True love doesn't have a happy ending, true love has no ending...

Mr Simpetar posted an excellent comment, intended to guide us single gals.
‘Hence my first advice to girls: do not work too hard at finding The Right Man: instead, work to become the Right Woman. BE the woman that your intended Mr Right would want to marry, and one day he will come to your door.’

One girl that I know who already is what Mr. Simpetar calls the ‘Right Woman’ may have found her ‘Mr. Right’. Essentially, Mr. Right may have walked directly into the life of a girl who reads this blog. This girl has kept her virginity with the intention of firstly not wanting to scar her soul with the weapon of mortal sin. But also so that in being virginal, she will have the best chances of happiness in love.
Here’s the story of how this ‘Right Woman’ met a ‘Nice Guy’/Possibly Mr. Right. To preserve their identities, and prevent their faces from blushing deep hues of red, we shall call her ‘Mia’ and him ‘Oscar’.

CHAPTER ONE

Mia was beginning a journey home from the far and distant reaches of the North of England. She wore her long black coat that complimented her long blond hair, and wore green sparkly earrings to match her bright green eyes. It’s her way to ‘make the most of herself’, and always look beautiful even if she was just about to go on a five hour train journey with a huge suitcase. A heavy suitcase with pointy edges! Mia brought the suitcase on the bus to the train station. Then Mia had to wade through the streams of people who were darting around the station all looking for their platform and for their connection. Mia thought to herself ‘oh if I didn’t have a suitcase, if I didn’t have to feel my wrist ache and feel my arm stretch! Oh, if some guy would just materialise and take the weight from my hand! Why can’t this be like an old black and white film where a gorgeous guy just strolls up, and says ‘allow me madam’ and takes the suitcase as though it were his greatest pleasure on earth?’ Instead, Mia lost count of the times she said ‘sorry!’ when the suitcase went into another traveller.


Mia waited on the platform for the train that would take her to London. The train pulled in and as she tried to get into the train with the suitcase, people kept shimmying and skimming past her to get on the train ahead of her. Taking a deep breath, she tried to get the suitcase into the train. She then heard these beautiful words. ‘M-may I give you a hand?’ A sporty looking fellow in a rugby shirt and glasses put his hand on Mia’s suitcase. Mia hesitated and gulped. She delayed and Sporty looking fellow took his hand away and stratched his gelled light brown hair. Mia felt a spark. There was definitely a spark running through her as she said ‘please...’ and gestured towards the suitcase. ‘I’d love it if you lifted the damn thing, and..and...and’ Oh no, why was she stuttering ‘and’? She felt momentarily foolish. ‘I’d be delighted to carry it.’ He took the suitcase like it were a feather, and stowed it in the luggage department.
‘Thank you , thank you so very much...thank you...’ Mia gushed. Oh no, now she was stammering thank yous. She looked up at him and saw that he was staring intently at her. This wasn’t usual. You don’t just meet someone and exactly two minutes later feel a charge of electricity pulse through your veins all because you are in the presence of a good looking man. Or do you...? They caught each other’s eyes and found that they were looking at each other a bit too intensely...
He cleared his throat, and said ‘am right, well, am do you know where you are sitting?’
‘Oh yeah...sitting...’ Yes, she was on a train, it was the idea that she find a seat. Instead, she was a sitting duck for this Nice Guy.
‘Am, right, well we could take a walk down this way, and see if there’s any seats available...’
Mia pretended to look for a seat, but really wanted him to look for the seat and invite her to sit next to him. He found her a seat, beckoned to it, and said ‘it’s all yours’. More clearing of his throat, ‘well, I’m Oscar, and you’re?’
‘I’m Mia’
People brushed past behind Oscar, and he had to lean in a little closer to Mia.
‘I couldn’t help noticing that you have a sticker for the football team of my university...I’m a PhD student there...’
‘Oh, I’m reading a degree for medicine there!’
‘Wow! We’re both going to the same uni.’
‘We’ll both have ‘doctor’ before our name!’
‘Am. Yes. Can’t believe I haven’t seen you before. My PhD is based on the poet Keats, so I never have any reason to go into any of the science buildings or the medical library...’ Oscar then gave her a long stare, a stare that’s considered ‘odd’ if you don’t have attraction for the recipient of the stare. But Mia when she saw his eyes alight felt a rush of something...
Oscar had to find another seat in another part of the train. Mia sat on her own wondering if that would be that. He would get off in London and wave goodbye and she would be left wondering why she felt so alive and so
A few train stops later, and the seats emptied around her. And then suddenly, he sat down opposite her.
‘Am. I hope you don’t mind, we go to the same uni, I’d like to chat to you some more’. There it was again, that feeling that their eyes were somehow connected. ‘You seem an awfully nice girl’. He may as well have said ‘I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world, and I’d really like to propose to you, but since I’ve only known you for half an hour that might be a tad premature’.
The next five hours went by very quickly. The small talk wasn’t really that small, it was a conduit into the bigger issues of their lives. How long Mia spent on the wards as a fourth year med student, and why he laboured over the fine points of Keats’ poetry.
They lingered on the discussion of Keats’ poetry.
‘What did you think of the film Bright Star?’ Mia asked.
‘I didn’t see it...’ Oscar replied.
‘But it’s all about Keats and his thwarted love affair with Fanny Brawn.’
‘Oh yes, and I’m investing four years into getting a PhD that centres totally on Keats’ poetry. But the film isn’t really accurate...the film portrays the Keats and Fanny Brawn story like they had been in love, like they had shared love. What really happened was that Keats fell for Fanny but she didn’t fall for him.’ Oscar frowned and then said ‘whenever I study La Belle Dame Sans Merci I think of the pain Keats must have suffered because his love for Fanny was unrequited. Have you read much Keats Mia?’
‘Well, I did study a selection of his poetry for A-Level English...’
‘Oh you didn’t mention you had an A-Level in English lit! Here I do behold a woman of many talents. Not only a student at our prodigious university with what at least three science A-Levels?’
‘Four science A-Levels’ Mia said and blushed. Oh no, she had allowed her cheeks to blush!
‘But also an A-Level in an artsy subject like English lit.’
A gap came in the conversation when Oscar said that he was going home to Kent and that it would be good to see his girlfriend again. Mia’s throat became icy. What, he has a girlfriend? Why does he go lifting other girls suitcases onto trains? Does his girlfriend know he’s a serial suitcase-of-other-girls-lifter? But Mia looked into his still blue eyes. He was being sincere. He gave her a hand with the suitcase, but was telling her gently that he had a girlfriend and that it would be best if she didn’t get ideas. Mia looked at Oscar and gave him a smile as if to say ‘oh how nice that you have a girlfriend’. And then without thinking Mia said ‘oh my boyfriend lives near me too. He’s about three miles from my home...’ What boyfriend? Mia had no such boyfriend...but felt compelled to say she had one because she didn’t want to seem available.
Yeah...but...an hour later, and Oscar had got Mia a coffee and chocolate muffin in a cafe in Victoria. They were still chatting and enjoying the surreptitious smiles that passed between them. Once when Mia checked a text, she saw Oscar’s eyes travel around her face and settle on the fall of her hair on her shoulder. She then thought, but he has a girlfriend and we’ll probably say goodbye now and I’ll never hear from him again. Her expectations were raised yet again though when Oscar raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Look we’ve been at uni for a number of years and haven’t met...could I have your number in case I happen to need a doctor in a hurry?’

Enter yours truly, Philomeena. I got a text from Mia to meet her in Victoria train station. I met her and the bashful, but brilliant Oscar for a coffee in a bustling cafe in Victoria.

Oscar got the last train home to Kent.


CHAPTER TWO

Over the following days Mia was in a quandary as to what to do next. She had Oscar’s number. Would she send him a text just to get things started? Why did he have to have a girlfriend? Why had she told him that she had a boyfriend? Had she wrecked her chances? Because Oscar thought she had a boyfriend, did he think it useless to pursue her affections? And anyway, what type of guy sought the affections of another girl when he had a girlfriend? But because she had told him that she was ‘taken’, did that mean he would never considering ending things with the present girlfriend?
I, Phil, got an e-mail from Mia seeking my help with the issues listed above. Here was my reply;

Dear Mia,

I take what you wrote in your last e-mail very seriously. And I affirm it. There was Definitely An Atmosphere of Attraction and Mutual appreciation between you and Oscar. I would bet that he has already seen You around the campus, but may have pretended never to have seen you before to save his pride. These modern men, afraid that a woman will know that they like her!

When we were drinking coffe, he was looking at you, and did not want to look away. He was memorising everything you were saying, and DID NOT want to get his train. Also, am I the only one who noticed or didn’t he embrace you and give you a peck on the cheek?! Yes!

He had a perfect opportunity to leave when I arrived. Most lads his age would have made their excuses to leave when ‘the female best friend’ came for a coffee. Men always have a reason for staying. They are not altruistic like women. He would not have stayed to give us a nice warm feeling. Oscar’s reason for staying was that he found he was magnetised by Mia. Also, the fact that he liked you calling him ‘Ozzie’ is a real give-away. He told you you could call him ‘Ozzie’, but he insisted that I call him ‘Oscar’. We’re in England, letting another use the shortened version of one’s name is done to further closeness. This is very obvious to ‘the Irish girl’, new to these cold climbs such as yours truly.

To be objective; you both are in different academic fields and this is a good thing. There will be no competition for success in similar professional pursuits. He’s mad if he doesn’t find you very attractive. It’s not just physical between you two! There is a 'link up' in terms of tastes and intelligence.

It’s a sign of integrity that he told you about the ‘other girl’/your nemesis/his girlfriend. And she may be his girlfriend – now – but that means that she is one girl of the 8 billion of us that he is having a dalliance with.

Don’t worry about the white lie. You probably have many fellows in your area who would LOVE for you to be their girl. Pity for them. BUT the fact that you gave that little lie is actually indicative that the chemistry between you and Oscar that was happening of its own accord. You wanted to seem unavailable so that he would think otherwise of your attraction for him. Your unconscious mind interpreted your body’s attraction before your conscious mind did. The last point is Essential. We have material bodies, and our bodies do the details without us being cognisant of the subtleties and the consequences. A perfect example is an ‘unplanned pregnancy’ where one has sex and your body enables the pregnancy. And so in falling in love.
Trust me, if ALL his emotional energies were involved with his girlfriend/your sworn enemy, he would not have been so open to attracting you. But I did use the word ‘emotional’. And that is a different thing to ‘physical involvement’ aka being ‘sexually active’ with her.

The difficulty is...he may be sleeping with her. I write that last bit hesitantly because I know what it’s like to get thoughts of men-that-I-fancy out of my head. But hey, I’m neurotic anyway.

If he is in a relationship where they both strip themselves down, swap special bodily fluids, and release hormones that are only meant to be released when you are in a lifetime relationship with someone, then there will be complications. I wrote the last part, not to be gross, but to put a context to my next point.

I had a very serious attraction to Dr. Lion last year. And it was returned. He liked me too. His family (All doctors) urged him to go out with me, and this is important in Ireland. In Ireland if the man is encouraged by his family to go . But he was going out with a Londaaan girl, who he was also giving a million of his sex cells to on a very regular basis. He had such a sexual bond with this girl – that he could not break the relationship – and start a new one with yours truly. He knew he’d be giving me no sex cells till the marriage bed was made! I thank God that the disappointment of not ‘getting’ Dr. Lion didn’t hurt me more than it could have... And the reason it did not Hurt me as much as it could have... Dr. Lion was not ‘my first’.

Which brings me onto the subject of First Love. It’s claw like tenacity is unlike anything on this earth. I ‘fell’ for someone many years ago, and did I fall hard. Some of us are like that. When we fall, we fall hard. And since that ‘fall’, I never really fell again with the same gravity. The ‘someone’, let me call him ‘Iggy’, fell with me, and I was informed that he Iggy was, indeed, in love with me. Ah, but we were so very young. So very young. With so little influence and were unable to go out with each other, namely because neither his family or my own were willing to lend us the support needed for such a young engagement to happen. We were not really given ‘permission’. And we met just before that Romeo and Juliet stage of teenage autonomy where you do go out with another, if in doing so you go against your parents, that’s alright, you know you’re the ‘legal age’ for both sexual involvement and for marriage. But ‘we’ happened when we were pubescent and under the patronage and protection of parents. Had our races been the same, had we been from the same ethnic group, then I believe our parents would have seen to it that we ‘got together’.

Many years later I’m still looking up Iggy’s profile on Facebook. I was advised just today NOT to look at this fellow’s profile. He’s the man, and the hunter. He should be looking up my profile and then sending me a friend request. So, while Iggy is my first love, he may not be my last. I get emotional when I watch Romeo and Juliet, and when I read Hallmark cards with greetings such as ‘true love does not have a happy ending, true love has not ending’. Why oh why can’t I be in a relationship with Iggy, aka My One True Love and send him those Hallmark cards? And I think such things as ‘no woman will ever love him as much as I love him.’ I even feel a sense of grief and loss, as though someone has just died, when I think that it’s almost a certainty that I will never have his kids.

These romantic illusions such as ‘getting’ one’s true love can motivate us to stay in the love-less desert where we are always looking ahead, sustained by the mirage of ‘getting’ one’s first love in the future. But for many of us, it stays a mirage, an illusion with no reality.

God bless you Mia, God bless your healthy attraction for Ozzie (I’d better call him Oscar, I’ll leave it to you to call him ‘Ozzie’), and God bless your many talents, and lovely personality,

Phil.

Finding Mr. Right - hard or impossible?

Last night I had an animated discussion with my flat mate, Alice. She was asking me why I am not going on dates with not just one man, but NO men. Alice asked ‘well are there any nice guys in the Catholic Church you go to? I mean...any chance of meeting a man there...’
‘Not that I am aware of...’ I said a bit despondently. It’s a bit hard to meet men in the foyer of the Church, and churches are not exactly pick-up joints.
’But Alice churches do hold weddings! Wouldn’t it be funny if I were to meet a guy in a church and then marry him in the exact same church?’
‘It would be hilarious. But I’m curious. Are there many men at the Masses you go to? I mean you're always saying you want to get married. How'ya going to meet Mr. Right?’
‘Ye-e-e-s’ I said thinking of the forty-something men that come to Saturday evening Mass and to Sunday morning Mass, these bald/balding men are chronologically too advanced for me, and even if I were so inclined, they have a wife and children surgically attached to them.
‘Alice, I’m not sure there are many single men going to Mass...’
‘Have you tried to talk to any of the single guys that are there? I think you should look for a nice guy with a rosary dangling in his hands.’
‘I wish! Well, it’s not quite that I don’t talk to them...it’s that they don’t talk to me. There are some suited, pinstriped twenty-something men that I see at the Communion rail, and I see them every week, but I never talk to any of them. Few of my friends are Catholic and I don’t have Catholic female friend to introduce me to male Catholics.’
‘Uh-huh. Doesn’t sound like you’re going to meet a Catholic.’
‘I’ve never had a serious Catholic boyfriend. I’m not sure they exist.’
‘But if you want one, someone must break the ice.’
‘Well, it’s like this, I can’t very well wear binoculars in Mass and then take detailed views of any nice types, then sidle up to them after Mass and say in a Southern American drawl, ‘hi, I’m livin’ in this crazeeee London town, lonely, and wondering if you would be so kind as to buy me luh-hunch. When you goin’ t’do thah-hat?’
‘Right. But I’m the type of girl who believes that man should do everything. From initiating the first conversation to asking me out to doing the proposing with the platinum diamond ring balanced on his forehead.’
‘Oh yeah – I definitely agree with that. The man does the asking out. That’s why that book ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ gets it so right. If a man really likes you then he will do anything to get you.’
‘I suppose those men at the Catholic events, and talks and conferences that I go to just aren’t that into me. But it’s so difficult! Alice! ALL my hobbies revolve around my religion. I write a blog to defend the concept of chastity, I organise my day so that I can go to Mass, and say the Rosary. I read LifeSiteNews and look up pictures of Baby Jesus....There’s a possibility that I won’t meet anyone. I just know very few men who have these interests in common.’

Alice paused before saying the next part. She was going to bring up the M word.
‘Have you ever thought what you will do if you don’t marry? I was thinking about it today and I just don’t know what I would do! When I was ten, I always had this picture in my head that I would get married at eighteen! Now that I’m in my twenties and have never met a guy that I could see myself marrying, it’s beginning to seem very scary. That my twenties could go by laughing and going out with my friends and that I’ll not meet the one.’
‘I feel your pain Alice.’
‘You’ve thought about this Phil? What’ll you do if you don’t get married?’ My friend Alice is very practical and reflective. She always likes to know the details of plan b, if plan a fails miserably. Alice knows that my plan a is marriage.
‘Become a missionary in a developing country and for every child that I won’t have, I’ll help a hundred learn to read and write.’
‘Yes, you could go to Ecuador! Maybe Mexico? You might meet someone doing the voluntary work over there.’
‘Yes, until then, I’ll go around London with ‘husband hunter’ tattooed on my forehead.’
‘What will you do if you don’t get married Alice?’
‘I just don’t know! It’s always been part of my dream. ‘I’ll concentrate on my career. Build a good reputation...’

No Sex Please - We're Human

The film New Moon has caused a stir in mainstream media - like everyone knows - the film has a male character (he happens to be a valiant vampire) who refuses to have sex with the girl (she’s gor-jus) who he’s in love with.

The mainstream media reportage of New Moon is very patronising. Newspapers all over the world are using the same headline - 'No Sex Please - We're Vampires'. Each review in any 'mainstream' paper has tetchy paragraphs deriding Edward and Bella’s chaste love. Acres of online comments diss the story for not being ‘realistic’ – well of course it’s not ‘realistic’. Were you ever in love with a vampire? Did a vampire ever love the scent of your blood? But no, the fact that the movie has a lot of animal eating vampires is not what makes it 'unrealistic', it's that the fact that the young couple, Edward and Bella do not have sex.

There’s way too much media kvetching and theorising as to why the teenage couple don’t have sex.

The most pathetically anti-intellectual criticism of New Moon claims that the media's most 'unbelievable' ,'far-fetched' storyline is that the vampire/boyfriend does not want to take his girlfriend’s virginity. In fact, he refuses the girlfriend's offer of her body. Oh-ho this is the most fantastical theme of all! One wonders if the movie reviewers are not entering into this fantasy novel a little too much – there’s way too much explaining that Edward is a religious vampire and so he won’t have sex because that would not be good for Bella's soul. As if one needs to be a vampire to stay virginal! But he is a male vampire, and anything/anyone male equals sex mad.

It's part of the message 'to belong to the human race means having sex whenever and wherever you can’; that not to revel in all the sexual delights of the flesh is something only a non-human would do. As if an unmarried boyfriend and girlfriend (they may even be human) cannot try to control their sexual urges for each other’s good. I have not read the Twilight series of books, but must ask, is there any human NON-VAMPIRE male in the books that tries to stay virginal? Is there any 'regular guy', as they say in the US, who for his girlfriend's sake, does not want to take her virtue?

Me thinks the Net and the newspapers doth protest too much.

And it all comes back to the 'well the author is a Mormon, yawn! She's trying to peddle her 'no sex before marriage doctrine', like we wouldn't have guessed!'
http://www.newsweek.com/id/148052 Where you will find this commentary;
‘Meyer, who is Mormon, has said that she doesn't want Bella and Edward to have sex before marriage. For most romance novels, the "no sex, please," notion would be blasphemous.’

Ultimately what's happening is that films that champion chastity are being rubbished in the media; there's lots of preachy reviews telling the public that this virginity thing is sooo old school. We need the good journalists to tell us that we are wrong in loving these flicks. The papers and the online sites know best afterall.

This implies that any book or film without heavy sexual content will be rubbished.

Only books/films with the 'everyone is doing it, why aren't you?' message will be triumphed as good 'instructive' entertainment, especially if the main characters remember the condoms. In the mainstream media, does anyone criticise films that are too sexually explicit? Recent films such as ‘500 Days of Summer’, or the (ruined) film version of ‘Picture of Dorian Grey’? It seems the opposite, we are living in an era where films with chaste characters and without heavy breathing sex scenes are the films that will be most analysed.These films will cause the media fanfares.

Only the religious press are pointing out the value for teenagers in viewing films with a chastity message. The Catholic Herald's Sophie Caldecott gets it right with this simply-put but superb article.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000500.shtml

The Pill: Does it decide who we are attracted to?

What if a good, sexually balance marriage was disturbed by the female partner taking the Pill?

In Western society, there is still the trend of marrying both traditional values and pharmaceuticals of the sexual revolution. Like two virgins ‘waiting’ till marriage, but when married using the Pill/Depo/any-hormone-that-keeps-pregnancy-away.

A tiny percentage of couples who ‘keep sex for marriage’ might be staying virgins before marriage because they are afraid of pre-marital pregnancies. They have a chaste ‘courtship’, chaste engagement, and are virgins before the wedding night. Even I know that happens very rarely in today’s Europe. But the point is that the fear the couple had of pre-marital pregnancies, becomes fear of marital pregnancies after they get married. The couple get married, and their GP says ‘well did you know that the Pill is now considered to be as effective as sterilisation?’ Wherever did GPs learn this jaded line? GP theatrical school? Everyone who goes to their GP for the Pill hears it.

The woman who has only ever slept with her husband gets the Pill prescription, and a few months later she gets a prescription for anti-depressants. According to research, women on the Pill have much higher usage rates of ‘mothers little helpers’, tablets of the Valium variety. One of the listed side-effects of the Pill is depression. The fertility hormones, those responsible for monthly ovulation, are 'happy' hormones and research also proves that many women are at their happiest during ovulation.

So the wife takes a Pill every morning, and the man is simultaneously either unaware or happy to have the womb of the wife wilt, and the ovaries dried. This has to raise questions for the many women who marry the man ‘of their dreams’/their ‘Romeo’, but find that when they are married, and subsequently on the Pill for decades that they lose their attraction for their husband.... The years on the Pill condition the women to be infertile, and to ‘skip’ the high hormones of ovulation during which women are more likely to be attracted to their lovers/husbands. Also, the Sheffield University professors found that the Pill makes women more likely to be attracted to girly men. Slowly, but surely, the wife is drawn to the feminised men who walk like poodles behind the Sex and the City characters, or the man in the local clothes shop who could play a part in the local production of High School Musical. A possible rational for wanting to be unfaithful during marriage?

As for the husbands. Here’s a common scenario. A married man has a loving wife at home, and they have been married for eight years, and have two kids. Of the eight years that they have been married, the wife has been on the Pill for six years. The Pill prevented Wifey from having fertile days (when the scientific studies claim that men are most likely to be attracted to her) for years... She’s only been fertile when she’s conceived the kids. The man wonders why he’s not more attracted to his wife, and he searches for the ‘chemistry’/wild attraction that he and she shared in the early days of ‘dating’. One night, the husband goes to his younger brother’s stag party. They go to a lap dancing club. The 30 year old lap dancer isn’t a teenager anymore, but you know what, she’s not on the Pill and tonight she’s ovulating. Her bikini clad body is giving off the ‘fertile’/’I’m available’ signals and the husband pays the lap dancer a bit extra. No one asks why a married man is cavorting with a lap dance. That's Western culture for ya. Husband may go home to his wife the next day, but guess who he’s thinking of when they make love...

One Thing is Certain - Juliet Wasn't on the Pill

The Gu-ah-ardian (1996) reported the beginnings of negative scientific findings on the Pill. Originally, the 1996 studies noticed that women-on-the-Pill were less likely to chose the best BOyfriend/mate. That old 1990’s study had women-on-the-Pill smelling men’s dirty t-shirts. The t-shirts were worn by a different selection of men, and when the t-shirts were BO drenched, they were proffered to the women. The women smelled each BO-ed t-shirt, and chose what t-shirt they preferred. The t-shirt that an individual woman picked represented what sort of man/BOyfriend that she would date/mate with. In the 1996 study, women-on-the-Pill chose the BO-smelly t-shirts of partners that didn’t suit them and, were more prone to pick the t-shirt of a man that didn’t meet their needs. While women-not-on-the-Pill usually went for men that did suit them, and these men were more certain of themselves.
How can this be? How does the Pill make women less likey to find ‘Mr. Right’?

A new study from Sheffield University has more sophisticated findings. Without going into scientific nitty-gritty, the study has found that women-on-the-Pill are less attracted to ‘manly’ or masculine men. Women on the Pill are (for the time they wish to remain on the Pill) chemically infertile. The Pill essentially makes women voluntarily infertile. Some women stay on the Pill for the time they want this ‘infertility’, other women find that they stay infertile after coming off the Pill... One way the Pill works is by fooling the woman’s body into thinking that the woman is in a permanent pregnancy. Never fertile. Always winter, never spring. The Pill halts the production of the fertile juices in a woman that nourishes sperm. Another way it works is by suppressing ovulation, preventing the fertile time when the woman pops an egg.

Now hold the thought of the egg popping. Women-NOT-on-the-Pill are not taking a daily pill to dry their ovaries, and so most of them pop an egg every month. Each month they have a few days when hormones run high, and they are most likely to conceive a baby. The Sheffield University study has found that during the egg-popping time (‘ovulation’ to be exact) fertile women are more likely to go for masculine men, than women-on-the-Pill. The Daily Mail picked Sean Connery as an exemplar of such a manly man.

Women-on-the-Pill however (no monthly egg popping) are attracted to more feminine types of men. The Daily Mail picked Michael J. Fox and the High School Musical cast as exemplars of such softer, more emasculated men. To be blunt, women-on-the-Pill go for more feminine men who are genetically more similar to women, and ergo more genetically similar to themselves. Women-NOT-on-the-Pill go for mannish men who are genetically dissimilar to themselves. It works both ways though. Men are more likely to be attracted to women who are, each month, temporarily fertile during ovulation each month. A study on lap-dancers found that when the lap-dancers were ovulating, they got higher tips from men.

Now, I’ve written about a dodgy experience that I had with a rotter, let’s call him X. But I wasn’t on the Pill when I went out with him. But interestingly, Mr. X’s past girlfriends had all been on the Pill. And they stayed with him for years. They tolerated his ‘wimpy’/cowardly bullying. And what’s more when his girlfriends dropped spineless X, they stayed on the Pill and met other such less-than-proper men.

To analyse the attraction I had for X, it does correlate with the Sheffield University findings. I didn’t find X attractive when I was ovulating. I always found there was something ‘missing’ in my attraction for X during those days each month when oestrogen was at its highest, my energy levels were high, my mood was high, and frankly X seemed very low on everything, including testosterone. It was during ovulation, that I was most likely to resent his comments such as; ‘you know that I’m not with you just for your body. If I wanted a sexy body, I could always get a prostitute.’ We fought more when I was ovulating. During menstruation however, when the hormones drop and when my mood, energy, appetite, and libido dropped, that was the time that I got on best with X. His waspy ways just seemed more acceptable. X wasn’t masculine. With a good eyebrow plucking and the right skirt, he coulda done drag.

Ah, maybe I misjudged him. Maybe X wasn’t a rotter after all. Maybe he was a bitch.
This is just the anecdotal evidence, but nonetheless what about all the millions/billions of women on the Pill who keep wondering ‘why am I always attracting the losers? Why can’t I find the man for me? Why can’t I get a man?’
One thing’s certain from the perspective of the most endearing love story of all time: Juliet wasn’t on the Pill.

My X-Boyfriend and his Blow-Up Girlfriend(s)

Few things are worse than being compared (at a public function) to your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. Substitute the term girlfriend with ‘bonded slave’, ‘sex toy’ or ‘submissive miss’.

What would you say/do if a friend of your ex-boyfriend’s marched up to you in a crowded venue, with all London’s beautiful and brilliant there, and started to hector you about your ex-boyfriend’s new ‘love’ interest?
I was with friends of mine at a large social event yesterday, and friend-of-X-boyfriend marched up to me. Friend-of-X-boyfriend's eyes were staring intensely at me. He was dressed in sailor ensemble, with blue and white colour scheme. Friend-of-X-boyfriend beckoned to me, ‘I want a word’ he said. Like a fool, I left my group of friends and talked to him.
There were no pleasantries; this conversation with sailor suit was firstly a discussion of my CV. No doubt so that sailor/SPY-of-X-boyfriend can sail back and report on his findings. I hope sailor/spy gets at least a drink for his troubles from my ex-rotter.
‘So you have a job, I assume you have a job...’ Spy said eagerly.
‘Yeah I have a job that pays the bills...’ I stammered.
‘I heard Phil that you were working for Con. That can hardly be a great income spinner.’
I nodded. I wouldn’t confirm or deny if my job was an ‘income spinner’.
‘Well I enjoy my work, thanks, and are you still – ‘
‘Whereabouts do you live?’
I gave him my Zone One address.
‘Really? You must have money to burn living in that neck of the woods. Money to burn. Wouldn’t expect you to have the dosh mind you.’
‘Good to see you’re as...ahem...direct as before’
Sailor/spy then gave me a hard stare and declared, ‘and I assume you know that your old flame, your dearest X has a new girlfriend. Lovely lady. Not the most attractive though, you’d score on her there, but X has done really well for himself with her. In point of fact, X has done really well for himself professionally too. He’s raking in the cash. Joined the company of his choice to boot.’
At the mention of X I felt physically sick. Head ‘swimming’ and heart hammering. I became dizzy and Sailor/spy started to look fuzzy. These are the same symptoms of anxiety that I suffer whenever I am unfortunate enough to hear X’s name.
‘Good for him. I’m glad he’s doing so well.’ I said as upbeat as possible.
‘Yeah, his new girl wants to do everything right. She wants to forget completely about her life before X.’ Was Sailor-spy remotely conscious of how misogynist he sounded? What was this conversation happening in the 1540?
‘She’s eager to please him so?’ I raised my eyebrows.
‘Yeah!’ sailor said enthusiastically. ‘She’s not the same religion as he is, but she’s taking instruction on how to become a convert. Very impressive that.’
My throat tightened in disgust. Religion is sometimes just a social pageantry where ‘actors’ in the religion just play their ‘role’ in order to become part of the play. To play along with other actors. Not for anything greater or better. Clearly, new-girlfriend was looking to join X and his religious dramatics.

‘Oh, and she’s not quite as bright and well read as X is, so she’s trying her best to catch up. She’s getting to grips with all his favourite books and films. Also, she’s dressing in a more classical way, you know the way X likes women to dress.’ Sailor-spy then shrugged his shoulders playfully. ‘I think our friend X is encouraging her to shop in Laura Ashley more than New Look. According to X’s standards, she’s doing very well.’
From sailor-spy’s description, he made her sound like a mail-order bride, that had specifications on a catalogue. You know, ‘this bride isn’t as good looking as the rest, but she makes up for it by being very subservient. She will shop in what clothes shops you tell her to. She will read your favourite books.’
‘Oh she must be a very good girl, who does exactly what she’s told. You know stereotypically submissive. Let’s him get away with things.’ I snorted.
‘She’s that alright. It’s their kids that I’ll feel sorry for...’ said sailor-spy, suppressing a chuckle, ‘they’ll have his shaggy dog hair and her blow fish face. Revolting!' Sailor-spy is one charming friend to X. Sailor-spy quickly added ‘But really Phil, he’s done very well for himself. Very well! You coulda’ done worse than X.’ Resisting the temptation to challenge sailor-spy and declare, ‘I will never give that creep a second chance.’ I said, ‘I could do worse than him? Like you would know.’ Before sailor could answer back, I said,
‘I’ll get back to my friends. Good to see you again after all this time. Bye.’
‘Oh, but let’s have some tea and cakes –‘
I pretended not to hear the tea invitation.

Reflecting on this conversation, it’s no bad thing that I made sailor-spy aware that I think X’s new girlfriend a submissive miss. But who am I to look down on this ‘lovely lady’? Had I not fallen for this rotter, been for too long his silly submissive girlfriend? Had I not endured his harassment? Had I not let him roughly rip my clothes off me (the police call it strip searching), all because he wanted to punish me for being upset with him?

Sailor’s comments about her doing all the right things to placate X brought back painful memories. Of having ear-phones pulled from my ears because I was listening to ‘rubbish’ music. Of having to witness my boy ‘friend’ in furious, trembling form, because I wasn’t wearing ‘smart’ enough shoes.

I know, he sounds like a monster, but he was so nice, generous and smooth at the beginning. I wasn’t psychic enough to know that he had a split personality.
Something in sailor-spy’s description of the new girlfriend made her sound desperate, and needy. But maybe she just fell for the same lies that I did. Maybe his ‘wooing’ technique is still the same, pretend to be the perfect gentleman, send the flowers, shower the girl with gifts and love letters, and tell her you love her a million times a day. Tell her the three words when you are speaking in an angelic tone, but also tell her ‘I love you’ when you are plying her with a drink after belittling her in front of all your friends. His ‘woo’ method is a bit on the traditional, predictable level, but it works.

Now, the majority of women that I know have had one if not a string of ‘difficult’ boyfriends. I prefer to call these men ‘rotters’. They don’t just look for sex, they look for the thrill in bamboozling and pressurising (bullying?) a woman into sex and sexual experimentation. Most of these women aren’t as fortunate and blessed as I was in escaping the emotional black mailers so easily. At least I ended the relationship with him, of my own accord, and at least he didn’t get to rape me. I remember going to my GP with severe headaches around the time I was thinking of breaking up with the rotter, and the doc grimaced and said, ‘patients of mine who have described a boyfriend such as yours are very often raped by these boyfriends...’ Later I asked this doctor if the same pattern of angelic-boyfriend morphing into devil-boyfriend would happen if my boyfriend met someone else. ‘Well he’ll have had more practice by the time he meets his new girl. She’ll have bruises, but they’ll be the sort that the evening gown will cover.’

Yes, I’ve escaped without being violently raped, but I can’t help but feel enormous anger that this individual has just got another girl that he can treat like a blow-up doll. I used to go to Roman Catholic Churches and pray that X would not find a new girlfriend. ‘PLEASE DEAR JESUS’, I would implore, ‘please let him not find another dupe. Dear Lord, let the girls see his vile side before they go out with him! Let him never harm another girl!’ Bearing in mind what my GP had said, and the intimate details of his character, I didn’t see him treating any girl with respect. No matter how nice her clothes were.

A historian friend of mine assures me that there were societies in the past where men such as X were horse whipped for physically and sexually intimidating a woman. We can’t hope for that in today’s times, but perhaps they could convert the Travel Lodge in Slough to a holding area/detention centre for such villains. The rotters could get therapy and have group sessions, much like people who are addicted to substances. In the case of the rotters, it would be an addiction to harming women. The organisers of this detention centre could have blow up dolls, and the rotters could role play with them, you know basic lessons would be learned with the doll such as ‘do not shove or slap your girlfriend.’ ‘Don’t call your girlfriend a slut.’ ‘Don’t tell your girlfriend that she’s fat.’ ‘Don’t rip the blow up doll’s clothes off. That’s a Laura Ashley blouse!’

I confess to having felt slightly self-loathing when I read the numerous websites giving space to Brooke Shields previous proclamations of virginity, and then her complaining that she lost her virginity too late.

It begs the question, if Brooke was using her virginity for cultivating a cult-following to her virginal persona, what am I writing about my own ‘saved’ virginity for? Do I have pure intentions when I write about my virginity? Am I, Phil, just trying to blog about how virtuous and virginal I am? You know, is this just one big ego-trip for me? Am I trying to establish myself as some figure to be adored, like Snow White or the Blessed Virgin Mary? A big ego-boost to the tune of my typing fingers, that goes ‘everyone else is so sexual-and-sullied, and most people have lost their virginity, aren’t you special Phil because you still got your virginity’? Am I not so clean and holy? Bow down all you lowly promiscuous urchins, and despair!

That’s not why I write this blog.

I write this blog because us writers are always cautioned to write about what we know. And well, I do know why I still got my virginity. I know why my friends ain’t got theirs. And I have read more about sexual matters, contraception, abortion and, the tormented lives of women than I have about anything else. I happen to be a woman so that helps in writing about sex (or the lack of sex till marriage) making a crucial difference to the life of a woman. It’s not like I have always been so pure and virginal. I have made mistakes with men. I’ve made mistakes with immodest clothes. I’ve attracted the wrong type and I’ve paid the price. Most people who know me do not expect me to be a virgin. It’s grace from God that has kept me a virgin.

Some would argue that I thrump the virginity card, because I have no choice but to remain a virgin. Like, I’m a plain Jane. Granted, if you male readers saw the teenage acne that still speckles my cheeks, ten years after their first appearance, you’d probably have me last on your list as girls to ask out. People may accuse me of having a ‘I’m-so-unattractive-that-I can-never-lose-my-virginity-so-nobody-else-should-lose theirs’ mindset. A sort of begrudging others their sexual fun just cos I can’t get no sexual action. If that were the case, why don’t I just berate my own parents for having engaged in the activity that brought me and my brother into the world?

If I had slept with men, and tried all the different ‘fruity’ contraceptives, I would blog about my sexual experiences and how it negatively/positively affected my life. That is if I weren’t a single mother, and didn't have time to blog. I would have to care for a baby conceived during a one night stand, and a toddler possibly conceived during my only serious relationship. A relationship where I did come under a lot of sexual pressure.

My number one reason for writing this blog is that I wish to share with others the value of keeping their virginity till marriage. The Juliet factor. It’s time to dedicate this web-log to all the women (the would be Juliets!) who search for something better in their lives, who want to take control of the most sensitive part of their physical and mental identity. For the women who want ‘to have it all’ – to find the loving, faithful marriage partner, and have the decent sex life.
I write this blog in the spirit of ‘there-has-to-be-a-better-way-for-women’; rather than the ‘must-have-sex-and-heartache-all-the-way-to-the-altar’ lifestyle. I write because ‘we’ all know that the ‘women have never had it so good’ is not true for a lot of us. It's not true for those of us who have felt sexually used, who can’t find ‘good/pure’ men, who rack our brains for ways to ‘stop’ a man taking advantage and who feel life is so full of sex completely sans romance. I write this for us women who find it so excruciatingly hard to admit to ourselves that yes, some men are only interested in our bodies. And if we don’t ‘give in’ then they will ‘drop’ us. For all the girls who want to be asked out by the ‘nice’ men, but who feel that they must make themselves as ‘hot’ as possible before any guy will ask them out. For all the girls who are looking for a ‘decent’ man who accepts them, physical imperfections and all.

For the girls who ask men out, even ‘dodgy’ men. I write this for all the girls who ‘settle’ for the ‘wrong’ man. I know – I’ve been there – I stayed with someone who ‘wasn’t worth it’ because I honestly thought that I couldn’t get someone ‘better’. Better didn’t exist because I didn't see better men, other than in books and movies. But if art imitates life, let life imitate art. Let our lives imitate Romeo and Juliet.

And for the men...

I write this for the men who actually want to take the challenge, and stay chaste. I write this for the men who feel pressure to ‘perform’. For all the men who are put under pressure by women to be sexually exciting. I write this for all the men who are called gay because they don’t want to sleep around. For all the men who feel twinges of embarrassment because they are virgins, because popular culture lambasts men who are still virgins as being objects of fun and ridicule. For the men who don’t want to put girls in difficult situations. I write this blog in the hope that the ‘normal’, ‘nice’ men can get together with the ‘lovely’ girls. Readers – get mating – but get married first!

This post is also dedicated to Dawn Eden, a contemporary prophet of the chastity movement whose memoir The Trill of the Chaste inspired me greatly, and gave me the courage to write about living the chaste life.

PS - Soon, there will be a section on this blog titled ‘The Rough Side of the Smoothie’, which aims to detail my experience with the ‘smooth’ men of this world. Replies from other women and men about their smooth-to-rough/rough-to-smooth love affairs are most welcome.

Brooke Shields - Exploiting Herself or Exploiting the Public?

I just sent this to the Brooke Shield’s official website. It ain’t fan mail, but let’s see if we get a reply to it from Brooke.

The police have stormed London’s art gallery The Tate Modern to grab the picture of a ten year old Brooke Shields standing naked in a bath tub. The picture is seedy; Brooke’s eyes are hooded in black ‘hooker’ make-up and her thin body is slick with oil. Brooke’s mother disseminated the photo (some would call it kiddie porn) to get her daughter ‘noticed’.

Campaigners against child abuse have lampooned the Tate Modern for having housed the ‘art’ in the first place. Michele Elliott, founder of Kidscape argued ‘Brooke Shields was 10 years old when this picture was taken. She could not have given informed consent to it being used.’ Michele Elliott then poured scorn on the intentions of the Tate Modern, ‘if you are using a picture of a naked child to bring people to your exhibition, then you are exploiting that child. It's as if they are using a 10-year-old girl for bait.’

While I agree with Michele Elliott, that the ten year old Brooke could not have given ‘consent’, the root of this exploitation is that Brooke’s mother organised for her daughter to be photographed in this way. Brooke’s mummy thought it would be a good career move, and that the photo would help establish Brooke as a model. Brooke’s mother was a failed actress, and is understood by many to have tried to live her own dreams through her daughter. But ambition, greed and an insatiable desire for celebrity are not good enough reasons for turning your kid into a porn model.

But the point now is that the photo, laconically and ironically titled Spiritual America did have a room to itself in the Tate Modern. The photo and its title are not entirely intended for personal titillation (although paedophiles would be drawn to it) but the photo is meant to symbolise the robbing of a child’s dignity, all for the cause of celebrity and money. In a sense the child is sacrificed for the ‘religion’ of money and fame. The exhibiting of such a photo in a gaudy, gold, glitzy frame is meant to challenge us. But why do we need such challenging? Why do we need to be disgusted, so disgusted that we will sneer at such photography? Disgust is the normal reaction, but what’s really disgusting is that there are parents willing to facilitate the porn-ification of their children. If a parent won’t protect their kid, who will? And isn’t it really quite simple, if Brooke’s mother had not had the photo of a sexed-up Brooke taken in the first place, would it have ever muddied the walls of the Tate Modern?

The photo, however doesn’t just drip with oil, it drips with deceit. The photo captures Brooke’s then innocence and childhood naivety, but is designed to make her look ready for sex; and frankly growing children should not be thought of as sexually available. But the photos had the result of getting Brooke into the movies. Woody Allen gave Brooke a role in Annie Hall in the flash back scenes. The bath tub photo also influenced a French film director who gave Brooke a role in the film Pretty Baby. Brooke’s first proper role was as a child prostitute in Pretty Baby. Aside from the nude shots in the film, photos of Brooke were always a little unseemly. The cover photo of The Brooke Book shows a twelve year old looking Brooke with naked thighs, and a under developed cleavage on display.


Next Brooke became the ‘virgin’ face of Calvin Klein. The notorious caption with a pouting picture of Brooke Shields was ‘nothing comes between me and my Calvins’. Nothing comes between me and royalties more like.

Of course there was then rapacious interest in Brooke’s sex life, or lack of it. If you pose provocatively, then you will provoke prying minds. Ahem, did she go whore-image or virgin –image? Brooke became a renowned public virgin. In defying the expectations of someone who was expected to be sexually permissive in real life, Brook later decided to flaunt her virginity as a means of attention grabbing. She starred in TV commercials warning girls against early sexual involvement. I scoured you tube, but cannot find any of those TV commercials. Maybe Brooke just did the-keep-your-virginity commercials for the money. All very bow-down-to-Mamon. All very insincere. Maybe those commercials with Brooke exhorting girls to stay virginal never existed.

Then Brooke wrote about keeping her virginity in her life story ‘I'm willing to admit I'm a virgin because I feel so strongly about it...Love is what I want to wait for. I don't feel the need to experiment.’ Yeah, but she could have been talking about playing with explosives. There’s no concrete reason such as dislike of disease or heart ache or pregnancy. It does smack of someone who is afraid of sex. And living the chastity lifestyle, and staying a virgin out of fear are two very different things. What might explain Brooke’s literary love of her own virginity is that she made an agreement with her publishers to remain a virgin for some years after the publication of the book.

Brooke’s publically announced virginal status was a bit of an act. It gave the publishers of her book something to grab a headline with. And if she had been serious about encouraging others to keep their virginity, why did she continue to pose so sexually? Perhaps, using her body to excite was just a way of life. Learned when she was ten. To begin with, her naked body was used as ‘bait’ for fame, and then her virginity was used to make her seem pure and wholesome, but always in a ‘who can have me?’ pesky prep girl way. Such girls are sometimes called ‘teases’, and are also an embarrassment to other women.

Now to bring this sordid tale full circle, Brooke came out earlier this year and said she regretted not losing her virginity sooner. Guess what, Brooke’s tale of lamenting losing her virginity at the grand old age of 22 was splashed across ‘serious’ newspapers. Who really was exploited, Brooke or the public? During the course of her career, Brooke never gave one consistent moral message on virginity or sexuality. Embracing sexy photos at ten to become known, then doing the virginity thing to win the heart of the public. Manipulating public interests, but never asking what messages she was giving women.

Diary and Memoirs of a Virgin

September 27th 2009
The glories of a mellow sun lit Sunday in London are many. I had no ‘official’ work to do, when I walked through the streets around High Street Kensington, I got the impression that London was taking a nap. On a Sunday afternoon in September one has the definite sense that the world is taking a deep breath before the hectic working week begins again. Sunday is a day for slowing life down, and reflecting on time past and a day for sharing memories...

And so I come to my blog, and illustrate the reasons why I remain virginal.
I wasn’t always the prim, proper, princess who writes prissy blog entries. Heck no. I didn’t even know there was such a concept as ‘chastity’ when I was growing up. Keeping one’s virginity till marriage? Hah – people only did that in times before contraception.

I grew up in the 90s. Sex was everywhere. Never before had the means of procreation become the means of so much entertainment. Every popular TV programme had a thread of sexual action in them. This was an era when most people had not even heard of the internet, and for average middle class families in Ireland, TVs sets were the focus point of the important rooms of the house. TVs were effective baby sitters, and sure Mum and Dad weren’t always there to censor everything that their little girls watched.

I remember other girls playing with Barbie and Ken dolls, and role playing with the dolls the sexual discourses and activities that they had viewed on soaps. There were always lots of TV storylines with childish looking teenagers having babies and being miserable, or having abortions and being subsequently carefree and jolly.
According to Irish statistics, 30% of Irish mothers were on the Pill when I was going to primary school in the 90s. And in my primary school class, a lot of the kids would coyly discuss they Pill packets they saw in their parents’ bedrooms, and the panicky discussions that their mothers’ would have with their older sisters about going on the Pill. Girls with milk-white Irish skin, freckles and The Simpsons school bags would see their mother rush to take her contraceptive pill in the mornings, and then hear their mother advise their teenage sister to go on the Pill.
Then there were girls who knew that their teenage sisters carried condoms ‘just in case’. I remember going into a chemist with a friend at the age of nine, and us both giggling and having a ‘who-can-spot-a-condom-packet’ competition. Later on when we were eleven, one girl took condoms from her brother’s wallet as a dare.

Every ‘cool’ actor on TV or on the big screen had a hot sex life, and most of the adults in our lives encouraged pre-marital sex by encouraging teenagers to take contraceptives, or by simply giving their approval. So by the age of ten, I thought that a teenager having regular sex with other pimply, fumbling teenagers was as good and necessary as having a shower. At twelve, I read the teenage mags Just 17 and Sugar. Both magazines were full of ‘how-do-you-know-you’re-ready-for-sex’ articles, each article full of glowing pictures of advertisement-perfect couples locked in embrace. The girl was always gorgeous, and the guy looked lovingly at her. Funny thing that I only ever saw pictures of these doting couples, but never saw couples like that in real life. These teenage mags extolled the importance of being ‘ready’ for sex. That was paramount. As long as you felt ‘ready’, then you could have sex whenever and with whoever you wanted. The mags carried stories of the guys and girls who were sleeping together at age 16, and what contraception they were using, and how they had waited until they were ‘ready’. The teenage magazines seem to have provided the NHS manifesto for ‘preventing’ teenage pregnancies. There was a lot of jargon thrown in about ‘waiting till you were the legal age’, but given that market research demonstrated that the majority of girls reading Sugar and J17 were actually eleven to thirteen, would even an astute twelve year old have understood the concept of sex being illegal... I know that I didn’t really get the whole thing about sex being illegal before 16, and it seemed so funny that the ‘boys in blue’ or the police would throw you in the local slammer for ‘doing it’...

But the single most influential reading material for me were the Judy Blume books. Judy Blume is a very talented writer, and it was obvious from her writing that she wanted her readers to have an adequate understanding of human sexuality. Blume’s novels however do not offer a rounded experience of pre-marital sexuality. Put simply, we cannot all be as ‘lucky’ as the characters in her novels. Her books do not offer young people, especially the twelve year old who re-reads and re-reads her books the opportunity to think about saving sex for marriage. I read Blume’s book Forever one night when I was twelve. I waited till everyone was asleep, and then kept the light on until 3AM reading the book that describes one girl’s passage from virginity to losing her virginity to leaving the guy she lost her virginity to. The girl used condoms, went on the Pill, didn’t get pregnant and didn’t get her heart broken. The sequence of events was all quite seamless for the newly sexually active girl. The message being that if you have sex for the first time with your boyfriend, that everything can work out, and that it needn’t be forever. You can go on and find other boyfriends and sex can just be a normal part of the relationship. One thing that struck me as odd was that Judy Blume included a male character in her novel Forever, and this fellow is averse to having sex with willing girls. He becomes mentally unstable, and has to have respite from society. At age twelve this plot line seemed a little perverse to me; did he become socially unacceptable and mentally compromised because he would not have sex with girls? The novel suggested that because he wasn’t ‘active’ with girls that this was a sign of some deeper imbalance.

Blume’s novel Forever is conservative by 2009 ‘standards’. The mother of the teenage girl has only slept with one person; the girl’s father. And the teenage girl loses her virginity when she’s ‘the legal age’.

Alright, I thought my teenage years will develop much like the teenage girl in Forever. I would just wait for the attractive males to come into my life, seduce me and I’d make sure he wore a condom.

Something changed that challenged my planned teenage sex life. When I was fourteen and not an especially likeable teenager because I was too sure of myself, my size ten figure and my own opinions, I became an acquaintance of a teenage boy, who was far more intelligent and polite than I was. Let’s call him Shaun. I felt like a buffoon next to Shaun. Shaun was from a more straight laced family than mine, and his parents went to Catholic Mass most days, and they were always trying to have more kids. Anyway, one Sunday, I attended a kind of workshop with Shaun. It was organised by a group of men and women in their twenties who wanted to show teenagers the value of keeping sex until marriage. Shockingly for me, as the workshop ensued, I learned one thing that they had in common...they were all virgins. Wow. This group of virgins did various role plays and gave their personal perspectives on why they were going to stay virgins until marriage.

One aspect of the workshop, which sticks with me today in minute detail, is the part where they invited Shaun to join them for an activity where they took thick brown sell tape and wrapped it around his arm. They explained that this was like his first sexual encounter, and that the stickiness on the sell tape was like the bond he would create with the girl. Then they ripped the sell tape off, and Shaun reeled for a bit, and was told, ‘when that first bond is broken it will hurt a lot’. And so they re- applied the same sell tape to Shaun’s arm, and said ‘and this will be like the second sexual relationship that you have, and because it will be your second bond, the stickiness will be weaker. But when you break up with your second sexual partner and the bond is ripped off...’ Cue here for sell tape being taken off like a band aid. ‘It will not be as painful as the first.’ The sell tape was weak at this stage and Shaun’s arm hair was speckled on the tape. Then they furled it around his arm a third time, but it hung loosely and needed to be held in position. ‘Now this is for when you have a one night stand. You’ll want the sex, but you’ll not be able to bond with the girl, and well you’ll only sleep with her once...so what’s the difference?’ They pulled the sell tape and Shaun didn’t notice a thing. ‘And it won’t be painful. You’ll just forget about the one night stand the next day. Your mind will wander back to the first girl that you slept with. But sooner or later you’ll meet a girl and she’ll be the girl. That girl; the one you want to marry.’ For the fourth time, they hung the sell tape on Shaun’s arm, but it fell off. ‘Now when you sleep with your wife, you won’t be able to bond like you did with the first girl who you slept with. The bond may not be there, and if any bond is there, it will hang loosely. And if there’s no bond to keep you together, you might find that you want an occasional affair.’

Shaun stood there, and looked noble with the straggly sell tape resting on his still arm. He smiled at me, and I grimaced. Why was he agreeing with all this sticky tape stuff? Who said that he would definitely have an affair? I hated the thought of all this pain when a sexual relationship would break up; it was wrecking all my fantasies of easy-come easy-go sex. Was I really setting myself up for painful break-up after painful break-up if I had sex with every boyfriend...? There surely must be a way of cheating, maybe you could find the one, and have sex with him, marry him, keep the bond and not get hurt. A sort of package deal where you had the sex before marriage and in marriage, but with the same man.

The ‘creating a bond’ with another human being played again and again in my mind. What?! A bond is created when you have sex? That sounds deep... There was nothing about creating a bond with someone in the mags and in the Judy Blume books. But this talk of forming bonds sounded sincere and true. But this business about keeping sex only for marriage seemed completely OTT. We’re not in the year 1950, I felt like screaming out. I probably would have at least sneered, but that my peer Shaun seemed to think what the twenty-something group of virgins was saying was so good and true. Stuff Shaun and his carefully gelled hair and neat shoes and shirts. He could be waiting until he’s thirty to have sex. That’s not for me, I’ll find Mr. Right, have sex with him when we fall in love, and we’ll live happily ever after.

Time passed, I distanced myself from Shaun because he lived in such a pure way and well, I found his Catholic school boy way a bit unnerving. In reality, I was the one with the problem because being such a teenagey teenager, I couldn’t accept Shaun. Shaun: so different but individual didn't fit into my orbit where every ‘average’ and 'conventional' person was doing the same thing and this meant that they were all planning to have sex whenever it was convenient. And Shaun was a boy who was planning to wait!

I was just waiting for ‘the right fella’ (‘fella’ is a real Irish turn of phrase), and for the man who was good enough for me to have sex with then, and for the rest of my life. I used to think about what would happen if I became pregnant-outside-of-marriage, and unusually this didn’t cause me personally a great amount of discomfort. I was always the child who had a family of dolls, and getting pregnant meant a human baby would be all mine. In accordance with this, I used to fantasize about what names I would give possible children, where I would rear them and the fun we would have together. I would walk through children’s clothes departments and see if there was anything that I would definitely buy for phantom children.
Tempered, however, by the work shop that I had attended with Shaun, I started reading more about STDs and especially the warty ones that are obnoxious for women. Then something occurred to me, what if my Mr. Right had slept with others before me? Wouldn’t I be likely to inherit the bundle of diseases that his body stored?
Then I read tracts detailing other people’s experience of casual sex. Most of the girls were not like the teenage girls in the Judy Blume books. They felt ‘dirty’ and ‘used’ after a boy had tossed them aside. The boys revelled in the limitless licence to have sex, and couldn’t understand why the gals felt so hard done by. The boys were then presented with the words ‘I’m pregnant’, and were neither emotionally evolved nor mature enough to support the pregnant girl adequately. Then the girls were always being given slaps on the wrist for not being ‘careful enough’.

I began to think seriously that the sort of dodging pregnancy and diseases but having to inevitably live with a sundered heart were not things that I wanted my own children to cope with. So when I was fifteen, I started thinking to myself that I would tell my kids not to have sex before marriage. Yeah, it made sense to tell your kids to wait until marriage. I knew that Shaun’s parents used to tell him that they had waited, and that they were his ‘good example’.

One day in my Walter Mittian way, I was thinking of a little pep talk that I would give some adorable twelve year old child of mine about not having sex until marriage. Of doing the same thing as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and waiting until Prince Charming had put the ring on their finger. In my fantasy, my child turned to me and asked and ‘so Mummy, you only ever slept with Daddy when you were married?’

How could I ask my children not to sleep with anyone before marriage if I had not kept chastity until marriage? I would look an utter hypocrite. It was in that split second that my decision to keep sex until marriage was born.

Diary and Memoirs of a Virgin

September 24th


Today I took in the film Julie and Julia. The film’s about two ladies with similar names. One modern lady – Julie. And one 1940s lady – Julia.
The film shows in flash back the life of 'Julia Child', who loved eating and cooking, having sex with her husband and who wanted to teach Americans how to cook like the French.
The film is based on the real life story of Julie, frustrated writer in modern day New York. New Yorker Julie has a hateful job, friends who belittle her and she lives over a pizzeria in Queens. She finds solace in cooking, and discovers that the cook Julia Child shared her passion for cooking. Julie starts a blog to chronicle this adventurous task; to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ in the space of one year. Each day becomes a routine of cooking the intricate recipes and then writing a blog post about the cooking experience. Modern Julie starts using Julia Child as her cooking role model, but also as her role model for how-to-live-life. Modern Julie even wears peals like Julia Child, and even beats herself up because she doesn’t have as ideal a marriage as Julia had in the 1940s.
Now here’s the virginity angle. Julia Child remained a virgin until she married at the age of forty. This aspect of 1940’s Julia Child’s life holds a certain fascination for New Yorker Julie. In one part of the movie, the modern thirty year old New Yorker Julie (she's in the clip above) tells friends at her dinner party that the famous cook Julia Child had been a virgin when she married...at age forty. I think the line from the movie was ‘can you believe it? Forty and still a virgin until she married?’ Modern Julie's friends gasped and swapped quizzical glances, as if they were discussing a miracle.
I took careful note of the reaction of my fellow Londoners in the cinema during this scene. In the row in front of me, one lady snorted 'what rubbish. A virgin at forty? Puh!'
The London audience chuckled on hearing ‘forty...still...virgin’. I lingered in my seat, and wondered if there was any one else in the cinema who could possibly be (like me) over eighteen, and still a virgin... Maybe I'll be like Julia Child, (the chef extraordinaire) and remain a virgin until I find The One. Maybe I'll only meet him when I'm forty. But one thing that I would take from Julia Child's life story is that whilst she didn't have any fun between the sheets until she was forty, she did have a fulfilled marriage, and did have an exciting sex life with her husband. Does anyone out there know of a couple who stayed virgins till marriage and have a happy marriage in these times?

Right, but the experience of Julia Child, i.e. staying a virgin and having good marital-sexual relations DOES follow the research trends.

Here are two reports on good sex in marriage:
http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/sex/ads/bestad.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981624-2,00.html



September 25th

‘Golly, it’s amazing that you’re still a virgin...’ said my friend Anne today. She then shook her head and remarked with a sigh, ‘I wish that I were a virgin. How cool would it be to be a virgin again. But Phil, seriously, how have you kept it anyway?’ she looked at me with wide eyes. ‘I mean, you're very pretty, and I'd say no one would know you've never had sex.’

‘Well...’ I stuttered. My mind raced. I was eating fish for lunch with my friend Anne. Today, September 25th in central London. Metres away from us were fashion magazines, on the cover were women who look like they are always chasing men, pouting lips and the 'hunting' eye. Another magazine was even advised that when they meet a man first to act virginal, so that he thinks they’re inexperienced and will therefore fancy them all the more, but then when things get sexual that they should become insatiable. OK, but Anne was asking me an important question. Instead of spending the entire lunch time giving my life history, I was being invited by my friend Anne, to give a few brief lines on why I am still a virgin. It’s the words ‘virgin’ and ‘still’ that really grab everyone’s attention.
‘Well, I suppose, I’ve just made the decision to stay one...’ I again stuttered.
‘Hmmm.’ Said my friend,disappointed that my stock reaction was so boring...
‘Phil, I mean you’ve had your fair share of boyfriends. Dodgy boyfriends and not-so dodgy boyfriends.’ She mused, then shot her eyebrow into the air.
‘And some those dodgy bad boys didn't exactly wanna give me mah space girl-fre-en-end.’ I drawled in a bad American accent.
Anne laughed, and asked if I’d like to try her prawn sushi. We spent a few moments in quiet...before we exchanged a few hum-drum questions about our jobs, our hair conditioners, what we had eaten for breakfast... I intuited that Anne had dropped the ‘virginity’ question out of politeness, and also because she's a considerate who doesn’t like to pester a friend on her lunch break. But me, feeling the tension of the unresolved ‘why-am-I-still-a-virgin’ question, I blurted out,
‘Alright, so my being a virgin is a bit of a miracle. OK, it’s a complete miracle. And to explain why I’m still a virgin will take some explaining....’
‘Uh-huh’ she said quietly. 'Look Phil, sorry if I was being nosey.'
‘No, it's OK Anne, I’ve had some less-than-desirable boyfriends... I’ve thousands of opportunities for easy going sex... It’s just that I realised from a young age that keeping my virginity till marriage was the best way to go...’ A few minutes of silence passed.
‘Yeah, but Phil, I really wish that I'd kept my virginity. But I don’t know why... What’s so special about keeping it? I mean why over all these years have you wanted to stay a virgin? Hang on, am I getting to you? Tell me to shut up if I’m too much...’
I shrugged, not pleased that yet again, with another female friend the topic of my still-being-a-virgin was the most sought after topic of conversation, but glad in any case that I was the centre of attention. I never said that I wasn’t self obsessed.
’Look I made a decision when I was a teenager; I mean I was very young, and I decided there were better advantages to staying a virgin...’ I staggered. ‘Look Anne, sorry to disappoint you, and I know that I’ve started a blog on finding the virginal love of Romeo and Juliet, but I really can’t explain quickly how I’m still a virgin...’
‘Hmmm, you said you were a teenager when you decided to stay a virgin...like what came into your teenage brain, and said ‘go on babe, keep yo’ virginity!’ Anne said in a much better American accent than I could muster. She said the ‘virginity’ word too loud, and a pinstripe suit fellow in a nearby table cleared his throat and gave us a suspicious look. Anne and I looked in the opposite direction, and stifled our laughing.
‘Anne, will I ask the fellow in the pinstripe suit if he wants a date with you? You know Opera maybe, even a Shakepeare play... Now what would you say if he wanted to buy you flowers?’
‘I’d say no thanks. He don’t do it for me Phil. But you and he could get together. I'll not be jealous!’
‘You must be joking. His horrified look at both of us when you mentioned the v word a bit loudly... A real prude if ever there was one... How would I tell pinstripe fellow that I’m doing a blog that discusses virginity?’
‘Hmm that might be difficult. I can hardly imagine pinstripe fellow introducing you to his friends at the silver spoon dinner party and saying, ‘now, here’s my gel who writes about virginity on the internet.’
‘And I’m a gel who can’t adequately explain why I’m still a virgin... I’m mean I know my own reasons, but explaining them on the web is another issue...’
‘But, I think you’re very brave to be...well you know...writing about such a sensitive topic. Us girls who wish we were still virgins need to hear it from the survivors. We're not going t' find it in the glossy mags.’ Anne sighed in the direction of the stack of mags.
‘I suppose I could have a think about it, and write a post about why I decided to stay a virgin?’
‘Now that’s an idea’ said Anne.
‘Did I tell you that I’ve started a diary, it’s called ‘Diary of a Chaste Lady’, and I’m writing about all the things in my daily life that concern chastity...sex and...’
‘What! Phil! You mean this lunch time conversation will be on your blog?’ Anne exhaled.
‘Too late!’ Now it was my turn to chuckle.

The Balcony Scene

Ah, the infamous scene where Romeo clandestinely trespasses Juliet's garden, and then observes Juliet perch on the balcony and speaks her thoughts to the night air. Juliet, unaware of Romeo's presence in the garden below her balcony, exclaims her love for Romeo. Romeo, as impulsive as ever, responds to her call for his love...
Romeo is adamant that if Juliet wants him to be newly baptised, and receive a new name, then he will willingly dissolve his old (controversial) name of 'Montague'. There is a deeper meaning here because in Catholic terms, baptism is a washing of the soul and thus renders the soul a new garment without stain and with gleaming whiteness.
They arrange to marry and Romeo is eager to speak with his priest, Friar Laurence, and arrange swift nuptials.
My mind focuses on how Romeo would have treated Juliet, had they met in 2009. How do you think Romeo would wanted Juliet to do in today's world of condom dispensers in loos, and sex education that tells us all that we can have sex 'whenever we're ready’? What would Juliet have done if Romeo, instead of being determined to decide a wedding date and hasten to Friar Laurence and, had pressured her for sex?