The Australians could write an entire dictionary to describe their use of the English language. I love it. A duvet is no longer a duvet. It’s a dooner. The Off License is commonly known as the Bottle Shop; therefore a trip to purchase alcohol is referred to as ‘going to the bottle-o’. Neither does one take a smoking break. One has a smoko instead. And so today’s Australian storyteller goes on schoolies. The Americans would understand schoolies as ‘spring break’, that sacred opportunity to get shit-faced and party like it’s the last day of your education. We don’t have a word for it here in the UK, mainly because that kind of behavior is part and parcel of daily life for most young Brits. We don’t need an excuse to go nuts here in Blighty.
Today’s storyteller is a man of note because he genuinely wasn’t that bothered about losing his virginity. I don’t know if they have a word for this kind of self-possession in Australian but either way, this blog probably wouldn’t exist if they did because this attitude is rare. For most young Westerners, the loss of virginity is a race to become an adult and no one wants to get left out. Matt, on the other hand, ‘felt no need to rush into it. It wouldn’t have made me cool and i would be the same person before i had sex as i knew i would be after.’
In honor of Matt’s unique style, I have left his story just as he wrote it. Enjoy!
‘my name is Matt. i am 22 years old, born in adelaide Australia. i lost my virginity at the age of 17, drunk, in the back of a car on schoolies but that's not the whole story.
in my last year of high school, i was dating a girl named Sarah. we had talked about having sex throughout our relationship but she was a little afraid and it never seemed right between us. for her it was this huge looming thing. for me it was different. it never bothered me that we didn't do it. i was probably what you would call a late bloomer. throughout high school everyone around me was dating. who they were dating changed on a weekly basis and the juiciest gossip was always who kissed who at the party. i was never part of that. i guess i just never saw losing my virginity as something i needed to strive for or achieve. not to say that i didn't care about it. for me it was a case of when it's right it will happen. i felt no need to rush into it. it wouldn't have made me cool, it wouldn't have made me a man and i would be the same person before i had sex as i knew i would be after. Sarah was my first real girlfriend; we dated for nearly a year but never had sex. the relationship ended about halfway through the year(2005) and she's still a virgin now.
it was an amazing time in my life. the idea that 14 years of schooling were finally to be over. i became close friends with a girl named suzie. she had just had a knee reconstruction and i would go round to her house and watch movies while she was stuck in her leg cast. she had her license and we'd skip class and drive to the shops to buy ice cream or just hang out. the end of the school year came around. i finished my last exam and that was it. a feeling of total freedom, the end of an era. at the first party after exams suzie and i kissed for the first time. it happened at other parties after that too. then came schoolies. in australia when you finish high school you go somewhere with a bunch of friends to party and celebrate the end of exams. schoolies is basically the australian version of the american spring break. there was about 8 of us who drove down the coast and stayed at a friends beach house. suzie and i never really talked about how we'd been hooking up at parties, we certainly weren't dating. we were friends. friends who sometimes after a few drinks struggled to control our teenage urges.
on the last night of our schoolies everyone went down to the beach, we'd been drinking and we were sitting by a campfire. we started kissing, we were quite drunk at this stage and our friends decided it would be better to just leave us there and go back to the house. we fooled around on the beach for a while but soon decided we needed somewhere else to go, somewhere less sandy. we walked back up towards the house but stopped at her car. we got in the back and continued to kiss and touch. there we were, drunk, in the back of a car on schoolies. it was new and exciting, something we'd never done before. there was a lot of foreplay, each of us exploring the others body, she reached into the glove box and pulled out a condom. we never said it but we both knew what was going to happen. there seemed to be no starting or end point to my first sexual encounter. i didn't come, i highly doubt that she did either (i wouldn't experience having an orgasm from sex until years after that). afterward we both stumbled back to the house. we both lost our virginity that night, we both lost a little bit of innocence but in a good way. i had to leave the next morning. it was a night of pure teenage sexual energy. the ending of school, the loss of my virginity, the beginning of a new stage in life, somehow it all tied together. in those few moments, in the back of her car, drunkenly fumbling with bra straps and seatbelts. having sex for the first time was the physical embodiment of growing up.’
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