One does have those moments when you look at your life and think, how the heck did this happen? I had one such moment this week at the ominously named ‘Literary Death Match’. Now who would have thought that lil’ ole me, the girl who barely scraped her O’levels would get to be a literary gladiator one day?

That said, whilst I might not have had the attention span it required to excel academically at school, I didn’t do so badly on the sports field and I remind myself of that each time (that’ll be a total of 4 times now) that I get an invitation to read or perform. Sport requires a ‘performance’ of sorts. If I focus for a moment; I can still feel the euphoria one feels as one stands at the edge of a gym mat, mind already living the moments ahead and then launching an attack that sees itself played out as a series of leaps, turns and tumbles that hopefully end in something vaguely death defying, dangerous and beautiful. Ok, I was only 13 at the time, it probably wasn’t that great but even now, I still remember feeling this: it’s always better in ‘performance’ than it is in practice.

There is something so seductive about the thrill of competition that one can often achieve something - in my case; height - that simply wasn’t possible when it was just me and my gym coach in the room. I remember leaping a full five inches higher when I was crapping myself in front of an audience at the borough gymnastics competition. Adrenalin brings out the best in us.

With the idea that somewhere inside me, that 13-year-old nutter might still exist, I stepped out onto the stage at Literary Death Match and read my favourite story from my book. I was slightly concerned about the fact that I’d have to use the C U Next Tuesday word several times but I was third up to read and the lovely Kat Brown tested (very beautifully it must be said) the water for me. It held firm and then one of the judges talked at length about ‘rimming’ and the last of my fears disappeared.

In any case, it’s hard to go wrong with a story like this one so, as an early wordy Xmas present, I’m going to repeat the un-abridged version. If everyone’s virginity loss experience were as good as this one, I’d be out of business. And if you want some grade A entertainment in the new year, get yourself along to Literary Death Match and cheer yourself up for the new year. Here we go....

Born in 1962, Charlie Thomas was the unfortunate victim of Thalidomide, a drug that was given to thousands of women in the 1960’s to relieve morning sickness. Tragically, and unbeknownst to them, it also caused dramatic birth defects. Charlie Thomas is a tall, handsome man who just happens to have arms that finish at his elbows. A smart, popular boy, we join his story at the age of sixteen, just as The Sex Pistols were ransacking the late 1970’s and just as Charlie’s mother and stepfather had moved from very ‘happening’ London to the very non-happening Welsh countryside.

‘It was the late seventies and my school consisted of Welsh people who were into Elvis and absolutely everyone wore flares. But there were also the children of the hippies that had moved to the country and formed all these hippy communes. One of them was a lesbian commune.  Can you imagine how popular they were with the local villagers? They were lesbian, dope-smoking, patchouli smelling English people and they were all witches as far as the Welsh were concerned. 

There I was, in the middle of all this and then she walked into the room.  She was the daughter of one of these lesbian couplings and she was called Stella.  Stella had huge bosoms, reeked of ‘teenage’ and sashayed down the hall in a way that stopped everybody in their tracks.

Our village was having a village hall disco one night. Imagine my surprise that day when Stella came up to me on the bus and said, ‘Are you going to be at the disco tonight because I’d like to dance with you?’ Pandemonium. You know, it was just a little bit too much for the other passengers. The weird English punk guy with the short arms getting propositioned by the witch girl with the big boobs.

The evening came and went and I walked her back to the end of the lane where her commune was and we had a bit of a kiss, but she had this really annoying all-in-one denim trouser suit on so any idea of getting hold of those breasts was just not happening because it was like a second skin. 

Cut forward to about a month and she invited me back to hers for tea.  By this time we were almost officially girlfriend and boyfriend and it was the weirdest house you’ve ever been in.  There was a woman called Gloria who looked like a man and had a moustache. An actual moustache.  Now I look back on it and I just think, yes, they were a bunch of lesbians in a hippy commune. It was the late seventies in Wales, what do you expect?  But at the time, for this little straight boy, it seemed really weird.

Anyway, the mother sent us off to Stella’s room with our tea and Stella got her Jimi Hendrix record out. She was still in her school uniform and she lay down on her bed lolling the legs slightly open and I was sitting on the floor so you can imagine the view that I was experiencing.  Then she just went, ‘Touch me’. What she actually meant was, you have got carte blanche to go straight to base three.

It was basically being offered to me on a plate. The sexiest bitch in the school, with the biggest tits, was showing me her vagina and saying, ‘Touch me’.  I had never really got anywhere with anyone and there it was, all there, for me.  I bottled it.

I wasn’t ready for it.  I needed the base one and base two, you know?  I hadn’t even touched her nipple.  I wasn’t ready to insert my fingers into places that they didn’t know what to do with once they’d got there. So, in a rather desperate moment of attempted comedy, I put my finger on her knee, because technically that could be construed as ‘touching’ her, and thinking that I’d also answered with wit to mask my insufficiencies.

Cut forward again to a month later and there was a gang of about five or six of us that were the dope-smoking, punk-rock-liking, beer-drinking naughty people, who also had the parents who cared the least.  We would hang around together, staying up till four and sleeping in the living room. On one of these nights, Stella and I were the only two left.  It was three in the morning and there wasn’t enough bedding for two so we slept together.

One thing led to another and she lay down and opened her legs and I sort of got on top of her, I had no notion of foreplay or anything like that and I managed to put it in her with a little bit of assistance, and then I started putting it in and out and in and out again.  And I remember thinking, is that it?  Is this what I’ve been waiting for?  Because this is shit!  This is nothing!  I didn’t come either, so I didn’t really understand the feeling that can go with it. I’d done it. I’d done the act but I didn’t have the feeling. 

It wasn’t long after that that we were doing it every night and I’d kept it from her that I couldn’t come.  We used to do it in the public toilets up the lane from the disco where everyone used to go. It was so popular that you could usually recognize the grunts of a familiar co-worker. Then one night she just sat back on the toilet bowl and went, ‘Where’s your fucking spunk?’  Or something like that.  She was a game girl, Stella; I was a very lucky boy.

That weekend, I saw a film called ‘Candy’ and I was wanking while I was watching it.  Suddenly I felt this really weird sensation, kind of like buzzing. My ears went a bit weird and I stood up and ran into my room, still with a hard cock, and carried on wanking, my legs felt wobbly for a second and I thought, oh my god, what’s going on, and then suddenly, yes!  Finally, I’ve orgasmed! I’ve come.  Produced sperm.  Da da, da da! I’m a man!  And that was my virginity. 

I was desperate to see Stella again after that, obviously. I think I got one more in, and that was the one where I finally managed to have sex with her and come.  A week later, Stella’s best friend Nancy asked her if she could borrow me because she wanted to lose her virginity. College was beckoning and she was buggered if she was going to go off to college still a virgin. Stella actually said to me, ‘Would you mind sleeping with my best friend?’  I was kind of like, ‘Err, sure, yes, I’ll do that’. 

And I did. I actually enjoyed that a lot more because I almost thought I knew what I was doing by then. Happy days.  Directly after that, when I went off to my A’ level college, I was quite confident and buoyed with the success of my double whammy in the summer holidays.

I met an older woman next who introduced me to LSD and the clitoris.  She was thirty and I was seventeen. I called someone a cunt in the pub and the next thing I knew I was being punched in the face and I was on the floor with a woman leering over me with pink hair, Dr Martens and a boiler suit. She was pointing at me shouting, ‘Shut up!  I like my cunt!’ and it was literally, like, ‘Wow!’ at first sight.

She was a communist and she was very angry. She looked at me and saw a man who’d been disabled by the state because basically, that’s what Thalidomide had done.  She wanted to unlock my anger by fucking my brains out and giving me acid. She was partially successful. Sexually speaking I had a lot more of an idea about what I was doing by the end of that summer.

I had a lot of partners over the years because I was in rock and roll bands and I was shagging everything I could get my hands on. Some moves were not an option to me, because of the disability stuff; there were some areas that I literally could not reach.  So I became damn good at oral sex to make up for that. Making the leap and learning how to go down on women was a huge step forward for me because then I could absolutely guarantee their pleasure.

Many years later, this is pathetic of me I know, I tried to sleep with Stella again but it didn’t work. Halfway through the date I realized that I didn’t actually fancy her any more and I was just trying to get closure on something that … didn’t need closure, so that was as far as it went.

I have been married to my partner for fourteen years now and I’m an old hippy. I believe that the physical plane is not as important as the spiritual one, and I’m also a pagan insofar as I’m anti Christian insofar as I believe we should have as much physical pleasure as is possible. And practice it as much as possible, because it will help us reach Nirvana.  Rather than abstention from physical pleasure. No!  I don’t agree with that. Absolute rubbish!  Wank, fuck, do all of that as much as possible, that’s what I say.  Because, come on, who of us here can quite honestly say that in times of stress, bringing yourself off in the bath or whatever, doesn’t relieve the damn stress, and make you feel better afterwards?  How on earth can that be a bad thing?’

Comments

[Hinge Ming]

Merry Xmas to you Kate. Seems like you had a grand year, 2012 for the better!