The Virginity Project

My non-perfect perfect first time..

How I wish I had posted this post yesterday. The mercury was rising in London yesterday. Today it is not but my story teller still lost his virginity on a hot sticky day in July. Mostly I like this story because he explores the idea of perfection, something that we have talked about recently.

People strive for perfection in all sorts of departments. Losing virginity is one such department and it’s a losing game. You can’t plan perfection. Perfection just happens. The very act of striving for perfection renders its existence null and void before you’ve even begun. To my mind, if something really is perfect, that conclusion can only really be reached in retrospect. Here is a man who didn’t plan his first time. This is a man who admits he did not love his lover, nor did the experience involve ‘rose petals and candles’ but upon reflection, he realizes the experience was perfect for him.

I also love the fact that he read about The Virginity Project in a feature I wrote for this month’s Glamour Magazine. He is a gay man so perhaps its par for the course but put it this way, he is not the first man I have heard from this month who likes checking out Glamour and they’re not all gay. Fact. Guys like reading girl’s stuff.

‘I read about your work in this month’s 'Glamour' magazine, and found it immediately interesting. I too have always found such a traditionally taboo and significant concept intriguing. I felt compelled to write to you about my experience. I'm a 20 year old gay man, and I lost my virginity when I was 17 to a man I barely knew. I'd met him on a night out the evening I turned 17, but I didn’t see him again until about 3 weeks later. He was so not my type, or anything like the sort of man I had imagined I would lose it to, but he was charismatic, about 6 years older than me, and incredibly 'together'.

He had his own city centre apartment and expensive clothes. To a teenage homosexual still living at home, this all seemed amazing. It was a sticky hot summer’s day in late July, and we agreed to meet in the gay quarter near where he lived for a drink. We got there, but being such a beautiful weekend, everywhere was packed. He asked me if I fancied getting a bottle of wine back at his place, and I knew right there and then exactly what that meant. I agreed, we bought the wine and walked up to his place. My heart was in my eyeballs and I couldn’t remember what to do with my tongue in my mouth. We proceeded to get a bit tipsy on the balcony, and I can remember the heat being so intense. I suggested moving it to the bedroom (the wine did wonders for the confidence), and we did. He had no idea I was a virgin, and still to this day I don’t think he does. He was kind and sparkly, and he looked after me. It hurt, like a bitch frankly, but I did ease into it in the end, and found myself really enjoying myself.

We made love again a few months later and it was just as fun. I just thought, with all the stories I hear from friends about how shitty their first times were, with horrible people or bad places, it would be nice to show that some can be perfect. I didn’t love him, nor do I now. There weren’t any candles or rose petals, but it was absolutely perfect for me and I always look back on that hot day in July and smile. I can’t wait to buy your book and see what other people have experienced.’

The bare faced cheek story..

I did a radio interview recently, the first words of which were ‘Kate Monro, why you are such a big perv?’ I was slightly taken aback but I also howled with laughter because it's a fair question. Why do I go around asking people such impertinent questions about their sex lives? To be honest, I can barely believe my own cheek when I think back to the beginnings of this project. What on earth impelled me to request such a personal story?

The clue is in the last word of the previous paragraph. It was never virginity loss per se that got me going. It was merely the most effective vehicle I could find with which to tap people for brilliant stories. We all know how we lose virginity. An entire book about the nuts and bolts of ‘the moment’ (as it were) would be as dull as dishwater. It’s the bigger picture that’s interesting. I wanted to get people to paint these pictures. I needed an under the radar entry point at which to do that and this was it. There aren’t many other life experiences that could garner such a rich selection of reactions than the moment we have sex for the first time.

I chose today’s story for two reasons. 1: because it didn’t make the cut for my book. Not because there’s anything wrong with it but just because I couldn’t find the right place to put it. And 2: it’s a lovely example of the bigger picture. ‘The Moment’ takes up all of two lines and there are no gory details. But it is the inspiration for an epic tale that takes in religious spliff rolling parents, a questionable church pastor, a young black man alone at college in Cambridge for the first time and a very big dilemma.

Whilst I am here, here is a link to a nice interview I did last week for ‘Love Matters’, a Radio Netherlands produced sex education website for teens. Watch and learn England, watch and learn.

Daniel Collins. Born 1967. Lost virginity aged 20

Afro Caribbean parties are different to the parties that I ended up going to at university. On one level, it was really laid back but on another level, it was scary because dancing is part of the culture and it’s all about the moves. You are seriously done for if you can’t do the moves. Revoke your badge; do you know what I mean? It is not good. You’re supposed to be all but going for it in the middle of the dance floor, wining and doing it and I used to get so nervous; I would be running hot and cold sweats. I think that the one and only time that I did actually get into a dance with a girl, she may as well have been dancing with a broom because I was rigid with fear. I was a nerd. I was a comic book reading, cartoon drawing, nerd.

My parents came from Jamaica and my mum has become a regular church attendee since my dad died, but for much of my life, she was very Christian without actually going to church. This is important, because I grew up not being that interested in religion. I heard a lot of things that my mum said about God and her absolute belief in him. But at the same time my parents were having parties and stuff and dad would be in the kitchen rolling one up and mum would be out there, dancing crazy and entertaining.  I rebelled backwards, I didn’t smoke pot until I was twenty-one, and it was my mum who taught me how to roll properly.

When I was eighteen, a mate of mine that I had grown up with came round one evening. I was hanging around outside my house as you do at that age.  He just seemed to be different and I couldn’t get my finger down on what it was that was different. Finally, when I asked him, he told me about this Born-Again Christian group that he’d joined and it was more the way he was, rather than what he said that I latched onto. It was the sense of him being a bit surer of himself. He seemed to have a confidence that he didn’t have before, so I went along with him the next time and I found myself getting involved. At first I was just curious but it didn’t take long before I was enrolling in one of the classes. 

Dr Whitsun was an American preacher who had split from the church and he had started to interpret the bible in a ‘new’ way. Basically it was a ‘reformation’ sort of situation. All these people had strayed off the path and he was going to put it right. He really bought all these ideas to life for me and there was a real sense of an active movement, something that I am sure the apostles would have felt, you know? The act of really doing something, and I found myself joining up.

One of the tenets of this faith was no sex before marriage and we talked a lot about the influences around us that are designed to lead you off the path. We were to follow the examples of the original Christians, which meant that we were free to see partners as much as we like, but we were to refrain from sex.  I was at an age where there was a real pressure to be sexually active and apart from my friend at church, I had always hung around with friends who had gone and lived life and had girlfriends, lots of girlfriends. At the end of the day it wasn’t like it was on offer for me to turn down, but maybe I was dealing with it, or possibly the lack of it, by using religion. But I felt that I was doing the right thing even if my body sometimes didn’t agree with me.

So I go off to college, I move away from home for the first time and now things really start to get interesting because I don’t have my touchstone anymore.  I can’t go to Fellowship and get a spiritual refill and I think I became really quite Taliban-like in those first six months of college. I think my way of dealing with it was to get really hardcore about it. I was at a little arts and technology college in Cambridgeshire; it wasn’t in any way involved with the university. But it’s not a very big town so you would end up in the same parties with people from the university. You’d end up in conversations with people who think they know stuff and I had some heated stand up debates.

I never felt more alone in my life.

I couldn’t find anyone else like me. Even if there were other Christians there, I wasn’t even on their side because my denomination was just as sceptical of all the other, nice, organized religions as it was of the secular world. It was a lonely place to be and I am not sure how I dealt with that first year. I remember once having this stand up conversation in the canteen with a guy about faith and trying to tell him about the ‘Born Again’ experience. I was trying to convince him that I would be all right but he wouldn’t, which at the end of the day is what you’re doing as a born again Christian. 

I gradually began to wonder about things. Everyone else seemed to be having such a nice time going to the college bar and drinking and I would be sitting there drinking my coke. In fact I did that for about eight months, not a drink, not a nothing. Just chatting. And then temptation came along. There was a girl who had been in the same canteen at similar times. We had seen each other a few times and maybe passed each other going to the bank. Then we ended up at the same party and I don’t know what happened but we conversed and stuff and somehow at the end of the night we were kissing and heavy petting. Nothing more came of it but I realised at that point that I had crossed over some kind of Rubicon.

Now I wasn’t so sure of what I was saying and I suspect it was at this point that I really started to ratchet it down. Osama had come out of the cave so to speak. But something had changed and I couldn’t tell anyone about it because this girl was known as somebody who would throw herself at guys. That was the worst thing about it: the irony; I’d gone from being Mr Chaste to being Mr Chasing and chasing the easiest kind of tail. I was very confused. I met the person I ended up having the ‘first time’ with not long after that.

I had fallen asleep in the library. I was supposed to be studying, and I sort of jerked my head awake and there was this girl sitting a few tables away laughing at me. I smiled but I was nervous and I knew that I looked a bit of a twat. Then we met at a party later on and got to know each other a little better. Nothing happened for a little while but soon I got to really dig her. The funny thing was that I ended up jumping straight in at the deep end with her so to speak. I was twenty by this point and I had to get rid of this dilemma. I didn’t go out of my way to ‘kill it’, not consciously at least, but sub-consciously I think I just wanted to let life go on.

It wasn’t the very best experience in the world but my imagination wasn’t that advanced and I really had no idea what to expect. On some level you experiment but it’s not the same as when you’re actually with someone. I had read books and seen porno mags and it wasn’t like that. It was all I could expect it to be, let’s put it that way. She knew it was my first time, or she would have known by the way I was. I didn’t exactly have it choreographed. At aged twenty it was a bit embarrassing to be that awkward but she was very caring. I knew I wasn’t going to be like superman lover and I didn’t think the world was going to explode either.

The relationship didn’t last that long and it stopped in a very abrupt way. I wasn’t pleased with myself that I was the instigator and that it was also for the most stupid, selfish, childish reasons. Basically, I thought the nerd in me had finally been killed. It was the end of the year and after we came back from the Christmas holidays, I was just like, its New Year and I’m gonna get me some new ladies. And I cut it. Just like that. That was the weirdest, hardest thing because I didn’t even explain myself to her. But how could you explain that?

It was done. I had done it before marriage. It was difficult for me to come back from that situation without looking like a hypocrite, without actually confirming everything that people thought, which was, say one thing and do something else. I did not want to be that person, so it was not like a coming of age experience for me. It was more like a step forward and a step back.

I never found a way to marry the two. And in fact what happened next was the pastor in charge of my church became involved in a sex scandal, the whispering campaign began and senior members of the church took sides, ultimately causing a split. Once I saw the bickering, that was it. I was off.

I felt like I had stepped out of the world I had been in and stepped into the world that everyone else was living in. But I didn’t know whether it was better. That was the price, you know. I knew I could say sorry for what I had done and ask for forgiveness but I think I knew that I was going to do it again so it was a bit of a hypocritical exercise. In some ways, everything has been up in the air since then. It’s not like the end of uncertainty for me.

I am not religious now but I am trying to get some spirituality back into my life to get a bit of balance. It is the sense that there is a pattern and a flow to things that I enjoy. I certainly don’t want to be as rigid as I was. I do think there are more shades to life and besides; I hate the idea of giving authority to any one person. Why would I do that? They are just as messed up as I am. If they can’t say, ‘I am actually just as messed up as you are’ then don’t be a ‘God’ as far as I am concerned. I am more leaning towards stuff like Taoism and the whole Buddhist thing. I like the sense of finding your place in the universe.

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.’

Good girl turned bad...

This is the title that today's story teller gave her own post. And like me, you’ll probably disagree with her choice once you read it. My first reaction was shoot the parents. I mean really. How does someone help their children by stopping them from living? But on reflection, how can we know what we will feel like until we are parents ourselves? And whilst I’d like to think that I wouldn’t stick a straightjacket on them, who can say for sure until it happens. Parents often believe they are doing what’s best for their children, even if they are not. And the resultant journey is one that we all go through. It’s called life. The tantric sex teacher that I interviewed for my book summed it up thus…

‘There’s a lot of stuff been written about this. About what you know, and what you are told.  Because as a child, you have a very deep, inner knowing. And what happens to us is that our intuition is denied and that’s why we get so fucked up, because we don’t trust ourselves.  Because the authority, parents, teachers, whatever, tell us that what we’re feeling is wrong.  And that’s the journey really, to get back.’

Here is Adele’s journey to get back. It’s a big one.

‘I am one of the many people who have become quite taken with your new book.  It has been a subject that has really got me thinking.  I was born in 1984 and as a woman, I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the generation that has grown up knowing I can ‘have it all’.  I can be a mother and a beloved wife and a career woman and go on flash holidays and have the most adventurous sex ever.  However, my upbringing was quite sheltered, and while the big bad world was looming outside my door, I very rarely got to part-take in its many pleasures.

In hindsight I wouldn’t necessarily say that my parents were strict.  There were some things that took place in our household that simply wouldn’t in most Afro-Caribbean homes.  They were not consistent about many things like bedtime or sweeties, but they were and still are overly anxious about our lives and the things we do.  They’re afraid.  The fact that my parents raised me and my two sisters with fear as their guiding light stopped us from blossoming and stifled our basic development.

My mum and dad got married very young and within a very short time had three kids. I can remember always feeling like this was the ultimate journey to undertake, fall in love, marry and have babies and have a companion at your side to muddle through life with.  In their late 30s they both got baptised and within a short space of time my father was ordained as a Minister.  The following year my two sisters and me converted to the same Christian denomination and from then we became Minister’s kids.  It’s quite an awkward position to be in.  Everyone is watching you to see that you are outwardly pure.  Everyone wants to see that the family is harmonious, praying together, at various church events together.  We were rarely apart from our parents. It sounds like something from the 1940s, perhaps even a little bizarre, but this was what life was for us. 

We attended an all girls’ school so my contact with boys was very limited.  I can honestly say that I never spoke to a boy until I was about 18.  Were there boys in Church?  Of course there were, but if you were seen talking to a boy; you better have a good reason.  All sorts of rumours would circulate either that you had been acting filthy together or that you were getting married.  Because they were the only reasons to even look at a boy.  We were taught to pray against any unholy urges and ask God to lay our lustful thoughts to sleep until we were blessed with a husband.  I was 13 years old, my oldest sister had just started university, we were hormonal young women who were told how impure our minds must be if we wanted to be touched.  It was all very confusing and very hard.  So we sat back and waited to get married. 

I remember working so hard at being ‘holy’, denying my every bodily pleasure in the pursuit of the heavenly.  But I was so young, impressionable and really needed a guiding hand.  The pastor at our assembly was very old, my dad was his deputy, but the young people were left in the care of the Evangelist.  She was a fearsome lady, and as someone who was new to the faith I revered her as someone to follow.  Coming from the home that I did, I was taught first and foremost to respect my elders.  My parents were always right, I never disagreed with them and they loved me for it, so I was to never disagree with the Evangelist.  I believed that if I could just gain her wholehearted approval, I would be fine and on my way to heaven.  She was a disagreeable woman; nothing made her happy for long.  I found myself on the receiving end of her sharp tongue and aggressive ways and watched my parents being belittled by her.  I was so afraid at times to go to church for fear that she’d be in one of her terrifying moods.  If I told my parents I didn’t want to go they would tell me not to worry or to pray for humility, she was an elder and therefore wouldn’t lead me astray.  I completely lost sight of the belief that God was my heavenly father who loved me.  Instead I saw him frowning at me and hating me, just as she did.

You’re probably wondering what on earth this all has to do with my virginity, but these experiences lead me quite directly to my sexual misadventures.  A couple of years passed and it was time for me to go away to university.  I was nervous, that same old fear reared its ugly head at home again.  I had chosen a university quite far away from home and my parents were wondering why.  I was still working part-time in London so it was expected that I was to come home every weekend, and of course attend church every Sunday.  I must admit I was hoping to get away.  I was hoping to get a life.  I had never been away from home, was constantly under the watchful eye of my elders.  Every word I said was scrutinised, everything I heard and saw was censored.  I was bound.  I longed to be free.

Freedom came in the second term when Artem, a Canadian exchange student came to stay in the dorm a couple of doors down from me.  He seemed so sophisticated; he charmed his way into the hearts and minds of everyone he came across.  We started spending a lot of time together and everyone was convinced that he had the hots for me.  So one night I kissed him.  One thing led to another and although it didn’t go further than heavy petting, it was a giant leap for me.  I was convinced that I was in love with him and him with me and started making plans for us.  Everyone was having sex; all my girl pals had boyfriends.  I was desperately lonely. In retrospect, I lacked so much of the confidence I tried to exhibit.  It was almost like it had been stolen from me after years of being a member of a Church that practically obliterated my faith in God.  My faith was such an integral part of my identity; it was hard to function without it.  I felt hollow and I needed to be filled.  Artem, I thought, was just the man for the job.

But he was cruel to me, picking on every little thing I hated about myself.  I was left feeling fat and ugly. Having let him know that I wanted him to be my first, he told me that he wouldn’t touch until I lost some weight!  To drive this point home he began a very public flirtation with Sadie, a six foot tall size 8 model-looking thing who he would ‘fuck in an instant’.  What little self-esteem I had left was shattered completely.  I was left not only hollow now, but very, very angry. 

Anger was a new emotion for me, since I had had to deny myself any knowledge of ‘fleshy’ things for so long.  I was so completely taken over by this anger, it was like a drug.  I dropped out of university after one year and started working full time.  Everyone was disappointed, not least because I was a girl with ‘so much promise’.  I went from wearing no make-up and long skirts, to not wanting to leave the house without a full face on and showing way too much boob.  I started drinking and answering back.  I had more or less stopped attending church at this point, waking up every Sunday morning with some excuse or another.  My parents judgementally shook their heads and I can honestly say I hated them at those moments.  It probably doesn’t sound so strange to have a child saying that about her parents, but the fact that I wasn’t a child, I was a young woman and I’d spent all my teenage years under my parents wing lovingly doing as they said, is odd isn’t it?  I started to fight really hard for my independence, but when they refused to acknowledge my desire to grow up I tried to hurt them.  The only way I thought I could achieve this was by abusing my own body.

Sometimes I think about the amount of freedom we have over our own bodies.  A hundred years ago a woman’s body was secret to everyone but her husband.  Nowadays we can flaunt it and no one bats an eyelid.  In the western world we look at the burkha, for instance, as a tool that Eastern cultures use to stifle their women.  But is revealing all up front any better?  In affect aren’t we as women only giving men more of what they want without expecting them to work for it?

I was drinking too much, mostly in secret.  I was watching a lot of pornography and worrying about my desirability.  My provocative dress was getting me noticed big time and working in the City in a well known jewellers meant that I had my fair share of admirers.  One such admirer was Alessandro, an Italian scooter-driving banker.  He came in and asked me to dinner and I accepted without hesitation.  I was looking so badly for a little affirmation that I let my standards slip.  What I wanted was someone I classed as a real man – older and therefore experienced, owned their own house, had a successful job (lots of money) and someone who seemed up to have sex with me.  In the testosterone-filled City this was pretty much everybody.  Our first ‘date’ was an amazing restaurant, the second was back to his place where he was to cook me dinner.  Needless to say he didn’t spend much time in the kitchen.  I was certain I was ready for him to fuck before he started fumbling about.  He threw me on the bed, fingered me too hard and broke my hymen.  He tried to enter me but he was far too rough and then he sat on top of me and made me give him oral sex.  It was then I told him I was virgin and he called me a cab.  The experience left me feeling cheap and disgusting.  I did want a little romance, but he was so flippant about the experience.  But I wouldn’t say I’d lost my virginity, even though he broke my hymen. 

My parents had been calling me all night to find out where I was, which really pissed me off.  When I got home after one, I explained I had been with a man and they looked at me in horror, which gave me a perverse sense of pride.  They begged me to let them know when I was going to be out. 

The next man who picked me up was Claudio, another Italian, a chef and ex-model who started signing his number to me from the other side of a restaurant I was at with my sister.  We started texting right away.  He let me know that he thought I was beautiful and at that moment I felt so grateful, not least because he was so good looking.  We went to dinner a few nights later.  The man was tall, dark, desperately handsome, but so boring!  I just wanted to go back to his place and see if I could get him into bed.  I did, but I just couldn’t give it up to him.  A part of me really wanted to, to upset my parents and God and to give myself a reason to think I was sexy and worth it.  But I was resisting him.  Was I afraid it would hurt?  Maybe.  Was I still thinking that I ought to be in love before I went all the way?  I don’t know.  We continued seeing each other for about a month, but then he told me he was moving away so it fizzled out.

And then there was Graham.  A Geordie, he was broad and dark, the spitting image of Jack Branning from Eastenders.  At 35, he was 14 years my senior.  I walked into a bar with some friends and I didn’t even need to look at him.  I sensed him.  I sensed that every single pore of his being wanted me and I felt so powerful I was practically walking on air.  He approached me and we hit it off.  He didn’t want me to leave when my friends tried to drag me away to get the last train.  We were on the phone constantly and when we went out to see a film on our first date we were in an endless lip lock.  But this kissing was quite unlike anything I’d known before.  Electricity.  I could feel his hard-on against my arm and for the first time I wasn’t afraid of the penis.  I wanted him so bad it almost hurt. 

We dated and kissed for a while and I managed to convince myself that he really cared about me.  He was always telling me how strongly he felt the moment he first saw me. I was the ‘most beautiful girl in the room’, and I really appreciated the sentiment.  I let him know I was a virgin, and he took this news in his stride, he wasn’t in the least bit fazed like the others had been.  He set about putting me at ease.  The night I agreed to stay with him I was quite shocked by his dirty flat, but I didn’t care.  I was there to be rid of my virginity.  We were kissing and touching.  As always it felt so good.  Then he said the words that shook me to my core: ‘I want to fuck you Adele; I want to FUCK you in every hole’.  So after hours of foreplay I let him.  Without a condom.

The experience left a lot to be desired.  I didn’t orgasm, I couldn’t.  I still couldn’t shake the thought that sex was dirty and that I was dirty because of it, just as I had been taught at church.  The momentary peak in self-esteem that I felt when Graham called me beautiful abated and I felt worthless again.  I continued seeing him for a while, always at his place, always a quickie that left me sad and anxious for affirmation.  Never with a condom.  I couldn’t care less if he had given me some incurable disease, I hated myself so much.  One night he unexpectedly became quite aggressive with me and it left me a little shaken.  So when I left I promised myself I wouldn’t be back.

It’s really strange how life happens.  I spent my childhood innocently following my parents rule without question, believing in love because they loved me.  My teens were spent trying to squeeze the love out of a heartless woman who wanted to hurt people because she was hurting.  I’ve spent the best part of the last 6 years battling my anger at never being strong enough to walk away sooner or strive for my own independence the way other young people do.  I stopped believing in love and looked for sex, but each time I found it gave me another reason to hate myself.

As it turns out, I didn’t catch a nasty disease from Graham.  I fell pregnant and four and half years later I have the most beautiful little girl on the planet.  He's never been involved, which is okay.  She’s really bright and forward and everyday I’m afraid that I’ll make some terrible mistake that will lead her down that same path I went on of self destruction.  After years of trying to pull love out of people I learnt that I need to love.  My child taught me that.  She was born so fragile and pure and my heart grew at the sight of her.  Now, I’m in a happy, fulfilling relationship with the most beautiful man I’ve ever met and we are expecting our first child together.  We’re getting married next year and my little girl gets two loving parents and a younger sibling.  Once I opened my heart to love I found that I couldn’t stop. 

I saw my virginity as a sort of anchor to my passivity in the past and in my haste to lose it, I ended up hurting myself and others.  I have so many regrets that I didn’t know enough about myself back then. If I had only had more patience and self-esteem I believe I could have bypassed these less than desirable experiences and found love.  It’s mad that virginity is viewed as something so undesirable.  It’s a virtue.  I’m not ashamed to say that this is the lesson I will be telling my children when the time comes.  Will I tell them to wait until marriage?  Maybe not.  But I will most definitely tell them that sex is dangerous if you’re using it to get affirmation.  Learn to love yourself and you can go anywhere and be anything.’

 

What is it with the twists and the turns in the tales this week? After last week’s page turner, here’s another. I’ll try not to ruin the ending by telling you it before you’ve begun this time.

I read this story whilst en route to Chris Morgan Jones’s book launch in London’s Diagon Alley-esque Cecil Court. Very early on in my book publishing adventures, Chris’s lovely wife got me a meeting with the legendary Lennie Goodings of Virago Press. I had very little concept at the time of just how important this meeting was – or how important Lennie was in the world of British book publishing. Had I known, I probably would have been a nervous wreck. As somebody memorably said to me afterwards, 'most writers would crawl over broken glass to get a meeting with Lennie Goodings'....

As it happens, I never did quite ‘seal the deal’ with Lennie but the fact that she was prepared to sit and entertain me and my book idea for a good 45 minutes one winter’s afternoon in the offices of Virago Press meant the world to me. It gave my idea gravitas and more importantly, it gave me bags of confidence. Fast forward 5 years, 2 agents and all sorts of twists and turns in the world of publishing and Icon Books have published my book ‘The First Time: True Tales of Virginity Lost & Found (Including My Own). And I finally got to have my own book launch at Lutyens & Rubinstein Book Shop in Notting Hill:

Which was all a long way of telling you that my blackberry only allowed me to read half the story below before it truncated the message and I had to wait until the next day to find out the ending. Once again, still trying not to give it away….so here it is.

'I had been with Jonny 4 months, I was 18 and had waited to have sex as I truly wanted the experience to be special and with someone I loved. 

I had met Jonny a year before and at first did not take to him. It had been a night full of drinks and at the end of it; I had been talking to a friend, telling them my woes of the current man who was taking up the space within my head.  Jonny walked past us, turned, looked at me and said 'get over it, he obviously isn’t into you'. Of course my reaction was to wonder who was the arrogant conceited man who had just walked past and stuck his nose in for no reason other then to be spiteful.

A little time passed and I was working part time selling magazines door to door, the advantage being that I got a team of friends who would walk the streets together after Sixth Form College and try and sell these charity magazines.  One day Jonny turned up. I turned to my friend and said 'he's horrible, I don’t like him' to which my friend replied 'Ha I know him, actually he's a really good guy'.  That evening, once again, I was selling the magazines door to door and Jonny was placed on my team. There is little to say other than, I have not laughed like that in years, we immediately hit it off. Long story short, it took a year to become Jonny’s girlfriend as I was still holding out for the guy who I should 'get over'.

One day like a thunderbolt it hit me. Who made me laugh? Who did I fancy? Who was a friend? Who acted like they would treat me like a princess? The answer, Jonny.  So I became his girlfriend, four lovely months later and we were out on our usual Thursday night rock night at the local pub. I had by this point stressed to Jonny the importance of my virginity to me, I had stated that it need not be lost in a fairy tale romance but it should be lost in a sensitive and caring environment where I felt safe and loved.

I felt ready at four months but I was holding out for Jonny to do something special, candles maybe, music.  Just something to show he cared.  So back to the night out, I had drunk so much that I could hardly walk, Jonny was due to meet his friends at a club but I had to return home.  Jonny agreed to walk me home. The entire way I begged him not to leave to stay and be with me, but he wanted to go, there was no persuading him.  So eventually I turned and said 'if you stay I'll have sex with you'. He agreed and we returned to my home and with my mother upstairs we lay down on the living room floor and had short, painful sex.  It did not last long and my head was spinning, after an awkward ten minutes, Jonny withdrew and stood up, put his pants on and sat on the couch and fell asleep, I sat there naked wondering why I had just used my virginity as a bargaining tool and did I regret not holding out.  I was hurt by the lack of comfort, but in a way relieved that finally it had happened. 

Do I regret it, hmmm…No I don’t think I do, as it taught me a cold hard truth, sometimes things just don’t turn out the way you planned.  Me and Jonny split after 2 and half years, we remain in contact but loosely...'

A trip down memory lane...

I don’t get too many stories like this one. Today’s author, by my calculations, is probably in his mid sixties now. Men of this age were by far the hardest to interview when it came to my book because they had little incentive to reveal their intimate lives and feelings. Women of this era were a different kettle of fish. They had lived closed lives. They were expected to guard their virginity closely or woe betide the consequences. Fast forward a few decades and they were itching to tell me the truth about how life had been for them in the late 1950’s and early 1960s.

Today’s man, however, is an exception to the rule. He is honest - sometimes alarmingly so - and open. But I love that. Sexuality is what it is. As he points out, so many different factors form what we think of as our ‘sexual identity’ and we have very little control over that as young people and particularly as children. Parts of this story make me feel slightly uncomfortable but I like it for its candour and of course because it is a window into a bygone era. Tellingly, he also confirms what I have long suspected about the older generations. They were more creative lovers than we are today because they were petrified about getting pregnant. They knew, as today’s author reveals that ‘sexual intercourse is only a small part of love-making’.

‘Here is my contribution to the Virginity Project. It is possible that you may disagree with my definition of “losing my virginity” but it might fit into what you want.

Probably my first sexual experience occurred during my birthday party that was celebrating the fact that I was six years old. We did not have much money and my mother had only invited a small group of boys about my age who lived in our street. One boy had a twin sister and she was invited as well. While my mother was out in the kitchen preparing the food, Maureen, who was the same age as me, took me to the corner of the room, and told me she had a present for me. She then turned her back on me and pulled down her knickers to show me her lovely bottom. I was very confused by what had happened. I knew it was wrong because my older sister had always covered up her body. My parents were the same. Up until that time I do not remember seeing anybody’s naked body. However, it was an enjoyable experience, and it had definitely been a pleasurable gift. To my eternal shame, when my mother returned to the room, I told her what had happened. My mother, who up to her dying day, never liked to upset anyone, told me that there was nothing wrong with what Maureen had done. It is possible that this brief flash of enlightened thinking by my mother preserved me from the feelings of guilt that it often associated with the naked body. I felt deep warmth towards Maureen for what she had given me. A few months later we moved house and I never saw her again. But every so often, when I meet a woman who looks like a grown-up Maureen, my body begins to tingle. 

My first conscious sexual experience took place when I was about nine years old. I can’t remember why, but for some reason, that night I had to share a bedroom with my sister. As I was four years younger than her, I had to go to bed first. She woke me up when she entered the room but I knew better than to make a fuss. In the dark she could not see that I was awake and had opened my eyes. The curtains were open and rays of moonlight provided enough light to show her undressing. She stood briefly naked in front of the window before getting into bed beside me. That event that lasted less than a couple of minutes is etched forever in my memory. Nearly sixty years later, every time I see an image that reminds me of my sister undressing on that moonlit night, I become aroused. I expect it is the human version of Konrad Lorenz's imprinting theory.

The third important sexual experience took place two years later. I was in hospital having my tonsils out. After my operation I had a blanket bath from a beautiful young nurse. It was the first time I had felt sexual love. The day before I was due to be released she told me that she would not be working tomorrow and that she would say goodbye before she left the hospital. I became very nervous as the time she was due to leave approached. Then I watched as she left the ward without looking back at me. I was distraught but about ten minutes later she returned and sat by my bed, apologizing for forgetting about her promise. After a few words of comfort she kissed me on the forehead and left my life forever. Of course, I am aware that the nurse did not have any sexual feelings for me. She probably was treating me like her much younger brother. However, I was convinced, rightly or wrongly, that at that moment in time, she looked at me in a way that told me that she loved me. The nurse, like Maureen and my sister were constructing a framework to my sexual personality.

I got on well with girls at secondary school. In fact, I enjoyed their company more than boys. As my father had been killed when I was eleven and I was very close to my mother and sister. At the age of thirteen, when I was just entering the stage where I was beginning to see my female classmates as sexual beings, my mother decided to move house. Instead of the modern council house on the estate, we now lived in a prefab in Catford. What was worse, the nearest school was only for boys. Denied the company of girls, my final two years at secondary school was a painful experience. Living on a council estate all my life, all the schools I attended were tough. Girls help to humanize schooling and without them, a school is a brutal experience.

I left school at fifteen but unfortunately I went to work at a small factory where there were only men and married women. There were a couple of other apprentices but they were older than me and already had girlfriends and so I had no one to go with to dances, which was the main way teenagers, found partners in the early 1960s. I could only watch women from afar. This was mainly on the bus on the way to work. At that age I had no idea how you could bridge the gap between them and you.

On Friday’s I was sent to the local technical school to learn my trade as a printer. Every Friday night there was a beautiful blonde woman about my age on the station platform. Unfortunately for me she was going in the opposite direction. On the surface she did not look anything like my sister, Maureen or my nurse, who were all very dark. However, she did have a narrow waist and slender hips that reminded me of my imprinted desires. Several of my fellow students got on the same train as me. They also thought this girl was incredibly beautiful. I did not know it at the time but she looked just like a young Catherine Deneuve. We all agreed that she was unavailable to the likes of us.

A few weeks after seeing the blonde beauty on the platform, Tony, another apprentice at the factory, broke-up with his girlfriend. He asked me if I would be willing to go with him to a dance in town. I readily agreed and saw this as my first opportunity to get a girlfriend. It did not take me long to see a girl on the dance-floor that could have been a grown-up Maureen. She was a couple of years older than me and I found it impossible to build up the necessary confidence to talk to her. However, I did have the courage to ask her less attractive friend for a dance. She accepted and in between dances I managed to exchange a few words with her, but of course she was loyal to her friend, and gave me no encouragement. I probably stood no chance with her anyway, but as I was to learn later, you have no chance with women unless you make it perfectly clear that you desire them. I went out a couple of times with my new girlfriend but it soon became clear to her that I was interested in someone else.

I had just joined a football team that played on a Saturday afternoon. The vast majority of the team were married men. The one exception was Jimmy. My confidence on the up, I asked him if he was interested in going dancing. He agreed and suggested we go to a dance that night being organized by his local church. It turns out that Jimmy was a devout Catholic. He argued that they would not check my religious credentials on the door. Jimmy was right and I had no difficulty in getting into a large hall full of young people. To my amazement, through the crowd I saw the blonde from the railway station. This time I did not have a railway-line between us and I walked towards her before I had a chance to think about the possible rejection. Much to my surprise, she said it wasn’t her and that she travelled home from work on a bus. She had a double. Not that this mattered, for I was now talking to a young woman I was strongly attracted to. I was in love and was to remain that way until her death many years later.

I took Haley home that night. I found out later that her real name was Helen but that Haley sounded much more modern. As it happens she lived on the same council estate as I did but Haley did not talk like other people from the estate. Her mother had come from a prosperous family that had fallen on hard-times. Mrs Conner was also a terrible snob and insisted that her six children did not talk like the other children on the estate. It was also this that gave Haley a kind of unapproachable look that I found so attractive. Mrs Conner was also a devout Roman Catholic and not too happy when Hayley turned up with me. She had sent her to the dance to find a good Catholic and instead she had come home with a committed atheist. 

A few weeks after we met I was booked to go on holiday to Rye.  Hayley was working that week but I suggested that she should come away with us on the Friday night and that she could return home on the Sunday. Much to my surprise, Mrs Conner allowed her daughter to join us the first weekend of the holiday. Mr Conner was to drive us down and Hayley’s elder brother, John, agreed to collect her on Sunday evening. I have never understood why Mrs Conner had accepted this arrangement only weeks after we had first met. She never did it again during the rest of our courtship.  

That Sunday morning we got up very early to sit on the beach on our own. Although dressed in our swimsuits it was far too cold to go into the water. Instead, we lay on the pebbles and kissed. I then said: ‘do you ever get curious about a man’s body’. Before she had a chance to reply I placed her hand on my erect penis. When she did not take her hand away I lowered my trunks so that she could hold it in the flesh. Within seconds my penis seemed to explode. It was the most marvellous sensation I had experienced. I also felt a deep wave of love for Hayley.

Friedrich Nietzsche was wrong when he said that love was ‘frustrated sexuality’. Love takes place as a result of sex. I agree with D.H. Lawrence when he said he only knew what love was after he had sex with Frieda von Richthofen in 1912. This appears to be the point he is making in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I suspect it was this dangerous idea, rather than the four letter words, that made the novel so shocking when it was first published in Florence in 1928. As Sebastian Faulkes has recently pointed out, up until this time, in novels, love had always come before sex.  

Although I did not have sexual intercourse in Rye, to my mind, that is when I lost my virginity. A few weeks after returning home from holiday, my mother took my younger brother out for the day. I picked Hayley up from church that Sunday morning and went to my mother’s empty flat. We took all our clothes off and spent the next few hours exploring each other’s naked bodies. We discovered where we liked to be touched and kissed and we both had several orgasms that day. The knowledge that we were not going to have sexual intercourse was not a problem. In fact, it was that realization that made us better lovers. It was not until two years later, on the first night of our honeymoon that we officially ‘lost our virginity’.  But by that time, we had learnt that sexual intercourse is only a small part of love-making.

I have had many lovers since those early months with Helen. Most have remarked that I make love differently from most men. I will have to take their word for it because I have very little idea of how other men behave in bed. What I do know is that my ideas on sexuality owes a great deal to Maureen’s lovely birthday present, my sister undressing in the moonlight, a kind and loving nurse, and a Catholic girl who knew she must not have sexual intercourse before marriage, but loved giving me pleasure.’

Inside out...

Once again, here is the acknowledgment that having penetrative sex for the first time - which is, after all, the way that most of us define the ‘loss’ of our virginity - can be a total non-event. What often sticks in our memories, as it does for today’s story teller, are other, more emotionally resonant moments.

Sharing a sleeping space with another human being for the first time can be a big deal. Taking your clothes off together is unforgettable. Going through the physical motions of having technical sex for the first time can mean little in comparison. It’s down to the individual. What means something to one person can mean nothing to the next. Which is why judging women for having broken hymens is so mind-crushingly pointless, fake and judgmental, not to mention misogynistic. Crikey, how did I get here?

I guess I’m saying that the loss of virginity and the way that we define it is a very personal thing. No one else should have a say in the matter. But unfortunately it seems that they do. Not for today’s story teller though….

‘I'm from the UK and I am 20 years old. I lost my virginity just over a year ago when I was 19.  I actually ended up, in a bizarre twist of fate, losing my virginity to my first boyfriend.  We dated when we were 14 and then when we were 15... and when we were 16... but it was never serious, and throughout sixth form I was involved in this torturous long distance relationship with this chiseled, handsome guy but I had strict parents, he had strict parents, so it was a lot of kissing in Trafalgar Square and St Pancreas Station and then he would go home and I would sigh over him and nothing ever really came of it.

So I was as surprised as anyone, after he dumped me (because he got religion and I was giving him 'impure' thoughts) to meet a new guy in my first week at university.  We started dating straight away and as we were both completely inexperienced, didn't rush stuff.  We progressed through the bases in a couple of months but then term ended and we went home for Christmas... and he didn't call once!  I was so cross and I called him and asked why/tried to find out if there was someone else etc etc but there wasn't. He was just so laid back he was on the point of falling over. 

I was so mad that I stopped all sexual stuff between us and without it the problems with the relationship became quite clear and it ended at the start of the summer term.  Over the summer I briefly dated someone else but it never got far enough to have sex.  And then suddenly, summer was ending and I was turning nineteen and I'd never had sex!  None of my friends had either because most of them were religious and the rest went to girls' boarding schools so suffered from a severe lack of opportunity, but I really did sort of want to, but not with a random. 

And then my first boyfriend came back into my life.  We'd been friends the whole time, but had been really busy.  And wow.  Chemistry, fireworks.  The night we had our first drink we ended up kissing in the alleyway next to the bus stop and I knew I wanted him.  Things headed south and when he came to visit me at university a couple of months later we had sex.  It was my first time but he had had one previous partner.  It was quite underwhelming actually and hurt a lot, and he totally guessed but promised me it would be better in future and it was but then I found out he was sleeping with a man so we split up, which was sad, but I've had lots of fun with other people since. 

I think my story is probably about as average as they come, but what I wanted to say was that when I think about it, the two moments which I found to be the biggest watersheds in my life were the moment when my university boyfriend and I first were naked together and slept in a bed together - it was a really big moment for me and felt like more of a change than losing my virginity, and the last time I slept with my most recent ex-boyfriend when I knew that this make up sex wouldn't be makeup sex and this was the end, because I wanted to save up all the memories I could and it was a very emotional moment.  Plus sex is better for me now.  But for me I don't really feel that losing your virginity is all about those five minutes with someone when you actually have sex for the first time - maybe because a lot of my friends are gay, or because I was in a 6 month sexual relationship but didn't have sex, or because every time I sleep with someone new in a relationship (only 3 times so far) it feels like losing my virginity all over again because I get nervous and flustered and excited.  But I'm also really glad I waited because having the experience with my first boyfriend, who is now my best friend was so much fun and he was so excited and appreciative and my uni boyfriend just wasn't that fussed. 

So that is my story.  I also had lots of random sex this term because I was trying to be cool, and that was just lame because sex with people you don't fancy and trust is just a physical and mental failure with me.  So now I'm waiting for a relationship where I actually fancy and trust and they won't know what hit them!  I hope this is not a stupidly long email but I have EXTREMELY religious parents who would kill me if they knew I'd had sex and all my friends are jealous and won't talk about it.  I also hope you can tell the boys apart but I didn't want to use their names as they are posh twats mostly with unusual names.

From Lara.’

Darling Violet...

Well now, here we are, just over four years since I first posted on this blog – February 7^th 2007 to be exact – and I was really nervous about it because I’d only been writing for about 5 minutes. But it was the best way possible to give digital life to an idea that had been rolling around my head for some time.

I began researching my book in September 2005, right after I’d had one of those light bulb moments that you hear about but you don’t think actually happens. I think we all get them. I think the universe, god, your long lost family pet, whatever it is that you believe it, drops these ideas into our laps and its just up to us whether or not we take the bait. I took the bait. The words horse and starting gate don’t even begin to cover it. I was bored shitless with my day job or, as I remember writing at the time,  ‘uninspired by earning money and spending it on new shoes and dinner’. 

I was itching to do something new and unique. Something inspiring that we could all relate to so when I had the idea with a friend after an afternoon spent entertaining each other with our ridiculous virginity loss stories, I pretty much felt like my prayers had been answered. That seems like a good idea for a book I thought to myself.

For eighteen months I interviewed anyone who crossed my path and sat still long enough for me to ask them impertinent questions about one of the most intense moments of our sexual lives. Hardly anyone turned me down and there begun a really fascinating journey. I was amazed at what people would tell you when given the chance to talk anonymously about their intimate lives.

Deciding to open it out to the digital realm felt like a natural progression because I knew I had more material and more to talk about than I could ever fit into a book. And so it goes. After four years, I have had all sorts of weird and wonderful adventures in the blogosphere. Mostly I have realised that it is a benign place full of people who generally want to help you, despite the fact that you may never actually meet in person. If anything, blogging has taught me that people are essentially good. So many folk have given me a helping hand along the way. Not because they had too but just because they felt like it.

Shel Israel writes a blog about technology but he still took the time to post about my project on a blog that gets hundreds of thousands of hits every day. Some of them came and took a look at my humble offering. Drunk Mummy and I corresponded for quite some time before one day, she offered to write me a guest post about virginity loss. Not to mention the people that can now only be described as ‘pen-pals’, people who have written and told me some of the most heartbreaking, funny, outrageous and poignant stories that I have ever heard and whom continue to be friends to this day. We may never meet in person, but I always look forward to getting their mail.

I decided to celebrate these strange and funny adventures by posting a pre-digital story – an interview that I actually did in person. It didn’t make it into my book. Not because I don’t like it. On the contrary, this is an extraordinary story. You have to ‘kill your darlings’ as a writer friend told me right back at the beginning and this story is a case in point. It’s a stunning monologue but it just didn’t fit anywhere in my book.

It is also one of those stories that makes you realise just how lucky most of us are. That we sit here day in day out, whining about how we can’t afford to go on holiday or buy a new car when in fact these are very elegant conundrums compared to the concerns of most of the world’s population. Here is a lady who left her native Ireland at the age of 13 with barely a penny in her pocket. Forty-six years later, she took some time out of her day to tell me her story.

Violet O’Callaghan.  Born 1936. Lost virginity aged 14

'You never talked about sex in Ireland. Sex is a dirty word. I remember when I was sent home from school when I first started getting the periods and I had a terrible bad stomach ache. My cousin said, ‘If you kiss John McGarren, you’ll have a baby’. So when my mother had to get the doctor down because I had these pains, my cousin said, ‘Violet is having a baby’.

There was a big workhouse where I come from in Ireland, you know, with a hospital as well, and people went there to have babies who weren’t married, which was a terrible disgrace. And my mum was going, ‘See them lights over there? If you are having a baby, that’s where you are going to go. That’s where your father will put you and you’ll stay there until you are an old woman’. And this is all because she heard my cousin say, ‘baby’. Oh no, babies was a dirty word, you wouldn’t mention babies. And you weren’t taught nothing about sex. We were very old fashioned.

I grew up in a place called Enniskillen and I came over to this country when I was thirteen. You want to go to London because you hear so much about London don’t you? You know, The Smoke, it’s a great place isn’t it? So I came over here with another girl. We had a half a crown each and I never went back since. Never went back. It was a different London in them days, you know. This would be 1950 and they were still clearing up after the war, you know, people were different. But the main problem was that I couldn’t read or write. Couldn’t tell the time on a clock, or anything, so I had a hard time. Yes.  I got a job with Lyons Corner House in Hyde Park corner, clearing tables.

We had no place to sleep so we used to sleep in Victoria Park, and it was the old smog as well. It was like fog, and if I was on a bench down here and you were on a bench up there, I’d have to go by your voice because I couldn’t see you and you were too scared to move. My spot was underneath Robbie Burns as a matter of fact. Yeah, it kept the wind off you, the statue, you know? Met some good people. Met some bad people as well, believe me, met some really nasty people, and just went from one thing to another.

I found out most things just by messing around with people when you come over here. Before then I had no idea. No idea. The things I learned over here shocked us as a matter of fact. I used to think it would be like when I had me period and me mother thought I was having a baby because I was kissing John McGarren. I was a bit stupid.

My friends were all having sex, yeah, a lot of them. I mean some of these girls were bought up in the country and they were inclined to go a wee bit mad, do you know what I mean? Girls had sex because they’d got freedom. Some of them got talked into drugs, which was purple hearts in them days, and girls who were out all night on drugs often got into prostitution, which was a very simple thing to do in them days. Some girls moved away and settled down. Some never got married but just lived with blokes you know? It was hard but it was easy, I think it was a lot easier than today and yet sometimes I think it was a lot harder.

I was about fourteen when I first started having sex, and I do remember losing my virginity, yeah I do. It was a nice bloke. I tell you how I met him. I went to work at Butlins with another girl called Sally Moon from Donegal. That’s how I met him and he was the first one I ever went out with. His name was Leslie. I do remember that, yes. He was good fun to be with, you know? He didn’t promise us anything. He didn’t say he was going to write or phone and I think that’s the way I liked them, you know? The other blokes you meet just tell you a load of old rubbish.

I can remember where it happened. It happened on the beach as a matter of fact. We didn’t plan for it to happen on the beach but I think you more or less knew it was going to happen, yes. I didn’t really have any expectation. But then I had a pal who reckoned she’d never had any pleasure from having sex, and she’d had fourteen kids. It’s hard to believe, I tell you, if you’ve had fourteen kids you must have had something? ‘Violet. Nothing. I never felt nothing at all’. And that’s hard to believe isn’t it? But that’s what she told me.

I went back there months after and I was telling a friend, you know, this is where I lost my virginity, on this beach. You’re supposed to remember what it feels like but I can’t remember, mostly because there were that many after. I often sit and think I wonder if he’s still alive. I can still remember what he looks like. But no, I never seen him again.

Most of my pals were on the game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have done it. The problem that stopped me was I was that scared of getting a dose. Because I seen girls getting sent to prison and in prison in them days, they used to put up a notice up on your door saying ‘isolated’. I was in prison later, yes. I was what you call a ‘back up’. I had been with some girls who had robbed a man, and that was right outside Holloway prison, would you believe that? I didn’t even know it was a prison. I was drinking half a bottle of VP wine, or ‘Kings Head’ as it was called in them days, and all of sudden I was nicked. I was remanded for six months. But that’s what they put on the door, so that everybody could see that you had VD. ‘Isolated’. It was wrong really. It was humiliating people. I was one of the lucky ones, because I never caught nothing like that, you know?

I do think it matters how you lose your virginity, yes, I do. I think it’s nice if you fall in love with somebody and you’re going somewhere together, you know? I don’t know why I lost my virginity when I did. I think what it is, I think you can’t wait to tell your friends what you’ve done, you know, but then you feel a bit ashamed that it’s over and you have to look at them again. And you think to yourself, you know, sex should be with someone you go out with again. I just say if you get one good one, you hang onto him. Believe me, there’s a lot of bad ones out there.

I’m a lot older and wiser now. Been through it all, done it all, you know, so it’ll never happen again. Too old for it now anyway, you know?  I see them out the back there at night, smoking wacky backy, drinking different kinds of beer and you know they’re thinking that we’re old fashioned, but they forget! I’ve done it all myself. I’ve done all these things. We know exactly what they’re doing. Gosh, it doesn’t seem that long ago.

It just makes you think, maybe you could have lived your life a bit better, you know? Maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick from the mark. I think the babies I had was too quick. Maybe I shouldn’t have had Edward. I had him when I was seventeen and maybe I should have hung on and got my act together a bit more, you know?

Everybody should be entitled to a decent chance in life, no matter what your background. It’s not a girl’s fault if she hasn’t got a decent education. I’ve survived all these years without it. You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of people who can’t read and write. People just accept it. They don’t seem to bother about it, you know, they never ask why. It’s just when if anybody says, ‘What time is it Violet?’ Then I go, ‘that clocks about ten minutes fast’. Do you know what I mean? I sign the card for my pension, I just put the numbers in and people don’t ask questions.' 

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.’

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