This week I got an email from a guy who is a virgin. In his words:

!’m 28, male and a virgin. I got brought up religiously. I so wanted to lose my virginity – but it didn’t happen. Let’s just say meeting girls wasn’t something I did. I went to university when I was 20 and well, it didn’t happen. Then I came home and it didn’t happen and… well, although I’ve never seen it, I’m like that 40 Year Old Virgin guy.

Long story short: he is worried that being a virgin makes him less attractive to women. A sticky problem, because if it’s true then being a virgin beyond a certain point means you fall into a vicious circle of not-getting-laid, making you less attractive to potential partners the longer it takes you to get laid, and so eventually diminishing your chances of getting laid to almost zero.

Scary stuff. Luckily, the world is not such a bleak and awful place that women will, en mass, refuse to sleep with you if you haven’t hurled your virginity away by your X-teenth birthday.

What’s the right age to lose my virginity?

The answer to this question is “literally any age you feel comfortable losing it.” Fun fact: this might mean ‘never’, if you never feel the desire to. Before I wrote this blog I Googled “ages to lose virginity by country” and came across this excellent map. The link to the original source is broken (if anyone’s got updated links do let me know in the comments) but I’ve no reason to believe it’s not true – it lists the average age for people to lose their virginity by country, with the ages ranging from around 15 to over 20. The overall average is 17, which would probably surprise the British teenagers I went to school with, who seemed to think that if you hadn’t rid yourself of your virginity by the age of 16 you were definitely frigid and/or ugly.

I digress.

The most important thing to note is that these ages are average: they are the age arrived at when, on balance, everyone’s experience is taken into account. If we all lost our virginities on or before the average these figures would plummet, so from this we can deduce that there are plenty of people losing their virginities much later than the average age, as well as people who lose it before.

Will girls not want to sleep with me because I’m a virgin?

Sadly I can’t answer for all girls, no matter how much I’d like to have an ‘official spokesperson’ badge. But what I can tell you is that there are definitely some girls who will want to sleep with you even though you’re a virgin. Moreover, there are girls who will find the fact that you’re a virgin a distinct turn on.

Over the course of my life I can count the number of virgins I’ve slept with on one hand. Or, to be more precise, one finger. The sex was stunningly hot. Absolutely, achingly, delightfully hot. His nervousness and desperation to do the deed combined to produce a tension that was utterly unique: never before or since have I felt someone trembling so violently as he touched me, or moaning with such beautiful, lustful agony as he slipped his shaking fingers into my knickers. You can read more about him here, or [SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT] buy my book for the full story.

So, in answer to your question, I certainly wouldn’t be less likely to sleep with someone if I knew he was a virgin. On the contrary, I’d be more likely to savour the moment, flattered in the knowledge that he’d probably remember me for the rest of his life. Not all women will think like this, of course, but those that do will appreciate you so hard they’ll make up for any other judgmental ones.

If all this is true, why do I feel bad for being a virgin?

Because some people (I like to call them ‘fuckwits’) speak and act as if your virginity is a troublesome mess to be disposed of. Like you’ve been carrying a used tissue around with you since you were born, and when you hit sexual maturity you must dispose of it as quickly as is humanly possible.

Whether it’s the arsehole kids at school calling you a virgin because you’re not behaving like a sex pest, to the adults who really should know better using ‘virgin’ as slang for ‘pitiable loser’.

Like those who think sleeping with more than the ‘average’ number of people makes you a reprehensible human, some people act as if ‘losing your virginity’ is a chore you need to get out of the way before you can become a fully functioning adult member of society. It’s balls, of course. I remember the night after I lost my virginity lying in bed thinking “huh. So that’s it. I’m not a virgin any more.” I expected to feel different: more grown up. I’m not sure how exactly – I don’t think I expected flashes of light or a tingling cunt or a sudden and comprehensive knowledge of the Kama Sutra. But I didn’t feel different at all: I felt like just the same slightly clumsy, neurotic twat that I’d been before, just with a new experience to hold onto.

I’d rather be a virgin than a bastard

In my experience sex is a very nice thing to have, and if you want to have it and haven’t yet then I understand your desire to hump things, in the same way as I understand why people want to go to Disneyland, or stay at the Ritz. I’m not going to patronise you and assure you that “it’ll definitely happen one day” or that you just have to wait for the “right” person – these things will depend utterly on how you feel about it, what you do, and who you end up meeting.

What I will tell you, though, is that not everyone is going to think badly of you for being a virgin. And I can assure you that the people who make you feel shit because you’ve missed out on a life experience they happen to have had are probably not worth fucking. They’re like braying gap-year-ites who tell you you’ve ‘never lived’ because you haven’t been to India, or got off your tits on mushrooms at a beach party in Thailand. Like arrogant city boys who brag about their salary in front of lower-paid friends. They are the the cool kids from school who never grew up, and remain convinced that happiness can only be measured in comparison to other people.

There are plenty of people for whom your virginity will not be an issue – there are many who will actively find it a turn on. There will be a few – and I suspect it’s only a small proportion – who will judge you for it. Don’t worry about whether these people will fuck you: if they judge you for being a virgin then they don’t deserve to have nice sex.

Last week I wrote about cheese-sandwich sex. The kind of easy, everyday, sex-for-need that you have when you just need a quick fuck. Today’s exceptional guest blog is right at the other end of the spectrum: this is 12-course gourmet sex. The kind of sex you dream about, have, then think about for the rest of your life.

Both the story and accompanying picture are courtesy of @HigherKinks, who you should follow on Twitter if you love hot pictures, and the gleeful, lusty delight with which a pair of perverts go about enjoying each other.

Joyous abandon

One look from a lover can last you a lifetime.

She was kneeling in front of me, naked. This happens a lot.

She was breathless too. Not from thrashing about, I realised – though there had been an agreeable amount of the bouncy stuff prior to this particular moment – but from something more subtle. A tiny gasp, reminded me that some joys are so exquisite to contemplate, that you momentarily forget to breathe. This doesn’t happen as much.

She looked up at me, eyes wide, lip slightly bitten. And that was when I saw the look that I will carry with me into dotage. It was the look of someone who digs you, seriously fucking turned on. Like, stupidly, impossibly, nothing-will-ever-feel-quite-the-same-again turned on. But it was more than that even. It was a look also of acceptance, of longing, of trust and of urgent desires that needed to be quenched. Some folk call it the look of love, but unless you’ve been in this exact scenario I’d invite you not to consider me a twat for suggesting that. (Oh, and there was a gentleman sucking my cock two inches from her face. I maybe should have mentioned that). She moaned at the sight and orgasmed on the spot. This had never happened before.

Some context for you.

New Years Day. Two lovers with no obligation to anyone but each other that day. No work. No kids. No stress. A lot of fucking, obviously. There had been pillow talk.

“We could call him..”
“He says he’s a bit tired and hungover…”
“We don’t have to do anything, just hang out…”
“Yeah.. he’s texted. He’s on the way…”’

It wasn’t much of a gamble. He was her friend, someone we liked and respected, and was good company. But we weren’t sure anything would happen. Or even if we’d want it to. After an enjoyable evening, and perhaps sensing a moment alone was needed, our friend went to the toilet. We looked at each other. We both knew what the other was thinking. She grinned the grin that says “Can we?”. By the time he came back downstairs, she was kneeling over me on the couch, skillfully rolling her tongue around the end of my penis while I babbled something about inviting him to join us or something – I can’t remember exactly what I said because he agreed inside 2 seconds.

From this point on, my memory is jumbled. A highlight reel of joyous abandon and giggling depravities. We undress her. I watch her beguile his cock, watch him eat her out. I get so excited I have to slide myself down her throat as she stretches under us and for the next few hours it just feels like we are drawn from one intoxicatingly filthy scenario to the next like a little boat magically propelled to different islands, each lovelier than the last. That might sound twee, but one of the fantasy islands we visited was the island where the lady gives head while her lover fucks her steadily to orgasm in the ass. Always wanted to visit that one.

In between bouts, we smoke, drink and lounge around, marvelling at my girl’s beautiful body and the pleasures of consenting, carnal adult activity. We talk about other folk we’d like to fuck, of experiences and delights yet to be had. We get so randy we fuck all over again. It was a stupefyingly good night. We took lots of pictures. Like tourists on holiday.

But here’s the thing. When you find someone you love, who you never want to stop shagging, it’s amazing. But when that person sees no reason for you both to not fuck other people together too? How can I explain this to the nerd generation? It’s like levelling up while playing the best computer game ever.

New year’s resolutions are generally a bit crap, but as it’s timely I’m going to tell you about a resolution I’ve been working on for the last month or so, which I’ll carry through into the new year because time is linear like that.

I need to lose some weight.

It’s not urgent, but I’ve decided that my happiness depends on shaving off a few pounds so I can jiggle around the house to showtunes without feeling my tummy wobbling out of sync to the rest of me.

There are three things I hate about this, and believe it or not none of them have anything to do with diet or exercise. Sure, I prefer cider to soup, and running my arse round the block is about as tempting as queuing for One Direction tickets, but these are just things you have to do to lose weight, so I bear no grudges against biology. But there are some things about dieting that bother me.

The detox bandwagon

The first and most obvious thing is the patronising, sexist market that surrounds female weight loss. Don’t get me wrong, there’s an irritating market surrounding male health too (Get ripped in 8 weeks, lads, with this one weird old trick). But given that I am a woman, the female stuff leaps out from the shelves and smacks me in the face more forcefully.

Magazines trumpet ‘detox time’, as if it’s a long-established calendar event: that all women, for the month of January, will eschew booze and munch salads. Because if we don’t do this there’s a very real danger that we’ll just disappear into a fatty swamp of chemicals.

It’s bullshit, mostly. There’s really no such thing as ‘detoxing’, and if we didn’t consume any chemicals we’d die. But since the first marketeer sat down and said “hey I’ve got this great new product it’s like water but better because it costs two quid a bottle” we’ve been dragged into thinking that ‘detoxing’ is not only a real thing but something that all women should do throughout the month of January. Unfortunately, the more of us do it, the more it reinforces the idea that we should all be doing it.

So now I am in a position where I feel guilty for dieting in January, because I am propping up a ridiculous ad-driven concept of the New Year detox, but similarly guilty if I don’t, because I am a woman and therefore should be thinking about calories every single minute that I am not either buying shoes or tearing hair from my pudenda. It’s a pickle.

The ‘oh but you’re not’s

Why is it that, when I mention the fact that I’m a bit chubby, people feel compelled to tell me I’m wrong? Seriously, why?

I’m wrong about a million and one things. Once I argued that the battery life on an iPhone was shorter than the time it’d take me to commute to and from work, and the other day I spent a good twenty minutes insisting that Brad Pitt couldn’t be a day over forty. Wrong on both counts, of course, but not everyone feels compelled to point that out: often they just roll their eyes and let me continue down the path to future embarrassment.

But when it comes to weight, people are keen to insist I’m wrong even when I’m plainly and clearly right. When I say I’m trying to lose a bit of weight (usually in response to someone trying to guilt-slip yet another mince pie down my throat), people leap insistently out of their seats crying “OH NO YOU’RE JUST BEAUTIFUL AS YOU ARE”, as if the world will stop spinning if they let me believe I am anything other than perfect.

Why do we do this? It is, of course, mean to walk up to a friend and announce “you could stand to lose a few pounds, mate.” But I’ve got a mirror – I can see what I look like. And what I look like is an averagely attractive person who could do with losing a bit of weight. You’re neither evil nor a bully if you let me get on with it.

To add insult to injury, although gentlemen friends are allowed to make self-deprecating jokes about their weight, as a woman any mention of weight gain is treated as blasphemy. The poor gents who actually do want reassurance are left out in the cold, listening to the lilting sounds of “who ate all the pies”, while girls hiss “blasphemy!” at each other if one raises the possibility of dieting. This situation sucks for all of us.

Will you still love me when I’m thin?

“I love you no matter what.”

It’s a lovely sentiment, designed to elicit the same warm fuzzy feeling people imagine they’re conjuring if they tell you that you don’t need to lose weight. And yet it’s rarely evoked the other way around. Someone who goes on a diet is rarely reassured “I’ll still love you even when there’s slightly less of you filling those knickers.”

Loving someone when they’re fat is seen as a noble and beautiful thing, as opposed to just something that happens when someone you love piles on a few pounds (or, indeed, if you fall in love with someone who doesn’t have the proportions of a runway model – i.e. almost everyone). If we really meant it then there’d be no question whatsoever about whether we’d stay with a partner who weighed more than average: therefore no need for any reassurance that our deep and true love transcends weight.

Moreover, as I’m confident the sun will rise tomorrow, I know that if I woke tomorrow lighter and tighter your love would not wane. It’s not my weight that’ll put you off, but the things I have to do to stay like that – the act of losing weight itself. You’ll love me when I’m fat, sure, but I think loving me when I’m calorie-counting might be more of a challenge. Will you still love me when I ask you to eat salad to keep me company? When I swap my legendarily awesome macaroni cheese for quinoa? When I neglect your blow jobs to go to the gym?

We’ll see.

I’ve been having a lot of typical sex lately. You know, the sort of sex you have when you just fancy some sex but have no particular desire to put a cherry on top. Basic sex. No-frills sex. If exciting and boundary-defining shags are the equivalent of a twelve-course tasting menu, then what I have been doing is eating cheese sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a whole month.

And guess what? It’s brilliant.

I love cheese-sandwich sex to almost exactly the same degree as I love twelve-course fancy sex.

My typical sex

It starts with a suggestion by one or other of us. Not a gentle touch or a barked command, or anything designed to elicit a specific sexual reaction. I’ve had shags that have started with playful sofa-fighting, and ones which I’ve kicked off by simply pulling my knickers down and offering my naked arse to the gentleman in question. Typical sex isn’t like this, it begins much more simply.

“Fancy a shag?”

“Yep.”

There’s a pristine beauty and simplicity to it. It’s not overworked, which means that if the second person doesn’t fancy one they’ll know it’s not the end of the world to decline. Nor is it overly-prescriptive. “Fancy a shag?” leaves you open to developing a particular type of shag if you like. I could respond with “yes, will you fuck me over the bath?” or “no, but I’d love to suck you off while I rub my clit through my knickers.” In short, ‘fancy a shag?’ tells me that you’re horny, and asks if I am too. All the rest is up for grabs.

Once it’s been established that both of us fancy a shag, we touch. Although I’m generally a fan of variety, in this specific scenario, when I am in the ‘typical sex’ mindset, I get off on the predictability of it. He grips me around the waist and immediately slides his hands down to my arse. There’s a delicious familiarity there – the exact size and shape of him is satisfyingly unsurprising. The exact degree to which he squeezes me has been carefully calibrated over years of ‘a bit harder’ and ‘oh God yes that’s it’ until he’s got just the right pressure to get me dripping.

The same familiarity comes, of course, from his dick. I know how quickly it gets hard, what motions will best help it to get there, and exactly how to open this specific pair of trousers (seducing someone new is great fun, but I never seem quite as suave as I’d like because I fumble with unfamiliar trouser openings). His dick has a very specific weight in my hand, and I’m an expert on just how to hold it and squeeze it to ensure that the typical fuck takes its course.

There’s no detour here for blow jobs – I’m describing my typical shag. And typically I don’t have time to take him slowly into my mouth, because we’ll both be too keen to start fucking. So fuck we do.

And the best part is that as soon as we begin, it’s all about the end. This is an ‘everyday’ fuck – something at least as fun and functional as masturbation.

He’ll fuck me with quick, efficient strokes – touching the bits that give him extra shivers through his dick. I’ll push back and squeeze around him so I can feel as much as possible inside me: so that every atom of my cunt is pushing into part of his cock. There’s no pretense that we’re trying to impress each other, or even making an effort to get each other off: we’re doing it because we need to, and because each of us is as keen as the other to feel those first twitching waves of orgasm grip us in the pit of our stomachs.

‘Typical sex’ doesn’t mean ‘boring sex’

It’s a fuck you have because you both need it. It’s even better than wanking because it’s a mutual pleasure, and is therefore sociable: like monkeys picking fleas off each other or you scratching an itch that I just can’t reach on my own. And the moans and ‘oh yes’s and sighs at the end don’t just signal joy or sexual ecstasy – there’s a definite tone of relief. We’ve soothed and satisfied each other.

That’s why I love the everyday fuck. I love it easily as much as I love the special ones, the exciting ones: the ones with extra people or special toys, or words that make me growl with lust. Because while twelve-course meals are undoubtedly exciting, sometimes you just want a cheese sandwich. Something you eat while standing up in the kitchen, dropping crumbs onto the counter and forgetting to put the butter back in the fridge. It’s everyday, it’s typical, it’s nothing fancy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t delicious.