Like a virgin...

I have this idea for a memoir, to do with resilience – or my general lack of it – and how I’ve tried to become a bit less delicate and a bit more robust over the years. I’ve told a few people what the working title is and it generally gets a great response. I want it to be a bit funny (not that I really know how to write anything funny) and relatable and real. Today is the fifteenth consecutive day that I have written and published, and I’ve decided to share one of the rough drafts of one of the chapter ideas with you, to see how it feels to put something quite personal out there.

I feel good when I imagine sharing this piece. It doesn’t feel like oversharing. It’s from a long time ago and the writing of the experience made me see it and myself differently. The way we tell our stories matters; the version of this story that I lived with for years was drenched in shame. Today, it’s not. Plus, if I don’t like how it feels to have this out in the world, I can always edit it or take it down. I have changed the names (despite what I said the other day about not wanting to), and have done so in a way that feels right to me.

So: if you don’t want to read about my sex life (or if you’re a family member!), then this one isn’t for you. Everyone else may read on…

Like A Virgin

I was touched for the very first time by Mark Plumpton in an alleyway outside a party. I say ‘I think’ because my teenage years were spent in a mostly inebriated haze, and I managed to have a lot of sexual encounters with a lot of boys and young men. This one however has always stuck in my mind as the first, the shame of it suffocating me. The truth is often a subjective thing, but this is the truth I remember, so in many ways it’s what matters.

I had found myself “going outside” with him after kissing a friend, James, on the middle of the dance floor in front of our other friends, one of whom I was pretty intensely obsessed with. Kissing James was a disaster. He was one of my best friends! Why had I kissed him?! What on earth would this mean on Monday morning back at school? All my drunk mind could think was, Shit shit shit shit shit, and Get away, run away, walk away, get away, get away.

Mark was in one of the tutor groups from the side of my year group that I had no classes with, so although I’d seen him around school, I’d never properly spoken to him before. In my inebriated state, I had staggered away from James and across the dance floor, going from 0-60 in a matter of seconds, beginning to spiral and catastrophise about what I had done. I started gabbling at him nonsensically, panicking and dramatic.

Then, the invitation.

“Do you want to go outside?”

There was a moment. A moment where I comprehended that outside would take me away from the music and people, the disco lights and the group of male friends that had just witnessed me and James snogging. I wanted to be in both worlds, the inside world where I was brave and went back to my friends and found a way to bear the laughter and the teasing, and a world where I went outside and crossed whatever threshold I somehow sensed was waiting for me out there. I knew, on some level, I think. I think I already knew.

I said okay, and we went outside, my mind still reeling from the kiss.

I started to realise that this guy, this… what was his name again? – He’d told me… oh yeah, Mark. I started to realise that he was flirting with me. I remember studying his face, trying to make it come into focus, trying to figure out if he was attractive or not. I didn’t think he was, but maybe I was too drunk to tell.

Either way, he seemed to be interested in me, and to a deeply insecure fifteen-year-old girl, that sort of attention automatically meant that something was going to happen. We started to kiss, found our way to a wall. He put his hand under my dress (actually, it was my mum’s dress) and down into the deep, warm place at the top of my legs. I was instantly and simultaneously tingly and sensitive and self-conscious and ashamed. A minute ago I was kissing James and panicking in a random church hall, and now, this? Who even was this guy? And, oh god, that felt nice.

It lasted a matter of seconds. Nothing bad happened. It was a quick, quiet teenage fumble in the dark. But pleasure was interlaced with panic, not in the least because a) I’d just kissed my best bloody friend! (and as you can tell, didn’t exactly have the ability to brush it off and play it cool) and b) now I’d been bloody touched! By some random boy I didn’t even know! How would I cope if people found out? How would I actually make it through the day?

I think I remember asking him not to tell anyone and him saying that he wouldn’t. I remember praying that no one would find out. I remember going back into the party and willing it to get to eleven o’clock so my dad could collect me. I remember getting into the car, sobering up now, dissociating slightly as I lied and said it had been a good night. I remember feeling like there was nobody I could tell.

Most of all I remember the horror of what happened at school the following Monday.

Mark Plumpton went into school and told everyone he’d fingered me.

Such a horrible image isn’t it? “Fingering.” A wriggly digit, worming its way into any nook and cranny it can get access to. Men’s fingers have a lot to answer for. 

The worst part was how I found out that he’d told people. Tracy, my nemesis – an absolute bitch who had called me a slag at the bus stop the previous summer when I hugged my three male friends goodbye and then three months later joined my school and was in my tutor group, turning all the girls in the class against me – took enormous, malicious pleasure in making sure that everyone knew what a slut I was. I remember the slimy, satisfied smirk on her face as she sauntered towards me, flanked by her fucking idiot sidekicks, giving me a look that made my stomach churn. “Mark’s telling everyone he fingered you.” I was right in front of my friends, friends who hadn’t been at the party, friends I hadn’t told what had happened, friends who I couldn’t trust with my pain and shame.

Tracy and her bitch friends laughed and I have never wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole more.

The shame and horror of my first sexual encounter spreading like wildfire around my year group was too painful to metabolise and make sense of for years to come. I felt like a slut, a slag, an easy, unattractive mess. The fact that I had taken pleasure in his touch - which really had only lasted a few seconds - made the whole thing even worse.

Today, as a 36-year-old woman, for the first time possibly ever I am look back on this encounter with a new, fresh feeling – anger. Previously I have always felt shame. It’s lessened a ton over the years, but I have always been slightly horrified by my behaviour that evening. What was I thinking? I have often wondered. What was I thinking?

Now, for the first time, I’m seeing it differently.

Sure, Mark was on one level just an opportunistic 15-year-old young man who saw the chance to get off with a random girl. I’m sure there are few who wouldn’t.

But… I had staggered over to this guy drunk and in distress, horrified and unsure about what I had just done and what it would mean once I was back at school the following Monday. As an adult I cannot comprehend taking advantage of someone in that kind of vulnerable state – even though I consented the whole way through. For the first time, I am pretty angry. I’m seeing the whole thing through different eyes and feeling very protective towards my 15-year-old self and all the other young women like her.

Today, as a woman who is very alive sexually and very settled in knowing how wild and powerful my sexual feelings and my desire are, I wish I could go back in time and talk to that part of me. I wish I could tell her that it’s all okay, that there is no shame in enjoying your body, that she was a gorgeous, attractive young woman who any boy would have been lucky to get a kiss from let alone anything else. I wish I could tell her to raise her standards and not just give herself away to whoever casually expressed any sort of interest. I wish I could give her the courage to stay in the room and go back and talk to her friend James.

That is not how it unfolded. A moment happened, and I introjected layers of shame around my sexuality as a consequence. I have found – and it took a lot of years – that even the most caustic of shames can heal, and that was was lost can be reclaimed. And for that, I am very, very grateful indeed.

OH. And forgiveness is the key to peace and happiness and all that, but I’m telling you – if I saw Tracy today, I’d want to punch that bitch in the face on behalf of my fifteen-year-old-self. Because I didn’t deserve for that to happen to me, and she really was an utterly horrible cow. So there.

(Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash. Thank you, Sharon.)