointed to the center of the cake. ‘We were going to put a cherry on top, but it looks like it rotted!’

It meant so much to have my friends celebrate this moment in my life with me. Now, not only will I remember the amazing feeling I got from a strong, well-endowed man bringing me to physical ecstasy, I’ll also remember the feeling of my friends caring enough to commemorate the occasion with me. I can’t decide which one felt better. That’s a lie. I don’t know why I said that. Obviously, I know which one felt better…but the latter was damn close.

Other friends warned me that now that I’ve felt the sensation of a strong, warm body on top of me, inside me, and now that I’m mature enough to actually handle sex, I’ll be doing it every chance I’ve got.  I’m not so much worried about that. Less than a week later, when I brought home my human birthday present from the bar, I had no problem turning him down for unlimited access to my body. I’ve been saying no for 24+ years, and I’m confident that I can continue…unless you get me near anything, and I mean anything, large, chocolate, and totally indulgent.’

 

Hit me with your rhythm stick...

A rather bizarre dissection of upcoming movie, 'The Virginity Hit'...but yeah, I'll be right there in the front row when it comes out.

Bad boys?

I sense a theme developing here. I did a radio show recently and in it, people phoned up and told their virginity loss stories live on air. It was a brilliant experience and I loved that people had the guts and felt the motivation to tell such a story to a live audience. It just goes to show what an evocative subject this is and how emotive it can be, even years after the actual event occurred. But what stuck in my mind was a brave young man who phoned in and told a very sad story. His words ‘...she took advantage of me…’ rolled around my mind for days afterwards. He didn’t elaborate too much because he could barely speak, so distressed was he at the re-telling of this story but he didn’t have to. His virginity loss experience had clearly been a nightmare and he obviously felt like he had had no control over the situation.

People are often surprised when I tell them I collect men’s virginity loss stories, as if men’s experiences are somehow less significant than women’s. Let me tell you, they are not. One of the things that I have loved most about this entire process has been listening to the voices of men, seeing the other side, understanding the thought processes and motivations – a little bit better – of the opposite sex. Today’s story is a case in point. Today’s story is the other side of the coin. I could probably write the woman’s version of events myself. Boy hangs out with girl, boy says he loves girl, boy and girl talk about having sex but don’t actually do it. Boy has sex with someone else. That’s how it’s going to look from a female perspective; we’ve all been there. But how about if it hadn’t been that straightforward? What if there had been a back-story that had never been explained to you? How would things look then? Because this is that back-story.

I am not suggesting that every man that ever behaved like a twat had an excuse for his behaviour…but some might have. And if they did, I think it might sound a little bit like this. And whilst we’re at it, lets not forget that women can behave like total twats too but for some reason, people are less interested in that story. Enough said.

‘I was born in 1986 (24 years old), am male and I live in the UK. Here follows how I lost my virginity. If I’m honest I am writing this for partly selfish reasons, as a sort of therapy really.

It was two days before my sixteenth birthday. I was a reasonably confident and popular guy, and was very confident being around girls. I was about eight months into my first proper relationship and was feeling my way sexually.

My girlfriend and I were almost identical in age and in sexual experience. We could spend hours in her room snogging and playing around, quite innocent when I look back at it. Over the eight months we eventually had progressed to the point of some genital touching, but were happy to take our time (and neither of us knew what we were doing). I felt like I was a bit more open-minded and happy to go further than she was, but we were both learning about each other slowly.

A couple of times during our playing around sessions, it had got very heated and she would ask me if I wanted to have intercourse with her, I said no. This was for several reasons. I felt like intercourse should come further down the line when we were much more comfortable with each other’s bodies. I was a little scared too and protective of my virginity. While I would have been happy to do lots of other things, I wanted losing my virginity to be something really special. And I wanted to be really good at it too, to know what I was doing, I felt like this might come after being more experienced in foreplay etc.

There was a party organised for a friend from school’s birthday at their house and my girlfriend couldn’t make it. This wasn’t a problem; I had had previously no problems with restraint but was more than a little flirty and got on well with people from school.

At the party I got chatting to a girl from school that I didn’t know very well. She was a little quiet but I had always found her sweet and more than a little cute. She was a bit upset as things weren’t going too well with her boyfriend and I was happy to comfort her about it. I was happy to do a bit of hugging, didn’t seem like I was breaking any rules (although of course I was!).

After a short while, she asks whether we could go upstairs to talk about it some more. I was enjoying being close to her, and my naïve brain didn’t put two and two together. I said ‘of course’.

We went into one of the upstairs rooms, it turned out to be a darkened small spare room with a double bed taking up most of the space in it, and we lie on it side by side still talking about her boyfriend. After a while, the way she touches me changes. No longer is she wanting comfort hugs from me but is stroking my chest. After a while we are kissing, badly, and my head was reeling. I had never even contemplated cheating on my girlfriend, and had previously always felt in-control of situations but I seemed to be passively sleepwalking into it. She asks if we can lie naked next to each other and I agree. I still did not have any idea that anything other than a bit of snogging/hugging was about to happen, as strange as that sounds to look back on.

As soon as we are both undressed, she climbs on top of me and pushes my penis into her. I lie there in shock, thinking how I don’t want this. As she starts moving her hips she tells me to ‘pull it out before you cum’, I do not understand fully what this means - as I had never ejaculated before (except in my sleep) and lay there silent and still. As she continues to move her hips I blankly watch what she is doing, shocked at what is happening.

After a minute or two I cum into her and my penis become limp. She stops and looks at me angrily. ‘What the fuck, did you just cum in me?’ and all I can get out is ‘Sorry’. A few seconds later, she realises that I am petrified. ‘Oh, you’re a virgin?’ she says with a mixture of anger and surprise. I nod.

She turns on the main light in the room, hastily gets dressed and heads back downstairs to the party. After about 5 minutes I get dressed and wander outside to be alone. I manage to pull myself together to pretend nothing had happened and get back to the party.

The next day I arrange to meet with my girlfriend, she knows something is up due to my urgency on the phone. We meet in the park and I decide to tell her that I slept with someone at the party and give no details about it. She is distraught and runs home. With the help of my sister, I phone the girl from the party and ask her to take the morning after pill. I’m really grateful for my sister’s unquestioning support.

Fast-forward almost ten years; I wonder how much this experience has affected me. I’m single but am still confident with women and confident about sex, and had a few wonderful partners who it didn’t work out with. It took quite a few years but I’ve stopped feeling guilty about what happened. I think that it hasn’t had much of an effect on me, but it’s a hard thing to gauge. That one first dreadful experience has not stopped me from having some excellent experiences since (and hopefully a few more).’  

Culture Club...

When I began this project way back when, my original mission was to cover off as many different ‘types’ of stories as I possibly could. I wanted to interview old people, young people, gay people, straight people, black people, white people, people from as many different cultural or religious backgrounds as I could and as many different ‘situations’ as I could. I wanted to interview people with disabilities for instance and in this regard I got lucky. One of my favourite interviews of all time was from the disabled man who told me pretty much the best virginity loss story I had ever heard. But culture, being what it is, has made it trickier to get the more diverse interviews that I want and to this end readers, I am posting a plea!

Lots of cultures consider the idea of talking about sex and virginity a repellent idea and I dig that.  Sexuality is alive and kicking in Islamic culture – the Koran talks widely about sexuality but that doesn’t mean that people are encouraged to talk openly to each other, let alone a stranger about their sexual lives. As it happens, I do have a story from a young Muslim woman about virginity loss but because this woman lost her virginity before marriage, I have never felt able to include this account without its more traditional counterpart – a story from a young person who waited for marriage – sitting by its side.

Quite apart from anything else, this is a story that I personally, would find far more interesting. There was nothing standing between me and the loss of my virginity. Whilst I would hardly say I was encouraged to lose it, I wasn’t exactly held back from it either. For me, finding out what is going on inside the mind of a young woman – or a man – who is living alongside the endemic temptations of modern society but knows that they will not have sexual intercourse until the day that they get married is a fascinating counterpoint to my own life and that of many of the people who write into me at this blog…..so my question to you is this: do you know anyone who would be prepared to be interviewed by me, not for my blog but for my book?

Anonymity would be a given. They can choose to tell me as much or as little as they feel comfortable with. I am more interested in what was going on in their heads than the gory details – although gory details are fine too! In the end, I am looking to interview people from interesting religious or cultural backgrounds who waited until they got married to lose their virginity. The younger and more contemporary the better but it’s not a deal breaker. You’d be contributing towards a unique snapshot of British society in the 21^st Century and I would love to have you on board, whoever you are. I can be contacted at [email protected]