By: M.J. Yeates

I "lost" my virginity a month shy of my sixteenth birthday, in the back seat of a cramped grey ‘92 Nissan. Frankly, I'm surprised I lasted that long. I'd had a boyfriend for almost a year, and I've always been a sexual being. The only thing that held me back was a vague guilt from my parents' religion that I didn't believe in; but just in case, I was trying to be good. Ha! That didn't last long. I waited until I couldn't stand it anymore. Then all bets were off.

I vividly remember, not the encounter, which was horrible, but the fact that a Kia car commercial was playing on the radio while he quickly pumped. The back seat was really not meant for trysting. We were cramped - knees and elbows protruding everywhere, and my head whacking against the window. The sex was awful; I didn't come. That guy was always a lousy lay. It was over though, which was a huge relief - no altering the fact, no going back after that point. At least not in my mind.

Wait, that's not right. That's the story I tell people about "losing" my virginity because it always gets a laugh. Technically I suppose I "lost" it in a swimming pool a few months before, experimenting - you know - taking his dick into me just a little, but not all the way to the hilt. He was pressuring; I was horny. You know how it goes. But we justified it in our minds. I hadn't "lost" my virginity yet, we didn't finish the act...it didn't count. Right?

We quickly used that excuse to experiment a whole lot more in his room. A few quick movements inside me, and then he'd withdraw, and we'd play in other ways. We didn't count oral, or fingering, those were just the bases. I was still a virgin because we hadn't really had the main course. Technically.

But which technicality do you use to measure the difference between a virgin and a non-virgin? Where do you draw the line? The hymen? Mine was gonelong before, somewhere between gymnastics, ballet, horseback riding, and falling out of trees - not to mention all the vigorous masturbation I was engaging in, starting at nine when I discovered my clit in the bathtub, and the oh-so-lovely feel of the tap water running full-force against my young self. So what counts as virginity, and what do we measure ourselves by? First sexual encounter?

That was on a merry-go-round in a neighborhood park in full daylight, right after I turned fifteen. He rubbed me through my panties (yellow cotton, skimpy) and left me panting. I went straight home and made myself come until I was out of breath. The experience was that intense. I was so angry that he left me so unfulfilled, so full of wanting! It was a great lesson about the power of desire. I look back at this situation and laugh - remembering the few blocks I walked to my house, legs wet and slippery under my dress, and cussing him the entire way.

What about the bases, the close contact of mouth on skin - the fingering? Fingering will break a hymen as certainly as a cock. Why do we tend to discount this? When you take someone's cunt into your mouth, you are certainly experiencing sex. How can you engage in sexual acts and still be considered a virgin? I've known some girls who engaged in anal sex, but still considered themselves virgins because they weren't using their twat. I have an incredibly hard time wrapping my head around that one. And for that matter, if you are queer and you've never engaged in hetero-centric, dick-goes-in-pussy sex, are you still a virgin despite all the sex you've been having?

There is also the virginity of the mind. Before I realized I was in love with a girl, I had no thought or concern about lesbian sex. It was a shock to suddenly discover that I wanted to fuck this girl. By this time I knew how to lay a boy, but had absolutely no idea how women did that sort of thing.  Weren't a few essential parts a bit lacking? I researched it, with fascinating results. I found a whole new world, and I wasted no time diving right in. 

I discovered gay-girl smut on the internet in the form of hentai fan-fiction stories.  They were excellent, and entertaining, and hotter than hell. The stories were based on the Japanese anime series, Sailor Moon. I know that makes me a complete dork, but I do not care. There's nothing better than written erotica, except when it includes cutesy characters, that should be written for young girls, doing depraved things with vibrators. Then it's just plain wrong, but in a most delicious sort of way! Especially if there are scenes with five girls having sleepover orgies.  I had never been exposed to such things before. So I "lost" my pornography virginity at age sixteen, getting it on with my hand at the family computer desk late at night, both terrified and terribly titillated and turned on by my own exhibitionism. To this day, written erotica is still my favorite porn, by far.

Then I "lost" my virginity, again, with my first girlfriend. Despite knowing the ins and outs of female anatomy, I was just as shy and fumbling as I'd been at fifteen. I was scared and embarrassed, and wished for guidance but did not want to appear the complete idiot. We didn't have any sex toys, just our mouths and fingers, and I was at a loss.

I asked her, "Is there anything you like in particular that you want me to do?"

"You're a girl, you know what girls like," she said.

Actually, I didn't; I only knew what I liked, which is not necessarily the same. I was too new to the world of loving girls. To this day I believe that statement was the most unhelpful advice regarding sex that I've ever received, and, since I was a victim of the god-awful abstinence-education era, that's saying something. I'd wanted her to be the experienced one - the girl who'd take me in her arms and show me an entire world built around two women fucking like wildcats. Instead, she expected me, the newbie, to steer the encounter. The sex was okay, but it was hard to get around the anxiety - I wanted everything to be right, like a redo of "losing" it the first time. And like the first time, it was awkward, bumbling, mostly unfulfilling, and hysterically funny...when viewed a few years later with some perspective, anyway.

At this point, I don't believe you can "lose" virginity. You can lose your car keys, but you can't lose a lack of knowledge. Virginity is only ignorance of sexual experience, and sexual experience is about learning how to engage with others, and about learning your own body and its fierce desires. We learn to fuck; we don't learn how to lose things.

When I began to have sex I gained an entire library of sexual knowledge, and I discovered that intense, heady power that comes from sex, and attraction, and an awareness of the erotic parts of yourself. You can't lose something you've never had. But you can discover an entire world where you can completely envelop yourself in sensation and be free and wild, and scream and pant, and fuck anyway and anyone you like. "Losing it" is hardly a loss; it is a golden ticket to orgasms! And I don't know about you, but I plan on using all of the knowledge I've gained as much as I possibly can.