Kate Monro - Losing It

This electronic edition published in the UK in 2013 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

3941 North Road, London N7 9DP

email:

www.iconbooks.net

Previously published in 2011 by Icon Books Ltd

under the title The First Time

ISBN: 978-184831-583-9 (ePub format)

ISBN: 978-184831-601-0 (Adobe ebook format)

Text copyright 2011, 2013 Kate Monro

The author has asserted her moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any
means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Interview transcripts constitute the opinions of the interviewees, and do not reflect the opinion of the author or publisher.

Extract from Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela reproduced by kind permission of Little, Brown Book Group

Typeset in Minion by Marie Doherty

Contents

About the Author

Kate Monro s career has taken in spells with the rock band Blur, publishing mavericks Dazed & Confused , experiential marketing agency Cunning, and most recently creative advertising agency RKCR Y&R. She also pens Cosmo award-nominated blog Big Guy Small Dog Blog.

www.virginityproject.typepad.com

Introduction

Writing this book has made for some interesting conversations. I cant tell you how many times I have perched, poised between two choices as someone has asked me what I do for a living at a party. Shall I opt for the more pedestrian answer, freelancing as a personal assistant in the creative advertising business? Or shall I tell them that in my spare time, I interview people about virginity loss? I think you can guess which one I go for.

Bam. In five seconds flat, I have bypassed the niceties and got straight down to brass tacks. You dont need to bother with small talk when you tell people that you investigate sexual experiences in your spare time. The conversation has just moved onto an entirely different level.

But I didnt plan this. Writing a book was never on my list of things to do, particularly not one about virginity loss. So how did it begin? What led me to a point where this sort of exchange was, and still is, a regular occurrence?

It all began on a beach. It was the end of the summer in 2005 and as we basked in the Californian sunshine, my boyfriend and I had entertained each other by reminiscing about our misspent youth. We had actually known each other when we were teenagers but we had never had that conversation.

How did you lose yours? he asked, finally.

He didnt need to specify which yours he was referring to. I knew exactly what he meant. From the practical details: the venue, the background music and the choice of attire (somebodys garden, Spanish euro-pop and a sun-bleached pink T-shirt, in my case) to the emotional nuts and bolts, we soon began to relive this unique experience and to talk about how it had changed our lives.

What had been our expectations for this much-anticipated moment? Compared to the reality? And what did we see now , sitting on this beach so many years later, that our tender teenage minds couldnt comprehend at the time? As our respective tales came to life, I was struck by the contrasting dramatic elements of these stories. They contained humour, sadness and joy. In fact, they contained all the ingredients for a top-quality drama.

They would make a brilliant book.

There it was. I was captivated by this idea. I had a perfectly good job in a marketing agency but I was looking for something different to do with my life. I wanted to flex my creative muscles and I wanted to do it in a unique way. This idea couldnt fit the bill any more if it tried. In the days that followed, I kept trying to push the whole concept to the back of my mind but it kept coming back. My boyfriend and I were not the only two people with tales to tell. This was the universal experience that almost all of us will encounter, no matter who we are or where we come from. There must be millions of stories out there that were every bit as good as the two that had just been told.

I decided to run the idea past my friends. This was probably the best litmus test I could have taken. Asking people to think back to their first sexual experiences garnered an immediate response. Peoples faces changed the instant I asked the question. Good, bad or indifferent, every single person that I spoke to had something to say. My mind was made up. I bought a Dictaphone, I started making phone calls and I got cracking.

Looking back, I am amazed that people agreed to take part, given that virginity loss has the potential to be one of the most vulnerable moments of your entire life, but that didnt seem to put people off. Once again, I appealed to my friends for help and a little like the loss of virginity itself, my first fumbling efforts didnt look promising. Jamie, my 24-year-old colleague, agreed to be a guinea pig and patiently put up with my attempts to break new journalistic ground as I quizzed him at my kitchen table one Saturday afternoon. But it was a start and at least I remembered to switch the tape recorder on (something I would not always remember to do in the future).

I followed this up with a trip to Yorkshire. This time, the subject was a very game 91-year-old family friend. To my utter astonishment, my mother had asked Edna if she would like to take part in this project and she said yes. Over the following eighteen months, I found myself travelling, literally and metaphorically, to all sorts of unexpected places, with all sorts of unexpected people. The subject matter seemed to capture peoples imagination. In the case of Edna, despite the fact that her generation were not given to such conversations, I sensed that she was seizing an opportunity, not just to give me the information that I wanted, but also to tell me a love story. She and her husband had been married for 50 years.

Slowly, as my interviewees referred me on to friends, family members, lovers and neighbours, a slow trickle became a steady stream of voices. Without ever intending to, I morphed into a different person. A person who could walk into the home, often of a complete stranger, sit down with a cup of tea and proceed to quiz them on the finer details of their sex lives.

While it wasnt too hard to pin these people down, I came to see that they had different reasons for sitting in the hot seat. Some of them did it just because I asked them to, but for others it was a rare opportunity to talk about their personal lives. How often do you get to do that in a non-judgmental environment? It is a well-known fact that much of the value of the therapeutic process lies in the sheer relief of having someone listen to you talk, with no interruptions. People grabbed the opportunity to sit with me for a moment, away from the maelstrom of their lives, and reflect on an experience that most had never shared with anyone before.

And boy, did they reflect.

I was astonished at what came out during these sessions. Virginity loss was the inspiration for some epic stories. As people spoke to me, they spun tales of shame and joy. Their stories contained breathtaking romance and mind-numbing mundanity, often in the same sentence. They talked about great expectations and equally grand disappointments. I watched as people revived ghosts from the past, and laid them back to rest. Sometimes it seemed as if these ghosts were right there in the room with us. I felt like I was mining a rich and untapped seam of personal history.