The Virginity Project

Two-for-one

I spoke earlier in the week about the concept of ‘not finding love’. It’s a pretty flexible idea, traveling, as it does between those who feel thoroughly depressed at the thought of not finding ‘the one’ and those who positively relish the freedom and choice that comes from never having to commit to one person. But what’s the fall out of this situation? How have the younger generations fared? Have we got it all ‘sussed out’ in a way that our parents never quite managed?

I saw a hilarious comic on Thursday night – which is a bit of a contradiction in terms seeing as one does usually assume that a comic is going to make you laugh but I digress. He was funny and one of his ‘bug bears’ was the whining, whinging ways of today’s young people. ‘Its soooo harrrrrrd being young’ one of them squeaked at him recently. And I hear him, I really do. Today’s young have much to be thankful for. Opportunities abound, gap years are pretty much compulsory and bars are open much later than they were in the 1980’s but I do see their point. As post 1960’s kids, we are all stuck in the middle of a no man’s land as far as I can work out. We don’t have to live by the morals and values that our grandparents did. Tick. Marriage is no longer necessary for survival. Tick. But the downside is that we have fewer tangible reasons to be committed or find ‘the one’…if things don’t work out with one person, we give up quickly and move onto the next. The glue, the impetus to hold our grandparents marriages together simply doesn’t exist any more so where have we got to? What do we actually want? Does anybody even know? I can tell my explorations into ‘love’ are going to be interesting.

Today’s 17-year-old storyteller is a classic example. Is she seeking a ‘perfection’ that doesn’t actually exist, no matter how good our relationships are? Is she in denial about her sexuality? Is she, at 17, too young and insecure to have a relationship? Or is he just not ‘the one’?

It is hard being young these days.

‘I’m a 17-year-old girl, currently in a five month relationship – nearing its sixth month – with a boy that I am not in love with. My story is a kind of two-for-one; I fell into unrequited feelings with one person at the age of 15, and now find myself no longer returning the feelings that my boyfriend professes… When I look at it that way the two situations seem like reflections of each other, like two sides of a mirror.

Two years ago, when I was 15, I met and became infatuated with a girl who attended my school for a few months. She was forced to move to another country the summer after I met her, and that winter I visited her there. After eighteen months and many late night calls to her I finally got over my feelings – and I still don’t know if I did love her, or if it was just an intense crush.

What I have since come to realize is that she is an extremely selfish person, or at least she is when it comes to our ‘friendship’. I met up with her very recently and found myself observing from a detached perspective how our conversations are one-way therapy sessions where she offloads her problems onto me, and barely pays attention when I talk. I don’t lay the blame for this on her though: If I had been more assertive in the beginning of our friendship she wouldn’t be treating me this way now, but at that time I could find no fault in her; I thought she was perfect. Well they do say love is blind, don’t they?

Four months after recovering from my feelings for this girl, at the age of 17, I met my (now) boyfriend. A month after our meeting we began our relationship, and for the first four months everything was great; it was my first ‘serious’ romantic relationship and I was enjoying it entirely - enough to say ‘I love you too’ when I wasn't sure if I did.

Actually, I can’t fault our relationship thus far. We haven’t had a single argument (which some of my friends believe, and I sometimes agree, is reason enough in itself to worry), he’s never been disrespectful, distrusting or possessive, and has never given me reason to suspect or distrust him. Compared to those around me who have various stresses on their own relationships, such as familial pressure or a boyfriend who thinks ‘fuck off’ is an acceptable way to end an argument; I have nothing to warrant my current feelings of dissatisfaction. But I am dissatisfied, despite having found what I idealized and fantasized about for much of my early teenage years: a ‘perfect’ relationship, with someone who honestly seems to care about me. I am dissatisfied with my relationship, and somehow with this kind, considerate, emotionally engaged boy – and I feel guilty for it.

To complicate things I recently and drunkenly kissed my best friend, who is having relationship troubles of her own, and have thought about this frequently since. I am trying to balance a worrying lack of repentance regarding this with the guilt I feel every time I tell my boyfriend that I Love Him Too. I currently have plans to break up with my boyfriend; plans which are delayed by his impending exams, and until then have to navigate the minefield of being physically intimate with someone I am no longer attracted to.

Apparently I can’t do right for doing wrong: I was unhappy when infatuated with a self-centered, insensitive girl, and equally miserable when in a functional relationship with a boy who does his best to support and comfort me.

After rereading this story I notice my tone comes across as very self-pitying which was not my intention at all. I was just trying to lay down the facts. I claim full responsibility for the mistakes that I have made, and hope all parties concerned in this story find fulfilling relationships in the near future: the ‘selfish’ girl, my boyfriend, my best friend, my best friend’s boyfriend and maybe even myself – but I think I’ll spend this summer single.’

All's well that ends well...

I was going to call today’s entry ‘A Gothic Tale’, playing as it does with dark themes. And who doesn’t like a dark gothic tale at this time of the year when the days are short and staying indoors seems like the only sensible response to such extreme weather? But its Christmas Day and luckily, what begins as a horror story soon segues onto much happier territory.

As it does, our writer also talks about something that – surprisingly – we have never really discussed on this blog: the experience of ‘taking’ someone else’s virginity. Traditionally speaking, the taking of virginity would be an act performed by a man but today, in so many different ways, the tables have turned.

I won’t say anything else. Quite apart from anything, I am about to go and cook Christmas lunch for 12 people but needless to say, all IS well that ends well. Happy Christmas one and all!

‘Hi Kate. I'm female, I was born in 1991 in London, England, and I have two stories to tell you. I'd like to share this first story because it's quite painful for me to remember and it'd be nice to get it out there, rather than keeping it to myself so much.

When I was 14 and my hormones were raging, I found myself making friends with a boy in the year above me at school - Tommy. He was tall, dark, handsome, and completely fascinating (at the time). He was flirty and charming and slightly gothic, with dyed black hair. Being an angsty teenager, I had already developed an intense jealousy of his female friends so I did my utmost to become one of them in order to get closer to him.

I'd never had a real boyfriend before, just some snogging and brief, sloppy oral with someone else a few months previously and Tommy appeared to be everything I wanted. He also became friends with my best friend Martha around the same time but I'll come back to that. Things developed, and we began to engage sexually on spare afternoons. I became more and more obsessed with him, especially when I noticed that he and Martha were getting on remarkably well; unfortunately, I began to suffer from mild depression and started to self harm on occasions, but I refused offers of help from the infirmary at school and continued to engage with Tommy, even though I knew it'd hurt me.

In December, when I had turned 15, I invited myself to a stranger's party through a friend (Edie, who is gay), which Tommy was attending. The party went as one would expect, but the next day, Edie, Tommy and I decided to go back to her house to get some sleep before the journey back to our respective houses. Because the walk back to Edie's house had been so cold, we decided to get into her double bed to warm up and watch a film; Tommy lay between me and Edie. Edie took off her bra to be more comfortable, but left her t-shirt on, I pulled off my t-shirt and Tommy pulled off his own, and then undid my bra. Edie pulled me towards her, so that I was in the middle and I kissed her. She caressed me and I moved down to tongue her nipples, which Tommy took as his cue to put his hand down my jeans. Edie took my hand and put it in her knickers once she had realised what Tommy was doing. He decided to lie in the middle, and I got on top of him and continued to kiss and fondle Edie. Gradually I started paying less attention to Edie, because, of course, I was infatuated with Tommy.

Eventually he made it clear that he wanted to have sex with me, and I took off both of our pairs of jeans and underwear, put a condom on him and attempted to allow him to penetrate me from beneath, but I was too tight and couldn't manage it. Edie, understandably, left the room. We switched into the missionary position, and I remember thinking, as he penetrated me, 'So that's it, I've lost my virginity.' It hurt: of course, his penis was far larger than anything I'd previously had inside me, and my head was banging against the headboard with each thrust. He didn't seem particularly interested, but I tried my best to enjoy it and make it enjoyable for him. Sooner or later, he came and rested his head on my chest. A week or so afterwards, Edie invited me to her house by myself (it was  obvious why she wanted me there), and although I considered myself straight at the time, I went along with it and had my first lesbian experience. That's not too relevant, though, as I didn't consider myself a virgin any longer. 

It wasn't until a few weeks later, when I was shocked and hurt that Tommy didn't want more to do with me, that I found out that he had had sex with someone else, a friend of Edie's, on the very same day that he had taken my virginity. As you might imagine, I was extremely hurt by this, and even more so when Tommy began a relationship with Martha, my best friend, whose virginity he had taken a few weeks before my own. I had no idea they were involved like that, and couldn't believe that my best friend could betray me that way. This was the beginning of a long and difficult period of depression for me. I started self-harming several times a day and was forced to go to the local mental health clinic by the school infirmary. After many months, during which I still had sex with Tommy, Martha and I made up, and I began to recover. Now, Martha is by far my closest friend, and I'm good friends with Tommy, and although I doubtlessly became closer to Martha than I ever would have had this not happened, I regret the circumstances in which I lost my virginity more than anything else.

This second story is much more positive, and makes me smile rather than shudder. It is about how my current boyfriend, Chris, lost his virginity.

Chris and I met on the 10th of October, the very first Friday of the first term of my first year of Uni, when I was 18. I had decided, along with a few others, to continue the night after clubbing at the campus SU in the flat below mine, which I hadn't previously visited. We were all quite drunk and talking and laughing loudly in the flat kitchen. Chris and a couple of others came and joined in our drunken chat; unsurprisingly, we got along extremely well (I had immediately gravitated towards him because of the green eye-shadow he was wearing) and swapped numbers. He called the next day and asked to meet up, which we did the following morning, and straightaway began a relationship from scratch, having known each other for a few hours. (He says he 'just knew' he wanted to be with me; I say he leapt before looking.)

Our sexual relationship began quickly, though he was determined to savour each experience before moving on. One day, lying in bed together after mutual masturbation, I asked how many people he'd had sex with. ‘What do you mean by 'sex'?’ he asked. ‘Well, oral or more, I suppose.’ He immediately blurted, ‘One.’ I assumed he meant he'd had sex with one person, and was taken aback when he told me he was a virgin. I couldn't understand how someone so handsome and desirable, not to mention 20 years old, was still a virgin. He explained to me that while he knew it was a leftover from being strongly Catholic before losing faith, he wanted to keep the ultimate intimate experience for someone he was really in love with, and who was more special to him than anyone else. Of course, I didn't pressure him to have sex with me - he wanted to do other sexual things, and that was fine. He was already the best sexual partner I'd had. I did, however, confide in a few close friends for advice, which turned out to be exactly what I would have done anyway. We grew closer and closer, and he let me know after a few months that he did intend to make love with me, but at the right time for him. I was overjoyed that he felt I was that special, so I couldn't wait.

One night in spring, after a meal out and a visit to the cinema, we went back to his house (coincidentally, we live very close together, considering we met at a Uni 150 miles away) for the night. We went to bed as usual, and began to touch and kiss each other, but instead of bringing one another to orgasm, he raised his body over mine and penetrated me for the first time. He moaned and so did I - I hadn't had sex in months and he had stretched me somewhat with that first push. We whispered tenderly and lovingly to one another as he began thrusting. The bed was squeaking and it was at the back of my mind throughout, worried that his mother would overhear. After a couple of minutes, his nerves took over and he lost his erection, which unfortunately continued to happen and prevented his orgasm before we were both tired out.

The next morning, we woke after his mother had left for work, and tried to make love again. This time, Chris was less tired and more relaxed and didn't lose his erection. He lay over me again and thrusted clumsily in and out, still and it was obvious that he was anxious to do it 'right'. He came inside me, which I definitely wanted. Afterwards, he lay in my arms, pleased that he hadn't had to stop and that he had had sex as most people think of it, and we fell asleep again.

We're still happy and have an explorative, tender and satisfying sex life.

I know the second story is someone else's, but it's still extremely important to me. I hope these have been, if not helpful or interesting, then at least a bearable read. Thanks for taking the time to read it! I've just discovered your blog and find it fascinating, so thanks for that as well.

Best wishes,

T. C

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.’ 

Love is contagious...

Today’s story comes in two parts. The first, the loss of virginity with the sweet boyfriend, the second, the discovery of potential boyfriend number 2. Marred only by the fact that boyfriend number two lives on the Pacific Islands, some distance from our storyteller in Australia. What can I say about today’s story? It reminds me of being young, of feeling that crazy heart-in-your-mouth feeling about a potential new love, even if you know next to nothing about him. Because one finds as time moves on, that conversation and humour are just as important as raw animal attraction, if not more so. Excitement is just that: excitement. But it’s not a sustainable way to feel. On a practical day-to-day level, if we felt excited all the time, it would lose its, well, excitement. There has to be something more to keep the motor running.

I think its tough being young these days and I count myself in that bracket even though I have reached the big four oh because I am still part of the post pill generation and for that reason, none of us need to commit. As women, we no longer need men to support us and the institution of marriage is largely obsolete unless you have children. We are free to move onto the next big thing the moment that things start to get tricky. Our parents would have tried harder to make things work because they had to. Our generation have very little motivation to stick it out. Not that I am suggesting Emma should marry boyfriend number one, or even potential boyfriend number 2. There’s no point staying with someone you don’t fancy (bf number one), and bf number two sounds lovely but they don’t speak the same language – cute and charming at first, quickly tedious  -  but somewhere in this equation, there has to be compromise between the values of the old guard and our new throwaway society. I haven’t quite worked out what that is yet but I do know that if you find it, hang onto it. It’s rare.

Emma from Australia. Born in 1991, lost virginity aged 19.

‘I had never understood the 'sacredness' of sex. I'd masturbated since I was 5 and constantly thought about it, however when I was 12 and my best friend practically tried to thrust himself inside of me I realised that it was perhaps a little bit important. My friends began having sex around the ages of 13 and 14, I did not. I quickly became the odd one out in terms of sexual promiscuity. However, late at night, on the bus, in a mathematics class or at dinner at my Great-Grandparents home, I longed to be entwined with someone, my hands stroking their budding breasts or their hard penis deep within me. Nothing romantic of course (oh, how I detested romanticism), just rough erotic fantasies (I'm glad I wasn't born a boy, with that utter misfortune of letting everyone know when you are 'turned-on'). 

So there I was, dreaming away, growing older and being so caught up in my self-esteem issues (oh my god, I have flaps - how one can be so insecure about their vagina is ridiculous - and black curly bushy pubic hair, how could I!) that I never actually played out one of those erotic fantasies of mine until I was 17. I'd met a sweet boy while on holidays at my aunt's house and I didn't really like him very much. In fact, I'd forgotten all about him until one day (a few months later) when we came to contact with each other via the internet and began writing tremendously long emails to one another which then developed into a ridiculous amount of plane trips interstate and a long distance relationship which lasted for a year before I moved to his city to study. 

It was four months into the whole thing before one night we were fondling around on his make-shift bed on the floor (so that we could both fit) when we took each others pants off and it happened. Poor boy, he was so insecure about his small penis that he couldn't get it up and I partially lost interest. But it happened and I was left thinking, 'ok, so that's it'. All in all, it was sweet and funny. That was my first heterosexual experience, however I'd really like to fill my desire and make love with a beautiful girl. 

Oh, and I watched a insightful documentary the other week called 'The Perfect Vagina'. It certainly cleared up any of my remaining insecurities surrounding my vagina.’ 

Emma followed up with this email shortly after:

‘Can I include a sequel? I'd like to share it because the whole experience really feels like an opening to a new phase of me.  

My current boyfriend (whom I lost my virginity to - the previous email) and fell out of love with a while ago. My love fled about 8/9 months after being together (about 4 months or so after doing the deed). Goodbye euphoric first love feelings. Since that feeling went I've cheated on him about 5 times. I told him every time (except once, a kiss to a mutual friend. Oh dear.), and I tried to talk him into having an open relationship, but he didn't want a bar of it. 

This last time however really was the tip of my sexual iceberg. I was holidaying in the Pacific Islands last week when I managed to fall in love (perhaps that word has been misconstrued here, I'm talking of holiday love, where you come home with too many souvenirs, suntanned and considerably heartbroken. I still haven't made up my mind if it is love... as in LOVE) with a handsome, funny, sexy, cool, sweet, beautiful, lovely island sailor. 

How I yearned for him. My heart began doing 60's jive dancing as soon as I saw him. I fantasised about him constantly and tried to control my sexual urges as I walked passed him every morning. I told no one, and I continued smiling when my mother bragged to people about how amazing my boyfriend is and how she wishes he were her boyfriend instead. My loveless yet sweet and friendly relationship back at home......then on the last day this sailor told me, in broken English, how when he first saw me his heart did back-flips and his mind goes crazy every time he sees me. The last day! Why on earth did one of us not share with each other this vital information when it first happened? 

The night unfolded in a series of events closely starting with him asking to 'try my lips'. It was the most magnificent night. So amazingly incredible and liberating. Which isn't just the 'newness' and excitement of that night but also the love and adoration. Or it could all have been a lie, another one night stand for a sailor. But, I truly believe (am I sounding rather naive here?) that it was not. He said that I was only the second girl that he'd been with, and he was my second man that I'd been with. I've cried every day since I've returned home. 

However, the experience really helped spell out to me what my relationship doesn't have any more and made me realise that although I love my boyfriend, it is as a friend and nothing more. There is no attraction, just an empty cup. Now, I lay in bed with the man I care for with all of my heart and I dream of the man I love who is a thousand miles away, who lives a completely different life to mine. Love is so utterly confusing.’