style="font-size:15px;"> Poor number one.
Not only did he have to cope with a girlfriend who was far more confident—and for ‘confident’ read ‘loud, horny, and unafraid to mention it’—than him, he was also solely responsible for battling years of ingrained stereotypes about his gender.
Sometimes he had a headache. Sometimes he was tired. Sometimes it would get to eight p.m. and he was simply empty of spunk, having managed to successfully live up to my expectations for a good four hours already. He’d shyly ask me if I wanted to watch TV or listen to some music. He’d offer me food, cigarettes, a refreshing walk in the sunshine, or if things were getting desperate he’d play his guitar, staring earnestly at me to try and tap into a romance that neither of us was old enough to be comfortable with. Occasionally, when all else had failed, and his attempts at distracting me simply led to comments about how I loved watching his hands as he strummed his guitar and could we have sex now pleasepleaseplease, he’d lead me into the kitchen and encourage me into protracted conversation with his parents just so that he had a chance to rest.
It’s not that I’m insatiable, I’ve never been insatiable. Thanks to my superlative wanking skills, I’ll happily go without sex for a while. And as an adult I’d see this situation for what it was—a slight mismatch in sex drives that could easily be solved by a bit of conversation and compromise from both parties. But I wasn’t an adult, I was sixteen, and as such I was devastated. I was a sixteen-year-old girl who had been told that all men would want to fuck her, that they were only after that one thing, and it was I who’d have to feign headaches and manage expectations just to get a decent night’s sleep.
Having been conditioned to believe this, it was humiliating to find that this man—my man, my teenaged boy—who should by all rights be an insatiable sex pest, was immune to the sexual temptation I threw at him.
I’d whisper filthy things, dress in cheap Ann Summers lingerie, strip naked for him and beg him to touch me. My attempts at seduction were as ham-fisted and incompetent as his undiplomatic rejections, but that just made things worse.
Late at night, after another failed attempt to tease an erection out of his exhausted cock, I’d lie next to him in his single bed, beneath a poster of Shirley Manson looking like teen-punk sex made flesh, and cry myself to sleep.
As an adult I know these lies for what they are—not all men want sex all the time, and not all women will punch the air in celebration if they receive a ‘get out of sex free’ card. People are just different, with different drives and needs and desires. I didn’t understand that back then, but I wish I had. It would have saved me the misery and heartache of trying to work out why I wasn’t sexy enough for my boyfriend, and it would have saved him the humiliation of having to explain to his sixteen-year-old lover why he couldn’t maintain a fifth erection in one night.
It’s important to challenge the assumption that ‘men are only after one thing’, because publicly recognising that it is definitely not true helps all of us feel a bit more normal. If young women grow up thinking that all men want to sleep with them, we’re not giving them the gift of insight, we’re telling them an outright lie. A lie that will lead to humiliating disappointment for our daughters, and—most importantly for my poor first boyfriend—give our sons a reputation that they could never possibly live up to.
But I shouldn’t complain about number one. As I say, it was mostly the fault of the weird expectations I had about male libido that led to my sexual frustration. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on his manhood—he was actually incredibly good. I am gobsmacked that we managed to have quite as much excellent sex as we did given that neither of us knew much beyond what we’d been told by teachers, parents and the aforementioned well-thumbed copies of FHM.
So although the sex wasn’t quite as copious as I’d have liked, it was certainly decent, and I won’t complain just because the poor guy hadn’t yet managed to overcome the limitations of biology and started producing six gallons of jizz per day from a permanently erect penis. We’d still shag a lot—at his house, at my house, at parties. In sheds, behind bushes, in tents. We learnt enough about each other’s body that we could frig each other to simple, gleeful orgasms during snatched moments—on buses, in his parent’s kitchen and, of course, in the darkest corners of the local park. On one memorable occasion we shagged in a treehouse, learning two lessons at once, namely that a) sex is much better when your friends aren’t standing nearby shouting ‘Timbeeeeer’ and b) it’s impossible to remain aroused when you’re within three feet of a garden spider.
Our parents soon learned what we were up to, and were given ample opportunity to lecture us about condoms, carelessness and conception. The Talk came earlier for me than for him, and certainly far earlier than my mum would ever have expected:
‘Can I stay round his house this Friday?’
‘What, in his bed?’
‘Yep.’
‘Umm … we need to have a talk. I don’t want you sleeping with him until you’re completely ready.’
I thought it appropriate to cut the chat short early to save embarrassment. ‘I already have.’
‘You have? But … when?’ For some reason as soon as they have children parents forget that sex can be had in places other than beds, and at times other than night time. I have not yet met a single teenager whose parents haven’t insisted on placing restrictions on couples sleeping together. As if without the sleeping there can be no sex.
‘Yesterday. And a few days before that. And every time I’ve been at his house for the last few weeks.’
‘Oh. Well, are you using condoms?’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s good.’
In hindsight, it might have been cruel to spring things on her so quickly. My sister, who was eighteen months older, had showed no signs of wanting to rampantly hump anyone, and I felt like I was jumping the queue.
I was clearly opening doors that my mum hadn’t quite been ready for me to see behind, and I got the distinct impression that she felt like she’d let me down. Like she’d missed out on the chance to talk to me about sex before I actually did it. Still, after she’d shed a few tears for my lost innocence, and warned me to be careful, I hopped up and went to get ready for a night at number one’s house.
‘I’ll be careful. We’ve got loads of condoms.’
‘Well, that’s good. But it’s not just the pregnancy thing. It’s the heartbreak thing.’ She didn’t hold me back, just let me breeze out of the room with a ‘good point’ hanging in the air, but she was right. No matter how many packets of Durex you have, the heartbreak thing can still get you.
Number one taught me a lot. Other than how to shag, and how to stop asking him for a shag when he was knackered, he taught me that I wasn’t going to die alone. This was comforting, as I’d spent the previous year chasing plaintively after First Love and staring into the mirror wondering what, exactly, was so horribly wrong with me that my love was destined to be unrequited. I’d begun to wonder if perhaps the reason First Love wouldn’t fuck me was because I was just fundamentally unfuckable. Glasses, bushy hair, puppy fat and a tendency to correct people’s grammar did not really work to my advantage when trying to convince anyone I was a sex kitten. But although First Love remained resolute in his decision to Just Be Friends, number one seemed to like whatever limited charms I had to offer.
And, curiously, as soon as
