The Virginity Project: The story that you don't want to hear...

I never said this blog was going to be pretty. People’s virginity loss stories come in many different shapes and sizes, and with varying different degrees of pleasure. Rarely physical it must be said but occasionally emotional. Not today.

‘I’m not sure people will want to hear my story’ wrote Mia. ‘Perhaps not’, I replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean they don’t need to hear it’. This is a heartbreaking tale and generously, its owner choses also to tell us the other side of a second story, that of the sex worker who ‘takes’ a man’s virginity. I frequently hear the male end of this story and less often that of the female, who is invariably the sex worker.

By the by, I think Mia does herself – and the world of sex working - a disservice when she says ‘I’m a hooker, I’m not real’. Given the dramatic course her life has taken and the nature of her ex job, this is understandable but as you probably know, I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the way we perceive sex workers.

I’ve met some fine women over the years who work in the sex industry, women that perform acts of kindness that go way beyond the concept of ‘just’ having sex. Yes, I hear you say, but they get paid for it. Yes they do, but thats hardly the point. Its a thin line between sexual surrogacy and prostitution as far as I can work out. And is one better – or worse – than the other?

This isn’t the time or the place to get into this discussion. I have something to post soon that will provide excellent food for thought on this subject. In the meantime, here is a big story. Not only that, but Mia reveals a promising flair for story telling.

‘Up until about a year ago, I worked as a prostitute, in and around the city of Chicago. I’m actually only twenty now, and I spent most of my teenage years as a hooker, working since I turned fifteen. It was about two years ago that I was contacted by a young guy living outside the city and he asked me to meet. He was a college student, 22, I think, and I remember how embarrassed he sounded in our phone call when he explained that I had to come at a time when his ‘parents would be out’. He also shyly told me that it was his first time so that I would be prepared.

It was that call that got me rethinking about the significance of a ‘first time’. I had sex for a living; did he understand that sex with me wasn’t the same thing? There’s a difference between making love and just having sex. I couldn’t offer him anything more than the latter. Losing your virginity is portrayed in movies as being such a special moment, and I felt like all I could do was let him down. I never got that special moment when I lost mine. Was I making it into too big a deal? Is a ‘first time’ overrated?

In terms of technically losing my virginity, I was fourteen. The story isn’t pretty; my life back then wasn’t in general. I was in foster care, and staying in a rough neighborhood. A year before I had stayed with one foster family for a couple months, and been abused by the father, yet I was still a virgin. I had never even kissed a boy. Despite being inexperienced in that way, though, I had spent a while in pretty tough areas and I was street smart in every sense. I knew better than to walk alone in the dark in that sort of place, yet that night, even sober, I made a stupid decision. I was halfway home when I was approached by five older guys I recognized from school. They were drunk, but not too much so to lose control of me. I was dragged into a dead alley and held down for each one. It hurt like all hell; I never expected that sort of pain. Afterwards, when I was left there, I redressed, threw up, and then walked home. I never spoke of it.

I thought if I never told, I could go on and, if not forget, at least move forward. That plan was put on hold shortly after, though, when I realized I had missed a period. I was pregnant. I was also only fourteen, and a complete mess. I couldn’t even think of options, I was so freaked. But just after I found out for sure, I miscarried. I woke up and I was bleeding, enough to scare me into going to the hospital.

I don’t remember much more, but the pregnancy ended with a tear/rupture in something. There was a lot of blood and no more baby. I was quietly relieved, and completely overwhelmed.

Fast forward a couple months later, and I had consensual sex for the first time. It was nothing special, and neither was he. My first boyfriend, a little while later, was older and more experienced, and sex with him was the first ‘real sex’ I had—sex that was enjoyable, more like it seemed it should be. With that I began falling deeper into promiscuity, and then I started hooking. Fast-forward almost three years after that, and I’m a call girl debating the importance of a lonely college geek’s virginity.

When I finally did meet him, he was just as I expected. Sweet, but in a frustrating way. Older than me, but somehow still very much a kid. We talked for a while, and then he asked to kiss me. I wish I could say that I ended up convincing him not to choose that way as his first time, but I didn’t. He finished, I dressed, and we ended up just talking for the rest of the time (the actual act only took him like a minute, after all, and not surprisingly). He thanked me for being so nice about it, and I wanted to laugh and cry. Stupid boy, I thought, I’m a hooker, I’m not real.

Yet he was happy, because that was all he wanted: plain, quick sex, with a girl who wouldn’t object to it being under the watchful eyes of his Star Wars figures. I saw that losing your virginity didn’t have to be beautiful. Not all sex had to be. Most girls say it takes a couple times before you get it right, anyway. I had spent so long feeling like my ability to enjoy sex was tainted by my first experiences with it, when really, as significant and memorable a first time is, it isn’t everything. I had let myself be scarred by sex, and then become reliant on the money it made me. Throughout that entire time, I had let it define me, without coming to terms with one, first traumatic incident. I wanted a sex life, but I wanted it to be mine, on my terms.

For reasons that could partially be attributed to that incident, but mainly to a decision to stop doing what made me unhappy, I quit prostitution. Bam, just like that, sex played one less role in my life. That first step helped me when it came to the rest of my climb. I wasn’t looking for closure, because I knew that was impossible. I never planned to forgive, because I simply couldn’t. I just wanted to not think of myself as a victim of my first time. I can’t forget that it happened, and that it altered me, but I’ve become okay with that fact. My first time changed me, but it should never control me.'