Virgin

I took a sharp intake of breath and visualised my future.

In June, I would go back to Dr E Bowers, get a chlamydia test and make her swap VIRGIN on my records for SEXUALLY ACTIVE. The next time I came into contact with a condom, it would not be falling off a shelf in the doctor’s surgery; it would be on an actual penis. And this time, it wouldn’t just rub around my vagina à la James Martell; it would be going straight in there.

CHAPTER THREE

‘OK, OK, SO HAS everyone got some kind of alcohol? There’s some more vodka over here if you need any.’

Kara, a pretty brunette who used to wear Topshop in her hometown but had swapped it for vintage clothes and brogues when she came to London, poured generous amounts of vodka into all our glasses.

Somehow I had been invited to an end-of-term party at Luke’s house, just before we broke up for Easter—Luke being the leader of the ‘cool’ group in my English Literature course. I didn’t own any vintage clothes whatsoever so I never really felt like part of the group and didn’t fully understand why they invited me to their parties. Maybe some of them thought my general uniform of jeans and woolly jumpers was a deliberate anti-fashion statement. Obviously they were unaware that dresses and fur coats made me look like a sad transvestite trying too hard, and high-waisted things just accentuated the birthing hips I may never have a chance to use.

‘Can we just start already?’ shrieked Hannah, who was wearing the vintage white nightdress she wore day in and day out, a strand of fake flowers around her head. ‘I’ll go first. Does everyone remember the rules?’

Without giving anyone a chance to respond, she lurched on. ‘So obviously it is called Never Have I Ever, so when the person says something like, “Never have I ever shagged someone who was married,” then if you have done that, you drink. If you haven’t done that, you don’t. Even if you are the person who said it, you still have to drink if you have done it.’

‘Hannah, we get it. Just start,’ moaned Charlie. ‘And can you please start with something better than shagging someone married? That’s so boring.’

Hannah put on a deliberate pout. ‘Well, why don’t you start, Charlie?’

He grinned, rubbing his hands together. Charlie was the joker of the group, and he liked nothing more than being given the spotlight so he could make everyone groan and laugh over his filthy sense of humour. This was his prime opportunity. I gulped as I tried to mentally prepare myself for what was coming. If I managed to make my face look calm and unbothered, no one would know that I would be lying through my teeth.

‘All right, so, never have I ever fucked someone in a public place.’ Without waiting for anyone else to start drinking, Charlie raised his glass and downed it. Everyone rolled their eyes until he shot them the cheeky grin that had probably made so many girls want to shag him in public in the first place.

I hesitated over whether to drink. I needed to choose wisely. I couldn’t just develop a new personality for this game; I needed to think which sexual things I would have done if I had lost my virginity years ago like everyone else. A brief layer of sweat formed on my top lip. It was too late to drink now so I put my glass down and looked around to see who had drunk.

Eight people raised their glasses, and six of us hadn’t. I breathed out in relief. I was one of six, which made me normal, kind of, and there was always safety in numbers. With the edge of my sleeve, I wiped the beads of sweat off my top lip.

Hannah—who had drunk—started waving her arms around and said, ‘OK, my turn! So, never have I ever cheated on anyone.’

Some of the boys sighed in boredom, but even Charlie refrained from criticising this, probably because he was just as curious as everyone else to see who drank. I started to wonder if I could drink for this one. Obviously I hadn’t actually ever had a boyfriend to cheat on, but back when I was messaging James Martell during those two weeks pre–Bite Job, I once got drunk and accidentally snogged someone else at a party. I think it lasted two-point-five seconds, and I have no idea who it was, but it was definitely cheating.

Feeling confident and sexually active, I drank some of my vodka and Coke. Three other people drank with me, and ten did not. Oh God, I was in the minority. This was dangerous, because someone could ask me about my story, and what exactly would I—

‘Ellie! I can’t believe you’ve cheated on someone! That seems so unlike you! So tell us, who were you dating, and who did you shag?’ On cue, Hannah interrupted my thoughts and brought me crashing back to the reality of Luke’s living room with its vinyl records stuck to the walls.

Shag? Surely cheating could include snogging, right? Why did EVERYTHING have to be about sex?

‘Oh God, um, it was ages ago. I was seventeen, and I was dating this guy called James Mar—’ I paused, suddenly remembering that Joe, one of the guys in the room, had gone to the same school as James. Hopefully he would have no idea who I was talking about, especially because I was trying to pass off this casual fling (could I even call it a fling?) as a bona fide relationship.

‘So, yeah, I was dating James, and I hooked up with someone else. When I was drunk, at a party. Not very exciting.’ I laughed awkwardly.

Hannah looked at me with raised eyebrows and did a feminine snort as she turned away, literally flouncing her hair. I’d thought only shampoo models did that.

Marie, a Belgian ex-model with a block fringe, asked, ‘So, it is my turn now?’ All the boys looked up at the sound of her accent and grinned their assent. ‘OK, so I have had anal sex.’

I choked on the pretzel I was eating and coughed. No one noticed because all the boys were grinning and admiring Marie’s looks while Hannah shrieked about her getting the rules wrong and ruining the game. I grabbed my glass and drank quickly, feeling better as the bits of pretzel were flushed down my throat.

I looked up to see who had actually drunk for this, wondering if Charlie would. I saw Hannah staring at me with her beady eyes as she shrieked, ‘Oh, my God—Ellie just drank, as well! So that’s five of the boys, Marie, Emma and Ellie. Wow, Ellie, you’re such a dark horse.’

All of them were staring at me. I saw Charlie’s appreciative expression, and something like lust spreading across his face. I felt the blood drain out of my cheeks and tried to force my face into something resembling a smile. I shrugged as I fake-smiled too brightly and reached back into the bowl of pretzels.

‘So, who did you do it with?’ asked Hannah persistently. I could have killed her.

Luckily, Emma—the only girl there whose clothes looked way more Topshop than charity shop—came to my rescue. ‘Uh, I thought we were playing Never Have I Ever, not Twenty Questions,’ she said.

Hannah shrugged and Emma carried on. ‘But if we are allowed to ask questions, then why don’t you tell us your cheating story? You already made Ellie tell hers.’

Hannah looked confused. ‘Um, I didn’t drink for the cheating one.’

Emma’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, my bad. I got confused with the question. For a second, I thought it was about being the person who slept with someone who was already in a relationship … like you did with Tom. Oh shit, I’ve said too much,’ she finished as Hannah’s face went purple.

Kara turned around in shock. ‘TOM, AS IN, MY EX-BOYFRIEND TOM?’ she screeched.

Emma shot me a wink and I let out a yelp of laughter, which no one noticed because they were too engrossed watching Kara scream at Hannah. I grabbed my coat and bag and slipped towards the door, using this as the perfect escape opportunity. I was about to leave when Emma snuck out from behind me.

‘So, how much fun was that?’ She grinned.

‘You saved me,’ I replied gratefully.

‘From that skank? I know, I can’t stand her.’

I stared at her with my mouth wide open. ‘No way, are you serious? I thought everyone loved her. She’s so pretty and confident and has the Shoreditch style down to a T.’

Emma rolled her bright blue eyes. ‘OK, so she’s pretty, but it seems like she only owns one dress and her personality is so grating it hurts to be around her for more than an hour.’

I started laughing, surprised. Who would have thought anyone else could see past Hannah’s fake-flower headband into her unhippy heart? ‘Oh my God, I couldn’t be happier you just said that,’ I cried. ‘I thought I was the only one who hated her.’

Emma grinned through her thickly coated red lips. ‘Trust me, you’re not alone in this, babe. Anyway, we should go for cocktails and share our anal sex stories.’

I made a strangled, yelping sound and Emma looked at me questioningly. Oh God, to lie or not to lie?

I compromised with a half lie. ‘Um. That part wasn’t actually true. I’ve never had anal sex. I just drank because I was choking on a pretzel and then it was too late to say no.’

She threw her head back and let out a throaty cackle. ‘OK, wait, so why didn’t you just tell Hannah you accidentally drank and didn’t mean to admit you took it up the bum?’

I flushed at her very visual words. ‘I guess I wished I was the kind of girl who, uh, took it up … there,’ I admitted. For a second, it had been kind of exciting to have Charlie look at me as though I was shaggable.

‘Babe, anyone can be that girl. I’m sure the guys are queuing up to do you up … there.’ She grinned.

I looked at her doubtfully. ‘They’re not.’

She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. ‘You must be going to the wrong places. Next weekend, you’re coming out with me. Text me,’ she said, blowing me a kiss as she turned back to the party, sashaying on her five-inch-heeled boots.

She left a trail of Miss Dior Chérie in her wake and I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be Emma. Maybe if I started wearing perfume instead of the strawberry body spray I bulk-bought two years ago, I could have casual sex stories and stand up to Hannah Fielding.

I looked down at the soggy pretzel I was still holding and realised I had a long way to go.

CHAPTER FOUR

I WOKE UP with a loud groan as I remembered what had happened at the party. My eyes were still glued together with sleep so I groped around blindly for my mobile and called Lara, my best friend.

She was my first port of call whenever something humiliating happened to me. I turned my horrible luck with men into funny stories for her so we could laugh about them and help me forget how much it hurt deep down. The Bite Job had given us enough ammunition for years.

Lara had given up her V-plates a year earlier than the legal limit, at the age of fifteen. He was called Marc, went to a school near ours in Guildford, and it only happened once. She was never exactly sure if it counted as sex, because even though he had penetrated her, it only lasted a couple of seconds and he didn’t go fully in. Marc never called again.

Now she had moved on and was living my parents’ dream by studying law at Oxford. Although her Facebook relationship status was still single, she had been having an on-off thing with a guy called Jez for three years. They’d met at the start of her gap year and had been having casual sex ever since. I wished I’d taken a gap year.

She picked up the phone on the fifteenth ring. ‘Ellie, thank God you called. I’m having a crisis.’

I pulled the duvet over my head. ‘Me, too. I played Never Have I Ever with the hipster crew and I told them I had anal sex.’

‘Why would you say that—you haven’t even had real sex.’

‘AND YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?’ I yelled down the phone at her. She responded with silence and I sighed despondently. ‘Anyway, I give up on my life—it’s too depressing. What’s your crisis? I hope it’s worse than mine. I need major distraction.’

‘Trust me, it is. I’m home for Easter and want to see Jez but, as usual, he is being a dick and won’t reply to my messages. So now I’m in central London just waiting for him to reply so I can see him tonight.’

‘Wait—so you’re in London with no plans? Why don’t you come over to mine?’

‘Well, I’m kind of already on my way.’

‘I can’t believe you assumed I’d be home alone with nothing to do.’

‘But that’s exactly what you are doing.’

‘OK, point taken. Anyway, I hope you’re willing to ditch Jez, because I have a proposition for you and it involves going out tonight.’

‘But what if he calls and wants to see me? I don’t know if I can go out out tonight.’

‘Lara, come on. He is ignoring you, which he does every few weeks, so you can’t just be at his beck and call. Embrace your inner feminist, stop being his booty call and come out with me tonight to help me lose my virginity.’

She started laughing. ‘Are you kidding? You want to lose your virginity tonight? To a stranger?’

‘Yup.’

‘I’m not helping you get deflowered by a one-night stand. You’ve held on long enough so you may as well last a bit longer for The One.’

‘I am so bored of that phrase,’ I retorted. ‘Do you know how many websites have advised me to keep on waiting? WikiHow’s entire virginity page is full of Hare Krishna crap like that.’

‘Did you actually search for virginity advice on Wikipedia?’

‘See how desperate I am?’ I pleaded in my best whiny voice.

‘Promise you’ll never do that voice again and I’ll consider it.’

‘Oh, fine. Have you brought any chocolate with you? I’m going to need calorie support for when I tell you about last night.’

‘I’m on a diet again.’

‘Are you kidding me?! You’re a size eight—you don’t need to diet.’

‘I know, but I feel kind of gross and I was planning to see Jez tonight and I didn’t want to be bloated.’

‘Lara, you’re speaking to someone who had to buy size twelve jeans the other day—and they still left imprints on my legs when I took them off. Do not even think about saying you feel fat. Besides, do you want to end up looking like those anorexic A-listers in magazines? They’re completely airbrushed and no normal humans look like that and—’

She groaned through the rest of the rant I recited to her every time she tried to diet. We had both decided long ago never to become girls who only ate celery and used their diaries for cumulative calorie counting, but occasionally one of us lapsed and found the willpower to start dieting. It was normally Lara.

‘OK, OK, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in five with chocolate.’

We sat looking doubtfully at the pile of clothes on the bed. I had no idea what to wear. Cosmo’s ‘What to Wear for Any Occasion’ guides were open on twenty website tabs but none of them had a ‘What to Wear for Finding a One-Night Stand to Lose Your Virginity to’ page.

‘Once we’ve chosen where we’re going, it will be easier to choose an outfit,’ said Lara.

I sighed and fell back onto the pile of discarded dresses on my bed. ‘The thing is, I don’t want to lose it to a skanky student, especially because I might see him again, so we can’t go to a student place….’

‘OK, why don’t we go somewhere a bit nicer?’ she suggested. ‘In Mayfair or something? Lots of people from my uni go out round there.’

Normally the thought of going to those clubs made me come out in a cold sweat. Hordes of Oxbridge graduates in designer clothes would make me stick out like a sore thumb. However, I had already tried the typical student clubs and had no luck whatsoever.

I shrugged. ‘You know what? Fuck it. I’m desperate. Let’s go to a posh club.’

She whooped and I carried on. ‘Besides, I may as well get deflowered by someone who can actually afford to buy me a drink. Hell, if I shag someone wealthy with connections, I might even get a writing internship out of it.’

Lara stopped cheering. She crinkled up her perfect-sized nose and stared at me. ‘Are you sure you’re not being a bit, um, blasé about this whole breaking-your-hymen thing?’

I exhaled loudly. ‘Look, I know I sound a bit crazy. But honestly, it just feels like a burden now. Even if I did meet the right guy, he would run a mile if he found out I’m still a virgin. It just makes me look weird—kind of like I saved it for him. If I can get rid of it with an ONS, then I’ll feel so much freer after, you know?’

‘Did you just abbreviate one-night stand?’

I ignored her. ‘I promise I won’t regret it. I’ve thought about it a lot and I know it’s the right choice for me. I just want to get this humiliating experience over with as soon as possible. Please help?’

‘Oh, fine. Let’s go to Mahiki. Prince Harry and his friends go there so at least you’ll lose it to someone who can pay for an abortion if you need one. Besides, it’s cheaper on Mondays for students.’

Hours later, Jez still hadn’t texted Lara back so she decided she would look for an ONS of her own to take her mind off him. We decided to wear black to respect the impending death of my virginity and picked out two short dresses from my wardrobe.

‘OK, so if I’m planning on getting down and dirty tonight, I need to shave my legs.’ I paused and then carried on. ‘And more important, what am I meant to do with the hair down there?’ I whispered. ‘You know what happened last time.’

Following the Bite Job, I had decided it was time to get rid of my pubes. A quick poll had revealed that all my classmates had been shaving their vaginas since they turned fifteen but no one had thought to tell me. I realised where I had gone wrong in leaving my pubes au naturel. I was too embarrassed to ask my friends for more info so I researched the topic online. It didn’t take long to learn the difference between a Hollywood and a Brazilian. Every website and magazine said that the au naturel vagina had only been acceptable in the seventies.

I realised I had to sort out my bush immediately because if I ever met another guy—or, more likely, got run over and had to wear an operating gown in hospital—I would be a laughing stock the minute they took my pants down.

I began my task right away. I ran a bath, and with grim determination climbed into it, brandishing my pink Venus razor. Shaving cream was too expensive to bother with, so I took a deep breath and reached for the shower gel. It was empty. Typical.

There was a bottle of shampoo and conditioner on the side. Conditioner was basically the same as shower gel, right? I figured it would be fine and slathered it all over my pubes. Then, without really knowing what I was doing, I started to shave the triangle area. My never-cut pubic hairs immediately got tangled in the razor and it started yanking them painfully. I persevered for twenty minutes before I realised I should have trimmed them to start with. I grabbed some nail scissors and started.

I finished snipping away with the scissors and went back to the razor. This time it was much easier, and the hairs disappeared. It got trickier around the more delicate areas, where I tried to pull the skin taut for a cleaner shave. When I got to the lips, I was navigating in total confusion. I was so terrified of cutting something important that I just left all the hairs on the side of the clitoris. I rubbed around with my hand to check if there were any other obvious patches I’d missed, but I couldn’t find any.

Until I headed down south and realised with horror there was a line of hair going up to my anus. I had no idea if you were meant to get rid of this bit, too, but figured I may as well finish what I’d started. I held my bum cheeks wide open and leant forward in the water, wishing I hadn’t put so much bubble bath in. I held my breath, carefully shaving upwards. It was hard to keep the razor close to the skin but I managed to get most of it off. I swapped sides and then breathed out in relief. I felt as though I’d just had a gruelling Pilates class.

I was about to climb out of the bath into the comfort of my dressing gown when I remembered Lily saying the lips were the one area where boys didn’t want hairs in case they went down on you. There weren’t exactly any boys queuing up to go down on me—but then, I reasoned, they wouldn’t if it got around that I had a hairy vagina. With a resigned sigh, I pulled the lips apart as far as I could and found the hairs growing only a few millimetres away from the clitoris.

Picking up my razor again, I slowly started steering it around the delicate parts, wishing I had invested in a special bikini razor.

Then I screamed. I had cut it. I had actually cut my clitoris.

I grabbed the shower head and turned the cold water on max. It numbed my vagina, and gradually my cries turned into self-pitying whimpers. I had another peek at it and it looked OK. It was only a tiny nick. I thanked God that I hadn’t accidentally lopped the whole thing off. I got out of the bath and dried myself gently before limping off to bed.

By the next day, I’d forgotten about the cutting incident. It seemed to have miraculously healed and I spent the entire morning feeling deliciously smooth. I even spent a full twenty minutes admiring my naked body in front of the mirror. The mass of hair that had used to terrify me and make me feel anything but sexy was gone. Post-shave I felt like a New Woman.

A few hours later, everything changed. I sat on the loo to pee and screamed in agony. The urine was trickling against my cut and it was more painful than anything I had ever experienced. I couldn’t pee without crying. I was fucked.

The only option was to dehydrate myself and not pee. I wandered around school for the next couple of days in a state of hell. Dante’s seventh circle of hell had nothing on my life post-shave. I was thirsty, faint, and had to stop wearing mascara because I cried so much every time I peed.

On top of that, the hairs had already started to grow back as stubble. It was itchy as hell and I couldn’t stop scratching. I had to hide in corners in public to scratch my vagina, and I winced whenever the outer lips rubbed together. In the mirror, it looked as hideous as it felt. The stubble made my poor lady bits look like a middle-aged man’s beard.

It took four days for the cut to heal and I spent every evening writing I hate my life all over my diary in five different felt tips. Eventually I worked up the courage to tell Lara exactly what had happened and she laughed so much she cried.

When I mentioned it again four years later, she was still laughing.

‘Oh my God, I totally forgot that,’ she sniggered.

‘It wasn’t funny,’ I snapped. ‘It was agony and I’m never letting a razor go anywhere near my vag again.’ I paused. ‘So what do I do instead?’

‘Why don’t you use a cream?’

I raised my eyebrows at her. ‘I can’t really see a cream having much effect down there. The hairs are kind of thick.’

‘No, it’s fine. The creams are designed to work on all types of hair. Why don’t you go ahead and trim, and I’ll go to the supermarket and buy the cream?’

‘OK, but if it goes wrong, I’m blaming you,’ I warned as I chucked her my wallet and walked into the bathroom to start the preparation. I hated trimming my pubes. I didn’t know what length to trim them to, and Lara was useless in this area because she was so fair her entire body was hairless. I doubted she had ever had to decide which hair removal method was best because she definitely didn’t have any. I’d noticed in Year Seven when we changed for swimming.

I started trying to pull the hairs together in clumps so I could trim them in mini sections. I channelled my inner hairdresser, sectioning the hair in between my fingers and cutting the ends of it. I snipped away as best I could, struggling as I did the lips. The hair fell away into the loo bowl and eventually I was left with a relatively evenly trimmed vagina. I leaned over so my head was in between my legs. Then the door swung open.

‘Jesus, Ellie, what are you doing?’

I snapped my head up and pulled my dress back down. ‘What happened to knocking? I was checking for stray hairs but I’m tempted to give up on them now.’