I don’t do much of this these days. For one thing, the people in my book have already made a wonderful contribution and for another, it’s a big ask BUT……this is a little bit different because this media request is for British Marie Claire, one of the most respected women’s monthlies in the known universe.
Marie Claire is looking for women (and men) who are still in touch with the person they lost their virginity to appear in an intelligent feature about how our 'first time' affects our future ideas about love and sex. Needless to say, Marie Claire is committed to producing stylish, intelligent journalism and your story will be treated with the upmost sensitivity. The touch that makes this feature really interesting is that Marie Claire want to interview women and men aged 25-40 with the person they lost their virginity to (it can’t be the person you are with now). You would be photographed together in a studio - which will also involve a pampering day of hair and make-up.
If any of you are interested, or know someone who might be, please drop me an email on katemonroe@yahoo.com and I will connect you to the journalist at Marie Claire.
How to Lose Your Virginity: Hymen Marketplace from Trixie Films on Vimeo.
As if to re-inforce last week's post, here is a clip from Therese Shechter's upcoming film, 'How To Lose Your Virginity'. This makes me want to shake with laughter and weep tears of frustration at the same time. To quote Adios Barbie, 'hymens tell as accurate a story about a woman’s sexual history as the tip of a man’s penis tells about his. That is, no story at all'.
One does get the feeling that if the tables turned and men were the one's who were judged for the tips of their manhood, someone might have done something about this shambles by now. In fact, the history of the world could probably be re-written in its entirety if men were judged on sexual status in the same way that women were but that is not just another blog post, its another book. In the meantime, bravo to Sweden, who Therese writes about on a recent post on her blog. 'Cable have Shark Week', writes Therese. 'We have Hymen Week'. As part of Hymen Week, they are posting their favorite hymen related stories. I liked this one. In a nutshell, the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education has coined a new term with which to talk about this controversial - for it is - area of a woman's body: they call it the, ahem,’ vaginal corona'. The SASE goes on to tell us that 'surgery on the vaginal corona rarely solves any problems, firstly because outcomes vary and secondly, because it helps to maintain patriarchal structures and a prejudiced view of women and their sexuality'.
Yeah, you're probably thinking to yourself, I knew that. And I'm sure you do. But are our British leaders and government working to re-iterate this idea? Are the voices of authority in this country really trying to drive this potentially life-saving message home to the people who need to hear it? You wouldn’t think so if you asked Nadine Dorries, a British (female - the horror) MP who recently proposed giving compulsory abstinence education to all girls. This, in 2012.
It’s heartbreaking, not to mention hideously backward to ask young women to carry on such a sexist old tradition. Why is it only girls who need to be taught to ‘say no’? Legislating the idea that women are shy maidens who would do anything to avoid sexual contact with hormonal boys is really not the healthiest of concepts to teach young people. Girls have hormones too – and why should they be made to feel guilty about that. I also hear from enough young men on this blog to know that men also feel the pressure to ‘be men’, i.e. sometimes boys say yes…..when they mean 'no' because who wants to be thought of as a big nerd?
So please let’s not send the next generation back from whence we came. It’s been a heck of a long journey from the 1950’s to the present day. Thank god people have seen sense and not allowed Nadine Dorries to take us back there. At least for the moment.
A different day for the Virginity Project. Number 1, this is the first story I have ever received from Guatemala – tech-heads, do you think there is an app of the world somewhere that I could attach to the side of my blog that would block a country out every time I got a story from a new place? And number 2, I am not featuring a cheerful story today. One feels one should stick with the positive but really, life isn’t always like that and would I be helping anyone by selling the idea that it is? A reader wrote to me recently and said that all my stories seemed quite positive and that his wasn’t. I rest my case.
Here, for you, is Mimi’s story and as I have frequently found, it is often the shortest stories that say the most. She has written 229 words but she speaks oceans. Not just about her own experience but the experience of many millions of women, the world over, today and since the dawn of time. It’s so easy to think that we in the west are the benchmark in terms of sexual mores but we are not. A much larger proportion of the world’s women, if not for religious reasons, than cultural ones, have to preserve their virginity. Listen to Mimi’s words. This story makes me unutterably sad. How and why should a woman feel so diminished for doing something that is so natural? It doesn’t make sense to me. It never has and it never will.
On a happier note, I started another new, and rather more light-hearted blog today. Watch this space for more froth. In the meantime, here is some serious shit.
‘Hi, My name is Mimi
I was born May 27 1990
I am Guatemalan
I live in the county of San Diego
I've been virgin for about 21 years but until last week I give myself to my bf who I have been dating for 7months but I have known him for about a year. I'm still going through the stage grief I wasn’t ready and I wish I kept it. I guess it’s hard for me to take it all in because I have been virgin for a while and haven't give into temptation but when I meet my bf I fell hard and forgot why I wanted to keep it and how proud I was to have my virginity for a long time.
However, I lost it and it hurted but what hurted the most was when he didn’t see blood so he assume I wasn't virgin. I didn’t tell him it hurt me but I just conform that I was. In addition, I was in denial for three days after I lost my virginity but once I came back to reality I was in emotional distress. Since that day I haven’t had sex and don’t plan to because I HATE the feeling of disgust and shame. I now don't see myself has diffferent or unique because I lost the one thing that made me different from other femails, (sic) as result, I see myself has normal and woman not a pure woman which I still wish I was.’
I was tidying up the hard drive on my laptop the other day, as one is wont to do at this time of year, when I came across a document I had completely forgotten about. I had titled it ‘the virgin diaries’ and it is a diary that begins right after I first had the idea for my book. Back when this blog wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye.
For some reason, and as you will see, I had got it into my head that I couldn’t tell a single living soul about my book writing plans at work. Because otherwise they would sack me. They wouldn’t, but try telling me that at the time. I was quite possessed by my idea and nothing, but nothing was going to stand in my way. Ironic really that just as I had the idea for my book, my bosses asked me to manage the office move. For anyone who’s ever moved an office full of people from one location in London to another, you will be feeling my pain right now. Somehow though, in between juggling floor plans, handymen and contracts, I managed to source my first interviewees, experience all sorts of self-doubt and drive to Cornwall to interview the brilliant 93-year-old Edna.
I’d also forgotten what a major challenge it was to step out of my comfort zone and do my own thing for the first time. It’s a brilliant reminder, at a prescient time of the year, that the best things we do are often the biggest leaps of faith. I had never written a book before. I had no idea what I was doing but I felt compelled to try all the same.
The story starts a few weeks after I have first had ‘the big idea’.
30 Sept 2005
My bosses are making noises about moving offices. If we do, I will be project managing the move. You have to laugh. I am 37 years old and I have just discovered what it is that I want to do with my life and my bosses want me to put it on hold and move office. Of course that is pure conjecture, they know nothing of my plans to write a book and my job is my job and must be done. I just don’t want to hold back at this stage. I am on the cusp of committing myself to something in a way I never have done before. I know that deep down; nothing will stop me if I really want to do it.
17 Jan 2006
Crikey, I have got such a bee in my bonnet. Having had to stop work on the book for 6 weeks while I project managed the office move, and now starting up again…I’ve got a fire in me and it’s burning me up!
During the move I found time to sew little seeds here and there. Phone calls, emails, the odd dinner with someone I thought would make a good ‘connector’*, so that when I had finished with the move to St John Street, I would have laid some solid ground work for the next phase. And I have. But people saying they want to take part and actually doing it are two different things. It’s not like I’m asking them to discuss their favourite foods, I’m asking them to share some of the most intimate memories of their lives. So I have to go at their pace. I am an Aries and this pace doesn’t suit me.
I get an overwhelming feeling sometimes – there is so much to do – that I don’t know which way to turn first. What about all the Muslims I need to talk to, the Jewish people, Buddhists and Sikhs. There are 1.8 million Muslims living in Great Britain today and I need to speak to at least ten of them. I find myself standing in the queue at the post office in Farringdon, looking at the girls behind the counters in their headscarves and seriously considering slipping a synopsis of my book along with my cash and asking them to please call me when they have read it. Would they think I was weird?
*I began sourcing my interviewees via friend’s networks and some of them were incredibly adept (not to mention helpful) at fixing me up with interesting people to talk to. I came to think of these people as ‘connectors’.
24 Jan 2006
Bonus! Just got a call from Nancy’s 19-year-old-babysitter. She wants to be interviewed for my book and what’s more, so does her boyfriend. She also has two other friends she can bring along as well. I have to hold her at arms length for a moment here. Two is enough I tell her, if there’s four of you it will take too long so come with your boyfriend and lets see how it goes. I’m really pleased. But nervous. More so than with the older interviewees and I don’t know why. Young people have been really hard to pin down.
27 Jan 2006
I hit the read symbol on my phone to read the text that has just popped up. It is from Nancy’s sitter. ‘Sorry Kate, I can’t do it, I just don’t feel comfortable with it, sorry to let you down’. Bummer. Well at least she let me know.
1 Feb 2006
I went out for an ‘appraisal’ lunch with one of my bosses today. It’s just a catch up and we go to the Souvlaki bar in St John Street. I love it. The smell of chargrilled meat that hits you as you walk in is completely fabulous.
We chatted about work for a bit. On the back of the successful office move they have offered me a new role. And then he catches me off guard with something that he has asked before. ‘But what is it that you really want to do Kate?’
‘Well I think this new role will be great, a new direction within the company is just what I need’
‘No, what is it that you really, really want to do with your life Kate?’
I am dumbstruck by his perceptiveness and I struggle, not for the first time - but now for a different reason - for a reply. I begin to wonder if he knows what I am doing outside of work. I end up fumbling around for some half assed answer about always working within creative industries, getting frustrated and wanting to do something creative myself.
‘Well’, he says, ‘you better hurry up and do it, because you’ll be thirty, (I don’t remind him at this point that I am about to hit 38), you’ll be forty, you’ll be fifty even, and your life will be over’.
Again, I cannot think what to say. It almost kills me not to tell him, that I am working on something, that its taking up pretty much all of my brain space, that I think about little else, that I am, in fact, possessed.
But I can’t. In that moment my mind winds forward and I wonder if I would be compromising my position further down the line even though – spookily - he assures me that if I were working on something outside of work, he wouldn’t mind, as long as I wasn’t coming to work and ‘falling asleep on my desk’.
Again, I wonder does he know? It wouldn’t be impossible for him to find out. And I think, it’s a shame, because I know he would love the idea and I want to tell him.
7 Feb 2006
I am having one of those days. I’ve been off sick from work and I just can’t muster up any enthusiasm about anything. It’s tricky riding the highs and lows sometimes when you’re doing your own thing for the first time. If I don’t do something of a day to push this project along then nothing happens. It’s as simple as that. A lot of times that is quite an exhilarating feeling and others, like today, I feel like a heavy leaden weight is in my brain…37 years of total inertia and all of a sudden I have woken up, had the guts to strike out on my own and not give a monkeys what anyone else thinks about it. It’s a big deal for me.
On the up side, I spoke to a lovely lady called Sherrie. She is 50; she loves the project and wants to get involved. I also spoke to 93-year-old Edna, who I am going to Cornwall to interview on Friday. It was a good chat and I feel more confident about it now.
One of the things that I allowed to do my head in most of today is the frightening thought that I can’t write for peanuts. I want to express myself better but sometimes it just won’t come out. I find myself writing in a way that I think makes me sound more intelligent instead of just letting it flow out more naturally. I spend so much time with my nose in a dictionary these days, hoping that some of the words rub off on me. It’s certainly not for lack of interest.
So, time to lock my inner Hitler away for the night, and hopefully for a bit longer than that. That was spooky. When I typed Hitler in lower case, my Mac automatically changes him to a capital H Hitler. Crikey, even my Mac knows who Hitler is.
8 Feb 2006
My mum calls me to say that 93-year-old Edna rang her this morning and made murmurings about cancelling our trip and therefore, the interview. I think she is worried that she is going to have to entertain us. I am torn between that explanation and the thought that maybe she just has cold feet about opening her heart about her past. She’s ninety-three years old for chrissakes, it’s amazing that she even agreed to it in the first place. I tell myself that neither my mother nor myself have really communicated our plans clearly to her and that when she knows she only has to hang out with us for an hour or two each day she’ll feel better about it. The most crucial part of the whole weekend for me is the 30 minutes that she will talk into my Dictaphone about days gone by. It’s a cornerstone of my project, a bookend, a vital component and I desperately want it.
Its tricky being an impatient type like myself. On the one hand its good because I do everything super fast, on the other its bad because I get cross when things don’t go my way. It’s all very black and white for me. I am learning as I get older to try and see the grey as well, or the rainbow shades as my boyfriend would prefer me to say. To this end I am starting a six-week meditation course after my ski trip. I am hoping to learn to ride the waves in a calmer manner.
I’m on tenterhooks about the ski trip, tenterhooks of happiness that is. Even though its one of the more strenuous sports you can partake in, I find it relaxing for the simple reason that it gives me a break from myself. I don’t have time to think about the next 15 paces when I ski. I can but concentrate on the path immediately ahead of me and nothing else.
12 Feb 2006
Home and dry. I clocked up a solid 8 hours behind the wheel of my Renault 5 today but it’s been worth every butt aching moment. Edna gave a fabulous interview. She was by far the most succinct interviewee so far. Not only that but she has an edgy sense of humour and is as sharp as a tack. With most people I am mentally editing out the parts of the interview that I won’t need but with Edna I found myself thinking ‘how on earth am I going to edit this woman down, its ALL interesting’.
Edna was married to Henry for sixty years. That’s almost unfathomable to me. Though I hardly remember him, I know that he was terrifically popular, kind and handsome. Everybody loved him. He was a bomber pilot in the Second World War. As he left for his nightly trips across the channel into Germany, Edna would count the planes out and then count them back in before the sun rose each morning. It must have been hideously stressful for her. He also suffered with nervous related illness for years after the war because, as Edna said, he was a sensitive man and he would return from his nightly trips across the channel into Germany, troubled by the thought that he may be responsible for the lives of women and children, albeit the enemy’s women and children but lives all the same.
*Edna was indeed a cornerstone of my project. Although I did interview an older lady of 101, it was Edna’s story that made the cut. Six years later, as The Virginity Project became a play, I watched Edna’s words come alive again and everybody loved listening to her.
24 Feb 2006
In between bouts of interviewing and my day job, I left for a ski trip in Italy and it appears, a momentary meltdown. I included this excerpt because, as I point out below, skiing is a brilliant metaphor for life. You do it the best when you lean away from the protection of the mountain. When it goes well, it is risk taking at its most elegant.
Skiing, it seems, is a lot like life. It bloody well has its ups and downs. The weather was vile today. The wind howled like a dog and snow swirled in great swathes around our feet as we attempted to attach our skis to our boots whilst remaining upright at the same time.
The snow, however, was perfect. Perfect enough for us to make our second attempt at a black run. Sure, I was apprehensive but our first foray into black run territory two days previous had been triumphant so I was brimming with confidence. Off we went, curling our way down into the unknown.
It is not necessary to look downwards on a steep slope. In fact to do so is stupid. To this end, I concentrated on moving across the slope and repeated the straightforward corner-turning instructions drummed into my head for the past four days. ‘This is OK’, I thought as we negotiated our way around the upper reaches of black run number 6. ‘I may not be doing this with style and panache but I am doing it’. Down we went. Soft powdery snow, giving my skis something to carve into, something to hold me onto the side of the mountain.
All of a sudden the snow texture changed. My ski’s started making a different noise and I realised I was skiing on ice. On a black run. There was now nothing to grip me to what looked like a vertical drop beneath my skis. I couldn’t remember anything that I had ever been taught about skiing. It was all gone. My mind was a blank page and as I looked down, I realised that I was now sitting down on the slope, arms, skis and legs bent into an angular mess and pretty much as helpless as a new born calf. I struggled to my feet and dropped straight back down again. My mind made me do it. As I looked across to the edge of the slope, I could not contemplate, even for one second, attempting to stand up, moving to turn a corner, my skis facing downhill, closing the turn and surviving. It did not seem possible.
Michele, improbably, had moved from half way down the mountain to my side in a millisecond. ‘Kate, Kate, what is problem? You are good skier. Why? Why? You are not my problem. Henrietta’, he said, pointing rather uncharitably at my ski partner, ‘is my problem. Don’t worry. Michele is here. I will help you’.
I think he could see from my expression that I didn’t believe him so he took my arms and started speaking. To. Me. In. Single. Words. ‘Flatten. Your. Skis. And. Slide. Down. With. Me’, he said. Deep down in the dark recesses of my mind I could hear the words and slowly begin to action them. I did exactly as I was told and we slipped slowly down the mountain, the harsh scratch of our skis against the rigid icyness.
Suddenly we met the soft fluffy snow again and he sensibly pushed me upwards and commanded me to continue my journey down. I hung onto every word he said. Up, up, shoulder, shoulder, shoulder and back down, prepare, prepare, prepare and turn, shoulder down, hold it, hold it and BEND YOUR KNEES!! My composure, like the colour in my face, slowly returned to life. The mountain began to look like a mountain again and not the torture chamber it had appeared to be just moments previously and I wondered to myself, what on earth happened there? Where did I go? Oh, here I am.
2 March 2006
One of those nuts days that you can’t believe will ever work out but somehow it does. I was working on our new press books all day, cutting, pasting, arranging, re-arranging, trying to make some visual sense of all the agency press. My boss is taking them to New York on Monday for an important meeting and she’s super stressed about it. Luckily she was out all day so I was left to my own devices, leaving me free to get away at 6pm sharp to get to an interviewee at 7.30 on the other side of London.
At 5.15pm my boss called me. ‘I’ll be back in the office in 15 minutes’. My heart sank. I know what this means. By the time she has got here and got round to looking at the books it will be gone 6. True to form, she arrived in a flurry, took a long phone call and then sat down for a catch up with someone. The clock ticked by and I was caught in a terrible dilemma. If there is one thing I can’t bear, it’s the look on my bosses face when its after 6pm, she wants me to help her with something and I have someplace else to be, like, er, my life. As predicted, when I told her I needed to leave at 6pm sharp she asked what I had to get to.
In my boss’s mind, it’s a simple request for information. I know she just wants to understand if it is something important. But my ears hear ‘Kate, I am seriously questioning your commitment to this role, perhaps its time to start looking for a new job’.
Anyway I managed to leg it by 6.20 and made it to Teddington against all odds AND via a route I had never taken before, by 7.30 on the dot.
In a sea of ordinary looking houses, Sherrie’s stood out a mile. Hanging by the front door was a huge fluorescent heart. I knocked and waited. I was way too tired to be even slightly nervous. Funny how some houses just seem to suck you in. As I stepped in and looked around I saw that Sherrie had created a labyrinth of a home that involved a lot of bare brick, candles, fairy lights, pets, books, music, food, television, all the things I like the most. I must have looked hungry because I was seated at a table eating an enormous bowl of pasta within two minutes of arriving.
Down to business and Sherrie told me a great story. Like most stories worth telling, it had some fabulous highs and some wretched lows. Once the tape stopped rolling, we continued talking as I knew we would. Frankly, if she had run me a bath and tucked me up in bed I would have gone along with it. She talked a lot of her and her husbands myriad ‘adopted son’s and daughter’s’*and I could see how they had amassed such a collection of interesting young people. She really loves the company of young people and because of her background, she is painfully aware of how tender and vulnerable young people are, more so, she thinks, today than at any other time in recent history.
*I joined Sherrie’s collection of adoptees that day and we’ve been friends ever since. I did however, test this friendship when I asked her to the stage version of my book and forgot to re-iterate to her that her story was actually in it. There is nothing quite like going to the theatre and seeing your own virginity loss story told as a monologue on stage. Good thing I always change names. Sorry Sherrie and thank you, once again, to all my wonderful, creative and generous interviewees and blog contributors - and of course my ex bosses. In the book or not, this project would not exist without you.
Warning! Seasonal soppiness alert: The Virginity Project is going to post something warm and mushy. It is Christmas after all. And Christmas is a funny time of year. It’s a bit like L.A. It’s a wonderful town if you’ve got something good going on in your life but it’s a potential sprawling pool of loneliness if you don’t. The Virginity Project is having a high old time of it at the moment but for those who aren’t, take heart, nice things do happen, and often when you least expect them.
A while back, I pondered on the idea of ‘love’ and what that meant for people. I was researching a feature I was writing for a broadsheet and I wanted to know how people felt about the finding – or not – of love. I particularly wanted to know what teenagers felt about that. Do they need to find love? For themselves? To keep up appearances? Do we have to have romantic love in order to survive? Does the media give us unrealistic expectations for our love lives? Well, I can’t answer that last question today but seventeen-year-old 'Maddie' had something to say about the rest of it.
"Hi Kate,
I’m a 17 year old female, born in 1993, and my name, for the purpose of this piece, will be Maddie. Now, instantly as you discover that I’m 17, you’ll most likely be questioning the content of this e-mail, as when someone below the age of 22 speaks about love, their thoughts are disregarded as they ‘Don’t even know what love is’ - and that’s a very true statement. I have no clue what love is (well...romantic love at least). However love, not just romantic love, but material, physical, friendship and family, fascinates me. I think it’s perhaps for the exact reason that I don’t know what it is, that it fascinates me so greatly, after all, humans do have a great fascination of the unknown. But despite my age, bare with me, hopefully my two cents is worth something.
So basically, I’m 17, and have never had a boyfriend. Now although I’m reassured that this isn’t that unusual, and that I’ll find a boy some day, it makes me panic. The thing is, it’s all well and good for these people (all people who have had a vast history of romance) to be telling me that I’ll find a boy, but they’re missing one more vital piece of information....not only have I never had a boyfriend, I have also never been kissed.
You will most likely now be imagining some girl who is quite possibly socially retarded, and is physically not in the least bit appealing to the eyes, so I will now attempt to change your premonitions of what I look like, and how I behave in social circumstances. And even if you don’t think that I’m some weirdo, I’m going to tell you anyway, in an attempt to boost my slowly sinking self esteem.
I have a number of close male friends, have a high leadership position within my school, play sport, musical instruments and do alright in school. I get invited to parties on a frequent basis, and I’m fairly certain I’m normal looking (and slightly above normal looking when I put on make-up). So the fact that a boy has never even looked at me in a romantic way kills me slowly (that’s a semi lie. I’ve been asked out twice, once by a friend who I just didn’t see in that way, and a second time by my best male friend, who then proceeded to retract the offer because ‘the sex would be weird’.)
I feel like there must be something wrong with me. Everyone says ‘Oh I’m so jealous. It would be so great to be single again’. But is it? When you’re in a relationship you always have the option, so if being single is so fantastic, why don’t you too be alone? I have never told anyone about my frustration at my apparent ‘forever alone’ status. I guess it’s because I’m not often serious about such matters, and consequently it would be awkward for me to speak openly about such sadness. I know I’m only 17, and I’ve got plenty of time to find some boy who finds me lovely and wants to hang out with me, but I feel like I’ve been waiting for so long. Some of my friends have had so many romantic and/or sexual partners, and I can’t help but think... ‘Isn’t it my turn to be loved?’
Anyway, I know this basically turned into a therapy-make-myself-feel-better-about-being-forever-alone e-mail, but hopefully you enjoyed reading about how in a world so full of perceived mistrust and hate (so dramatic, I know), that love is, in my eyes at least, the most important thing.
Feel free to e-mail me back, or not, it's up to you. I've got plenty more stories on how I've been in love with the same guy for 2 years and he hasn't even noticed. It's great. Thanks, ‘Maddie’
I know what you’re thinking. What’s mushy about that? Well I’ll tell you. One of the (many) nice things about being the owner of The Virginity Project is that from time to time, people write and update me on their stories. So that what may have started out as a very sad tale can often take an unexpected turn for the better.
Earlier this month, Maddie emailed me out of the blue:
‘Hi Kate, I sent you an e-mail a few months ago and promised to update you if anything occurred within my love life, so, I suppose this is the update. Around 3 weeks ago, I received the text message I thought I'd never see - the guy who I've liked since I was 15 asked me out, and things have been going wonderfully ever since then.
I guess there's nothing more to add to that update except to say that I suppose miracles can happen! Also, I have to congratulate you on the success of the play! Keep up the good work! :)
Thanks, ‘Maddie’
And if that doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart, try The Muppets. This is foolproof.
The Virginity Project wishes you very happy and peaceful holidays X
One does have those moments when you look at your life and think, how the heck did this happen? I had one such moment this week at the ominously named ‘Literary Death Match’. Now who would have thought that lil’ ole me, the girl who barely scraped her O’levels would get to be a literary gladiator one day?
That said, whilst I might not have had the attention span it required to excel academically at school, I didn’t do so badly on the sports field and I remind myself of that each time (that’ll be a total of 4 times now) that I get an invitation to read or perform. Sport requires a ‘performance’ of sorts. If I focus for a moment; I can still feel the euphoria one feels as one stands at the edge of a gym mat, mind already living the moments ahead and then launching an attack that sees itself played out as a series of leaps, turns and tumbles that hopefully end in something vaguely death defying, dangerous and beautiful. Ok, I was only 13 at the time, it probably wasn’t that great but even now, I still remember feeling this: it’s always better in ‘performance’ than it is in practice.
There is something so seductive about the thrill of competition that one can often achieve something - in my case; height - that simply wasn’t possible when it was just me and my gym coach in the room. I remember leaping a full five inches higher when I was crapping myself in front of an audience at the borough gymnastics competition. Adrenalin brings out the best in us.
With the idea that somewhere inside me, that 13-year-old nutter might still exist, I stepped out onto the stage at Literary Death Match and read my favourite story from my book. I was slightly concerned about the fact that I’d have to use the C U Next Tuesday word several times but I was third up to read and the lovely Kat Brown tested (very beautifully it must be said) the water for me. It held firm and then one of the judges talked at length about ‘rimming’ and the last of my fears disappeared.
In any case, it’s hard to go wrong with a story like this one so, as an early wordy Xmas present, I’m going to repeat the un-abridged version. If everyone’s virginity loss experience were as good as this one, I’d be out of business. And if you want some grade A entertainment in the new year, get yourself along to Literary Death Match and cheer yourself up for the new year. Here we go....
Born in 1962, Charlie Thomas was the unfortunate victim of Thalidomide, a drug that was given to thousands of women in the 1960’s to relieve morning sickness. Tragically, and unbeknownst to them, it also caused dramatic birth defects. Charlie Thomas is a tall, handsome man who just happens to have arms that finish at his elbows. A smart, popular boy, we join his story at the age of sixteen, just as The Sex Pistols were ransacking the late 1970’s and just as Charlie’s mother and stepfather had moved from very ‘happening’ London to the very non-happening Welsh countryside.
‘It was the late seventies and my school consisted of Welsh people who were into Elvis and absolutely everyone wore flares. But there were also the children of the hippies that had moved to the country and formed all these hippy communes. One of them was a lesbian commune. Can you imagine how popular they were with the local villagers? They were lesbian, dope-smoking, patchouli smelling English people and they were all witches as far as the Welsh were concerned.
There I was, in the middle of all this and then she walked into the room. She was the daughter of one of these lesbian couplings and she was called Stella. Stella had huge bosoms, reeked of ‘teenage’ and sashayed down the hall in a way that stopped everybody in their tracks.
Our village was having a village hall disco one night. Imagine my surprise that day when Stella came up to me on the bus and said, ‘Are you going to be at the disco tonight because I’d like to dance with you?’ Pandemonium. You know, it was just a little bit too much for the other passengers. The weird English punk guy with the short arms getting propositioned by the witch girl with the big boobs.
The evening came and went and I walked her back to the end of the lane where her commune was and we had a bit of a kiss, but she had this really annoying all-in-one denim trouser suit on so any idea of getting hold of those breasts was just not happening because it was like a second skin.
Cut forward to about a month and she invited me back to hers for tea. By this time we were almost officially girlfriend and boyfriend and it was the weirdest house you’ve ever been in. There was a woman called Gloria who looked like a man and had a moustache. An actual moustache. Now I look back on it and I just think, yes, they were a bunch of lesbians in a hippy commune. It was the late seventies in Wales, what do you expect? But at the time, for this little straight boy, it seemed really weird.
Anyway, the mother sent us off to Stella’s room with our tea and Stella got her Jimi Hendrix record out. She was still in her school uniform and she lay down on her bed lolling the legs slightly open and I was sitting on the floor so you can imagine the view that I was experiencing. Then she just went, ‘Touch me’. What she actually meant was, you have got carte blanche to go straight to base three.
It was basically being offered to me on a plate. The sexiest bitch in the school, with the biggest tits, was showing me her vagina and saying, ‘Touch me’. I had never really got anywhere with anyone and there it was, all there, for me. I bottled it.
I wasn’t ready for it. I needed the base one and base two, you know? I hadn’t even touched her nipple. I wasn’t ready to insert my fingers into places that they didn’t know what to do with once they’d got there. So, in a rather desperate moment of attempted comedy, I put my finger on her knee, because technically that could be construed as ‘touching’ her, and thinking that I’d also answered with wit to mask my insufficiencies.
Cut forward again to a month later and there was a gang of about five or six of us that were the dope-smoking, punk-rock-liking, beer-drinking naughty people, who also had the parents who cared the least. We would hang around together, staying up till four and sleeping in the living room. On one of these nights, Stella and I were the only two left. It was three in the morning and there wasn’t enough bedding for two so we slept together.
One thing led to another and she lay down and opened her legs and I sort of got on top of her, I had no notion of foreplay or anything like that and I managed to put it in her with a little bit of assistance, and then I started putting it in and out and in and out again. And I remember thinking, is that it? Is this what I’ve been waiting for? Because this is shit! This is nothing! I didn’t come either, so I didn’t really understand the feeling that can go with it. I’d done it. I’d done the act but I didn’t have the feeling.
It wasn’t long after that that we were doing it every night and I’d kept it from her that I couldn’t come. We used to do it in the public toilets up the lane from the disco where everyone used to go. It was so popular that you could usually recognize the grunts of a familiar co-worker. Then one night she just sat back on the toilet bowl and went, ‘Where’s your fucking spunk?’ Or something like that. She was a game girl, Stella; I was a very lucky boy.
That weekend, I saw a film called ‘Candy’ and I was wanking while I was watching it. Suddenly I felt this really weird sensation, kind of like buzzing. My ears went a bit weird and I stood up and ran into my room, still with a hard cock, and carried on wanking, my legs felt wobbly for a second and I thought, oh my god, what’s going on, and then suddenly, yes! Finally, I’ve orgasmed! I’ve come. Produced sperm. Da da, da da! I’m a man! And that was my virginity.
I was desperate to see Stella again after that, obviously. I think I got one more in, and that was the one where I finally managed to have sex with her and come. A week later, Stella’s best friend Nancy asked her if she could borrow me because she wanted to lose her virginity. College was beckoning and she was buggered if she was going to go off to college still a virgin. Stella actually said to me, ‘Would you mind sleeping with my best friend?’ I was kind of like, ‘Err, sure, yes, I’ll do that’.
And I did. I actually enjoyed that a lot more because I almost thought I knew what I was doing by then. Happy days. Directly after that, when I went off to my A’ level college, I was quite confident and buoyed with the success of my double whammy in the summer holidays.
I met an older woman next who introduced me to LSD and the clitoris. She was thirty and I was seventeen. I called someone a cunt in the pub and the next thing I knew I was being punched in the face and I was on the floor with a woman leering over me with pink hair, Dr Martens and a boiler suit. She was pointing at me shouting, ‘Shut up! I like my cunt!’ and it was literally, like, ‘Wow!’ at first sight.
She was a communist and she was very angry. She looked at me and saw a man who’d been disabled by the state because basically, that’s what Thalidomide had done. She wanted to unlock my anger by fucking my brains out and giving me acid. She was partially successful. Sexually speaking I had a lot more of an idea about what I was doing by the end of that summer.
I had a lot of partners over the years because I was in rock and roll bands and I was shagging everything I could get my hands on. Some moves were not an option to me, because of the disability stuff; there were some areas that I literally could not reach. So I became damn good at oral sex to make up for that. Making the leap and learning how to go down on women was a huge step forward for me because then I could absolutely guarantee their pleasure.
Many years later, this is pathetic of me I know, I tried to sleep with Stella again but it didn’t work. Halfway through the date I realized that I didn’t actually fancy her any more and I was just trying to get closure on something that … didn’t need closure, so that was as far as it went.
I have been married to my partner for fourteen years now and I’m an old hippy. I believe that the physical plane is not as important as the spiritual one, and I’m also a pagan insofar as I’m anti Christian insofar as I believe we should have as much physical pleasure as is possible. And practice it as much as possible, because it will help us reach Nirvana. Rather than abstention from physical pleasure. No! I don’t agree with that. Absolute rubbish! Wank, fuck, do all of that as much as possible, that’s what I say. Because, come on, who of us here can quite honestly say that in times of stress, bringing yourself off in the bath or whatever, doesn’t relieve the damn stress, and make you feel better afterwards? How on earth can that be a bad thing?’
Do you think that when Marvin Gaye wrote Sexual Healing, that perhaps he might have been thinking about today’s story? I think so.
It never ceases to amaze me just how much one person can right someone else’s wrongs through the power of sexual experience alone. Today’s story is a lovely example of that. It reminded me of a man I interviewed many years ago. It was by accident really because I had just interviewed his wife for my book. Afterwards, he started quizzing me about other people I had interviewed. Had I had any ‘difficult’ stories he wanted to know? No, as it happens, I hadn’t at that stage.
At which point, he offered up his own.
Suffice it to say that as he sat and told me a story that involved teenage sexual abuse, I felt a renewed sense of urgency to finish my book. That I was onto something important because people carry some huge stories around inside themselves. This man had never let his out. Why would he? He felt ashamed of it even though it hadn’t been his fault. I knew that other people might benefit from hearing it. But what I really remember about that day is the unexpected ending. His first marriage finished in failure because he couldn’t get over the past, until, in his thirties, he met someone who redressed the balance.
‘Jane was a really gentle, simple soul but she was absolutely fantastic with people. She was brilliant with social relationships. I was with her for four years and she slowly taught me what women are all about. She literally took me by the hand and guided me very gently.
That was the first time in my life that I understood anything about sex, about what women required, and about what they appreciate. I learned more about sex in the first three months with Jane than the whole of my marriage to Jean. I learned what it was like for a woman to have an orgasm. I learned what actually triggered an orgasm. I learned what a woman was looking for and what it all meant. It was all completely new to me at the time and it felt like waking up’.
Here is how today’s storyteller redressed the balance.
‘The first version of how I lost my virginity is quite literally painful for me (in more ways than one). I was 13 nearly 14. I had been with my brothers best friend on an off since I was 9 years old, rather naively believing that he was the 'one', planning to get engaged and married all before I was even 18!
Several months prior to the night I actually lost my virginity. We had tried to have sex but I found it too painful to carry out the act and asked him to stop, which he did. The only time he respected my request to stop. The second time was the weekend before my 14th birthday. For some reason he decided he wanted to have sex with me and nothing was going to stop him. Although initially I did agree to going through with it, my common sense kicked in (as did the knowledge that my entire family were in the house) and I asked him to stop. He refused and continued. I couldn't stop him from doing it. He was 15 when this happened.
Not long after this happened I decided that even though he had taken away my virginity, that technically and in my own eyes I was still a virgin. Which leads onto the second and 'official' story of how I lost my virginity. Which was also around a birthday, but my 20th this time. Although this version is slightly unbelievable to some as I have been told.
I lost my 'virginity' to a member of staff at the college I attended. He was not a teacher but a member of support staff in the college's student union that I was an active part of the student committee of. He joined not long after I had been elected onto the committee and just before the beginning of the summer break. At the time I was dealing with a lot of issues personally and he offered a shoulder to cry on. This obviously forged a bond between us that got stronger over the summer holidays as we talked a lot via text.
Upon returning to college in the September, I began to realise that there was something there. It took a few months before we started seeing each other in secret. In fact the first kiss happened at college and was a bit of a shock for us both! The November after that, we ended up at his house, the illicit kisses in the SU office where no longer enough. He knew about my past encounters with men and took we took it at my pace. He was very gentle and kind and did everything right, it was everything I imagined.'
In honour of ‘#Granumentally’, whose twitter feed I discovered this morning and who turns the very grand age of 87 today, I decided to run this story from my book. ‘Edna' was 93 years old when I interviewed her. I loved the fact that she was prepared to tell me this story although having said that, it was very much in keeping with the kind of character she was. She told things like they were. She was happy to share. Men of that generation were definitely not into talking about their personal lives whereas women of almost any age have a fluency when it comes to the discussion of their personal lives. It’s in our nature to talk about how we feel.
Note the use of language in Edna’s story. She never mentions the word ‘sex’ once. That’s absolutely in-keeping with the sexual and social mores of the time. It was not the done thing. Or, as she also pointed out to me, one didn’t mention ‘going to the loo’. One talked about ‘powdering one’s nose’ or ‘brushing one’s hair’ but one never mentioned anything that even alluded to the fact that we had bodies that, er, did stuff. All those clichés that we hear are absolutely true. But it never sounded to me as if Edna lived less of a life as a result.
‘The First World War was already a year old when I was born in 1915. Both of my parents were involved in it so I stayed with my grandmother in Surrey. She had big boobs and feather beds and I loved it. I used to get into bed with her in the morning in this feather bed, and the boobs, and that was my first few years of life.
Eventually my mother gave up war work and we went back to live in Wimbledon where I had been born. One day I was playing and a man passed around the house and I didn’t know who he was. My mother was sitting on the table and she had had her hair cut. She used to have beautiful hair and she had an Eaton crop and she was smoking a cigarette and he came back and found this woman who he had left with lovely long hair and didn’t know what a cigarette was, sitting on the table, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. That was my father. My little brother was born nine months later.
Though I had two brothers, I never knew what a man looked like until I got married. Now, how my mother kept the two brothers from me, one bathroom, has always been an enigma. You’d have thought I would have had an idea, but I didn’t. Sex was a forboden (sic) subject. And going to the lavatory was a very private matter and that’s how it was. My mother never gave me any advice. When I started periods, she just said, ‘You’ll have these once a month and don’t let your brothers know’.
Eventually, as I grew up, I left school and got a job as a receptionist in a hotel in Bloomsbury. I used to meet lots of chaps and I hung onto my virginity. It was taken for granted that I would. Some of these chaps would grope around but I had had this austere sort of childhood and no one was going to get too near me. Men fumbled and tried to find their way through like the prince did in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and he had to get through all those brambles and everything. Well, they never got that far with me.
I was in love several times, deeply in love. I was going to commit suicide when it ended but I decided not to in the end. Also my father was ill. We thought he had cancer but he actually had TB. He contracted it in the trenches during the war. It lay dormant and took a hold of him when he got older. I used to visit him in the hospital and he would write me these wonderful little poems. I was in love with a man from Peru at the time so there would be a little poem entitled ‘My friend from Peru’ and another time it would be something else. Anyway, he died, just before the Second World War.
Although I was engaged to the chap from Peru, there was no familiarity at all in those days, a kiss good night and that was it. Eventually, he went back to Peru and I was to go out to Havana and get married to him. In the meantime, I met Henry and fell in love with him and we decided to get married. Unfortunately, how it worked out with dates, our wedding day, 12 January 1940, was also the anniversary of my engagement to the chap from Peru and all these roses arrived and my mother was absolutely furious. She said, ‘What are you going to do with them then?’ and I said, ‘You put them on dad’s grave’. So that was that and Henry and I got married.
Before our wedding, I would go up to London at the weekends when Henry was free but we always had separate rooms. One night he did come into my room and got into the bed and things could have gone on from there but with my austere upbringing; I knew that this wasn’t right so off he went. I had half lost my virginity when I say that I’d been fooled around with and manhandled by previous boyfriends but when I got married, that was when I really lost my virginity.
I was frightened on my wedding night and when I saw how he looked, I laughed. I’d never seen anything so funny. In spite of having two brothers I didn’t know what a man looked like. My mother had never told me anything. She never said anything about what would happen when I got married, I had to find out by myself. On the first night I might tell you, I thought this is much ado about nothing, but then I got to quite like it.
In days gone by virginity was a commodity that was sold. Today virginity is a very cheap thing. On the one hand, I don’t think the ideal thing is to keep yourself pure and meet the right man and save yourself for marriage, I don’t believe in that at all. But I feel sorry for young people now because they’re taking their young days and making the most of them but I think there is going to be a regret later on. I don’t think poor girls setting out for an evening’s boozing and then all finding a one-night stand is a good way to start.
I think it is very likely that if you’re in love with someone and you’re not married, that it can happen in a natural sort of way; that happens. But to go out with the intent, that you’ve got condoms in your bag, I don’t like it. The whole point about marriage is that you grow into a deep friendship. You grow older together and you become deeper friends. Henry and I were very deep. We were very good friends.’
Being a topical blog, I probably should be flagging up the fact that Glee has just dealt with ‘the first time’ scenario but number one, I haven’t seen it yet and number two, my US counterpart Therese at ‘How to Lose Your Virginity’ will do a much better job of ‘appraising’ it than I…which she does, right here. I’d like to like Glee but frankly, I still haven’t got over the demise of Buffy.
I should probably also flag up the fact that on last night’s ‘Made in Chelsea’, Ollie Locke and his agent came up with the ground breaking idea to interview as many people as possible about the loss of virginity and turn it into a book. I am truly ahead of the zeitgeist. I guess I’ll let them find out in their own time that that ship has sailed!
Meantime, today’s story took me straight back to my own. A radio interviewer once commented that my story – which he read in my book - seemed a bit cold and business like. That it was a job to be done, a box to be ticked. Because it’s true, at 15 years old I was hideously aware (that’s a bit sad isn’t it), of the fact that most of my close friends had lost their virginity….and I hadn’t. Not that anyone else cared about this detail, but I did. So the interviewer wasn’t completely wrong. I was on a mission that needed to be accomplished and the cute French boy I met on a Spanish holiday was the man for the job.
On the last night of his trip, we snuck up into the hills and did the deed. It was just about as far away from how I had imagined the experience to be than you could possibly comprehend. It was bound to be great because he was so good looking. Right? Wrong. It was what it was. Two young teenagers fiddling around with very little knowledge of how it’s supposed to ‘work’. Ouch. We’d known each other for less than two weeks too which doesn’t really help. But the prescient part of the story, the bit that I really remember is the ‘girl’ part of the story. Despite the fact that I hadn’t felt connected to my experience, I did feel connected to him. And walking away a few hours later, not knowing whether or not I would see him again felt weird.
There is something in the make up of a woman that makes this so. It’s an ancient thing. It’s a cosmic trick if you like and if it were any different, the human race would not survive. It really is as simple as that. We need to feel an attachment to our mates so that we stick together. More so when we are young and fertile than at almost any other time of our lives because sex has the potential to produce life and if life is produced you can be damn sure that you won’t want to be alone.
So wondering, as today’s female story-teller does (despite the fact that she first thought her lover an ‘arrogant knob head’), ‘if it doesn’t mean something more to both of us’ is the most natural feeling in the world. I felt it when it happened to me, today’s story teller feels it and if my radio interviewer had been a woman, she would have felt it too. Its part and parcel of being female and we are built this way because we need to be, whether we like it or not. On some levels, it’s slightly irritating. I mean, wouldn’t it be so much simpler if we could all be like men? But at least it gives me the opportunity to completely contradict myself…..
I think men and women are more alike than ever before. I have come to this conclusion whilst sitting and listening to hundreds of men and women share the complexities of their intimate lives with me. But you don’t need to do this to reach the same conclusion, just look at the world and the way it has changed. Women have stamped all over male territory. We earn money; we buy our own houses and generally look after ourselves whilst damn well doing what we like these days. Meanwhile, the men’s ‘personal grooming’ market has grown out of all recognition. Men moisturize, wax and powder whilst taking paternity leave and occasionally chucking the day job in on a permanent basis and becoming stay at home dads. The times they are a changin’. So……where we will park the evolutionary will to attach ourselves to our mates, the piles of hormones and the traditional balance between the sexes in amongst this gender related confusion? Perhaps our physical make up might change to start mirroring what’s happening in society? Is this possible? Or more to the point, even desirable?
What will our relationships with each other look like in another 500 year’s time? I have absolutely no idea but whilst I am not sure I would like to stay there, I sure wish I could time travel and take a peek, I really do.
‘Hi, I'm Belinda*, I'm 15 from Manchester, England and I lost my virginity about 3 hours ago. I know this may seem like a weird thing to do, but the guy in question has left, so it's not like I've just left him in my bed to write an email about what's just happened.
This feels so strange telling the bare-honest truth to a total stranger, but we agreed, share no details, at all, to our friends.
Charlie and I aren't boyfriend and girlfriend. Up until a few months ago, I didn't even count him as a friend, because I thought he was far too arrogant and a general knob-head and while I still think that, now it just adds to his charm. He was the first and only boy I ever kissed, a month ago, and somehow it's progressed into something that I'm telling you now, all through the wonders of Facebook and it's instant messaging services.
It wasn't perfect, but I never expected it to be after my friend told me how disappointing her first time was, but it was perfect enough for me. I didn't come or anything, but it felt good, and he seemed to have a good time…..so good in fact, that tomorrow I need to go get the morning after pill, which should be fun, making up an excuse to my mum about where I'm going.
To put it in the crudest terms, because there's no other way to put it, I didn't expect giving a blow-job to be so easy. A lot easier than a hand job. It was sore at first but then we eased into it and I did enjoy it immensely….he's fun to be around, because we're both incredibly sarcastic, we understood each other, and it eased the pressure, and made it fun. We were better by far with me on top, and I didn't mind, because I could get the pressure and the angle I wanted from that position. I bled a bit, which he didn't expect, and I forgot to expect.
But, that's the technicalities.
I didn't understand 4 hours ago how much this connects two people. Even though this was only meant to be a 'friends-with-benefits' style arrangement, I'm sitting here still smelling like him, and thinking of the beautiful things he said to me, and wondering if it doesn't mean something more to both of us, but neither one wants to admit it.
That's my story. I still can't quite believe I actually have a story! Thanks a million and one for letting me unload my shit on you!
Belinda Jakes (initials BJ, it's a burden)’
*names, as ever, are changed to protect identity.
And we are back to song titled posts again. It’s been a while. All it took was one mention of The Ramones to come up with the only Ramone’s song that I really know well - primarily because it was often used as a form of communication in a former job. As in, ‘Hey, ho, MONRO’ I digress...
I loved today’s story. I had a moment of total horror when I first opened the email, left it whilst I ran downstairs to fetch something and came back to find it gone. Nowhere to be found. This is my worst nightmare…losing a brilliant contribution. I briefly contemplated posting a request on my blog to the woman who had written from her ‘post break up death bed’ – what a fabulous phrase – and try to get her to send it again. However, the cat looked guilty and eventually I realized that he must have walked across the keyboard whilst I was out of the room and deleted it. I found it nestling in the 'trash' bin. THANK GOD.
What I like most about this story is the writer’s assertation that ‘it’s uncanny how your relationship with sex can be slightly fucked up, even when your parents were super cool about it’. You could use the phrase ‘fucked up’ but in the end, I don’t think it’s ‘fucked up’ so much as just not knowing how the hell you’re supposed to feel about your sex life when you’re young. Is there a benchmark for this? Not really. We’re all individuals and we all have to wind our way through a complicated labyrinth of thoughts, feelings and reactions to the opposite sex - or in the case of lots of young people - the same sex and hopefully come out the other side. It’s tricky.
We can read stuff and look on the internet, whilst simultaneously scaring the crap out of ourselves and feeling a strange thrill, after all, what are we going to learn from watching pornography? That women don’t have pubic hair and appear to climax with very little assistance or interest from the opposite, and incredibly well-endowed and rather oily sex? There’s a lot of information out there but not all of it is useful. Whilst we at The Virginity Project endeavor to give you as realistic a picture as possible about ‘the first time’, in the end, we are not going to be there with you when it happens. It is something that you will do by yourself and your instincts are your best guide. However, honing instincts takes time so ‘fucked up’ it is for the moment. At least until we find our feet and work out what it is that we really need from our intimate lives.
‘First of all I have to specify that I am writing this from my post break up death bed, which is a state that never fails to make me feel a bit nostalgic and prone to reminisce.
At 18 and a half I was the very last of my friends to become sexually active (or, as they say, to get rid of my virginity), and I am pretty proud of how I handled the situation. I was wise enough to not see it as something to give away: in my eyes it was simply a necessary awkward moment that would lead to a life time of enjoyable sex (oh, I was so naive in my teenaged wisdom). I was especially afraid of having sex once with somebody at a party and then never again for a long time, like so many of my friends had done. I wanted time to practice, because from what I knew about sex, I suspected it to be something that requires some time and dedication before it gets, ahem, good in that very special way. Especially if you are a girl, or maybe especially if you're me and lose five pounds before every first date.
But let's look back at my teen age years, that are not that far away but thankfully quite definitely gone. After three years of middle school spent watching other kids making out like it was a national sport from the corner where I was reading books written for an adult audience and watching similar movies, I knew too little and too much to feel confident enough to let those poor pubescent boys I started dating in high school kiss me. So basically I waited for the classic older, dangerous guy that gets you drunk and tries to have sex with you even though you made it quite clear that you'd rather just kiss some more and talk about astrology and childhood memories.
While his equally older friends take your friend's virginity in the next room, three of them in one night. A night that you will remember for quite some time and that will give you a hint of what is wrong in the world.
That night I was on my period and that tiny detail enabled me to keep my virginity (and gain a nice, fat, juicy trauma) for the next three and a half years. Three years in which I kissed three other guys (in the same month) and mostly removed sex from my preoccupations, although it was at the base of each and every single one of them. After a year spent in America in a Jewish private school being puzzled at the relationship between American teenagers and sex, I returned to my small island in Italy and eyed a seemingly innocuous nerdy guy with glasses and a beard that had just broken up with his first girlfriend (what can I say, I like my men vulnerable) and basically forced him to be my first boyfriend and after a couple of formative months, have sex with me.
The funny thing is; he really didn't want to. His previous girlfriend and he had had sex only a couple of awkward times but I was determined and in the end he wasn't that hard to convince. He played an uncool instrument in a band that was about to dissolve, and their very last concert was the very first one I witnessed. My life long fantasy of being with a boy in a band was finally fulfilled, although nothing was quite how I imagined.
That night, I asked my best friend for a condom and the poor boy and I went back to my house. My parents were away for the weekend because my mom was aware of my agenda and quite keen to let me finally have sex. She probably hoped that I would finally calm down and stop throwing chairs at her every other day, or maybe she was just doing exactly what her own mother would have never, ever done for her in the 60's.
The act itself wasn't that remarkable at all. I just remember the pain that was mainly caused by me being extremely nervous and then the surprise I felt when I realized I was actually doing it, having sex, feeling ok about having that kind of intimacy with somebody else. Enjoying that intimacy even (because I definitely wasn't enjoying the intercourse itself). It was the anniversary of our country's liberation from fascism, a beautiful spring night, and I was losing my virginity, in my own bed, with Paul Simonon and the four Ramones cheering from the walls.
It is uncanny how your relationship with sex can be slightly fucked up; even when your parents were super cool about it and nobody ever told you it was a sin or something wrong. Even when you know exactly how it works since you're about 8 years old and even when you have been raised by feminists that taught you to be empowered by your womanhood from an early age. Ok, maybe it's really not that surprising at all.’