my imaginary older brother, or reading books under my duvet. Consequently, I moved up to the top reading set at school, developed an over-active imagination and became obsessed with my friends’ functional families. I couldn’t figure out how all this linked to the ‘why am I still a virgin’ question, but it had to have had some kind of psychological impact on me. My latest theory was that it gave me a pathological fear of men.
4. I was a late bloomer. I spent every lunchtime listening to my friends talk about their first kisses and boyfriends but their lives always seemed so far removed from mine. Over the years, they moved on to second base, third base, and when they were all finally losing their virginity, I was still the only girl who had never kissed anyone. I sat on the socially acceptable side of the sixth-form common room. I hung out with the cool people and eventually managed to wear the right clothes, but somehow I didn’t kiss a single boy until the ripe old age of seventeen. I didn’t stop there, either—I begged him to have sex with me. He said no.
5. The Bite Job. It happened just before the First Kiss refused to deflower me and it is the reason why I have a fear of penises (penii?), second base, third base, rejection, teeth and pubic hair. It is my worst memory.
We were at Lara’s eighteenth birthday and I was wearing a dress so low-cut you could see my bra. It was just like any other party, except this time, an actual boy came over to speak to me. James Martell. He was no Mark Tucker (Year Thirteen’s own Brad Pitt from the boys’ school) and his nose was, surprisingly, bigger than mine—but he was funny and had floppy blond hair. He took me upstairs to Lily’s older brother’s bedroom and drunkenly pushed me onto the bed.
We snogged. I mirrored what he was doing with his tongue and wondered why none of my girlfriends had ever mentioned how much saliva was involved. Then his hands started creeping into my pants. Any self-respecting girl who was having her first kiss would have yanked them back out, but not sexually starved Ellie. I let his fingers venture down into my VJ and let him poke away. I carried on shoving my tongue down his throat at full velocity and after a few minutes of discomfort in my sacred zone, he stopped. We went back downstairs holding hands and swapped email addresses.
We ended up chatting on the computer every night for two weeks until one Saturday evening when he invited me over. I was so nervous I ended up sitting on the loo excreting my nerves for an hour beforehand. After a second shower, I got the bus to his.
We sat in awkward silence for half an hour until he swooped in and started kissing me. We snogged on the sofa for a while before he put his hand down into my pants again. This time I was more prepared and didn’t wince in pain when he started waggling his fingers around. The next thing I knew, he was pulling my dress over my head and I was naked bar my pink polka-dot underwear.
He pulled his clothes off, undid my bra and slid my knickers off. He stared in shock. After a few seconds of total silence when I wanted to curl up in a ball and die, he threw his head back and howled with laughter.
I froze. Why was he laughing at my vagina? I stood, paralysed with humiliation, and waited for him to speak.
His laughter died down. ‘Wow, I knew you had some hair down there but I didn’t realise you had a full-on bush. You’re the first girl I’ve ever met with an unshaved vagina.’
I hadn’t shaved. Why hadn’t I shaved? Why hadn’t I known I was supposed to shave?
He didn’t seem to care very much because he carried on kissing me. Then he pulled his boxers off and I saw his naked penis staring at me. It was the first one I had ever seen and I kept trying to sneak a peek at it while we snogged. I felt it gently prodding my thighs and as we writhed on the sofa, I realised it was rubbing around my VJ.
I reached out and touched it. It felt alien and alive. I was about to move my hand away when he moaned in pleasure and I realised I was going to have to give him a hand job. I tried to remember what the girls at school had said, and with fear settling in my throat, I slowly began to move my hand up and down.
It looked like an extra limb and had the texture of an old cucumber. I had no idea how tightly to hold it, or at what speed I should be moving my hand up and down. What if he thought it was awful? What if he didn’t come? What if he laughed at me again? I panicked. Without thinking I took my hand off his penis, broke away from the kiss and crawled down the sofa. I took it into my hands and slipped it into my mouth.
I felt my face getting hot as thoughts raced through my head. I tried to make my mouth fit around him and began moving my head backwards and forwards. The minute I started I knew it was a mistake. I had thought it would be easier than the hand job but I could not have been more wrong. I had absolutely no clue what I should be doing. I opened my mouth wider and pushed forward, when suddenly I heard a loud yelp.
I stopped what I was doing and dropped his penis in shock. I looked up and saw him try to pull his face into a smile.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, though I didn’t want to know.
‘It’s just, um, you bit me.’
I felt bile rise in my throat and wanted to throw up and cry in the corner. Feeling my skin prickling with humiliation, I laughed shrilly and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’
I wanted to leave but there was no escape. If I ran away, everyone at school would know. I took a deep breath and went back down to his penis. I tried to carry on like before but this time I wrapped my lips around my teeth. It was so uncomfortable it had to be wrong. I tried to go down deeper and then gagged. I swallowed the urge to throw up and carried on. How was I going to finish?
I pulled away from his penis. ‘James, let’s have sex.’
He laughed awkwardly. ‘Um, are you serious? I thought you were a virgin.’
I flushed fuchsia. ‘So? I’m seventeen. I’m ready.’
He looked at the floor. ‘Ellie, we’ve only kissed a few times. I can’t take your virginity.’
‘But … I want you to. Please?’
He squirmed. ‘I can’t. Not like this. Your first time shouldn’t be like this.’
Standing, I pulled on my pink dotted knickers and did my bra clasp with numb fingers. I ignored his protestations and left.
I never saw James Martell again. I avoided the parties that I knew he would attend, and I blocked him on instant messenger. He didn’t try to call me and I never did anything more than kiss someone ever again.
Once I got home from the GP surgery, I lay down on my bed and felt a familiar wave of disgust flood over me. Only this time it wasn’t just because of The Bite Job. It was mixed up with Dr E Bowers.
I always knew it was weird that I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin, but it hadn’t really hit me until I saw those green capital letters screaming at me from my medical records. I wasn’t even eligible for a chlamydia test. Dr E Bowers had given it to me either to make up a quota or because she thought I was a religious nut-job who didn’t want to go the whole way but secretly gave head to every guy around. If only.
I sat up straight in my bed. This was it. I was in my final year of university and I would never be surrounded by so many horny men again. This was my last opportunity to lose my virginity and I had to grab it now. I had to ditch my V-plates by the time I graduated in summer—which meant I had four months to finally understand what an orgasm was and to learn how to give blow jobs.
I took a sharp intake of breath and visualised
