Virgin(86)
“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.