The Virginity Project

Everything but the girl…

Perhaps you think that as a non practising Christian, I have something against god. Perhaps you think that I believe that people should throw caution to the wind and the rest of you be dammed. Actually I don’t. But I will tell you this: I am irritated beyond belief by the ways in which religion controls women.

Whoever invented the contraceptive pill was a genius. Could he, (for in a lovely twist of irony it was a he) ever have dreamt what a tidal wave of change would wash over a world that kept women chained to the cooker/home/bed simply because they couldn’t control their own fertility? I am oversimplifying the facts but this is what it really boils down to. Women used to need men and now they don’t. Except for the things that really count in life: love, companionship, warmth and protection. All the things that men need too.

We are all singing from the same song sheet, so why the fuss? Why do people persist in telling other people what to do and dress it up as something else? Its 2008 and women (and men for that matter), must be able to make basic choices for themselves without the burden of guilt.

Here is a consummate lesson in ‘owning your own sexuality’. No muss, no fuss, this is the story of a girl who asked the question, ‘who makes the decisions around here’?

Me, god, or the judgement of everyone else?

I think you know the answer.

Lynette, Southern California, USA (Born 1985)

I was the ‘everything-but-sex’ girl for a good six years of my sexual maturity. My first kiss came from a boy who pushed me up against a wall and stuck his tongue down my throat.....not all it was hyped up to be. He'd come over while my mom was at work and we'd make-out for hours. I'd let him put his hand up my shirt but that was the extent of it, after all, Jesus was watching.

One day he thought himself clever and slipped Mr. Happy over to the side of his shorts and I very accidentally came into contact with the most disgusting, wrinkly appendage I'd every felt. I was pretty much over it right then and there.

Boyfriend # 2. I'm sixteen now and everything-but-sex now includes my hands and his hands and a crazy, messy blur of clothes and mouths and ‘everything-but’. I asked if he was ready. I was scolded for even bringing it up and we continued on as if nothing had happened. I got to hold on to my v-card and assume the Christian mould and he got to continue being a weenie.

For years I pulled out the 'waiting till marriage' speech every time someone asked, when secretly, it was merely by chance that I hadn't blown it at sixteen. It became this crazy, inner struggle between what the church had told me was right and what I really felt. This continued until I was twenty. Enter Mike. Four years older than me and very much not a virgin. Beautiful piece of man. Incredible, charming and seductive. I knew he was a bad idea the second I laid eyes on him.

I let him take me to dinner. After a month of make-out sessions with me saying ‘no, no’ and him saying ‘I won't, just let me *stay* here’, I finally gave it. I'd like to believe I ‘gave in’, but truly he had one foot in the door already.

It was amazing. I went home that night and stared at myself in the mirror for an hour. I felt like something in me had shifted and like it should have shown on the outside...it didn't. But I had been changed; I had taken charge of something that for so long had been controlled by something other than myself. And it brought me closer to the thing I had feared for so long, that maybe God's not so concerned with whether or not I'm wed before I'm bedded. Maybe it's about being aware of myself and things that I'll stand for. My happiness, my confidence, my self-respect came from being that much closer to understanding the inner workings of myself.

God still loves me, and now so do I. And seriously, everything-but? It all came down to owning my own sexuality and allowing it to grow within me without being told how to do it.

The times they are a-changin’?

Perhaps it is the practice I have been getting with the interviewing of people, or maybe it is a lifelong skill that I simply never noticed, whatever it is, I appear to have an innate ability to get people to talk about stuff - without really trying. Take last week as an example. It was Saturday and it was national expose your flesh day. You know the one I mean. The one day in the year that the sun comes out and people everywhere, much like the ecstatic scrabbling of dogs looking for leads, tear open the doors of their closets and don the most optimistic item of clothing they own in order to celebrate April’s first five minutes of sunshine.

And so it was that I found myself in a strapless sun dress standing outside Somerfields in Brentford, yes, Brentford, at 7pm on a Saturday night. It was my old buddy Mark’s birthday and I had the dress to prove it. We met at The Brewery Tap. On arrival I was reminded of a previous visit, many moons ago. It was vaguely comparable to the scene in American Werewolf where our hero arrives at the back of beyond, pushes open the door to the local pub only to be met by rotating heads and the stony silence of a series of League of Gentlemen look-a-likes.

Except this time they were smiling. Kind of. ‘We don’t get your type around here much’. This was clearly what they were thinking as I perused the facilities. To the right, a pool table – still nobody on it! So far, so good. To the left, the judge and jury, a motley bunch consisting mainly of Brentford’s most ‘senior’ members, and, starboard, our host, stationed behind his taps, much like the captain behind the controls of a large sailing ship.

The pub might not have changed much but I have. I’m more of a driver than a drinker these days and I couldn’t resist half a lager in one of those glasses that looks like the thick glass windows of an old fashioned pub. You don’t get many of those to the pound in your average Gastro pub. Nope, there’s wasn’t a herb-crusted cod nor pan-fried frittata in sight at The Brewery Tap. This is what we would term ‘a proper boozer’. You’ll have a packet of pork scratchings and a pint of Young’s and be glad of it here at the Brewery Tap.

Now, I know I said I had an innate ability to get people to tell me stuff but I’m only half telling the truth. Mark began celebrating his birthday at around midday so I can’t take all the credit. Mr Lager played his part too. It was quite a scene as I stepped out into the self-designated young(er) persons area i.e. the garden. A lot of celebrating had clearly been done and one person was asleep on the table.

The birthday boy was having a fine old time, if you could only get a look behind his sunglasses – so the thing on a Saturday night out in Brentford. My good friend Tania had also been let out of the house for the night, a party girl if ever there was one and it wasn’t long before they were contemplating the piano action in the front bar. Yes ladies and gentleman, this wasn’t just any old real boozer. This was a real boozer where real old people sit around and listen, sometimes even joining in, to another real old person who plays the piano and sings. Tania looked like she had died and gone to heaven. I, meanwhile, spent some time getting to know the birthday guests. The first conversation went something like this:

Him: what do you do with your time then?

Me: I interview people about virginity loss.

Him: (raising eyebrows), I don’t actually remember losing my virginity but I am about to become a grandfather.

My turn to raise my eyebrows now and you would too if you were looking at what I was looking at.

Me: If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?

Him: I’m 39

Me: and how old is your expectant son or daughter?

Him: It’s my son, and he is 13

Here I will leave a long silence in which to contemplate this astonishing piece of news, although in real time I think I did continue to gabble about something whilst lifting up my jaw from its resting place on the pavement. Here was a normal enough looking man, of sane mind, no outward signs of poverty/ill-education or any other cliché ridden stereotype that you might care to reach for in order to explain such a calamity, telling me that his thirteen year old son is about to become a father. Tania has a son who is 13. He is a lovely boy but he still laughs if you tickle him. He is a child.

For the record, the man looked like he had been slapped about the face with a fish. And in amongst the lager, cigarettes and the warmth of a first Saturday evening spent outdoors, I felt sad for this man, and his son, and most of all, for a girl who had managed to conceal a tiny human being inside her body for almost seven months until the bump got too big and the game was up. We want to believe that this doesn’t happen in this day and age, but it does. Virginity loss can be every bit as dramatic now as it was for our parents.

Revelation number two pales a little in comparison but it is no less poignant. The owner of the tale was Dave, a forty two year old man, whom, as it turns out, was a frequent visitor to many of the same watering holes I frequented in my teens. The Cobwebs, The Bull and Bush and The Old Ship. We revisited them in our memories and then got onto first gigs.

Me: ‘My first gig on my own’, (up until13 years old, my brothers took me to gigs. Genesis, Echo and the Bunnymen, Blancmange, I was a pretty eclectic kid), ‘was the Hammersmith Palais to see Africa Bambaataa and The Soul Sonic Force’.

Him: ‘I was conceived outside the Hammersmith Palais’.

There’s not much to say to that except how the monkey nuts did that happen?

As it turned out, he was adopted and he didn’t find out this truly unique piece of information until years later when he questioned his birth mother and she told him the truth about her ‘situation’. Without going into too much detail, a night out at the Hammersmith Palais can be memorable for many a reason, not least for the fumble outside in the car that led to the birth, and the adoption of a son in 1966.

Perhaps I do have one of those faces. Or maybe we are just a generation who are happier with the truth. We no longer live in an era where pregnancy has to be concealed – unless you are thirteen years old. In a week when I was also told a story about a woman who gave birth to her second child and lost her husband to a heart attack on the same day, I realise that truth really is stranger than fiction. You don’t have to scratch the surface of most human beings too hard in order for them to tell you stories that you will never forget. We all have them. Perhaps I might write down a few of my own sometime.

Meanwhile, the party in the pub continued. Not only that, but the ice had begun to melt as Tania and Co talked the pub pianist into playing a selection of Elvis classics and the evening’s entertainment really got underway. Later, as Mark, with two fingers bandaged from an accident earlier in the week, attempted as good a rendition as you could ever expect to hear from a man with only eight digits of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, I fancied our geriatric audience were enjoying themselves more than they let on. But it still wasn’t quite like this in our day, they seemed to say. Actually it was. You just didn’t talk about it is all.

*All names have been changed to protect identity.

I can't get No....duh nuh nerr....SATISFACTION

Judging by some of the stories I get sent, virginity is not a place that most of us want to go. A recent contributor summed it up thus: ‘most people view virgins as pathetic losers who should just make more of an effort.’

No mincing of words there then. But he has a point. Time and culture have dictated virginity to be a place of shame, disempowerment even, despite the fact that our definition of virginity loss precludes any number of sexy things that we might have done that don’t involve putting a penis into a vagina. As one of my interviewees once said, ‘I certainly didn’t feel like I had ‘lost’ anything, I’d had so much cunnilingus, I had lost my innocence long ago’. I rest my case.

Virginity loss is a nebulous issue, but in the end it doesn’t really matter what I think or how we define it, it is still the bogeyman of modern culture. Who wants to be a dried up old virgin when you can be, well, Jordon?

Which got me wondering if virginity really is all that bad? And do we all have such a negative outlook? There must be someone out there who could turn this thing on its head?

I found her.

‘Virginity is extremely alluring’.

Come again?

Its author continues: ‘its mysterious allure is not rooted in an image of innocence and purity, but rather in the notion of strength. It takes a strong woman to be abstinent, and that’s the sort of woman I want to be’.

Now, I can’t speak for the guys, and something tells me that these words are unlikely ever to be uttered from the lips of a man, but whatever way you look at it, this is still an interesting statement. Who would say such a thing?

Janie Fredell is who, a student at Harvard University and contributor to a series of articles by Randall Patterson for The New York Times. Janie is a Catholic girl who had never found the need to join the abstinence movement, mostly because she came from a place where ‘literally everyone’ wore chastity rings - but Harvard was the opposite end of the scale.

‘The hook-up culture is so absolutely all-encompassing’, she says. ‘It’s shocking! It’s everywhere!’ She decided to take a stance and took up the reins at ‘True Love Revolution’, Harvard’s very own answer to ‘The Silver Ring Thing’. I should be shot down for such a lazy comparison, so, to re-dress the balance, here is their homepage mission statement to read for yourself:

‘TRL is a new non-sectarian, student run organization at Harvard College dedicated to the promotion of pre-marital abstinence. We strive to present another option to our peers regarding sex-related issues, endorsing ideas of abstinence and chastity as a positive alternative for ethical and health reasons’.

OK, so far, so…abstinent. It’s not my cup of tea but each to their own and here’s the bit that interests me:

‘It’s extremely countercultural for a woman to assert control over her own body’, says Fredell. ‘It is, in fact, a feminist notion. Conventional feminism’, she explains, ‘teaches that control of your body means the freedom to have sex without consequences – sex like a man. I am an unconventional feminist’.

This is a pretty big statement and we could spend all day picking it apart. Believe me, I have just spent twenty minutes trying to do so in a nutshell. We all have our points of view. I’ll just say this. I admire her stance. In this day and age, it’s not easy to stand up and say ‘I don’t have sex and that’s my choice’. ‘Feminist notions’ aside, it is still her right as a human being and as a woman to do as she pleases.

But is self-inflicted fundamentalism really healthy? After all, whether we like it or not, human bodies are hard wired for procreation. Even if we were deaf and blind with no sense of smell, we would still have the hormones and as such, the urge to mate. Should we be holding ourselves back?

Just a thought.

The point I am trying to get to is this: does virginity have to be the last word in hell or can it be something better, a position of power even?

I don’t know about power but medieval woman might have argued for something even more intoxicating: freedom.

Back in the day, you were either married or waiting to get married. These were the roles that were allocated to women. There was none of this ‘you can be anything you like’ malarkey. You got married and fulfilled your duty as a wife, a mother and a housekeeper. Nobody expected any more, or less of you.

You can see why the convent held a certain allure.

Virginity equaled opportunity for the medieval nun. Yes, they were married to god and a life of devotion, but above and beyond that, relatively speaking, nuns got to call the shots. They spent their time with like-minded people. Nobody expected them to change nappies, tend children and have sex with their parent’s choice of marriage partner. More than that, they were educated. This might not sound like a big deal but back in the dark ages, women’s education was not top of the list of priorities. As Hanne Blank writes in her book ‘Virgin, The Untouched History’…

‘Years of singing or listening to a relatively limited collection of familiar texts whilst looking at the books would eventually result in women figuring out how to match what they heard to what they saw’. She continues, ‘to the nuns, it was a miracle bestowed upon the deserving, pure-hearted virgin by god: when the gift of literacy bloomed in the mind of Hedwig von Regensburg, the entire choir of sisters saw her heart shine through her body and habit “like the sun through glass”.

Powerful stuff. Just throw Elizabeth 1st into the mix, a woman who knew that relinquishing her virginity for marriage could cost her her freedom and the future of her country, and we see that virginity packed quite the heady punch in those days. But all to an obvious cost – our sex lives.

Times are different now. We live in the era of ‘having it all’. We have the freedom, the education and the sex life. But it still comes at a price. Because this will all be cold comfort to my lonely friend, the ‘pathetic loser who should just make more of an effort’. And I am right back where I began.

I feel for men. I really do. You could argue that women’s freedom has been to the detriment of men. Because whilst women may have the opportunity to have ‘sex like a man’, the sad fact is, that depending on which way you look at it, this now means that she can choose not to have sex with you.

Women hold the cards. A fact that I wish I could shout from the rooftops to teenage girls who still think that they need to lose virginity in order to gain acceptance/to be a ‘real’ woman – insert whatever your particular insecurity is here. But they don’t, and nor do men. Because that’s what this post is really all about. That times may change, as does our perception of virginity loss, but the pay off is that we suffer in equal measures. It’s not just women who are sweating about virginity. Men are too!

Laugh? I almost spilt boiling water all over my....

I have struggled to make you laugh at times. Heck, I have struggled to make myself laugh at times. It’s been a challenge. Virginity loss isn’t all fun and games. But it is a bittersweet combination of comedy and drama. And therein lays the fun. I have searched high and low for that ‘laugh out loud, you could not make it up’ story and I think I may just have found it.

Granted, it’s a lot to do with perception. I don’t think the owner of this story thought it was funny at the time. But time, as they say, is a great healer. It even heals scars. Scars caused by the application of boiling hot water. I shouldn’t laugh, but I did. Read on – and weep...courtesy of the excellent hownottogetlaid.com...

Going to California….

There are lots of things you could say about this story. You could comment on the fact that its author is technically a minor. You could also point out the last line - the smartly penned assertion that her virginity has ‘got lost in the mail’, but mostly what I love about this story is the way that even though I don’t live in California and even though I am no longer seventeen, this young woman has allowed me to get right underneath the skin of her life. Intentionally or not, Aimee builds intrigue and suspense right from the first word she writes. It’s never clear which way this story will go. It still isn’t.

Reading her words puts me straight into the shoes of a seventeen-year old world. I can hear the slam of shuttered porch doors on warm dusty streets and I can feel the late night walks around quiet neighbourhoods and the first kiss from someone you love. Aimee has shown us an episode of her life but one way or another, the story will continue to be told whether we have a subscription or not.

Aimee. Born 1991. Virginity loss TBC.

‘I'm only seventeen years old but I grew up fast. I was invited to take courses at Stanford University in California when I was in 4th grade. I graduated high school at the age of sixteen and I am now a full time student while I save up for University.

I met my boyfriend at my job just a month and a half after my sixteenth birthday. He was actually one of the assistant managers and he had just been transferred to our location. I was instantly attracted to him but never acted on it because, well, he was technically my boss and older than me. We worked together for four months before he was promoted to general manager and yet another location.

I was hanging out with my best friend and we decided to invite him. We were all hanging out at her house and he said he wanted to get something out of his car to show us, (it was his old school ID and it didn’t look anything like him). He asked if I wanted to help him and I said sure. When we were at his car he said, ‘Aimee, I really want to tell you something, but you can't tell Mary-Beth.’ Mary-Beth being my best friend. I of course said I wouldn't tell her and then he said he was head over heels for her.

Of course I was hurt, but what was I to expect? Mary-Beth was nineteen, almost twenty, much closer to his age than me. I said I wouldn't tell her and I agreed to help him. If I couldn't be with him, I wanted to at least be his friend. We became really close. We talked everyday on the phone and hung out at least every other day.

Then while we were walking at about eleven o’clock at night, (he worked late and not in town so we would hang out once he got off), we started talking and he was telling me how I was his best friend and he could talk to me about anything and he was really comfortable around me.

At this point I liked him a lot, I had gotten to know him and he was so sweet and amazing. I'm not to let my feelings be known to someone because I fear rejection among other things. I didn't want to ruin our friendship by telling him how I felt. But before I could tell my mouth no, I heard these words pop out of me, ‘What if I were older?’ I just stopped walking and froze. I couldn't believe what I had just said!

Alex stopped walking also and looked at me. All he said was, ‘What did you say?’ I couldn't pretend like I didn't say it, so I just said, ‘What if I were older? What if I were eighteen?’ He didn't say anything for a moment and I felt myself freaking out. He walked closer to me since we were standing a good ten feet away from each other. He looked into my eyes and said, ‘You would be Mary-Beth’.

He leaned down and tilted my chin up with his index finger and kissed me. It was only my second kiss ever. It was the most amazing moment. We had only been friends for three weeks and all of a sudden we were kissing. We talked for at least two hours about the situation and had come up with the only logical solution. We would remain friends until my eighteenth birthday then we would date. We weren't sure if we could resist the temptation of each other’s bodies so we had to have boundaries. Since I was a minor and he was not, he could get in a lot of trouble.

But even being just friends, it didn't quite work out. We were basically dating, and eventually we just said we were. He then asked me if I would be his girlfriend. I of course said yes. I had never had a boyfriend before. Unless you count the whole ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ thing in 5th grade where you sit together at lunch.

It was amazing. He was so sweet and wonderful, and nice. He would do little things that would make me smile. He would open the car door for me, he would walk closest to the cars when we were walking, he would randomly surprise me with a rose.

He said ‘I love you’ first, and about a week later I said it to him. I had never said it before and well, I didn't really know how to. Since I only had had one other kiss before him I obviously hadn't done any other type of sexual interaction with another person. But he was really sweet about all of it and I found myself exploring his body and allowing him to explore mine.

We didn't take the physical stuff very slow. Well, all the stuff leading up to actual sexual intercourse. Within a week I was comfortable enough to have my top off, but it took about three weeks until I was comfortable enough to even have him touch below the belt, but it took me a few days more to let him look. It all was fun and new experiences for me.

After dating for two months, I had decided I was ready to lose my virginity to him. I told him and he asked me all sorts of questions so we could decide if I was emotionally ready or if my hormones were just telling me to do it. After figuring out why I wanted to and things like that we both agreed that it was something I was ready to do.

But once we go to the actual act, I got extremely nervous and tightened up. Needless to say, your body won't let anything in when your muscles have closed the opening! He was really sweet about it though, telling me it was okay and that he will wait until we are ninety if that's what I need. We just layed in bed naked and held each other.

I lived with my mother, and only three months after we began dating, Alex moved in. We tried to have sex every once in awhile but it always hurt too bad. It's now five months after he moved in and six months after our initial try, and we still have yet to have sex. So even though I'm still a virgin, I find myself not feeling like one some of the time because of my relationship and what we have done. But I definitely see myself losing my virginity to Alex. He is the man I hope to marry one day and the only man I wish to sleep with.

Hopefully soon will we be able to do the deed, I can't wait to share the experience with him. Even though he is not a virgin, and hasn't been for many years, he has remained supportive and does not pressure me in any way. My ‘virginity’ may still be intact but my heart has been given away, and the gift of my virginity might have just temporarily been lost in the mail

Sincerely,
Aimee,
California, USA’

Sign me up...

Having spent a lifetime not recognizing quite basic forms of flirtation from the opposite sex (note: for any potential suitors, you may have to make yourselves obvious, when I say obvious, I mean installing green traffic light signals outside my house type obvious), my heart goes out to this week’s story teller. Nineteen year old Christopher is a teenager. He differs in no other way to you or me, except that he is Autistic.

This is a condition that amongst other things, affects the perception of quite basic non verbal communication. The ‘playing hard to get’ routines of the average teenager would be lost on the Autistic youth. The casual signals that you and I (usually) read would be invisible to the Autistic eye. Christopher explains it thus:

‘I have trouble with women. They tend to be very subtle which of course is entirely lost on me along with their non-verbal signals. I have difficulty recognising the significance of expressions and gestures as well as the more implicit language features – intonation and stress, etc.’

And we think we have a hard time!

Christopher has adopted what some may consider a radical solution to this problem. He has taken the bull by the horns, saved up some cash and taken the short cut. Christopher chose to lose his virginity to an escort. I applaud his brave, pragmatic approach. These qualities will serve him well as he prepares to leave home and go to university, a bold step by anyone’s standards. Here is his story…

‘Dear Kate,

I've been considering sending you an e-mail for some time now but have only recently plucked up the courage.

Until the 25th of May, 2007 I had never had a girlfriend, never kissed a woman, never held hands, never touched, and never came close to having sex. On this day I had a two hour appointment with a beautiful twenty-five year-old escort who went by the name of Dannie.

I've always struggled with social interaction, particularly with the opposite sex. This is due to having mild autism and also having suffered extreme levels of bullying throughout most of my life. I am generally considered very handsome and do not have a shortage of women interested in me but I don't have the social skills or the confidence to do anything about it - although I am working on it and feel my virginity-loss experience has helped immensely.

The idea of using an escort for my first time had been in my head for about a year but I had not seriously considered it until my eighteenth birthday on the 4th February 2007. Roughly a week before meeting Dannie, I phoned the agency which she worked for. They were friendly and put me on to the escort I had selected (which I wasn't prepared for and, unfortunately, nearly hyperventilated just speaking to her).

The day came and I took a taxi to the city where she was based. I arrived at her flat and took about ten minutes to bring myself to ring her door bell. When I did, I was greeted by Dannie who was even more stunning in real life than in her photos. Five foot nine tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, very soft features, and large, supple breasts (I hope that doesn't sound crude, if so I apologise).

She greeted me warmly with a kiss on the cheek, (the closest I'd ever got to a woman) and invited me inside. I handed her the envelope of money (£250), she invited me to sit down and offered me a drink of wine which I accepted. She went to the kitchen to pour the drinks, and presumably check the money also.

Dannie returned with the drinks and we talked for about fifteen minutes; just general chit-chat. She asked me to come to the bedroom, but I sheepishly asked for another drink which she obliged. When pouring the drink she asked 'Christopher . . . are you a virgin?' I answered that I was, something which I'd never admitted to anyone before and had always vehemently denied when previously questioned. She talked to me reassuringly as I drank and then led me to the bedroom.

I won't go into details but the rest of the appointment was amazing and intimate though we were basically strangers, we spoke more during and after which was, again, very intimate and personal. I left the appointment having received one last kiss, and wearing a grin which didn't fade for a few months and still returns when I reminisce.

I was extremely relieved to be free of the bonds of adult male virginity. As clichéd as this may sound, I felt like I had removed the weight of the world from my shoulders. I have since become much more confident in communicating with people. I still haven't had a meaningful relationship with a non-paid woman, though I have seen two other escorts since which, though not as special as the first, have served to make me more confident with women.

Although I was only eighteen at the time, and am only nineteen now, I could not and cannot see myself ever having had sex or a relationship without having seen an escort; I needed this. I will be going to University in September and hope to have a fresh start and, hopefully, forge new friendships and pursue a meaningful relationship with a woman. I will never forget Dannie and do not regret my decision to pay for the experience.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher, 19 years old, from England'

Given the prevalence Autism, I had to ask Christopher what advice he might offer to someone else considering this course of action. He answered with the following nuggets….

‘I would say that it's important to keep an open mind and be willing to learn, or more importantly, be willing to be taught. My first time I left my socks on and was jokingly scolded for it, we laughed and I didn't do it again. So, yeah, I'd say don't take things too seriously; be light-hearted in your approach and humility never hurt.

I'd also advise to aim to experience a variety of different women, not just one age group, ethnicity, background, et cetera. I've been with a tall blonde twenty five year-old, a medium height black-haired thirty year-old, and a short brunette thirty eight year-old. All of them brought a new and totally different experience.

Finally, I'd say if you're looking to use a sex worker to gain experience/ lose virginity/ whatever, then be sure to research them. Check previous clients' reviews, the reliability of the agency/girl, and remember that you generally get what you pay for. Also, I'd recommend a minimum booking of two hours, particularly for your first time; it gives you more time to relax and get to know the woman on some level.’

Wise words.

However you feel about Christopher’s choice, it is interesting to note that despite the fact that he lives with a condition that excludes him from the bore of standing on social ceremony, he is still prepared to go to great lengths to rid himself of his virginal status. He goes on to say this:

‘Now that I'm not a virgin I feel much more confident and happy in all aspects of life. As bizarre as this no doubt sounds, the moment I stopped being a virgin was the moment my confidence and general happiness increased ten-fold.’

You can’t argue with that.

Note: all names changed to protect identity.

Fear-less and fancy free..

When Donnie first sent me the story in the previous post, I wrote back…

‘Wow. That is one big story and you tell it so well. It illustrates so beautifully what a powerful experience the loss of virginity can be, coming as it often does at a time in our lives when we are so 'in the moment', everything is new, we have nothing to hold back from because we don't understand the concept of holding back, holding back from what?’

As I read this, an image from a television program I once saw springs to mind. The presenter made his point by setting a sweet chubby baby down on a glass floor. Beneath the floor was a big fat nothing. Infinity. Space. Nada. Was the baby fazed? Of course not. Why would he be? Fear is a learned response. The millions of adults who have purchased ‘Feel The Fear And Do it Anyway’ will testify to this.

Beyond ‘innocence’, people have often found it difficult to articulate what it is that they think they are losing when we talk about ‘virginity loss’. But perhaps ‘loss’ is the metaphor for something more profound. Maybe it is the fearlessness that we miss the most.

When we fall for the first time, we often fall hard. To compound the dullness of the thud, some of us, well, Donnie, managed to time this with his first sexual experience. True to form, he finds the right words to describe this bittersweet collection of feelings…

‘Thanks. You're exactly right about us not holding back. I think that's what people REALLY miss when they talk about the loss of innocence. It's not the innocence they miss at all - I certainly don't - it's the willingness to throw oneself entirely into something with no regard for the consequences.

That's the most beautiful element of youth. And it's that feeling, the loss of it - that is really what we lose. That's the idea I think is so beautifully captured in the Eden myth. I remember in the months after she and I fell apart, I read ‘Paradise Lost’ for the first time and I was blown away by how brilliantly Milton captures just that feeling. Adam and Eve are in the full flush of youth, absolutely unafraid and perfectly in sync. But after the fall:

‘They sate them down to weep, nor onely Teares
Raind at thir Eyes, but high Winds worse within
Began to rise, high Passions, Anger, Hate,
Mistrust, Suspicion, Discord, and shook sore
Thir inward State of Mind, calme Region once
And full of Peace, now tost and turbulent:
For Understanding rul'd not, and the Will
Heard not her lore, both in subjection now
To sensual Appetite, who from beneathe
Usurping over sovran Reason claimd
Superior sway.’

Yikes! If you needed a reason to regress, there it is.

Through the past darkly....

Coming as they do, at a point in our lives when we are ‘unformed’, free from the adult shaped shackles of ‘holding back’ or ‘being sensible’, the teenage years leave us free to throw ourselves fully at our first sexual experiences with no holds barred. Heart and all.

In response to Donnie’s story, I wrote back and told him that I will never forget the first time that someone really hurt me. Not that it matters now, but I can still recall its smell, taste and feeling. For Donnie, this bittersweet event collided with another ‘first time’ – the first time he had sex. Ouch. Like many of you, he expresses his feelings clearly. Furthermore, with hindsight, he has learnt to appreciate the past. Good or bad, all our experiences have their parts to play. This is as powerful a story as you will ever hope to hear…

‘If I pause for even a second, I won't send this to you, so I am just going to send it as I wrote it before I have a chance to change my mind:

It was ten years ago this month that I lost my virginity and the experience has left me with memories at once beautiful and bitter.

I was in college, working at a bookstore where it was my job to catalogue all their books for sale on their website. I had a key and often worked late at night and this meant that I and the girl I loved had a place where we could go and be away from the dormitories and our roommates. To say that I loved her would be a pale word for a feeling of radiant brilliance. I savored her. Every angle, every facet of her mind and her words and her eyes seemed to infuse me with an energy that I had never experienced before. When I was with her I felt that blessings were falling around me in a circle, shielding us both from a grey and chilly world.

One night, late in the dark store, after talking about Joseph Conrad novels, we kissed more and more deeply, and everything began to spin around me; all the square angles of the books and shelves blurred like a cartoon as I removed the lace from the curves of her body. It was hard to believe she was real—that anything could be so beautiful. Of course I had seen naked women before in pictures, and that had somehow infused the whole idea with a degree of unreality that now seemed to surround us.

We were laying on the floor between shelves of old books, and it all seemed like magic rather than reality; like music rather than sounds. I remember how her heat surprised me. I remember how her legs felt when they moved up around my ribs. I remember something she whispered to me—a whisper I sometimes still hear at night. I remember when I climaxed, the feeling rising up in me in a rush of heat: not like the feeling it had been when I was alone.

I remember playing with her hair afterwards, as we lay together panting and hot. And most of all I remember the feeling much later, as the sun was rising and we left the store. She was wearing my coat. And everything in the world was different. I noticed it instantly—as though the world had changed color; as though everyone had been speaking in a foreign accent and now suddenly switched to my own. I felt connected with the earth and the trees and the animals around me, and, of course, with her. It was truly a revelation.

I felt redeemed; saved somehow from an emptiness of which I had once had only a vague notion. In the ensuing weeks, as we made love more and more, I felt as though I had discovered a spiritual salvation of which religion had always seemed a bland imposter. I had never been a religious person, although I had appreciated religion's emotional aspirations. Now I was part of those aspirations.

It was only weeks later that it ended for us, under peculiarly painful circumstances. We tried briefly to salvage what had been, but it did not work. I was faithful; she was not. My heart was truly broken, as it has never been before or since. I fell into a depression and a year later decided to kill myself. I lay on my bed holding a knife and staring at it. I put it to my skin, but did nothing else. I won't go into what happened next, or describe how my desperate attempts to salvage what she and I had were rebutted with two painful betrayals. Suffice to say that I put my life together, and in the decade that has passed since I have made a successful and happy life, one of which I am deeply proud; one which makes me so glad I did not take my life as I so seriously considered then.

Six or seven years ago I saw met up with her again at a restaurant on the East Coast. She was with someone else, and after our lunch, I was able finally and at last to let her go. At home, I threw away my mementoes of her. Since then I have found a woman I love with all my heart and this summer will be our five-year anniversary.

My college girlfriend has married, and I hope she has found a life of tranquility, and that her husband fills her heart, as evidently I could not. Although the pain she caused me can never be washed away, and can never allow us to be friends, I am still intensely grateful for what she gave me, and I am able now to look back on that night and the other nights with magnanimity and fondness.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking of her and I am reminded of lines from my favorite poem, Tennyson's ‘Ulysses’: ‘I am part of all that I have met; / Yet all experience is an arch where through / Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move.’

I told her then that I would always love her, and, for better or for worse, it seems to be true.'

Donnie, from the United States

The write to express yourself...

The brilliant emails and stories that you send me are a constant joy. This is what makes The Virginity Project tick. It doesn’t happen everyday – sending your most intimate sexual stories to a stranger can be a daunting prospect, but when you do, the results are great.

‘Oh my story isn’t that interesting – you wouldn’t want to hear it’.

Not true. Everyone has a different perspective. Your experience is every bit as unique as the tips of your fingers. And lets face it; the moment itself isn’t always much to write home about. What makes the story great are the details. How did you get there? What was happening around you at the time – literally or metaphorically? Can you remember why you lost your virginity? Compared to what you might tell me now with the benefit of hindsight?

The telling of stories is a powerful experience. Whether on paper or by voice, re-living a watershed moment can be revealing. I promised myself I wouldn’t mention the word ‘cathartic’ but I can’t help it. How many times have I observed a look of relief on the faces of people who have chosen to tell me stories? Too many to mention.

Asides from anything, it can be fun. And a chance to express yourself. So, people of the world, if you get the urge, pick up your pens and create. If you would like some guidance, drop me a line and I’ll send you some starting points but here are a few more to get you going….

Is virginity ‘loss’ a physical or mental moment?

Can you describe this moment?

What does your story say about you?

Does the way we lose our virginity matter?

Keep them coming - katemonroe@yahoo.com

* Please note – all names will be changed to protect identity *

The Virginity Project takes a trip....

Water Lillies is one of those French films that normally I would hate, and truth be told, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick between that and ‘Echo Park LA’, another film that features virginity ‘loss’, I would choose Echo Park or ‘Quinceanera’ as it was originally known. But that’s just me and there’s a reason for it. I like happy. I like bright and I like warm weather. Whilst elements of Echo Park LA are harsh, the story is told against the rich vibrant background of Latino life in the Sunshine state – California – with a guaranteed 365 days of nice weather per year. Life might be hard but the temperature is hot and the ‘uncle’ of the film is the owner of one of the cutest little gardens I have ever seen.

Horticultural preferences asides, ‘Water Lillies’ is another kettle of fish altogether. You know those French films that are set in the geographical equivalent of Staines? Not even Staines but Staines in the sticks. Staines in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and nowhere to go and the director never lets you forget this for even a moment or tries to dress this town up to be anything other than what it is. This is the filmic version of heroin chic. No frills, no spills, just real life with all the glamour of a bare bulb swinging back and forth across a sparsely decorated bedroom.

I’m just trying to flag up some of the internal prejudices that this rookie film reviewer has to wrestle with when she steps into the cinema and frankly I don’t suppose I shall be spending much of my life reviewing films for anyone other than myself with that attitude but I will say this: ‘Water Lilies’ is a terrific film.

This is a film that takes you back to a time when stuff mattered. I don’t mean the stuff that you think about now: houses, mortgages, jobs and money, I mean the important stuff. Desire, boys, girls and hormones. Do you remember when the four walls that surrounded your bedroom felt like the universe? Do you remember the first time you felt like you might die if the feelings you felt were not reciprocated? This film does. It takes us slap bang into the world of three very different young women as they explore their first forays into the world of physical love.

There are no holds barred here, literally and figuratively. The director pulls no punches when she illustrates how the foxier of the three goes about the technical loss of her virginity - I don’t want to ruin this scene for you, you’ll have to see it. These are young urban women with nothing to hold them back from pursuing their teenage desires, unlike the protagonist of my other new favorite film, ‘Echo Park LA’ – a bit of a misnomer actually as it came out in 2006.

Magdalena has no such luck. She is on the eve of her ‘Quinceanera’. This is the traditional Mexican celebration that informs the world of a girl’s impending woman hood. Virginal women hood. ‘Quinceanera’ means fifteen and as such, all fifteen-year old Mexican girls are supposed to be ‘pure’. This is a problem for Magdalena because she is pregnant.

Here we arrive at a theme that these two films share. One of the modern absurdities of our time is the misinformed belief that an inconsequential piece of skin is a reliable indication of virginity. Every sane person knows that a hymen can be broken in so many ways, none of which involve sexual intercourse.

For our French sisters, this tiny piece of skin represents nothing more than a physical barrier, something to be removed quite literally, again - I won’t tell you how - and, most importantly, in order to save face. No one wants to be a big prissy virgin. But for Magdalena, the presence of this anatomical detail is a saving grace. She might be pregnant but she didn’t have sex - at least not the penetrative kind.

And yes, in case you are wondering, it is possible to get up the duff this way. My friend’s thirteen-year old daughter is living proof of this fact. Hello? Fingers can fit into all sorts of places and sperm can swim!! Luckily for Magdalena, this oversight has been noted by the local doctor, luckily for us, not before our hapless heroine is dispatched to live with the other black sheep of her family, her gay cousin. Here the film finds its heart between the tender interplay of these characters and their protector, the lovely garden owning great uncle.

Neither film takes a moral stance on any of this activity; it merely observes the characters as they struggle to take their first sexual steps whilst being judged against the activities of their peers – Water Lillies, and the social mores of their elders – Echo Park LA.

Water Lillies may lack the surface sunshine of ‘Echo Park’ but it has a very warm core - topped off by some truly beautiful performances. OK, I know these girls are professional actors but this is some serious subject material and they carry it off superbly. Ditto Echo Park, which strays into documentary territory at times, so visceral are the emotions expressed by these actors.

Both films echo what I reach to achieve on this blog – the gravity and the humor of some very serious situations. For some people, the loss of virginity is literally life threatening. For others the consequences may not be so drastic, at least not to the naked eye.

Echo Park LA is available here.
Water Lillies is out on 14 March in the UK. Take a look...