These are just words you are reading, letters on a page, nothing more. It is merely a means of communication that we have developed over thousands of years in order to impart information and express the way that we feel to other people. So why do these tiny, unimportant letters make a difference? Because people are essentially alone. We cannot inhabit the body of another person. We only have ourselves and at times, this can seem incredibly lonely. None more so that when it comes to the personal parts of our lives, the parts that we don’t always want to reveal for fear of being different, wrong or just plain weird.
There are so many ways we can communicate in this world. We can talk, we can email, we can even twitter or fall back on good old facial expression but when it comes to the intimate sides of our lives, if something is wrong, tried and tested methods of communication can fall by the wayside in a nano-second. So what then, if you are a young man in your 20’s, who has had several debilitating experiences of the horribly clinical sounding erectile dysfunction? What if you then pluck up the courage to go to your GP, ‘a very conservative old guy it has to be said’ who lacks the sensitivity to deal with this issue in an appropriate manner, thereby leaving you even more isolated and freaky feeling than before?
Welcome 26-year-old Adrian who had this exact experience but still had the balls to write to a total stranger (me) and tell her about it. Now the power of words really comes into play because he and I are going to tell you a story and someone, somewhere will read these trivial words and realize that they are not alone. That, my friend, is the power of these strange little shapes and patterns that we put down on paper in order to express ideas and the myriad ways that the human mind can feel.
When Adrian first wrote me a couple of months ago, he was ‘pretty lost. At the point at which I guess it would have been ‘normal’ to lose my virginity, I had a couple of bad experiences and by the time I was 20, I pretty much gave up on sex at altogether.’ Except that he decided to write about it and in doing so, he shone the spotlight on a subject that affects hundred, maybe even thousands of young men at some point in their lives, but no one ever talks about it. That is the power of words in reverse effect. Lets try and even out the balance.
‘It’s taken me the best part of a decade to lose my virginity. Whilst I’d like to say it’s because I have a Superman-like level of stamina, it’s more to do with shyness and insecurity about sex. So, I’ve got the job done recently aged 26. I now live in London but am from the north of England originally.
At 16, I fell in love with Fiona, whom I shared a form class with. I was a relatively clever working class kid getting away from a terrible comprehensive school going to a very middle-class (state) 6th form in a wealthy suburb. I think she often thought of herself as the ‘poor relation’ in the school and was delighted to see more people like herself. Although at first it looked as if she liked me, my interest wasn’t reciprocated and she eventually got together with my best friend, got engaged and moved in with him. They were together for 8 years, we always got on well and she became one of my best friends over the years.
As a somewhat immature response I grabbed the first girl who came my way, Bryony, who I met in a nightclub. I wasn’t that attracted to her thinking back and had just done it as a response to being spurned but we ended up staying together for over a year. Embarrassingly for someone my age it is still the longest relationship I’ve ever been in.
We tried to have sex quite a few times, but partly through our mutual inexperience and because I couldn’t get it up, essentially, very little happened physically between us. This was crushing for my confidence, I’m sure it wasn’t too pleasant for her either but I doubt she gave it a second thought after we broke up. A few months after going off to university we went our separate ways and this bizarrely sexless and loveless relationship withered away.
Why was I so shy? I don’t know, while I’m no Brad Pitt I’m probably a 6 out of 10 and a nice enough person (and I've definitely had time to work on my personality since!), I’m sure had I lost my virginity at this age I’d have had a lot more fun at university, but this initial experience really scarred me. I think I had, and still have to some extent, deep-set sexual confidence problems.
The summer after my first university year I got together with a girl I worked in a bar with, she later came to stay with me at university and I had the same experience as I’d had with Bryony, only she stayed a whole weekend and I couldn’t escape it. This was enough to put me off even chatting up women and/or flirting for literally years.
So from this time I just did nothing, ignoring or playing ignorant to women who were attracted to me and just stewing in my own frustration when I met someone I liked. This was particularly bad when I met Bethany, a beautiful Scottish girl I met studying abroad but I don’t have time to go into each lost love, I’d best move on to this year.
I hadn’t paid any attention at all to sex or anything sexual, but I work in (what could broadly be called) an arts background so sex is never far from anyone’s minds and I often work with attractive women. When we were out drinking one night one such woman that I had a bit of a crush on revealed she was desperate to have children and settle down. She is a few years older than me (30) but it was a wake up call as to how bad I’d let the problem of my sexual inexperience become. I resolved to meet someone and signed up to an Internet dating site. In my desperation, I even thought about consorting with a sex worker, but having heard the same woman say she could never respect a man who slept with prostitutes I decided against it. A healthier mind would probably have just asked her out, but as you have already read, that’s not how I roll!
And this is how I met Ffion. She’s a lot younger than me (18) and it is something I feel guilty about slightly, but I’m trying not to beat myself up about anything sexual any more, as I think this weirdly puritanical part of my brain is something that held me back in the past. So we chatted on the Internet site, then Facebook, then phone. We would’ve met up earlier but she spent a week in hospital and so we just called each other and texted during this time. It helped us get to know each other better. I told her online I'd never had a girlfriend before, which although not 100% accurate, was near enough to what I wanted to say, and saying it through a computer screen was less awkward than doing it face-to-face. What's the worst that could happen? Block-and-delete wouldn't be the end of the world.
After she got out of hospital we had phone sex one night which was a massive turn on and still sticks in my mind as a very sexual experience. It’s quite ironic that I could build my confidence more without someone in the room than I could with someone with me when I was younger, but that’s life I suppose. We eventually set a date to meet and I was very excited. The next day I got another phone call.
It was Fiona, visiting London for a few days, and did I fancy meeting up for a drink? There was nothing odd about this, she’s been separated from my best mate over a year, my mate is now in a relationship with someone else and she was going out with a bloke called Keith. Only she isn’t any more, I found out, and so we went out drinking.
It was a night of intense conversation. She told me about her parents upcoming divorce, how her dad had a second wife/life and some other things. I didn’t really want to share the virginity thing at that point so just told her some other family stuff. We stayed sat in one pub all night and got pretty drunk. She had been matching me drink-for-drink, and although we’re both quite thin I’m about a foot taller than her and didn’t realise how much it had affected her.
We got outside the pub at closing time and were giving each other strange eye contact I don’t remember having seen since the start of 6th form. After asking each other if we were going home, she said ‘the night doesn’t have to end yet’ with a cryptic cheeky smile on her face, so we went for another drink. We walked hand in hand to the next pub and were a bit more open as to how we felt about each other and being obviously flirtatious. I realised I’d have to tell her.
I don’t know why I was so anxious about this, she’s known me since I was 16 and could probably work out I’d never had sex, but telling her felt like facing up to it and telling everyone I knew (who again, could probably have worked it out).
So I told her and she pretty much said ‘that’s fine, not a problem at all… Shall we go then?’ So we left the pub and she said ‘Where next?’ I said ‘mine’. She smiled, laughed and we walked off hand in hand, kissed at the bus stop and went back to mine.
Now, in a classic rom-com we’d have gone home and had amazing sex, but I had the exact same problems I had in the past, only added into the mix were both of us being the drunkest we’ve ever been and her being sick at least once during the night. I also live in a right shit hole due to doing something I love for a living and she naively walked past my flat, assuming I couldn’t live somewhere so horrible, which was rather humiliating.
So we woke up in the morning, laughed and got dressed. She’s a great person to be around, clothes on or off, so it wasn’t as awkward as it could’ve been with someone else. We were texting later, trying to piece together what had and hadn’t happened, and although I had (apparently, this is how drunk I was) penetrated her, I hadn’t ejaculated. She apologised that my first time hadn’t been more special. I was sorry we hadn’t enjoyed ourselves more but I wasn’t sorry it had happened.
Ffion came over a few days later and we gave each other oral sex, and I pleasured her with my hands. Although I’m breezing over this a great deal compared to what’s written above, it was a great experience that (I think) we both really enjoyed, and the second time she visited we had full sex to ‘completion’, which was also great. And that was that and it was done.
Why were these occasions so much more relaxed? Maybe because of the age difference, maybe because it was a more purely sexual thing, maybe because I care less, although I do care, she’s a very sweet girl. I don’t know, I guess it was just my time (I’ve been waiting long enough!). Who did I lose my virginity to? I don’t know, and frankly don’t care that much now. Ffion is coming to mine again tomorrow, and I’ll probably see Fiona at Christmas, so I’m just going to try to get through to 2011 first.
Don’t read that to mean that I think I’ve become some kind of ‘hit with the ladies’ – seeing Fiona again will probably be awkward and I’m conscious that a relationship with such a big age gap at such a young age (for her) can’t really last but I’m just going to try and enjoy it for now. I’m well aware that I’m due my next sexual partner/s aged 52 so for now I’m just going to try and have fun and make up for lost time.’
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