MY
VIRGINITY – THE LAST TABOO
VIRGIN ON THE RIDICULOUS?
In the 1998 Greater Manchester
Humanist Group member’s questionnaire responses on the subject of suitable
newsletter material, one member asked for ‘MORE EROTICA’. I would love
to oblige by exploring this issue, but a thirty-six year old male
heterosexual virgin has little experience of such matters to work with, or
does he? If the initial shock of my casual breaking of the final taboo hasn’t
grabbed your attention, nothing that follows will either. My motives for ending
up chaste instead of chased and chasing are twofold; 1/. a fear that I might
not be much good at sex; 2/. on the whole a lack of interest in what seems to
be the predominant male preoccupation among many of my friends.
THE BIRDS AND THE BEES.
I learned the facts of life early on from my Mother, who described
everything in dull turgid biological, medical detail, and a Catholic Church
that regarded sex as vulgar and disgusting. Discovering a family friend’s
secret stash of porno mags, I found the contents mostly left me giggling, and
at times, rather frightened by the garish legs akimbo shots of many of the
women. Vagina pictures still look too much like brutal knife wounds to me.
Masturbation was a minor, mechanical guilty fascination for me, never
practiced from lust, but from boredom. That men masturbate in direct relation
to the sexual fantasy that grabs them at any time leaves me cold. It tends to
make actual sexual intercourse merely an act of masturbation in itself, in
which a woman is just used as an alternative to your own hand.
Many childhood friends boasted of their sexual conquests, (mostly
untruthfully) and tended to regard girls only by their availability. The first
schoolgirl I developed a crush on was the recipient of my first ever purchased
Valentine card, which she took from me and immediately threw into the bin, torn
in half, without a word. I was put off even talking to girls for years then.
THE CHILD MOLESTER.
A child molesting pensioner almost got his mitts on me when I was eleven. I
was invited to his house in Cheshire (a long way from Moston for my first
journey without my parents in accompaniment). I went to learn about how to
develop photographs myself, as opposed to sending them to the chemists. He just
spoke of sex the whole time, and just before I was due to leave, he grabbed at
my inner thigh in his dark room. I shrieked and moved back, knocking expensive
developer bottles over in the process. My attacker was now as nervous of me as
I was of him, and he took me home. I said nothing to my parents, even when
other boys stepped forward to tell what he had done to them, (far worse abuses
than I had experienced). I had escaped lightly.
At parties, I asked girls to dance, but often got rejected and dejected. I
was using contrived, unconvincing cliched chat up lines. I felt as though I was
just going through a seduction act for the sake of it, and as a means to a
single objective end; the end of my virginity.
In
1977, aged 15, a girl of my age seduced me. I was on an educational cruise
organised by the school. She was from a school in Scotland. She told me she had
lost her keys near where I was sitting, reading a book, on the quiet top
passenger deck. I played along with what was an obvious ruse, from curiosity to
see where we would end up. Eventually she realised I wasn’t taking a hint,
grabbed hold of me, called me a big duck egg, and kissed me with
passion, and lips that wouldn’t let go. Pleasure was just taking over from fear
and surprise when the pain came. An old man hit me with his walking stick and
told me to leave her alone. My first kiss was ruined. The girl and I drew
closer because of him. Our passionate embraces were intense. (The girl, not me
and him). We became inseparable, and hid from our respective teachers to be
together, while our friends seemed to observe us as though we were pandas,
hoping we’d mate there and then. Britain was getting closer. Our bliss was
doomed. She asked me if I loved her. I was terrified by that
word. ‘We only just met. It’s too soon to tell.’ I replied, but she demanded
that I told her I loved her. I felt something, but I wasn’t sure if it was
love, which was a soppy concept I imagined only existed in my Mother’s Mills
& Boon books. I declined to answer. She threatened to kill herself. I told
her not to be silly. She climbed over the guard rail of the ship and held on
with only one hand, threatening to let go, which would have sent her straight
into the sea. I told her I loved her because she looked crazy enough even to
let go for real. Separated at last we wrote and phoned each other. She remained
intensely emotive towards me, crying desperately each time she called. I wrote
to her saying that I felt we were hurting each other too much, and even half
heartedly advising her to find a boy closer to home as we would only ever meet
at best, every blue moon. She took up my advise and never contacted me again. I
was utterly lost for some time. The experience inspired my poem FIRST TASTE OF LOVE
Several holiday romances tended to end for me in things getting interesting
just before the coach or plane was due to go.
THE SWINGING SOCIETY? COUNT ME OUT.
Twice, I ended up at parties where people had sex in front of the guests.,
which I found appalling. Many guests simply shouted encouragement and fought
for a closer viewpoint. In both cases, I left, as I did when a party host put
on a home made video of his wife taking off her clothes, as she and everyone
else cheered.
Literature tends to magnify sex to an earth shattering, mind blowing
proportion that far transcends the reality of the experience for many people. Rapists
and misogynists are probably people who find the reality of their sex lives
doesn’t measure up to what they think everyone else is up to and achieving. A
book that hurt me hard was Dumas’s Three Musketeers, with its terrible female
villain, Milady De Winter, who seduces men to their destruction ands makes good
men do evil things for her. I began to wonder if I was doomed to meet women
like that. In fact, I once was.
SEDUCED INTO CELIBACY AND CHASTITY. 1981-85
Soon after my Father’s death , and a Hepatitis attack that nearly sent me
after him, a girl lifted me out of my sense of depression by inviting me on a
date. Thinking I was finally there, I was lead by my lust into a chaste
religious cult, called the Divine Light Mission, where I would remain for four
and a half years. My Milady De Winter nightmare had come true. I never missed
sex at all, as I hadn’t had any. The cult members always talked of failed
marriages, and sexual disasters in their lives that reinforced my view that I
was better off without sex anyway.
A girl came from Sweden to see our guru, and didn’t have enough money to get
home with. She was blonde, tall, and extremely attractive. She seemed the
ultimate sexual archetype. Unable to help her in Birmingham, where our Guru had
held court, I brought her to Manchester by Train, where I helped track down the
Swedish Consulate to help her get money to go home with. In the three days it
took, she was hidden from my parents in our spare bedroom, right under their
noses. A policeman I asked for help (at the police station) accused me of
trying to seduce her and of using her as a sex slave. His eyes crossed when I
told him about our Guru. The only time we even considered touching was when we
kissed each other goodbye when she finally left for her long journey home.
I really did fall for a girl who we were trying to recruit to the cult. We
started sneaking out for meals and drinks and dates. The cult treated her badly
as if she was a painted Jezebel seducing me away from them. One member even pushed
her violently to show his resentment over her. It was the beginning of the end
of my cult involvement, but sadly, we split up when I discovered that I was her
‘bit on the side’ and that she had a more steady boyfriend.’ I wasn’t jealous
of him. I felt sorry for him, and gave her back to him, without getting as
close as I would have liked. The full extent of my cult experiences is covered
at BRAINWASHED
- A CULT SURVIVOR'S TALE
POST CULTUS INTERRUPTUS - DESPERATION SETTING IN.
Safely out of cult land and reverted to atheism, I decided to get sex
properly. I joined a dating agency. The dingbats and basket cases who wrote to
me, and especially the one who went out with me for a single evening soon put a
stop to that pursuit line.
Then there was Susan (not her real name), who started talking to me in a pub
right under her boyfriend’s nose. It was clear to everyone that there was a
real chemistry between her and me, but not her and him. I discovered later that
he beat her and abused her badly, and offered to take her as mine, but she
remained loyal to him, despite her instincts and her Mother and me all advising
the opposite. One night when he had walked out on her and she felt particularly
depressed, she asked me to come and sleep with her. I did. We SLEPT together,
naked, and in each others arms, but we never had sex of any kind. We seemed to
both know that we were comfort and support enough for one another as we were.
It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, and I have no doubt
that it would have been spoilt if we had of made love. Eventually she jilted
him for another man, who treated her just as badly as the first one did, and I
felt terribly hurt and sorry for myself that it wasn’t me she came to. Again,
the events inspired a poem, SLEEPING
AROUND
ROMANCE, LOVE & SEX TO COME.
Dare I suggest that sex itself is overrated? I guess I now wear my virginity
with pride and arrogance and some sense of fear. I certainly love women and
feel attracted to women, while men never, ever turned me on. I am certain that
I am not gay. My deviations from the norms of society take a rather more
bizarre course. I am celibate, without even trying to be. I still desire sex,
but I’ve never got round to it. In many ways, I’m a failed romantic. But I
wonder if sex would destroy me. My father’s death changed me. The cult changed
me to a god-lover and Humanism changed me back to a man again. What will sex do
to me? Will it make me possessive, jealous, violent? Will I turn into the kind
of monster who ill-treated Susan? Could lust make me that way?
Sex involves a potent element of fantasy and abandonment. You lose your
thoughts and reason in the heat of passion. I don’t. I can’t do that. In the
kissing, French kissing and heavy petting that take me as close to actual
penetrative sex as I know, I have always been too self conscious. I am aware
that I am holding a lovely girl in my arms. I hear my mind telling me to kiss
her. I sense myself analysing and questioning the experience. Move arm now.
Touch breast now. Touch her hair now. My approach to sex is reduced to a
mechanical, text book style, that fails to reflect the kind of warmth I’d like
to be able to project. I think I basically don’t get sex because women know I’m
likely to be crap at it. Hopefully, someone may put me to the test one day, but
I’m not expecting a rush. If I die as I am, I don’t really mind. I’m happy
enough anyway. I get by with good books, (compensating for lack of good looks?)
films, friends to drink and dine with, and of course, Humanism. I have a
relatively contented life at present. Would sexual commitment spoil that for
me? I expect it would, even if it does bring rewards of its own.
Pornography always strikes me as too artificial. It depicts a world of
eternal sexual passion where people undress and get right down to it with
little story or dialogue or life getting in the way. The characters and
situations involved seem to be depicted for nothing more than their sexual
prowess and the audience become voyeurs, just as I became at those parties
where sex became a spectacle. . Erica Jong, in her hilarious novel, Fear Of
Flying, describes the ideal sexual encounter as ‘The Zipless Fuck’. where
two people meet for the first time, and undress, and make love, and part
company without even exchanging names, and without any complications or fuzz,
and never meet again. That is Pornography’s utopian dream. Pure undiluted sex
without complications or problems setting in. When a real couple turn to
bondage equipment, or the use of vibrators to enrich their sex lives, the
danger is that they will find the toys and gizmos and fantasies being played
out more interesting than each other. Sex reduced to experiments with positions
and variety of places to ‘do it’ takes over from itself. It can end up being an
empty and shallow experience. Actual sex experience remains basic; foreplay
followed by ejaculation of sperm in the vagina. The rest is window dressing, no
matter how artfully contrived it is in creative expression. Pornography creates
an unaesthetic illusion around the basic primary sex act. Real sex in the real
world involves the complications as well, and as much emotional pain as
pleasure between the lovers. Sadly many try to live the pornography dream. It
is totally unrealistic. On the whole I find it impossible to take porn
seriously. I don’t see anything educational, or beneficial to me in it. It
simply bores me. Sex is only a part of our lives, not their total sum. There is
work, and a great deal of platonic social intercourse of a distinctly
non-sexual nature. Those who live preoccupied by sex fail to see the rest of
life and what pleasures (and pains) it can offer us.
All too often, courtship seduction takes place on the dance floor to music
played so loud that your ears bleed, making conversation with your potential
partner nigh on impossible. I am handicapped by the fact that I dance like an
epileptic hippopotamus wallowing in quicksand. All too often, the loss of
inhibitions involved in courtship involves both getting the partner drunk with
alcohol. Generally I’m more comfortable at the dentists or having job
interviews than I am in asking girls to go out with me.
COMING OUT OF THE DIY CLOSET.
What I write here sounds intimate and private in the extreme. Members may
wonder what it has to do with Humanism. I believe we must be open and totally
self-honest on all aspects of our lives. We break one taboo by declaring our
Humanism. We break others by simply opening ourselves up to discuss our
sexuality and our understanding of the issues involved there. Many people
discuss sex only in childish sniggers and with a cliched bag of innuendoes to
play with. For all my lack of experience in the practice. I think I’ve got the
theory worked out better than many. I suppose for some though, that is like
memorising the Highway Code and never taking a driving lesson. Occasionally gay
men see that I am without a girlfriend and try to ask me out. One man asked me
bluntly if he could jerk me off, but most gays are more polite than that. At
first I was shocked and frightened, but now I react with good humour and a
polite ‘no thanks.’ A few people may still think of me as a closet, latent
homosexual, but I doubt it. I’ve never been afraid to openly discuss my
atheism, my former involvement in a bizarre cult, or my Humanism. I explore
this question further in AM
I GAY? –Could admitting to homosexuality be any worse? I doubt it, though GAY &
LESBIAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION (GALHA) members, who's work and courage I respect
enormously, may feel different. It will be interesting to see what reactions I
get to an admission of thirty something virginity. Will people laugh, feel
shocked, or feel total indifference? I don’t know if I will ever marry and/or
have children of my own. I would like to, one day. I certainly won’t marry just
for the sake of doing so, or to gain acceptance by other members of society who
like even now to insinuate that my lack of sexual partners makes me ‘queer’. If
I wanted sex, for the sake of it, I have no doubt that I could get it. I don’t
frequent singles clubs, or dating agencies these days.
If I was really desperate, I’d just go and pick up a trollop on Princess
Street, where the prostitutes hang out in more ways than one. Perhaps I don’t
want syphilis as a souvenir of my first love. I’m not sure that making love to
women is the best way I can show my love. It would be arrogant of me to think
of myself as some kind of Don Juan, when I’m not. So, there you have it. You don’t
have to be gay to come out of the closet. As I don’t belong in theirs, I’ve
built one of my own instead.
"Make love. We must make love instead of making money." Adrian
Mitchell.
PLAYING FREUD - AN ATTEMPT AT SELF- ANALYSIS.
Many people will feel that I have pulled deeply private thoughts and
feelings too violently into the public arena. Some people will wonder if they
weren't better off buried in my head and heart forever. We should all be open
and candid about our lives. I am no more ashamed of my sexual identity than I
am afraid to declare myself a Humanist. Supposing I had never expressed my
feelings of discomfort with the Catholic faith of my upbringing. I might now be
still in Church, singing the same hymns as the people around me, unable to express
my feelings there either. I am a Freethinker in the sense that I have learned
to be open and candid in my views on religious, social and moral issues, but
when it comes to feelings of private, personal sexuality, why am I expected to
remain not so free spirited in thought and expression?
HUMAN FIRST - HUMANIST SECOND.
The area of life where we have to be most ‘Human’ is with our wives,
husbands, girlfriends, or boyfriends. For many, sexual relationships are not
only personal, and existing only between the sexual partners, but are also used
(rarely consciously) an expression to others of virility, potency and strength.
Men like to be seen to be flirting with beautiful girls, and to be seen to have
sired at least one healthy, happy looking child. The eternal bachelor nowadays
provokes only the rumour that he might be kinky, gay, or somehow perverted .
Occasionally I do hear ‘wanker’ being mumbled behind my back, (though happily
not from Humanists). I am increasingly often asked why I have not married, or whether
I am divorced. My being ‘single’, (footloose but not fancy free) is becoming
increasingly noticeable, and eyebrow raising. The social solution seems to be
making sure that I am seen in female company. Occasionally at pubs and clubs, I
have danced with girls, and found discomforting the fact that my friends watch
what is going on with intense scrutiny, and some comment. One way or another,
we all have public sex lives. Whether we like it or not we all end up
conforming to peer group pressure. Take the gay experience; At one time,
homosexuality was a private personal activity, but today the closeted gay (or
lesbian) is forcibly publicly outed, often through pressure from others in the
community and obliged to step into a pigeon hole, before being left alone to
live the life of his or her wishes.
There is no doubt a valid case for outing homosexuals in public office, when
they use and abuse that office to pass legislation and comment that makes life
unpleasant or impossible for other, more brave and open practising
homosexuals,. Outing is dangerous practice to others who will feel obliged to
see themselves as either straight or as gay, but still as ‘sexually successful'
in their own eyes and in social recognition. The idea of a life lived
relatively unaffected by practised sexuality seems utterly alien in today’s
society. I start feeling like I’m a freak. I start wondering then if I should
contrive and manipulate a love life around myself, by becoming openly
seductive, and going to pickup bars, etc, but that would be me using women to
further a personal and a social need of my own. It feels ‘false’ and
engineered, rather than sincere and spontaneous. I wouldn’t be happy with that.
I’ve trapped myself in a Catch 22 vice that is largely of my own cerebral devising.
Sexuality is about abandonment, and letting go, to experience and feel through
the senses. Passion is about giving in to your feelings. Much sexual
uninhibition involves a sense of fantasy and role play. Couples turn the lights
out and close their eyes to kiss,. People will dress alluringly. My mind
doesn’t switch off. I am too mentally aware of where I am. That kind of sensual
relaxation seems to be too deeply suppressed in me. I believe I am by nature
simply not very good at sexual practices. On the whole, that fear tends to keep
me out of the game. Many a girl I have fancied has gone off with another man,
sometimes right under my nose. One girl I wanted a relationship with turned me
down, but at least told me openly why. She said I lacked aggression,, and that
I was just too insufferably nice, with a tendency to put women on an impossible
pedestal, and handle everything with kid gloves, as though dealing with
Aphrodite herself. My very fear of proving inadequate to meet needs of the
females I do adore has distanced them from my reach. I’ve tended to approach
women with love, but not lust and fire in my eyes. Mine is a quaint, soppy
world of chocolates, cards and flowery romance. Sadly, I don’t often get to
save women from fire breathing dragons, and when I do, they usually just say
thank you and marry another errant knight instead.
FILM AND TELEVISION INFLUENCES.
In the 1960’s television shows like the Avengers depicted the elderly
bachelor as a man of near saintly virtue, and moral integrity. No one really
expected John (Patrick McNee) Steed to bed his leading ladies. In the 1990’s we
have The X-Files TV series depicting a working platonic relationship between
two FBI agents, but after four series of the show, the producers are under
pressure to show the two agents getting laid. For 60 years, Superman (Clark
Kent) and Lois Lane had an unconsummated love for one another that never
interfered with their work, or narrative story telling. Now the TV series has
had to show them have sex together. Once that happened, the series went off the
air. The public had seen all it wanted to see. In the recent Titanic film, the
lovers are seen having a platonic love affair, but just before the ship starts
sinking, the film just has to show them having sex. Whatever happened to films
where the hero only even kisses the girl in the final reel? People have a
craving to know what we do, and think and feel towards one another. Princes
Diana’s life was destroyed by such intense scrutiny. The young man with an
unsuccessful string of failed relationships behind him may well panic and enter
into marriage with a girl he doesn’t know well at all, and pin his hopes on
things working out well. Sometimes, things do work out for them. Often they
don’t. Divorce becomes likely.
FEMINISM AND HUMANISM.
The need for a feminist movement is proof that male attitudes to women do
not work at many levels. The subordination, subjugation, and reduction of women
to property of the male (often with violence) that has gone on for many
generations shows that too many men require a woman to be passive and
controllable in order to be able to love her at all (if even then). Women have
wisely, and rightly rebelled; suffrage, and the liberation movement towards
equality have helped to partly redress the balance. Though there is still a
long way to go. Humanism surprisingly lacks a feminist tradition. Feminist
literature is open, frank and candid about women’s attitudes to foreplay,
penetration and even female masturbation, in works from writers like Germaine
Greer onwards. Male sexuality is too focused on possession, ownership and
control of women. Men find a sense of immortality in their potential to have a
son to take their name forward. The weak male, the castrated eunuch, the hen
pecked husband, the cuckold, etc are figures of fun today, in film, and
literature written by men (are they saying essentially, I’m glad we’ machos are
not like that, eh, lads?). Men set great store by seeing men as successful
breadwinners. I have no doubt that presenting myself as single, but not
divorced on a CV or job application will play against me at my age.
Strindberg’s The Father depicts a man driven insane by the fear that his wife’s
pregnancy might not be his doing. We have GALHA who fight for gay rights, but
no specifically Humanist feminist perspective on life. We need one, and fast.
Religion has always looked on women as inferior and dangerous to men. There are
still God fearing men who think women should walk three paces behind them. God
himself is regarded as male. Sex itself is dirty talk for Christians, as the
body is an earthly delight. My failed sex life would make me a model Christian
if I could buy their God at any price. Ha! Am I sexist? Does my retained
interest in (unpractised) heterosexual sex make me thus? Who would be the ideal
woman for me to fall in love with;? She’d have sympathy for Humanism (though
she needn’t actually be a Humanist); an intelligence, and a sense of
understanding and sensitivity would also be important. She will probably be a
woman many men would find dull and uninteresting. I still don’t see her face
though.
Does this really qualify as Humanism and Freethought? Or am I kidding myself?
THE LAST TABOO REVISITED.
Few
of my articles provoke as much feedback as the one above. This follow up
statement summarizes events since then (yes, I am still a virgin) and addresses
some of the criticism received.
One of my most controversial and
frequently visited web pages, perhaps understandably, is that about me still
being a virgin, now that I am in my forties. The article was written when I was
in my late thirties).
Responses to it have varied from
utter disbelief and incredulity to genuine interest and understanding.
From those who don’t even want to
comprehend, I have just received e-mails telling me I must be gay, which A/.
Makes me worry about how they respond and react to real homosexuals and
B/. Tells me that they haven’t read my
companion article, AM
I GAY? –
Most people just take my lack of
sexual experience in their stride, as a curiosity and go on to read my other
work. Some find it odd that I can successfully write so many erotica without
having experienced a lot of it first hand. Some people just plain don’t believe
me. One recent e-mail pointed out that
the events on the ship, The SS Uganda, with a girl threatening to leap
overboard if I didn’t declare my love for her must have been cribbed from the
film Titanic, but my article was written some years before the film even came
out.
Sometimes, girls who read the
article tell me that they appreciate my work and that they would happily
satisfy the gaps in my life-experience if not for already being spoken
for.
The oddest reactions are from people
who know me but who haven’t paid close attention to my website and seen my
virginity article. When they eventually do find it, they feel as if they have
discovered a great secret about me. The fact that my life story is spelt out on
the World Wide Internet Information Superhighway should really tell people that
there is no secret. If anything, it is my casual honesty about my sexuality
that shocks and amazes people. Breaking taboos can shock people.
In 2005, a feature film, The 40 Year Old Virgin was released. I thought, Oh, am I in for some hassle now, but surprisingly few people picked up on the similarities between my experiences and those in the film, which I loved and my review of it is up at /film.review-the.forty.year.old.virgin.htm
OTHER
MIDDLE AGED VIRGINS
I
was surprised to discover that I am not alone in my experience or lack of it.
Middle-aged male virginity is surprisingly prevalent. American psychologists
and psychiatrists have discovered that many seemingly healthily minded males
(and in some cases handsome males) are still single and virginal. Prostitutes also testify that many middle
aged men come to them for late life sexual release and lessons in the practical
side of having intercourse. I have found a few websites on the subject.
http://www.datelinehollywood.com/archives/2005/08/15/real-40-year-old-virgins-say-40-year-old-virgin-movie-make-them-uncomfortable/
http://archive.salon.com/sex/feature/2003/10/08/virgin/index_np.html
The
release of The 40 Year Old Virgin led some US Virgins to threaten legal action,
thinking that they would be subjected to ridicule and intolerance, but such
fears strike me as groundless. I have generally found more good-humoured
positive reaction and respect than hostility and pseudo-homophobia in responses
to my article on the subject.
Arthur Chappell
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