Virgin (18 page)

When Emma had left to meet Sergio, I was still lying in the same position on the bed. I’d swapped the chocolates for beans on toast and now had an empty plate on the bed next to me while I watched TV shows on my laptop. I was watching a particularly boring episode of
Gossip Girl
when Emma’s story popped back into my head. I started getting a bit panicky about the pain I would have to go through to join the post-V club. Now that it looked like it was going to be a serious possibility with Jack, I was going to have to try to come to terms with the approaching pain.

I put my thoughts into a mental list.

1. He knew I was a virgin already. This was good because it meant he would take care and not shove it inside me with full force.
   
2. Almost everyone lost their virginity. It couldn’t hurt that much, surely?
   
3. The blood bit. What if I bled all over the sheets? It would be
   so
   embarrassing. I wouldn’t be able to live it down.
   
4. Horse riding! It broke hymens. If I rode a horse, I would break my hymen, then sex wouldn’t hurt and I wouldn’t bleed everywhere. I could skip straight to the fun bits.
   
5. How on earth was I going to start horse riding in central London?
   
6. Maybe I didn’t have to horse ride to break my hymen. Maybe I could do it myself? I could just penetrate myself . . .
   
7. I should have bought a dildo instead of a tiny little bullet. Or the rampant rabbit. I was clearly going to have to lose my virginity to some piece of plastic, and it was now or never.
   

With grim determination, I went into my bathroom and started running a bath. I needed to do this in a warm, lying-down location, and seeing as I had my period, it would probably be best to do it in water and not on my white sheets. It also had to be now or I would keep going over it in my head. I would use whatever I could find instead of an actual dildo, and I’d continue all week, or as long as it took until Jack and I had sex. Then, by the time it came to the real deal, my hole would be the perfect size.

While the bath ran, I scanned my bedroom for something suitable for self-penetration. I considered and eliminated the handle of my hairbrush (too thick) and a selection of mascaras (way too thin). The zucchini in my fridge briefly flashed into my head, but the thought of putting a vegetable inside me freaked me out.

I went into the bathroom and looked at all my toiletries. The shampoos and bottles were all too big. I dug deep into the cabinet and, to my utter joy, I found an old set of bath stuff my aunt had given me for my eighteenth birthday. I had forgotten all about the Champneys set, but the four pink-and-white bottles containing body lotion and shower gel were going to come in handy. Each bottle was about five inches long, and the diameter was strangely similar to that of Jack’s penis. I had hit the jackpot.

Triumphantly, I selected the bubble bath one, then stripped off and eased myself into the warm bath. I added a bit of the bubble bath stuff to the water first, ignoring the fact that it was three years old. I laughed nervously to myself. The bottle looked a bit intimidating, considering it was about three times the size of a supersized tampon. I took a deep breath and put it into the water. I tried to ease it into my hole, but it wouldn’t go in. I pushed harder and yelped in pain.

Bollocks. Now what? I needed to turn myself on, so I would get wet and the valve bits would relax and open up. I lowered my fingers and started fiddling with my clit. I closed my eyes and let myself think of giving Jack head and how good and exciting it had felt. I moved my fingers faster. Then I had a brain wave. I would slip a few of my fingers into my vagina and try to open it a bit, fingering myself before using the bottle.

I put one finger in and it slid up easily. The skin was a totally different texture than the rest of my body, and it felt almost rough up there even though it was also warm and damp. Ew, that was probably my period blood, I thought. I ignored the grossness of the image and carried on. I withdrew the finger and then put two in together. It was a bit tighter this time. I tried to move them around, trying to stretch the hole a bit. Then I took them out and added a third one. I shifted a bit and wiped my brow with my other hand. This was hard work.

The three fingers clumped together couldn’t go in as far as the two, but I pushed them around a bit, writhing like a demented mermaid in the bath, then screeched when I accidentally pushed them in too hard. The pain was excruciating and I wondered—was this it? Had I finally torn my hymen?

Anxious to know, I grabbed the Champneys bottle. I breathed slowly, trying to relax myself and get back in the zone. After a while, my heartbeat calmed down, and with the help of my fingers working away on my clit, I started to feel my vagina open slightly. To my surprise, the bottle slipped in. Not all the way, but a little bit. I tried to wiggle it around, to expand the hole and make sure it would be able to cope with a penis inside. It started to feel slightly sore, so I decided I’d done enough for today. I would just do this once a day until Jack and I met up again, curling out my inner lotus, to prepare myself for the ultimate deflowering.

I slipped out of the bath, wrapped myself in a huge fluffy towel and waddled out into my room. My bits still felt a bit sore, so I walked with care. I put on my large Barack Obama T-shirt. Then I walked over to my chest of drawers where I kept all my knickers and bent down to open the bottom drawer.

To my shock and horror, when I bent down, a gush of water FELL OUT OF MY VAGINA ONTO THE FLOOR. I stared at the damp patch that was quickly spreading out on the green fluffy rug beneath me. It wasn’t blood; it was 100 percent water.

I screamed.

I didn’t know how long I was crouched there, frozen in fear above the wet puddle. It felt like my water had just broken, like I was a modern-day Virgin Mary. Pregnant without penetration.

If my baby Jesus was fathered by a Champneys bottle, would he get free spa days?

I leaned against the wall, my mind clearing up a bit. I didn’t understand why this gush of water had just come out of my vagina. Then it hit me.

It was bathwater. I had opened up my VJ and the bathwater had crept in through the open hymen. It was just like sperm swimming up my woman’s canal. Then when I’d taken the bottle out, the hymen had closed back up, sealing the water inside. It was only when I’d crouched down that the stream of water had seized its chance and gushed out. I’d finally realized how female drug mules smuggled drugs onto planes.

Great Sexpectations

When Charles Dickens wrote about the weight of expectations society imposed on gentlemen, he had no idea what it would be like for girls a century and a half later when there weren’t any gentlemen left. Now a girl trying to get laid has to put on an entire show for a man just because it’s what he sees in pornos.

Proof? Here’s a list of the things men have expected from our friends and us over the past few years.

[Note: We have slightly changed their words.]

1. No pubes. None. In fact, no hair anywhere below your neck. “But what about the fine hairs that grow around my nipples?” you ask. Get rid of them. We don’t know how, but do it.
   
2. Lots of sounds. Moaning is ideal and softly crying out his name is a guaranteed plus.
   
3. Wild sex. Depending on the sub/dom roles you’re going for, you should either be riding him and whirling a lasso around, or begging him to do you from behind.
   
4. Dirty talk. Tell him how huge he is and you’ve never seen one like it, blah, blah.
   
5. No condoms, ever. Get on the Pill already. STDs? You’re just gonna have to risk them.
   
6. Give plenty of blow jobs and look like you’re enjoying it.
   
7. Don’t expect any emotional, loving words. You’re
   fucking
   —not making love.
   

Jack texted me that evening. He said how much he had enjoyed the night before and wanted to see me the following Sunday. That was precisely seven days from now, and enough time for my period to go away. I wondered if he’d calculated this too.

I waited till the morning to reply because I was trying to play hard to get. All the books said it was the thing to do;
Sex and the City
loved going on about it, and at this point I was so terrified of buggering things up with Jack when I was so close to losing my virginity that I was willing to play by every rule. Eventually I sent a casual reply, saying I’d be happy to see him on Sunday. It wasn’t exactly a Keatsian ode but it had taken me twenty minutes to compose, with three punctuation edits.

Clearly my playing hard to get had worked because he texted back immediately, saying he couldn’t wait, and asked me—get this—not one but
two
questions. He had basically told me he desperately wanted me to text him back. Twice.

I basked in my joy before remembering I should do a bit of work or I would end up a failed university dropout. That would potentially be worse than being a twenty-four-year-old male virgin who had only just discovered his sexuality. Poor Paul. I would have to remember to send him a text.

Paul didn’t just text me back. He called me. He had been on a date with Vladi, who was a Czech economics student in London, and things had gone well. Unfortunately he wasn’t willing to give me a blow-by-blow account of his night—even though blowing had occurred—but he was happy to listen to my in-depth descriptions of Jack’s groin area. Eventually he cut me off.

“Ellie, I know I don’t need to be saying these sorts of things to you because I’m not your dad or your mum or your best friend but, have you, um, thought about contraception?” he stammered.

I shrieked down the phone at him. “Paul! Of course I have. I’ve had twenty-one years to prepare for this—I’m not going to forget about pregnancies and STDs.”

He sounded relieved. “Okay, thank God. Because when you were talking about, uh, your blow gift, you didn’t mention anything about putting a condom on . . . and I just thought, you know, you should.”

I paused. No one put condoms on before giving a guy a blow job, right? I mean, all you could get was mouth herpes from that, and Jack’s penis didn’t have any herpes on it. So I was fine, right? “Well, no. I didn’t,” I said uncertainly. “But do you know that most people don’t?”

“Yeah, I know. But it does mean that a lot of people do end up with STDs and I really don’t want you to be one of them.”

“Well, I appreciate the concern, but I’m definitely okay for now,” I assured him. “And I promise I’ll use proper protection when he actually pops my cherry.”

“Okay, so long as you do . . .”

“Oh my God, and you too!” I added quickly. “If you get HIV I will literally die. I’ll be like those people who get sympathy illnesses and I’ll get phantom symptoms for you.”

It was his turn to laugh. “All right, I’ll be careful too. Sorry, I just feel like I should say these things to you because we’re both in similar positions.”

“No, don’t apologize! I love that we have such huge things—well, virginity—in common and that we can both be really open about stuff.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “I never really expected this friendship to happen, but I’m glad it did. Even if it started off on a pretty weird note . . .”

“Um, that never happened. Remember?” I replied. “Anyway, did I tell you my mum’s convinced we’re dating now?”

“Yeah, about that . . . ,” he said sheepishly.

“Paul, what did you do?”

“I told my mum I saw you that Friday and she got all excited . . . I denied everything, I swear, but she didn’t believe me so this is probably my fault.”

I sighed. “Oh well, at least my mum’s being nicer to me now. It’s going to be awkward for your parents when they realize you’re gay, though.”

“If that ever happens,” he replied with a sigh. “Anyway, good to catch up, Ellie. I’m going out now but keep in touch. Hope it goes well with Jack.”

“Thanks, Paul. Same for you and Vladi!”

I hung up and got back to work. I was meant to meet Emma in the library that afternoon so we could work solidly all evening and get dinner together, but the dissertation wasn’t going so well. Besides, I now had more urgent things to think about. Obviously I’d thought about protection. I didn’t want to be breaking my water for real anytime soon, and there was no way I wanted lumps of gonorrhea all over my precious VJ. I’d always figured I’d go on the Pill, but that would require a trip back to Dr. E. Bowers. I shivered at the thought.

The Pill could wait a while. It was definitely more boyfriend-style contraception, and even though Jack and I were on target and slowly creeping up the relationship ladder, it seemed a bit premature. Condoms would be sufficient. Besides, I was kind of excited to use a condom. We’d spent years learning how to put them onto plastic penises in secondary school, but I’d never had a chance to put my skills into practice. It seemed like a rite of passage I had to go through, and soon I could be one of the sassy girls-about-town who keep a spare condom in their wallets. The vow I’d taken after visiting Gower Street Practice was going to be completed. I would use a condom on an actual penis and it would actually go inside me and I would never ever
ever
be a virgin again.

Then I realized I had only the one condom I got for free in Freshers’ Week. Shit. Why hadn’t I picked some up from the floor of the doctor’s office days ago when I was surrounded by them? It was too risky to have only one, in case it broke—and once I started, I planned on having as much sex with Jack as possible. I couldn’t leave it up to him to have them either. What if we had sex at my place and he didn’t bring them with him? It was safer to just brave a trip to a pharmacy to get some. Thank God I wasn’t in Guildford, where someone would be sure to see me and report back to my mum. Here I could just slip into the chemist, another anonymous student practicing safe sex, and no one would ever know.

A few hours later, I was ready to go. I had put a lot of thought into my outfit. It needed to be subtle, but not so subtle that it looked like I bought condoms every day. I wanted it to shout out Girl Next Door meets Ambitious Young Woman. In the end, I decided to go for black tights, a black skirt and a cream polo-neck jumper. I looked like I was going to a job interview.

I wandered down Camden High Street to the pharmacy, where I quickly found my required aisle. It wasn’t hard to miss. There were rows and rows of family planning items looking at me. Alarmed, I realized how many types of sexual accompaniments were available in the local pharmacy. Surely all these lubes should only be available in dark shops in Soho?

I browsed the condom selection, trying to ooze casual calmness as I read the labels. Fetherlite . . . Jesus, what did that mean? Ribbed for extra pleasure? I stared in confusion at the array before me and decided to start eliminating. Colored condoms were not for me. The flavored ones seemed a bit too intense. Ribbed would just add width to the penis and that would create extra discomfort, not pleasure. In the end, I decided to go for the thinnest ones. It meant I would hopefully not notice it.

I was about to reach for the package when I realized they came in different sizes. Oh God. How the hell was I going to be able to buy the right size? First, I had no sodding clue what size Jack would be, and second, even if I did, wouldn’t whatever I chose just offend him? He probably wasn’t a large, because James Martell had been bigger than him, but to get a small seemed rude. I took a deep breath and decided that the only possible solution was to buy a medium pack. Why couldn’t they just make them “one size fits all” like with woolly hats?

I picked up the pack and glanced at the price. Nine fifty?! For one tiny little pack? These had to be the most expensive condoms available. It was going to cost me almost a tenner to lose my virginity. I could buy two bottles of wine for that. Maybe the shop did generic-brand condoms? With renewed excitement I scanned the shelves but to my dismay the only ones I could find were a pound cheaper.

Resigned to the expensive reality of sex, I took my condoms over to the counter. If they did a Meal Deal, you’d think they would at least consider doing a Sex Deal. I wouldn’t mind paying ten quid if I got a varied selection of condoms, with maybe a free bottle of lube. I made a mental note to find out exactly what lube did and if I needed some.

I put the singular packet of condoms on the counter and the cashier looked me up and down. He was in his fifties and Indian, and he shook his head at me as I defiantly crossed my arms, waiting for him to challenge me.

“Nine fifty, please, madam,” he said in a strong Indian accent. Ooh, I was
madam
. Clearly my outfit was having the intended effect.

I handed over my card, feeling successful and entitled to be there. I punched in my PIN, felt sad because it was the first four numbers of Lara’s date of birth and waited for the transaction to come to an end.

The cashier sighed and looked at me with an expression of . . . disgust? Jeez, why was he so mean? Buying condoms was what responsible young adults were meant to do.

“Yes?” I snapped at him, putting my arms on my hips. “Do you have a problem?”

“Your card has been declined.”

Oh. Crap. It was rent day and my loan wasn’t coming in till next week, so I had no money in my account. I felt a blush launching across my face at the speed of shame. “Oh, right, sorry,” I mumbled.

A queue had formed behind us and people were starting to look round curiously. I knew I should leave the condoms there and come back for them, but I needed them for Sunday, and I didn’t know if I could handle another day like this. I opened my purse and started looking for loose change.

“So, you would still like the condoms?” he asked in his faltering but pronounced accent.

“Um, one sec, sorry,” I said as quietly as possible, pulling a fiver and pound coins out of my purse. I made up nine pounds thirty from the change in my wallet but I was short twenty pence. Oh God.

“You need twenty pence more so you can buy the condoms, madam,” he said. “There might be a smaller pack there that is a bit cheaper.”

“No, there isn’t,” I said through gritted teeth. I opened my handbag and began rummaging around for more change. I was now breaking into a mild sweat. “Okay, got it!” I said triumphantly as I pulled out a pound coin. Oh, bollocks . . .

“That is a euro,” he affirmed.

Please God, please give me a break here,
I prayed as people behind me started tapping their shoes. An old man behind me stepped forward. “Here, take this,” he said to the cashier, handing him a twenty-pence piece.

I whirled around to look at my savior and was repulsed to see the pensioner
wink
at me. I whispered, “Thanks,” and grabbed the plastic bag from the cashier’s hand. I took it and ran. All the way down Camden High Street. The second these condoms ran out, I’d be going straight on the Pill.