Virgin(65)

To my shock and horror, when I bent down, a gush of water FELL OUT OF MY VAGINA ONTO THE FLOOR. I stared at the damp patch that was quickly spreading out on the green fluffy rug beneath me. It wasn’t blood; it was 100 percent water.

I screamed.

I didn’t know how long I was crouched there, frozen in fear above the wet puddle. It felt like my water had just broken, like I was a modern-day Virgin Mary. Pregnant without penetration.

If my baby Jesus was fathered by a Champneys bottle, would he get free spa days?

I leaned against the wall, my mind clearing up a bit. I didn’t understand why this gush of water had just come out of my vagina. Then it hit me.

It was bathwater. I had opened up my VJ and the bathwater had crept in through the open hymen. It was just like sperm swimming up my woman’s canal. Then when I’d taken the bottle out, the hymen had closed back up, sealing the water inside. It was only when I’d crouched down that the stream of water had seized its chance and gushed out. I’d finally realized how female drug mules smuggled drugs onto planes.


Great Sexpectations

When Charles Dickens wrote about the weight of expectations society imposed on gentlemen, he had no idea what it would be like for girls a century and a half later when there weren’t any gentlemen left. Now a girl trying to get laid has to put on an entire show for a man just because it’s what he sees in pornos.

Proof? Here’s a list of the things men have expected from our friends and us over the past few years.

[Note: We have slightly changed their words.]

     No pubes. None. In fact, no hair anywhere below your neck. “But what about the fine hairs that grow around my nipples?” you ask. Get rid of them. We don’t know how, but do it.

    Lots of sounds. Moaning is ideal and softly crying out his name is a guaranteed plus.

    Wild sex. Depending on the sub/dom roles you’re going for, you should either be riding him and whirling a lasso around, or begging him to do you from behind.

    Dirty talk. Tell him how huge he is and you’ve never seen one like it, blah, blah.

    No condoms, ever. Get on the Pill already. STDs? You’re just gonna have to risk them.

    Give plenty of blow jobs and look like you’re enjoying it.

    Don’t expect any emotional, loving words. You’re fucking—not making love.





 Jack texted me that evening. He said how much he had enjoyed the night before and wanted to see me the following Sunday. That was precisely seven days from now, and enough time for my period to go away. I wondered if he’d calculated this too.

I waited till the morning to reply because I was trying to play hard to get. All the books said it was the thing to do; Sex and the City loved going on about it, and at this point I was so terrified of buggering things up with Jack when I was so close to losing my virginity that I was willing to play by every rule. Eventually I sent a casual reply, saying I’d be happy to see him on Sunday. It wasn’t exactly a Keatsian ode but it had taken me twenty minutes to compose, with three punctuation edits.

Clearly my playing hard to get had worked because he texted back immediately, saying he couldn’t wait, and asked me—get this—not one but two questions. He had basically told me he desperately wanted me to text him back. Twice.

I basked in my joy before remembering I should do a bit of work or I would end up a failed university dropout. That would potentially be worse than being a twenty-four-year-old male virgin who had only just discovered his sexuality. Poor Paul. I would have to remember to send him a text.



Paul didn’t just text me back. He called me. He had been on a date with Vladi, who was a Czech economics student in London, and things had gone well. Unfortunately he wasn’t willing to give me a blow-by-blow account of his night—even though blowing had occurred—but he was happy to listen to my in-depth descriptions of Jack’s groin area. Eventually he cut me off.

“Ellie, I know I don’t need to be saying these sorts of things to you because I’m not your dad or your mum or your best friend but, have you, um, thought about contraception?” he stammered.

I shrieked down the phone at him. “Paul! Of course I have. I’ve had twenty-one years to prepare for this—I’m not going to forget about pregnancies and STDs.”

He sounded relieved. “Okay, thank God. Because when you were talking about, uh, your blow gift, you didn’t mention anything about putting a condom on . . . and I just thought, you know, you should.”

I paused. No one put condoms on before giving a guy a blow job, right? I mean, all you could get was mouth herpes from that, and Jack’s penis didn’t have any herpes on it. So I was fine, right? “Well, no. I didn’t,” I said uncertainly. “But do you know that most people don’t?”