The Virginity Project

Two for the price of one....

 

Today’s story comes straight from the valleys. The Welsh valleys that is and I like it very much. You’re a good story teller I wrote to ‘Bronwyn’. Quick as a flash she replied with another. This time, the story of someone else’s virginity loss - with herself cast as the ‘taker’. From the green fields of North Wales to the beaches and hot dusty streets of West Africa, virginity loss is a universal experience, just with a different set of characters. As today’s stories will surely show….

‘Bronwyn, Born North Wales 10.08.1966 - year of the fire horse - unmarriageable and unmanageable we are apparently.....

I grew up an excruciatingly shy child, an ugly duckling with one eye bigger than another. Hid myself away in books and the ubiquitous ponies. Ascending to secondary school I became know as the class nerd. No tits or pubes until 15 years of age. Torment ensued via the communal showers after PE with the usual developed girl’s comments. A controlling Victorian father who had one set of rules for girls and quite another for boys only compounded a sense of isolation.

Arriving at 16, I progressed to Sixth Form College with my partner in crime and best friend who I used to hitch hike all over North Wales with, going to parties getting drunk and stoned. I landed at college with the firmly planted aspiration of losing my virginity ASAP. I felt it to be an embarrassment, a hindrance to my developing to adulthood, but waited till this age so that nothing was illegal, even having sorted myself out on the pill cannily 3 months before. Generally my attitude was good riddance when it's gone.

I briefly dated a couple of guys who were, bluntly put, rather brainless. Then one day, I found myself walking down a corridor behind a very cute biker with very revealing leather trousers on. Gorgeous, working (=independence) and at 21, well he was quite a catch. The usual clumsy teenage flirtations followed. We ended up going out together. How sweet, his name meant 'blackbird'.

I fell in love with him as much as anyone can during their unformed teenage years. Six weeks into this I decided this was the time. We went out to a nightclub in North Wales and I was staying at his parents on the sofa. Wasn't drunk or stoned just decided now is the time. I like him, thought I loved him. The experience was brief, extremely clumsy. He had no idea about a woman's body despite not being a virgin himself. He had no idea about foreplay or preparing a woman, no fuss, no frills or lubricant. It was agony for me but fortunately over quickly due to his utter ineptitude.

After the act off he went to bed and I was on the sofa. So much for chivalry ha ha. All I could think was 'thank god for that.' Whatever - clumsy yes, a wasted opportunity - maybe, it remained my launch pad into adult life. It was a huge relief. We remained together for a year but went our separate ways. Him never having the desire to leave North Wales, me: couldn't wait to get out. He was sweet but did not have a shining intellect.

I remain grateful to him however due to his general kindness as a person, his sense of humour, his physical beauty and his innate sense of privacy - certainly did not go round advertising he had had a 'virgin'. We remained friends and I think fondly of him to this day. He launched me onto the adult world with a generosity of spirit that is rare to find these days. I have become a very confident independent woman able to hold my own and can smile gently at my past youthful experiences.

I do have another story of a man's virginity I can tell. Age 27, I found myself living in Liverpool doing my training as a midwife. I was half way through a 3 year course that was challenging on every level. Prior to moving to Liverpool, I had finished work and gone travelling solo for 6 months, covering India, Nepal, Czech Republic ending up in a squatted town in Holland at an artists festival. Landing in Liverpool I found it extremely difficult to acclimatise, with monumental work loads and total social isolation. It was difficult to get out due to work and although fond of my other student colleagues we didn't really see eye to eye about places to go out. I was by this time dreadlocks, tattoos and piercings, active in the free party and festival scene. Bernie Inns were not really me cup of tea.

Half way through the course I was fit to blow due to the pressure of work and the realisation of just how conservative the profession really was. Round peg in a square hole was an understatement. One night, I found an advert in the back of a tabloid paper for vey cheap flights to West Africa. I vacillated for 30 minutes and then said stuff it I'm going. I knew I would be missing a couple of things at college and that I would be in serious trouble but it felt like make or break time. My flight booked, I had to get myself from Liverpool to Gatwick airport for 7am the next morning. It mattered little that there were no bus or train services, my house mate dropped me off at the motorway at 9pm that night. I’d spent years hitching alone in the UK and Europe. I met some interesting folk, had a safe journey and arrived at Gatwick at about 4am the next morning.

I started talking to a middle aged business man in the departure lounge who told me he was building a school for philanthropic reasons out there. We sat next to each other on the plane and he said he would introduce me to his middleman, who he had met on the beach when said chap was 12. This guy was now 24 years old. Landing in Banjul a few hours later we disembarked and introductions were made. The business man was dropped at his hotel and I was sent off with Tunde the middleman to go sort out somewhere for me to stay with arrangements for us all to meet up for dinner later.

Tunde was a sweet character. An honourable character with an honest loyal heart, a winning smile and even more winning face and to be honest a body to die for. These are just things women notice. I had no particular intention of going out to Africa with any agenda of physical fun or seducing someone.

We looked all afternoon without any luck. People saw the colour of my skin, who I was with and obviously thought I was in the same financial bracket as the business man - despite the dreadlocks and piercings. Tunde suggested I stay with his family in their compound and I would be a paying guest. Seemed fine by me. His mother was most welcoming. A teacher and ex midwife, I thought it would be interesting and beneficial for all concerned. Retrospectively his mother had a hidden financial agenda; I can't say I blame her really.

We settled on a price which, having spent a lot of time in the developing world was generous. It was more than a month’s salary for a professional and I only intended staying 3-4 days as I was planning to go to Senegal to Dakar. I was mortified to find that she had thrown one of her daughters out of her bed and was making her sleep on the floor. I stayed one night in their house and after becoming friendly with one of the guys in the compound he offered me his spare room. I had eaten twice with Tunde’s family and spent one night with them. I explained I did not wish to evict her daughter from her bed and that the money would cover all. My friend was unemployed and would benefit more from some extra income. This all seemed to be accepted with good grace.

Two days after arriving in Gambia a military coup took place. The whole country was sealed in, curfews ensued and armed military were on the streets with a fully armed American warship sitting in the gulf. Bang went the Senegal trip. I remained living at Kwaiko’s house with the middleman Tunde staying occasionally. We became good friends and he was very gentlemanly in an old world sense. Such as (I thought ridiculously at the time) picking me up and carrying me out of the sea when I stood on a broken bottle, but very sweet. Our common love of music brought us closer together. I enjoyed his company, I was used to pushy cocky Europeans and he was a breath of fresh air.

I could see all this being observed in an increasingly disapproving manner by his mother. After staying at Kwaiko’s for a week Tunde’s mother called me to her house for a conference. To sum up, she stated that I owed her money for accommodation and food, neither of which I had received since leaving her house. She stated she had incurred expenses for my staying. This unfortunately escalated from my asking how this could be as I was not staying with her and what I had paid previously was overly adequate and generous. The result was her crying and shouting, pulling her hair saying I had abused her hospitality, that she had treated me like a daughter....It went on and on it was excruciating. I stood my ground saying I am sorry you are upset but this is emotional blackmail. Conference ended, I went back to Kwaiko’s. The whole compound was gossiping. Poor Tunde was stuck between loyalty for his family and his obvious embarrassment at how his mother was behaving. It took Kwaiko having to go and talk to her and be frank saying this is ridiculous and wrong for this lady to calm down.

Everyone was upset that evening. Tunde in particular. We had become closer and as result, he came and stayed with me that night. He was sweet and loving. Having had African boyfriends before my experience was of them being a little proscriptive in what they are prepared to do sexually. Tunde would not contemplate any of my gentle suggestions and the experience being a little clumsy and no frills, I realised after the act that he had been a virgin. His embarrassed response to my gentle questioning confirmed this.

Knowing the reputation of Gambia for the sex trade reversed, older women going there to find themselves a young handsome fit thing, well I was frankly mortified. I didn't even want to contemplate where his mother was coming from, was she trying to pimp him out? Make some money out of him? It was all rather too horrible to think about. We stayed friends but I insisted that nothing more could happen. Of course his mother hated my guts. I was stuck there for a further 10 days till flight restrictions were lifted.

Returning to the UK I received a flood of letters from poor Tunde. Declarations of love, pleas to come back and marry him. I felt really bad about it. What would have been seen by other more experienced men as a lovely thing that happened between friends when they were both in a state of emotional upset morphed into a whole different scenario when the issue of virginity was placed in the equation. Had I known him to be a virgin I would not have touched him with a bargepole.

Seeing how unequal we were retrospectively, in sexual and financial terms as well as life experiences, I feel like he must have thought I took advantage. I have never used another person sexually and still look back at myself and think I was a bit of a dope. Still I suppose he had an experience a lot of men out there never would have, friendship and a sexual liaison with a sassy independent woman who was beautiful (was being the operative word as now being 44 it's all naturally gone to pot - I'm nothing special to look at now).

I think of him  fondly when I remember my time out here, despite cringing at my naivety and would like to think he may think of me with some affection when or if he ever gets time to think amongst the hurly burly of scrabbling round trying to earn your daily crust in West Africa. Perhaps he gained something. At least I wasn't demanding marriage, babies and financial support. It was for him a pure experience clouded by none of the usual implications that are inevitably associated with any sexual liaison in the developed world - social position and community responsibility.’

Schoolies

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.’

The power of words..

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) 6^th 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 6^th 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.’

 

A blog is not just for Christmas….

I’ve used that line before but forgive me, it’s a good one and apt considering I abandoned my blog like an unwanted pet for the festive season. Truth be told, I’ve missed the little bugger like mad but needs must. There is nothing quite so galvanizing as checking the Amazon link with your book on it and realizing that you haven’t actually finished writing it yet.

To that end, I have risen every morning and crawled my way through the early morning darkness to the keyboard. I have drunk forty-five gallons of tea, read entire chapters aloud to the cat (he loved it) and generally lost the plot in the way that one only can when one is unable to leave the house for weeks on end. It was all worth it. I emerged this last Thursday, blinking into the light and clutching my - more or less – completed manuscript! Mission accomplished. To celebrate, I have a cheeky little story from a young man in NYC. Charles raises that old (Christmas) chestnut. How does a gay man lose his virginity? I asked him and this is what he had to say:

‘Well, I guess for man-on-man action, there are two V-cards you could lose. My friends and I have discussed this several times...and almost all of us have come to the conclusion that oral sex IS sex, but penetrative intercourse results in the loss of a V-card (this includes my LGBTQ and straight friends).  We haven't done a scientific study to back it up but I guess from personal experiences we've found the penetrative act to be more intimate.’ He also made this rather interesting point. ‘Also, had I been a heterosexual woman offering up my wares for free to a heterosexual man, I almost guarantee that it would have been a different outcome, and I would have hung my V-card up six years earlier...’

This is how it happened.

‘I'm Charles, born in the US in 1983, raised in Germany and moved to the US later on.  I have a super European liberal minded mother, but to spite her liberal awesomeness (but mainly for schlepping me back to the US), I decided to join a super evangelical Christian church.   Sex wasn't much of a taboo in our household, but I was a bit verklemmt* about the whole sex thing after the religious morals that were taught to me in the church. Although I didn't think it was a big deal and as my friends were losing their virginity's, I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and thought ‘to each his/her own!’  I did the whole Christianity thing for a while and I eventually realized that it wasn't my cup of tea.  

In college, I realized that, whoops! (Surprise, surprise) I liked the boys.  It wasn't really much of a surprise, but it didn't help make the sex situation easier.  When I was 20, I finally decided it was time to get things going and I made out for the first time ever. Making out once with a guy led to many times with many people (guys and girls) and I was quickly versed in the ways of non-penetrative sex.  Finally I was ready to ‘go all the way’ and this is where my five-year long journey of trying to get ‘it’ starts.  

First guy...a couple of dates, I'm ready and willing and waiting.  He knew I was a 'virgin' and when I asked him to help me get rid of that label, he said ‘I can't do that to you. You're so innocent!’  Yikes! Strike one. Saw him once or twice after that, and I tried, tried, tried soooo hard, but it just wasn't doing it for him.  After that I went on a rampage for a few months working it like a hooker a month before Christmas.  After a couple of more ‘you're so innocent’s’, I gave up and only tried a few times a year to no avail.  

Then comes the week before my 26th birthday and I decided that this was it.  I was going to get laid and not give a damn what anyone else thought.  I started working it like crazy again but also decided at this point that I wanted a perfect dick for my first lay.  After a few short months, I finally found him.  Tall, dark, handsome and with an accent.  He takes me home, we start doing our thing, and then I see it.  A fantastic specimen.  So I asked him if he'd ‘do it’.  He asked if I'd done it before, and I just said ‘yes, of course!’ So we did it, and it was amazing.  I never told him that I hadn't done it before, but oh well. Only saw him once more a few months later, and it was still good.  

Do I hate the fact that I had to lie to someone to get what I wanted?  Yes.  Am I glad I did?  Hell yeah!  Was it necessary?  Probably...I might still be running around begging, begging, begging for a lil' something-something had I not.’

*verklemmt = emotionally inhibited in a convulsive way; stuck

Are you being served?

Today’s story is a showstopper. It also highlights a shadowy area of intrigue for some of us…what men get up to when left to their own devices. We have all heard the tales about boy’s boarding schools and whilst I am not accusing every man I ever met of being secretly gay, I do think that most men are a lot less hung up on the idea of ‘being gay’ than they let on. I also think its got nothing to do with being gay and everything to do with making the most of whatever opportunities come your way.

Some years ago I took a detour into restaurant management. The restaurant was populated by the gayest (and loveliest) collection of male waiting staff you have ever encountered. The kitchen was where the straight guys hid. Big, beefy macho men who could take the punishing pace and crippling heat of a Saturday night restaurant service. Well, you might think that east is east, west is west and never the twain shall meet but that wasn’t the case in the restaurant that I worked in. It wasn’t just that we were the culinary equivalent of the United Nations, i.e. all departments loved to party together regardless of our differing roles, genders, sexualities and religions. No, there was partying of quite a different kind going on between some of the straightest, manliest chefs I have ever encountered and some of the most homosexual waiters. Strictly behind closed kitchen doors you understand. I only know all this because I had the ‘ears’ of the gay waiting staff. This wasn’t a one off either, it happened a lot.

I remember being surprised at the time but I am not now. Men understand each other. They understand each other’s needs and to that end, they can make simple physical transactions with each other that have fewer emotional repercussions than their heterosexual equivalents. Women are hardwired to involve feelings. Sometimes it’s easier to leave us out of the equation.

‘I prefer the company of and sex with women but enjoy the frisson of possible discovery involved in homosexual activity. I don't regard myself as a gay man; I'm not sure where I stand on the sexual continuum.  I suppose I am about 10% gay and 90% straight.’ 

So says today's story teller. Sexual orientation is not a black and white matter and it never has been. Today’s story teller is totally down with that.

‘I am a 68yr old man, born in the UK where I still live.

I was educated at public school and this seems to have bred into me a subsequent tolerance of the breadth of sexual desire. I was 16 or 17 when I lost my virginity. I was at boarding-school and living in one of seven houses, where we ate, slept and entertained ourselves.  Among the staff was a young woman who was employed as a maid in the kitchen and the dining-room.  She was a pleasant, friendly lass, well-built with large breasts and bottom.

I think it was in May 1959, the summer term and I walked through from the boys' end of the house, past the kitchen towards the cellars where the craft and other rooms were.  What I had intended to do there, I haven't a clue.

As I approached the door to the cellar steps, I bumped into Jesse.  I cannot remember from this distance in time what was said nor how it was that we came to be kissing.  I can remember that she had full lips and that when ours met I lost all sense of place and time.  I think it was at that point that I stuck my hand up under her overall and into her pants.  

We made a tacit decision to go down to the cellar, where we shut ourselves into a vegetable store room.  We continued kissing and I put my hand inside her bra to feel a breast which was large and soft. She took off her pants and lay down on the floor;  I'm not sure if I took down my shorts (yes, it was that kind of school!) or simply unleashed my erection from the fly.  I lay down on top of her and my cock entered her very easily. She was soft, wet and roomy but unlike anything I had ever felt in my life - blissful.  However much I was enjoying it, the sensation did not, sadly, affect the enthusiasm of a young man's first time and the excitement ensured that the performance was all too brief.  I had just relaxed on top of Jesse, when we heard familiar footsteps coming down the stairs.  

My housemaster!  His steel-tipped heels clicked their way along the stone-flagged passage outside our door. Jesse and I did not breathe. Our already-raised heart rates must have doubled as we lay, terror-stricken. The footsteps continued and on into the craft-room next door.  They did not stay there long before retracing their way back up the stairs.  Silently praising providence that he had not wanted a vegetable, we gave him a decent time to return to his quarters, hastily adjusted our clothes and went back upstairs.  I kissed Jesse good-bye and, knees trembling, went back to daily life.  Jesse will always have a warm place in my heart and I shall be for ever grateful to her for the pleasure I had in giving her my virginity.

During my time at prep and public school, being a male with a very healthy sexual appetite, I did become involved with other boys in mutual masturbation but never experienced anal sex.  I was in my 40s in the mid-1980s before I started to explore an interest in sex with men.  I had read stories of the infamous New York bath-houses and learned that there was a Turkish bath and sauna in the neighbouring city.  On my first visit it became clear that it was a hot-bed of homoerotic activity.  There was a steam-room, and three sauna areas of varying temperatures from mild to very hot.  In those days, men would walk around naked and sexual activity was common almost anywhere.  I had a number of pleasant experiences there and met someone with whom I shared other sexual moments over a good number of years.

However, my experience of anal sex took place in a well-know male 'cruising ground' in woods north of the city.  One way of soliciting attention is to single out a likely candidate (and they're quite obvious), to stop and have a pee, making your intentions clear by displaying your cock to the subject.  On this occasion, a short, bald well-built man responded by producing his cock but remarking that he knew a better place to go and suggesting I follow him.  We returned to our cars and drove a mile or so to another area of the woods where I followed him into the trees for a distance until we were sheltered from gaze.  I asked him what he liked (a stock phrase of the male cruiser), to which he replied that he liked to be fucked.  I was happy to oblige. 

We dropped our trousers and I gave his cock a cursory fondle before turning him round.  He had a muscular bum, smooth  and lightly covered with dark hair.  He gave me a condom, which I put on and he bent over to receive me.  I place my cock at the entrance to his anus and pushed, a bit too sharply, because he complained.  I took more time and let him absorb my cock until I was fully inside him and started to slide in and out.  His passage was tight and smooth and felt wonderful and the condom ensured that I could enjoy a decent ride before shooting my load.  As is usual in these circumstances, we parted with a mutual pat on the backside.

Having fucked a man, I developed a curiosity as to what it felt like to be fucked.  One evening, some years later, I was cruising in woods nearer home, where I met a man who was similarly inclined.  We withdrew to a secluded spot, where we got out our cocks and indulged in mutual stroking, sucking, bottom-stroking and hole-fingering.  He asked if I was up to be fucked.  I had another look at his cock which was uncut (my favourite!) and, although not small, was, I hoped, of an acceptable size, so I agreed.  He put on a condom and I anointed his cock and my anus with KY and bent over to receive him.  His cock felt large as it entered and its passage through my sphincter while uncomfortable, was not unduly painful. 

He shafted me enthusiastically for a few minutes before he came.  It did not feel 'natural', which of course it isn't and it did not feel, judging by this experience, to be a past-time I wanted to pursue, although I have succumbed occasionally since.  I am now a subscriber to the Julian Clary philosophy that it is better to give than to receive, though, in fact, having recently received a clean sexual bill of health, I now abstain from anal sex and fellatio but I do not resist the occasional 'feel'.  I don't know if you are aware of the seemingly huge number of men who seek out this kind of experience before returning to their partners but it appears to be prevalent wherever one goes.  

So there you are, dear Kate, three virginitie for the price of one.  I am glad I was not the subject of the rogering administered by the female banker's dildo to her husband.’ 

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).’  

Southern Hospitality...

As we descended into Atlanta, we could see this sprawling metropolis with elaborate highways and skyscraper buildings that was very different from the London skyline. We were greeted by some very friendly immigration officials who kept saying ‘Welcome to Atlanta, Georgia, the Capital of the American South’. It was my first experience with American southern hospitality. It excited me because no immigration official in the United Kingdom had ever been that pleasant to me.

We stayed in a suburb called Druid Hills, a lovely affluent all white neighbourhood. So, here was this British/African family moving into this over pristine American neighbourhood with the perfectly manicured lawns, lovely driveways, basket ball hoops in everybody’s property and cars galore. It was a very different experience from the Finchley High Road in Swiss Cottage.

The first day of school was like something out of a movie. It was my first time not wearing a uniform to school. It was my first time having a locker, and it was my first time not having different classes in the same class. On average, we had 8 classes a day and a school bell would ring indicating when one “period” ended and we had 5 minutes to proceed to the next class. It was all so surreal, but what was even more surreal were the girls. MY GAWD!!!!!!!!!! They were beautiful. White, Black, Latino, and Asian girls all over the place. Beautiful bodies, bodacious attitudes, and an alarming number were very friendly. They immediately took to the two new boys who had come in from London. They were in awe of our accents and would just love to hear us speak.

Before we knew, the coaches, and teaching staff all loved us. We were both playing sports, doing well in school, invited to every single party, had girls writing us love letters, and even some girls ready to date us. There was one issue; none of these girls were having sex. It was crazy because this was the only stereotype of America that was demystified. A lot of American girls in the South during those days had very strong religious values and the most important one was saving themselves for marriage. They were prepared to do everything else but that, so after a while, it got very frustrating, but I was still learning. It wasn’t until my twin brother; my main man a 100 grand finally got it off with his girlfriend. That was when I believed something was very wrong with me. He described in grave detail the experience. They did it in her parent’s house one of the weekends he went over there. I was so jealous and happy for him at the same time. I was dating about three girls at the time, and I had propositioned each and everyone one of them, but nothing ever came out of it. They all enjoyed being around me, they all wanted to be seen with me, and go as far as giving me hand jobs, but none of them wanted to do the deed and I couldn’t understand it.

It was one day in October as the winter began to form; I was feeling sorry for myself being the only virgin left in the crew. I ate some very bad sloppy Joe’s (barbeque sauce dripping beef served in a bun) in an attempt to cheer myself up and developed a tummy bug in the process. For the first time, I went to infirmary and there she was, Nurse Serena Wainwright*. She was 23, 5ft 3 inches tall, as voluptuous as anything I had ever seen, smooth ebony skin, and the most delicious lips. My tummy bug was quite bad so I had to spend some time there. She gave me some medication and asked me to just relax until the end of the day. Over the next few weeks, her beauty was enough of a reason to continue to come and see her and we spoke at length each time I went. She asked about how the sports season was going and commented on the games she saw me play. She asked about the different girlfriends I had and couldn’t believe that as popular as I was with the ladies, that I hadn’t had sex.

She was very different from any other girl I knew. She already had a child from a previous relationship and was now raising this little boy on her own. After a few months of keeping each other company, I went to see after practice one day, and told her that I would just keep her company until it was time for her to go home. She finished up late that day and she offered to drop me off at home. When we got to my house, I told her to pull up a few feet away from my house because I didn’t want my parents seeing this older lady drop me and I wanted to tell her how I felt about her. After I expressed myself to her, I took that leap of faith by leaning over and giving her a big fat wet kiss. Initially she was shocked and pushed me back for a few seconds and then, much to my delight, she responded by grabbing the back of my head and pulling me closer to her and locking my lips and tongue with hers. It was a very mature kiss, unlike any I had ever experienced. A few minutes into our kiss she grabbed me down there and stroked it through my shorts with erotic pleasure, breathed heavily and said to me ‘I want that thing inside me’. I was so turned on by this; I didn’t know how to behave. I was ready to give it to her in the car 20 feet away from my parent’s house. She told me to calm down, and said she would let me know when it would be best to come over to her house.

I followed her orders, even though I couldn’t stop thinking about what she had said and the erotic feeling I experienced. The following week, she had a note sent to me with her address, the time and day to come over, and the excuse to tell my parents.
I told my parents I was spending the night at my friend’s house. My twin brother pretended to be sick preventing him from going and off I was on this remarkable adventure. There I was sitting on the Atlanta Metro train bubbling with excitement anticipating what was going to happen. I called her once I arrived at the train station near her house. She drove by in her Ford Escort and picked me up taking me to her two bedroom flat. The atmosphere was set; her son was at his father’s house.
She offered me, a minor at the time some cognac (that’s probably where my desire for Courvoisier comes from) with strawberries. I was in heaven! She showed me her bedroom where a very quaint bed was. Brian McKnight was playing in the background. She told me to give her a few minutes. I took off my clothes and lay my 6 ft 2inches frame on the bed. I remember thinking to myself, Oh My Goodness, today is the day I lose my virginity. She came out of the bathroom, wearing just her underwear and bra and asked if I was ready, I responded saying ‘Hell Yeah’. We kissed like banshees, she rubbed my chest and grabbed my cock and stroked it very hard. It felt like it hurt, but it was a pleasurable pain. I kept wondering what it was going to feel like when I got inside her. After about 5 minutes of foreplay, she took off her panties and asked me to stick her. I took the condom I had earlier purchased on my way to her house and put it on. I struggled putting it on because I had never put a condom on before while under so much pressure. Finally, the condom slipped on and here it came, that magical moment. I tried to slip my penis into her and it just wasn’t going in. I wondered if this happened to every man their first time. I tried again and again, and as I looked down, only the tip of my head entered, and I was wondering why my whole shaft wasn’t going in. She then said something that probably gave me the ego that I have up until today, she said ‘You know you’ve got a big dick right?’. I was like, WOW!!!!!  I asked her what to do, and like a pro, she opened her bedside drawer and whipped out some KY Jelly and then asked me to apply some on my cock with the condom on and then to also apply some on her clitoris. I did as she instructed, and I tried again, and my dick slipped in. I remember not necessarily feeling anything. I had watched countless hours of porn and seen the pros do it with such athletic precision, so I just wanted to imitate what I had seen on television, so I stroked and stroked and stroked, and stroked without any sensation. The only thing I felt was a sense of accomplishment that I was getting the deed done. After a while, her breathing got heavier and her rhythms more frequent and pronounced. I wondered what was going on, until she started saying ‘fuck me harder, harder, don’t stop’, a few hard thrusts after that, she let out a quiet gasp with her mouth fully open and her legs frozen in some strange mummy type position and all the previous gyrations she was making stopped. Her body now seemed more relaxed and she felt incredibly warm. She said to me ‘How does a young boy like you make a woman like me cum’? I was like ‘huh’. Nothing had prepared me for that. As far as I knew at that time, women didn’t have orgasms, I was confused and wondered, and so is it over now, because I was still hard. She then moved me from on top of her and asked me if I wanted to come and I said yes. She pulled off the condom and asked me to lay back and relax and before I knew it, my cock was in her mouth. Now, after 20 minutes of thrusting and not feeling anything, I felt all the sensation of sex in the first five seconds of feeling her mouth completely rapture my member.
She sucked on it, spat on it, licked her spit off my dick and continued the motion for maybe another 90 seconds before something very strange started to happen. My body was tingling out of control, my heart was racing, and I couldn’t comprehend the feeling. My palms started to sweat, my toes curled up, and it seems as though every emotion within my being was heading toward my genitalia area and then, like a powder keg, I came all in her mouth and I screamed as though I was getting tortured. She didn’t stop sucking until I was limp and swallowed every drop. After she released my cock from her mouth, I just curled up and cuddled with her until I fell asleep.

She woke me up the next morning, cooked me a huge breakfast and dropped me off at the train station. I promised never to come and see her at the infirmary, and that I would respect the need for this to be quiet, because in the U.S. State of Georgia if an adult (considered anyone over the age of 18) has sex with a minor (anyone under the age of 17), the adult could be brought up on criminal charges for statutory rape. However, as a 15 year old boy with all the immaturity in the world I had to tell my teammates and before I knew it the story was all over the school.
I was called in front of a panel, asked to see psychologists and counsellors making sure I wasn’t going to sue the school. She was fired immediately but wasn’t convicted because I kept hammering on the fact that it was consensual. My mother was mortified, my Dad was proud and I never saw her again and never attempted to.

The story intrigued many women in my school, and I went on to have several sexual partners after that. I eventually graduated, went to University and continued my sexual exploration with several girlfriends and one night stands or jump offs as the term has come to pass.
I learned a lot from that Ms.Wainwright that night, and it is an act that was wrong but the definition of some true Southern Hospitality as I was deflowered that night.’ 

* All names changed to protect identity.

Do not disturb..

I waged a real battle in my head over this one. Should I give this man a platform? Should we actually have to listen to this stuff? Is it even real? Or is he just a man with an empty bed and a rich imagination? In the end, this project has always been about presenting as many different points of view as I could and just because I loathe this particular one, does that mean that I should stop it from being heard?

I briefly toyed with the idea of filming people’s reactions to this story as they read it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the surprised cat on YouTube but mostly people’s faces looked a bit like this. And thats me trying to make light of something that is not funny. 

The pertinent part of this story for me is just how entrenched the Abstinence movement has become in American culture. This isn’t a casual movement, this is something that is funded by the government and the upshot is that young people are being prevented from receiving decent sex education in the vain hope that they will ‘abstain’ from having sex. Young women are being encouraged to pledge their virginity to their fathers at ‘Purity Balls’. This may sound like something out of a film but I can assure you that it is not. This is real and slowly but surely women’s virginity is being fetishized all over again. The following story is living, and rather disturbing proof of that fact.
‘Hi Kate, 

I was reading some of your collection of statistics on human sexual behaviour, and I noticed you were collecting data from individuals who were willing to share their experiences.
I am male, and I don't experience shame regarding sexual matters. I'm devout Roman Catholic, an almost chaste mystic, a prophet, sage and scribe. I'm an author, as I do need money to live in civilized society. That's just a fact of life. 
I was born 01/01/1981, in the USA. When I was 14, I was visiting my aunt and uncle. They left to the local bar to party. My aunt hired a babysitter, a neighbour’s daughter, because I didn't know how to care for small children.
I had never really been driven to have sex. I might note that males do not have virginity. The Roman Catholic Church developed a religious doctrine claiming the existence of male virginity, and gays and feminists adopted it as a means to obscure genetically programmed gender differences. 
So, I never considered myself a virgin, and I never lost my virginity. But the 13-year-old babysitter fell in love with me. I was not a very romantic 14-year-old, so I didn't know what was going on. I didn't acknowledge myself as attractive, so I didn't understand that girls would be attracted to me for mating.
I was innocent. I thought there were two ways for a female to have a baby: she could get married, and it happened magically; or she could have sex, and she could also have a baby that way.  The babysitter, named Sarah, got frustrated in her attempts to get my attention, and she came over and kissed me. After that, things just sort of happened, and I thought it was great. 
She was attractive, fit and developed almost like an adult woman. She was beauty queen later in her youth. I also turned out to be very attractive. We hung out from time to time, and we always went out when I was visiting my aunt and uncle. But that first experience changed me. I didn't look at the world the same way. I started drinking beverage alcohol, and experimenting with drugs. I didn't do as well in school.
It seemed like life had lost meaning. I fell away from the church. I had sex with about 20 girls in high school, mostly cheerleaders. I'd show up at parties, and the girls would fight over me. One party, a girl took me upstairs, and when we came back down, her one-year-younger sister took me upstairs.
I loved to party. In my early twenties, I lived in a trendy part of the city. Two of the girls from my high school class, but who I didn't date during high school, came to me at different times, telling me they wanted to have sex with me before they got married to their fiancés. I refused. 
One of my high school girls sought me out before I was to be married, and said she wanted to have me one last time. I know this sounds impossible and contrived, but I assure you, it's true. I deeply regret my sexual past, because I can't really love a woman.
I'm selfish and self indulged. I use women, and I can't help it. I'm going to keep on testing virgins for chastity, and when I find one who can resist me, who loves God more than she loves me, I'll marry her.
But I just can't respect a girl who soils herself. I think I love her, and that I really want to spend the rest of my life with her, but when I sow my issue inside her, she seems soiled. Then I can't wait to get away from her, because she's not desirable for her innocence.
I think of it this way: Every masculine male wants a girl he can call his own; a girl to whom he teaches the pain of atonement, and releases her blood sacrifice of innocence; that the child she bears might be blessed of her holy and chaste womb.
Men who are indifferent to whether or not they marry a virgin are not masculine. They are still boys, with no appreciation for the beauty of innocence. I was once a boy. I know. I lament each time a girl loses her virginity to me, because there goes another prospective bride.
I can father children all my life. But a girl is on a clock. No decent man wants to marry a girl who has already had some other guy inside her reproductive tract. Only a man lacking self respect will marry a non-virgin. 
Have you ever read any posts girls write about their nightmare boyfriends and husbands? These guys have utter disrespect for themselves, and for their women. But a non-virgin can't attract anyone else. 
I don't date for sex and recreation. I treat each date as a job interview for the position of wife and mother. But men are genetically programmed to test the chastity of each prospective bride. I just lure the girl into privacy, treat her like a sensual female, dim the lights, tell her I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and only her; and make her feel special, like she's the luckiest girl in the world, about to have the best night of her life, with the perfect male, and it will never end.
When I find a girl who tells me, ‘Put a rock on my finger, marry me, and get me pregnant. Then I'll believe you love me’, I'll devote myself totally to her happiness, for the rest of my life. I want a true equal for a wife. 
I'm back in good with mother church. I recite the rosary each day, and say The Chaplet of Divine Mercy. I read the Bible for at least 1/2 hour each day, and study Roman Catholic Doctrine. It isn't a sin for males to have sex before marriage, because that's the way men test female chastity. It's natural law. 
But it is a sin for a female to have intimate contact before marriage, because she loses her blood sacrifice of innocence. She's useless as a wife after that. She wasted her choicest ornament, allowing a man to use her as primal urge gratification flesh.
So I do value virginity. The world is going through a temporary phase. The genetic code of the unchaste female will be purged from the human gene pool, and female chastity will shine like light unto the world. It's a cyclical thing. Godless perverts don't reproduce, and the progeny of unchaste mothers is wiped from history in two generations.
Only the DNA of the chosen survives. That's an advantage God enjoys over Satan. Satan can corrupt one or two generations, but They can't alter the self cleansing property of human DNA. Only the chosen survive through generations, to become immortal.

That's just the way I feel. It's not right or wrong. Everyone functions according to their own beliefs. What was Truth is Truth now, and it always will be Truth. There is one Truth. Everything else is wrong. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Truth shall never pass away. 
Mike’ 

He's got a ticket to ride...

I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again. I searched high and low for the prostitute virginity loss story for my book. I phoned a friend – or ten – I practically advertised on the Internet at one point until I realized that it might look a bit iffy. No story, asides from my endless (and unrequited) search for the Muslim story has taken me on so many twisty turny paths as my search for the prostitute story. And then one day they started rolling in. For no reason. Just like buses. It’s all true what they say about buses. None come for days and then there’s a ten-car pile-up. At one point I had three separate email conversations on the go at the same time, via my blog, from three different young men who were in the process of planning the simultaneous popping of their cherries with a visit to a sex worker. (Quick deviation…does my life ever seem a bit weird to you?)

Then I couldn’t quite decide how to introduce this story to you. I was going to tell you about the time, years ago, when, sitting around a table late at night with a bunch of work colleagues, well after the aforementioned last bus had gone home and deep into several bottles of red wine, someone piped up with a line that you don’t hear very often, ‘so who here, sitting at this table, has paid for sex?’

Imagine our surprise when two people said yes. One of them was a gay guy and the other was a woman. Guess who’s story we were more interested in. But then I thought that the telling of this particular tale was a bit misleading, after all,  this was a story about men, virginity loss and prostitutes, not a story about the small percentage of women who have paid for sex. (For the record, the lady in question visited a female escort with her boyfriend because she wanted to know what it would be like to have sex with a woman. The most memorable part of this story was the candour and pride with which she told us this story. She wasn’t in the least bit embarrassed about it).

And then I thought I might finish up by telling you that on the whole, I get far more tormented emails from men about virginity loss than I do from women. Despite the fact that women have been castigated, terrorised and judged – and continue to be – for centuries when it comes to virginity loss, they do have something over men. Generally speaking, and as the law decrees it, the buck stops with women when it comes to sex, i.e. – and this is a very debatable point - women get to control when they lose their virginity in a way that men do not. Let me explain.  Assuming that I still had virginity to lose, if I stepped out of my house this evening and took a walk to a local bar, the chances are that if I asked around, I would probably find someone who was willing to avail me of my virginity. Can you imagine the same thing happening to a man? I don’t think so.

Women are generally pickier than men. Women are also anatomically and emotionally different.  Any decent sexual experience begins in the head for a woman and as such, we require some degree of sexual chemistry to be present. A man requires an erection. Several more reasons why more men are likely to lose their virginity to a sex worker than a woman.

Either way, here is another one to add to the collection. As per usual, this one came in right underneath the radar and from the most unexpected source; from someone that I have known for some time, from someone who suddenly decided to write down his story for me one day, or, ‘tippy tapping’ as he calls it, which sounds a bit gay but reader, I can assure you that he is not.

Charlie. Lost virginity April 1997 aged 16

‘Get the violins out. I was the last of my group of friends to lose my virginity. I know. In the world of the teenage boy there can be nothing worse. I watched all those cherries drop around me as mine was growing fatter, juicier and all the more ready to burst. My problem wasn’t aesthetic, I may not have been Johnny Depp but I wasn’t exactly Andrew Lloyd Webber either! I was always the ‘safe’ one. The funny one. The one girls would tell their problems too. That’s right, I was the ‘we’re such good friends’ guy. I swear if the wind had blown the other way, I would have been gay but alas, despite the rumours and an unhealthy obsession with show tunes, I wasn’t.

There were occasions when being charming, funny and polite got me somewhere, but it was never far enough. In fact once at a party, the girl everyone - in particular me - had a crush on got quite drunk and said she wanted to sleep with me. We kissed and canoodled a bit (yes I did just say canoodled!) but when it came down to it, all we did was sleep. She had a boyfriend who was a shit. They kept breaking up and getting back together and I didn’t want her to get any more confused with things so we talked and I stroked her hair until she went to sleep. In the morning she blanked me. At college she ignored me. The tea and jaffa cake conversations disappeared and I didn’t know why. I thought I’d done the right thing. This kind of thing kept happening. Maybe the ‘right thing’ didn’t work. Then and there on a cold North Yorkshire morning the ‘right thing’ ceased to be the thing I wanted to do.

What better thing to do for a sixteen year old with a tsunami of lust washing over him than to go away from his small town and small life? This is precisely what I did. I went to the big city to stay with my big brother. I had to undertake two weeks work experience for my college course and blagged my way into a production company in Manchester. Ok, it was only two weeks but those two weeks or rather one weekend smack in the middle changed me – more than I realised at the time as what happened would have an effect on every relationship I would have from then on.

My brother is dodgy. No two ways about it. He hangs out with dodgy people and does dodgy things. We say that he is the rough diamond and I am the polished set in a ring one. It’s actually more a case that I can get away with things easier and don’t seem to get caught as much. It’d be easy to say he corrupted me during my two week stay but truth is; any corruption was more than encouraged by his saintly little brother.

Having dabbled with speed and weed, I was keen to try some ‘city stuff.’ After much arm twisting we scored some party powder from a guy who only the previous night had stabbed someone in the neck over a debt, in a crowded bar and continued drinking as nobody said anything. He was a good friend of my brothers and I only found out his previous night story when he went to the loo and my brother suggested I stop taking the piss out of the guy’s hat.

Anyway, this was Saturday afternoon. We hung out in cool bars, met new people, chatted up girls, drank, ate, party powdered the day away. It was cool. The sun went down and the music got louder. What to do next. My brother’s axis of evil stretched to the door staff at a very well known Manchester club which is no longer with us. On the night in question some soap actor was having his birthday there and so the question my brother posed was: ‘Do you want to go hang out with wotzisname or do you want to go somewhere and pop your cherry?’ He didn’t need to ask twice.

Armed with a pocket full of cash we made our way to a delightful establishment that offered massage, sauna and steam. After we were buzzed in we walked up the dark stairs with an aroma of damp around us. We entered the ‘reception’ where there was a tiny middle aged, sweet looking woman with glasses. She greeted us and told us that her name was Pam. She then asked us what we wanted. I didn’t know! ‘It’s £35 for massage and full personal service,’ she smilingly told me. ‘Personal service?’ I asked. ‘Look love we’re a brothel!’ she answered.

Two girls appeared wearing sexy underwear. One looked like a Page 3 model and the other was amazing! Long dark curly hair cascaded down her body. Full pouting lips, gorgeous green eyes and perfectly formed breasts. It’s like someone had reached into my head, pulled out some instructions and given them to someone who’d made this fantasy come to life. She was my bespoke bird!

I pathetically handed over my money, hands trembling and said ‘I’ll go with Beck if that’s alright.’ Of course it was. They weren’t there to tell me what a good friend I was. Becky wasn’t there to ignore me. She didn’t care that I was funny, charming and polite.

Becky took me by the hand and led me into a back room. It has a massage table in it and for one moment I thought I was actually going to get a massaged and nothing else. I was actually relieved. Then Becky told me to strip and lie face down on the table. She unclipped her bra and removed all of her underwear. I didn’t know where to look…actually I did and I probably stared for too long.

I did as Becky said and lay down on my front. She started to massage my back; she rubbed her breasts over my back, kissed down my spine and cheekily bit my bum. She asked me how old I was. ‘16,’ I said ‘and a half.’ She said I was cute and had a good body for my age. Then she told me to turn over.

She slowly caressed and kissed her way to my crotch and still to this day I’ve never seen anyone put a condom on the way she did.

She climbed on top of me and eased me into her. Thoughts swirled in my head. ‘Don’t cum too soon.’ ‘What do they do in porn?’ ‘How do these places get away with it?’ ‘Is £35 a fair price?’ ‘WHAT DO THEY DO IN PORN?’

Half an hour later we were done and getting dressed. ‘You’re a sweet guy, you should get a girlfriend,’ was Becky’s parting shot before kissing me on the cheek and patting me on the lower one.

I went back into the reception area where Pam and my brother were finishing off the party powder. We said our goodbyes and went home to bed.

The rest of the two weeks wasn’t as eventful but returning home, people knew something was different, something had changed.

I still think of Becky, she was gorgeous but unlike the old Hollywood legend, she didn’t give me a second time for free.

That one night opened a floodgate – I was the original rampant rabbit. The sex just kept coming (no pun intended). I got a girlfriend, got another one, got another one, got caught, got another one.

I’m not a bad person but I do bad things. I’m very sexually active and often blur the lines of what’s right and wrong. I don’t think being faithful is in my programming, my make-up. For me there is no such thing as too much sex. I get it where and when I can at the risk of relationships and such. Why? I don’t know. Is it because I was the last to do the deed and am still making up for it in my head? Is it because I paid for my first time and see sex as a transaction? Or is it because I’m a greedy bastard?

I’ll never know if I would have turned out the same or different depending on that ‘first time’ experience. I didn’t give it away to someone I was in a relationship with. I didn’t develop a style or technique over a period of time with someone. That all came later. Maybe I did it so I could practice so that I would get it right and be good at it by the time I got into a relationship. The fact that I actually made the decision to lose my cherry in this way surely says that I would always have been a horny up for anything kind of person because I wanted to do something, so I did it. I still do.'