Virgin (24 page)

He carried on. “So, that’s why I’m . . . explaining all of this. She changed me the second I met her and I just fell for her.”

This third-person tense thing was starting to freak me out. Couldn’t he just use the pronoun “you” instead? The Ginger Zinger didn’t feel so good in my delicate tummy either.

“I met her last year,” he said, “so it wasn’t overlapping with you—don’t worry. She ended things with me just before I met you.” He paused. “She’s Brazilian.”

I felt my stomach sink. He was talking about someone else. This entire speech. It was about someone else. Not me. He didn’t love me. We didn’t have a profound connection. He had it with
her
. Someone else. I felt sick. Tears pricked my eyelids.

He kept going. “It’s just . . . I really liked her and she told me she was only here for a few months and was going to go back to Brazil. So she didn’t want anything serious. Which broke my heart. Then I met you, and we hung out a bit, but you and I were obviously never going to be serious. We’re more friends than lovers, right?” He nudged me.

My heart fell into my lace-edged socks. Friends, not lovers. The phrase spun round in my head and went into neon green letters bigger than VIRGIN on Dr. E. Bowers’ computer. I was ready to cry. He looked at me expectantly. I gathered together the tiny modicum of strength I had left inside me. I made a big, unnatural smile appear on my face.

“Sure,” I said.

“Ah, I knew you’d understand,” he said, grinning gratefully. “The way you are with me . . . really jokey and silly. It’s what makes me love you as a friend. You’re hilarious. The way you kid about everything, even your virginity. It’s nice you wanted to lose it to me as a friend—it’s way better than loads of girls who just give it away on a drunken one-night stand or to a guy who breaks their heart, you know? At least this way, we’ll always stay friends. I think you’re great.”

I nodded mutely. Friends, not lovers. Heart. Broken. Ow.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you about Luisa. I need a girl’s perspective. I just . . . Do you believe in love? Do you think she’s the one for me and I should fight for her, or do I just let her go?” he asked anxiously.

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t sit here and advise him on another girl. It hurt more than anything had ever hurt before. I wanted to cry hot, salty tears of humiliation. I wanted to undo everything. I wished I’d never met him. I wanted Lara.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said breezily, gulping away sobs before they appeared on my face. “I reckon . . . um . . . if she
is
the one, it will happen. In its own way. If it’s meant to be, it will be.”

“Do you really think so?” he asked, leaning towards me. He was so passionate and cared so much . . . about someone else. Why was I still sitting there, giving him advice? I needed to get the fuck out.

“Oh my God,” I said loudly. “Is that the time? I totally forgot—I double-booked myself! I said I’d meet a friend. I have to go. Shit. Call me, though—we can chat about Luisa and, um, stuff.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, looking confused. “What’s the time?”

Bugger, what
was
the time? “Way later than I thought it was!” I quipped, and grabbed my bag. I gave him a quick wave and ran out, leaving him looking around the café for a clock.

I reached a hidden alleyway around the corner and collapsed to the ground. I felt so stupid. How could I have thought he was talking about me? How could I have believed that Jack wanted to be my boyfriend when really he just thought of me as a friend? He hadn’t even liked me through any of this. God, I felt so used. When we were sharing our writing, laughing together, sleeping together . . . he’d probably been thinking about this
Luisa
the whole time. I dropped my head into my hands and cried.

I lay on my bed, clutching a glass of rosé. The girls were sprawled over my duvet alongside an open pizza box. I’d cried all evening but now I was well on my way to the next stage in the grief cycle. I’d done denial, sorrow and now, fueled with wine and pizza, I was on ANGER.

“He’s a fucking dick,” I said for the tenth time that hour. “How
dare
he lead me on like that and then casually be all like, ‘Oh, I thought we were more friends than lovers, right?’ I mean, who the fuck even
uses
the word
lovers
?”

“He’s a useless, time-wasting, scummy little shit,” agreed Emma. “You’re better off without him. Leave him to this Brazilian bitch.”

“Exactly, Ellie,” said Lara, nodding fervently. “He’s a total bastard. You need to forget him and move on—you deserve so much better.”

I closed my eyes and took a large slurp of wine. It was wine-from-a-box, and I could tell from the taste.

“Guys,” I ventured with my eyes still semi-shut, “do you think Jack did like me?”

Emma reached out and squeezed my arm. “Yes, of course he did. It’s just that you wanted completely different things and you misread each other’s signals. It happens.”

“I guess,” I said. “It still feels shitty.”

“Of course it does,” she replied. “But just think, even if you had been in a full-blown ‘I love you’ relationship with him, I doubt you would have married the guy. It would have ended at some point anyway. It’s just . . . this way it ended sooner than you thought.”

Lara nodded. “She’s right. We all build up fantasies about guys. Yours just crashed down to earth sooner.”

“So, it was . . . a good thing?” I asked doubtfully.

“Oh, who fucking knows,” said Emma. “Let’s have some more wine.” She generously squirted more rosé from the cardboard box into our glasses.

“Also,” said Lara, “you shouldn’t attach too much importance to Jack, Ellie. You’re too special to waste even a second of your life caring about him and what he thinks.”

“I agree,” said Emma. “And you know what? Everything happens for a reason. If Jack hadn’t been such a dick, you wouldn’t be here getting valuable life advice from your favorite people.”

I rolled my eyes at her but Lara cautiously ventured on. “Don’t hate me for saying this, El, because I love you, but . . . I think you need to like yourself more. You need to stop letting guys run your life. Don’t waste your time trying to preempt what a guy wants. If you don’t like having Brazilians, don’t get one. Go au naturel. If you want to be a virgin, be one. If you want to sleep with every man who smiles at you, fucking
do
it!”

My friends were better than any number of Ginger Zingers. I was starting to feel rejuvenated. “Fuck it,” I said. “I’m growing out my Hitler.”

As they laughed their approval, I realized that I’d wanted to embrace my pubes ever since I was seventeen and shaved my vagina for the first time. The public pressure to have a waxed, perfect VJ had been weighing down on me for four exhausting years, but I was finally ready to walk away from it.

“I’m never getting a wax again,” I announced. “I think I’m going to carry on trimming it though, but purely
because I want to
—and also, it’s really gross when it pokes out of my knickers, you know?” I paused while they nodded in agreement. “But this is it, guys. I’m done caring about my pubes. If it means I can never buy lacy knickers because there’ll be a mass of squashed hair beneath them, so be it. Cotton panties, here I come.”

The girls cheered and I started to realize I was having more fun with them than I ever had with Jack. When I was with him, I’d constantly been having a second conversation with myself, narrating and overanalyzing every tiny thing. On top of that it had been fucking
exhausting
pretending to understand his political views. It was a relief to be around friends who liked me for me.

“Aw, Ellie, I’m so proud of you,” said Lara. “I’m not being patronizing, I promise. I know you try really hard to fit in, but we love you
because
you’re not like everyone else.”

“I love you too,” I cried. “I’ve been an idiot, haven’t I?”

She sighed in mock-exasperation. “Stop being so hard on yourself. You haven’t been an idiot. You’ve just been
you.
Whatever you’ve done—caring loads about your virginity, trying to fit in, losing it to a guy you really liked who turned out to be a dick . . . it’s just life. You did what you thought was right at the time and you’re moving on. And when you’re ready, you’re going to turn it all into a funny story to make us cry with laughter like you always do.”

She was right. Yes, I had possibly attached undue importance to what was essentially just biology, but that was because of all the external influences in my life. Hannah Fielding, Never Have I Ever,
Sex and the City
 . . . It was no wonder I’d cared so much about my virginity. But it was really just a hole in a hymen.

Suddenly I felt light and free in a way I hadn’t even felt immediately after losing my virginity. This was different. At the age of twenty-one, I was finally okay with being a virgin. Pity I wasn’t one anymore.

“Babe, are you okay? Your eyes have gone misty and weird,” asked Emma.

“Guys . . . I think I’m okay with being a virgin,” I said slowly.

Lara and Emma looked at each other, exchanging glances filled with concern. “What?” I asked.

“Um. You know you’re . . . not a virgin anymore, right?” asked Emma cautiously.

“Whatever,” I said, waving my hand in the air. “I’ve just had an epiphany. I think . . . I have finally accepted my virginity. And the fact that it’s gone. Oh my God, this is . . . this is fucking revolutionary.”

Lara looked confused. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ellie?”

“Yes, I’m okay, I’m
great
,”
I cried. “I’ve just realized that there was nothing wrong with being a virgin. So nobody had penetrated me. So what?
I
can shove a plastic dick in me. Who cares?! Why does the state of my hymen mean so much? It’s not defining me. I’m not defined by my skin color or my weight, because that’s racist and fascist, so it shouldn’t be any different with my virginity.”

“I don’t think you meant fascist,” said Lara.

“Just because you do law,” I retorted, and she held up her hands as if in surrender.

“So, do you guys agree or not?” I demanded.

“Of course we do,” said Emma. “What do you think we’ve been trying to tell you this whole time? And you know what? It goes the other way too. Why should I be judged if my hymen
is
broken? So am I a slut because my vagina has had more than thirty-five different dicks inside? Um, NO!”

Lara’s eyes widened a bit at that but she joined in. “It’s true. Why does it matter if I enjoy having sex with an emotionally unstable guy who doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me? I don’t want a relationship with him either. I just enjoy sex, and there is nothing wrong with that. I don’t want a boyfriend. I want occasional, noncommittal, booty-call sex with Jez. Fuck it; if you can finally accept your virginity, then I’m going to stop pretending I want more from him. I’ll admit I love our arrangement. It’s perfect.”

“You know what?” I added, a grin on my face. “I no longer care that I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin. I wasn’t a drug addict or a uni dropout or anything disastrous; I was just a virgin. And if Hannah really does know I was a virgin, I think I’m okay with it. So, I was a virgin at twenty-one. So fucking what? If that’s the best gossip the English gang have, then their lives are
dull.
”

“Totally,” agreed Emma. “It’s not even interesting news. No offense, Ellie. It’s the kind of thing everyone will forget about in five minutes. Besides, after graduation, we never have to see any of them again.”

“You’re so right,” I said. “It will be embarrassing if people know and talk about it, but I’ll get over it. And, while I’m at it, I’m going to accept that I am attractive even with my obvious flaws. I don’t need to look like Angelina Jolie to get laid.”

Emma raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not just ‘attractive,’ I’m fucking
hot
and so are you two.”

The girls laughed and raised their glasses. “To Ellie and her hairy hymen,” shouted Emma, and we clinked our glasses.

I kept my glass raised. “Here’s to my future. As a girl who doesn’t give a fuck about the state of her pubes, her hymen or her humiliation. Here’s to my vagina.”

Pubes and Prejudice

Here is our promised entry on pubes. Instead of both of us sharing our knowledge with you, EM has respectfully bowed out of this one because her pubes are blond and she has no ingrown hairs. Instead, EK is going to tell you about her own sizeable bush and her journey to final acceptance of what lies beneath her pants. Hope it helps.

EK: The first time I showed a guy my vagina, he burst into laughter. We were both seventeen years old and it scarred me for the next four years. It was only when I was twenty-one that I was able to face my demons and let another man down there again. He laughed too.

I do not have a particularly amusing vagina. However, both of these men found my pubes—or lack thereof—hilarious.

Guy 1 saw my pubes in their full glory. Curled to the max and springing out from every follicle. I had done nothing to cultivate my lower garden and he found this hilarious. BUT no matter how much he laughed, he was still willing to let me go down on him. My point being, I may have been more au naturel than a hippie in a commune, but he still wanted a BJ from me.

Guy 2 saw me with a Brazilian that had turned into a Hitler ’stache. [Warning: A Playboy wax is advertised as a type of Brazilian wax but it does look different. Normal Brazilians have thick landing strips. A Playboy Brazilian is a tiny postage stamp of hair that looks like Hitler’s moustache imprinted onto your vagina.] He told me he hadn’t expected me to have a waxed VJ because I “seemed like a natural kind of girl.” He had shaved his own regions into a neat lawn.

I let their reactions bother me. I have been so preoccupied with men’s expectations of what my VJ should look like that I have spent hours (and hundreds of pounds) on shaving, creaming, waxing, tweezing and trimming my pubes. I have even cut my clitoris with a razor blade from trying to shave. My vagina has dark dots all over it from the ingrown hairs that are too deep to get rid of. I am permanently scarred.

Which is why I have decided I am finally done with it all. I am no longer going to try to prune my bush into the top of an exclamation mark or yank out all the hairs that are just doing their job and stopping dirt and sweat from getting into my vagina (yes, that’s their biological purpose).

From now on, I’m doing whatever I want to my pubes. I’m keeping them trimmed but I’m not even bothering to do my bikini line. Why? Because I’m embracing my pubes. I don’t want to cut myself while shaving, use creams that don’t work on thick hair, lie half-naked in salons or agonize over stray hairs with my tweezers. I don’t care what the next guy says about my pubes and I refuse to be part of the culture that assumes women have no hair down there. WE. DO.

I pressed publish and waited happily while the screen took me to the vlog homepage. We already had 750 followers. The past month had been hell while Emma and I forced ourselves to revise Shakespeare and Chaucer when all we wanted to do was keep telling the cyber world about our vaginas.

Most of the comments on our posts were negative. Apparently our posts were patronizing and unnecessary. But for every ten haters, there was always one girl who said something positive. It made it worthwhile.

Jack had texted a few times since that night, apologizing, but I hadn’t replied. He’d taken the hint and finally left me alone. It still hurt, but only because my pride had been dented. It had taken four weeks but I had now fully accepted what had happened. I’d written
I am over him
on my left hand in permanent pen to help me remember and I’d redone it every week so it never had a chance to fade. I’d changed his name on my phone to DO NOT REPLY—REMEMBER LUISA. The thought of the Brazilian part-time model (I’d Facebook-stalked her) put me off every time. I couldn’t compete with that.

Instead I had thrown all my energy into passing my degree and vlogging with Emma. It was funny how easy it was to focus on work when I wasn’t having an existential crisis about my virginity.

None of the companies I’d applied to intern with had replied yet, so I had sent them all follow-up emails gently pushing for a response. As a last-minute decision, I added a link to the vlog to the emails. I had no idea how it would go down—especially with the conservative newspapers I’d emailed—but at least I was being proactive.

Meanwhile Paul was shagging Vladi and making his way through the pack of lightweight condoms I had gifted him. Lara was still at university, going to May Balls and glamorous things I didn’t understand, and was on track to graduate with honors. She was due to move in with me soon. I had a summer with my girls ahead of me and I was moving on from Jack. His name barely even featured in my diary anymore. It was only on every alternate page.

There was only one thing I still hadn’t done. Go back to Dr. E. Bowers.

Which was why, after I posted my latest vlog entry, I shut down my laptop and grabbed my leather jacket and sunglasses. It was time to face my fears. I had let go of my status as a barely touched maiden and accepted my new one as a fallen woman. I had a future as a slut ahead of me and I couldn’t wait to let Dr. E. Bowers know.

I was back in the doctor’s office waiting for my name to flash up on the TV screen. I fidgeted awkwardly and wished the air conditioner wasn’t on so high. My bare legs, which had looked relatively tanned outside, looked deathly pale under the fluorescent lights. The few leg hairs I’d missed when shaving were standing on end in the cold.

I crossed my legs and tried to pull the white summer dress down over my knees. The waiting room was relatively empty because most people had headed back home after exams or were too busy getting liver disease to care about checkups.

The television screen flashed:
MS ELLIE KOLSTAKIS. PLEASE GO TO DR E BOWERS’ OFFICE.

Obediently I got up.

“Come in,” said the familiar terse voice from inside the office.

I pushed open the door and there she was. Her blond Diana hair had been chopped even shorter into a David Bowie–style mullet and she was wearing a chocolate-brown suit.

“Ms. Kolstakis, how are you?” she asked, looking me up and down. Her eyes hovered on the hemline of my dress and then returned to my face.

“Okay, thanks. How are you?” I replied neutrally, sitting down in one of the plastic chairs. I knew the routine now.

“Very well, thank you. So what can I do for you today?” she asked expectantly. She pushed her rimless glasses up her nose and peered at me over the lenses.

“Well, I would like to do a chlamydia test, please,” I said confidently, crossing my arms. “And all of them, actually.”

“All of what?”

“I want to get tested. For all the STDs,” I explained.

“It says on my system here I gave you a chlamydia test last time, but I don’t have any information about your results. When did you send it off?” she asked, scrolling through her computer.

“I didn’t actually get round to it,” I admitted. “It didn’t seem relevant because I hadn’t had sex then. But that’s all changed now, so I need to get tested.” I settled back into my chair, smugly watching her.

She turned to face me. “Right, so you’ve recently had unprotected sex? Do you have reason to think your partner had any STDs?”

I shifted in my chair. My bare legs were getting stuck to the plastic. “It wasn’t unprotected. I just thought I should get checked to be on the safe side.”

“And your partner—has he been checked lately?”

“I mean, he isn’t actually my
partner
, and I don’t know if he’s been checked . . . I didn’t ask him.” Jeez, what century was she from, expecting him to be my boyfriend? I bet she was the kind of person who said “making love” instead of “having sex.”

“Could you ask him now?” she asked.

“Um, no,” I answered, biting my lip.

“All right,” she said wearily. “Let me give you another chlamydia test. You can do this one here. And you’ll need to get a blood test for HIV.”

“HIV?! Oh my God, do you think I have HIV?” I cried out.

“It’s unlikely, but if you’d like to be tested for everything, it makes sense to do an HIV test,” she said, typing away on her computer.

“Okay,” I said uncertainly, “but I’ve only had sex once, so I think I probably don’t.”

She shook her head gently. I could tell she didn’t believe me. “All right,” she said. “Do you have any symptoms you’re worried about? Does your vagina smell, are there any lumps or unusual amounts of discharge?”

“Um . . .” Didn’t everyone’s vagina smell? And I didn’t think it had any lumps or I probably would have noticed. Who knew STD tests were so complicated?

“
I suppose I do have a lot of discharge,” I mumbled, looking down at the floor. “And it sometimes smells but I thought that was . . . normal.”

“Is the discharge white or yellow? Is it thick?”

I had no clue. I had never analyzed it. Clearly I should have. “Erm, I guess it’s . . . a bit of both? Kind of . . . average, I guess?”

She sighed. “Okay. Well, you may have thrush. Let me give you some thrush cream just in case.”

I looked up, alarmed. “Thrush? Really? I thought you get it from wearing lacy knickers. I’m more of a cotton panties kinda girl. I don’t think I have thrush.”

“Certain underwear can cause thrush, but it can also appear for a number of reasons. It’s a very common infection and your body can generally overcome it by itself, but I’ll give you the cream just in case. If you start to get particularly heavy discharge or if there’s a very fishy smell, you can use the cream.”

“Okay,” I answered, trying to process all this brand-new information.

“In the meantime, take this pot and fill it with a urine sample. While you’re in the bathroom, do this chlamydia test and then come back for a blood test with the nurse. I’ll pass on your information to her. Is there anything else you’d like to talk to me about while you’re here?”

“Well, there is one thing,” I said cautiously. “This is . . . kind of embarrassing for me to ask, but, um, now that I’m
not
a virgin, do you mind changing it on your computer? So it doesn’t say VIRGIN in massive letters next to my name? Maybe you can change it to . . . SEXUALLY ACTIVE or HAD SEX. Actually, HAS SEX would be more accurate because I’ll probably do it again . . .” I trailed off awkwardly.

She stared at me and took off her glasses. “Excuse me?”

“It’s just, well, on your computer last time I was here, it said that I was a virgin. And I’m not now. I’ve had sex. So I was wondering if you could update my records?” I asked. “Please?”

She furrowed her brow. “I will update your records, yes,” she said. “I tend to do that after I’ve seen a patient. If you go off and do your samples, I’ll finish my paperwork.”

She wasn’t going to do it in front of me. Typical. Maybe she was going to write SLUT or SEXUALLY VOLATILE.

“Okay,” I said with a small sigh, resigned to my new fate as a fallen woman. People were automatically going to assume I had HIV and write things about me behind my back. I picked up the brown envelope and plastic pot and walked off forlornly to the loo.

Right. I just had to hold the pot under my vagina and catch the urine as it came out of me. Except when it trickled out in a pretty solid flow, it went everywhere but into the pot. Bugger. I paused mid-flow, taking a deep breath. Damn. I moved my damp fingers, adjusting the pot. Okay, good, this time the pee was filling it up but . . . oh no, it was overflowing. Onto my hand. And my bracelet.