‘The honour of a girl is like a match; it only lights once.’ – Egyptian proverb. I lost my virginity under what can be considered, by general consensus, really shitty circumstances, and it caused chaos in all aspects of my life.
The idea of sex – the thought of it – occupied my mind all the time, but it was always with an underlying feeling of discomfort. While people were hooking up casually all around me, I found myself already burdened by the invisible jury, by the messaging that I had apparently absorbed by osmosis: that the only acceptable, socially acknowledged context for sex was marriage. That sex (and subsequently desire) was dirty and bad and wrong…
‘Satan’ started to call me on the phone late at night to ask for advice on how to approach Regina. I’d give him some insights and then he would ask me about my day. Reporting back to her at school in the mornings, she would always roll her eyes and cringe. At some point, I started to look forward to his calls.
One night, he got drunk and called me and told me he couldn’t stop thinking about me and that he was really starting to like me. Then he hung up. It was a masterclass in how to make a young, naive, lonely and confused girl fall in love with you….
The phone calls grew more frequent and the questions became more probing…
He’d leave me long voicemails that I’d play back over and over to myself, fawning at the way he would call me ‘baby’ and tell me how much he cared about me. He convinced me not to tell anyone about our conversations or about ‘us’. He said people always talked and always ruined things and that this was so special to him that he didn’t want that to happen. I believed him and kept it to myself, even when I really needed someone to talk to. I believed him even when the red flags were smacking me in the face.
One night Satan called and told me that he wanted to show me how much he loved me and would I consider letting him? I can’t remember how I decided, but I have memories of walking alone in the park, bracing myself against the English wind and listening to his voicemails, wanting to feel the love he was talking about. I remember telling him I was scared and that I had never even seen a penis in real life and could we not take it slow – maybe go in order of base, or something? I remember him bringing it up every time we spoke for weeks after.
The next scene sees me at his house, him pleading in my ear. I said no and he said yes, and maybe I stopped saying no or maybe I kissed him back or maybe he managed to convince me finally, but then he was inside me. I hadn’t even seen his penis.
We went out for a cigarette and then we came back and did it again and when I left his house that evening, I remember his dad, who was sitting in the living room, saying ‘take it easy’ in passing, and being convinced he knew what we had done and that was why he had said that, and I felt the shame pooling in my knickers.
I remember standing on the platform of the Underground on my way home, taking my phone out of my bag, before realising I had no one to call to talk to about what was meant to be a momentous occasion. I had no one I could call. My virginity was supposed to be the most ‘precious’ thing about me, or so I had heard, and I hadn’t taken good care of it at all…
I began to notice that the box of condoms would often be far emptier than it should have been, but he always had a story to hand. I didn’t yet know that he was using up boxes of condoms on more girls than I could possibly have remembered the names of, that he was taking virginities like they were a prize. I guess they were, in a way. Just as we were taught to prize and guard them, boys are taught to prize taking them…
As is so often the case, the women attacked and blamed each other, and left the man unscathed… They’d scream at me in the school hallways, hurl balls at me in PE and talk about me in front of me, calling me a ‘whore’ and a ‘slut’ – all words I’d started calling myself too. Teachers sat me down and told me I shouldn’t have sex with another girl’s boyfriend. And then that night my house phone rang. I could hear my mum pick it up in the other room. Ashen-faced, she entered my room minutes later. ‘That was Regina’s mum,’ she told me, her voice rising in pitch with every word. ‘She said you were having sex with Regina’s boyfriend.’
There was literally nothing worse that could have happened to me at that moment in time until: ‘Put your shoes on.’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked her.
‘To the hospital,’ she said. ‘To check.’
I could hardly believe what she was saying to me. I still can’t. Sure, in some societies and cultures in the Middle East and its diaspora that does happen, but I didn’t expect my mum – in London, in her fucking Juicy Couture tracksuit – to be joining in on the insanity.
I managed to dissuade her, to convince her that it wasn’t true. Putting months of practice to good use, I lied like my life depended on it…
In an article in the New York Times, a twenty-three-year-old French student from Morocco was interviewed after having hymenoplasty. ‘In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,’ she said. ‘Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.