a graft for the ages

I’ll be real with you, I am sat here absolutely beaming. Because I get to tell the story that will go down in history as the greatest, most (unknowingly) strategically-paced pursual of a prospective shag that literally anyone has ever seen. 10 years in the making, this on-off graft took twice as long to complete as the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City, except it had a pay-off 20 times more beautiful, that, I might add, is just as much of a home to the Pope: my broken hymen.

(Disclaimer, I had already lost my virginity the night before my 18th birthday, but it appeared there was still something left in the tank- hymen wise xxxxx)

Prologue

For the purposes of this story, I will call him Jasper. I think Jasper is the perfect name for someone sexy yet ultimately morally dubious. You can literally smell the residual cigarillo odour emanating from his vintage trench coat lapel just from the name. My boy was far from trench coat-wearing though. He had the blonde skin-fade of a Scandinavian footballer, the slightly grey-toned paleness of an 1800s orphan, and the shy smile of Alex Pettyfer when the fit girl in the film asks him if he wants to go skinny dipping.

Aged 8. Graft commences. There I was in my red and white plaid school dress, mission in mind, wandering around the playground looking for the Bieber-fro that, when flicked to the side, could have brought even Thatcher to her knees. Our impermeable Iron Lady. Roughly bi-weekly, me and Jasper would cross paths in the playground, and I would utter the slickest and most nonchalantly alluring chat-up line I could think of: ‘Where do you live?’ To which he usually replied, ‘IM NOT TELLING YOU WHERE I LIVE’ and ran away. I’d like to state here that 10 years later, he asked me the very same question. Suck on the teet of vindication you awful, beautiful man.

(and he did!!!!!!)

When he left school, I was heartbroken. There was a boy in my year that I supposed I could rebound with, but his dad’s car just wasn’t as nice. It wasn’t the same. Little did I know that after a collision of worlds with a terrifying goth girl I became friends with aged 13, who now on reflection I think was more than mildly schizophrenic and had the same kind of zany, I-might-kill-you-in-your-sleep energy as Myra Hindley (which I ADORED to ponder whenever I lay awake next to her during one of our sleepovers, eyes statically wide open, for the full hours of 10pm-10am), I would find him adding me on BBM.

What????

I want to say this led to the kind of committed and all-consuming year 8 relationship that pushed you as far as putting their name adjacent to yours in your BBM display. But no dice. So I did what any underdeveloped, scrawny, pre-teen girl with absolutely no curves or shape would do in my situation: I used my body.

I sporadically sent highly pixelated mirror bikini pics in a string top that I didn’t yet fill-out, with an arse pushed out as far as my spine physically permitted. I went as far as saucily setting one as my BBM display picture, which ultimately didn’t spark any interest in him and only led to a 2-month long OCD spin in which I lost sleep over the fear that I was going to be stalked and murdered by a 50-year-old nonce. High risk, high reward!

I gradually let Jasper tinker out of my head. I left boys aside, really knuckled down and focused on passing my cycling proficiency exam. I went to secondary school, agonised over other boys who literally wouldn’t so much as raise an eyebrow if I was hit by a bus, and repressed feelings for the only openly gay girl in my school, who’s performance in her GCSE drama exam, where she played a gangster, caused me to go and do heavy breathing by myself in the girl’s bathroom.

We had well and truly grown apart. I spent A levels in the college theatre, mercilessly choreographing weird routines with 14 other girls, not at all wondering what Jasper was doing. Not even whilst laboredly forcing a double pirouette in this black box of period pains and laughter did I wonder whether his pop’n’lock career had ever taken off- a possibility that breezed into my mind after watching a video of him breakdancing to 'Lollipop' by Lil Wayne in the, I presume, school’s talent show, which, I might add, made my clitoris explode like a suicide bomb.

I went off to Leeds uni. I spent first year scaring people with my then-manic bottle-of-wine-deep mum energy, toiled over which shade of pink hair dye to buy from Bleach London, playfully experimented with alcoholism and gender dysphoria, and read a play a week. It was in one of my most treasured outfits (I literally looked incredible) that my world turned upside-down on such a grey, grey day in the North of England...

Chapter 1

I perched contentedly in the Roger Stevens café, reading Waiting for Godot (heinously symbolic), in a huge leopard print coat and a beachy topknot that could have passed for an effortless tide of morning luck, but in fact probably took around 40 minutes to nail. I was sat in the kind of leather, wingback chair that would command you to bring a finger to your temple and say, ‘What are we to do, Hans, this new age is one without virtue, without passion..’ and I looked, I will pretend, incredibly important. It was out the corner of my focused eye, that I noticed a gorgeous, tall boy with a girl at his side, who resembled the golden child I had agonised over in my youth. Holy mother of shit, piss and tits. It was him.

When I say that I began to sweat at an alarming rate, I would like you to really picture it. It was like two waters broke under my armpits. I obviously didn’t break eye contact with the page, but was however swiftly posited into fight or flight mode when I peripherally saw and heard him mumble to the girl he was with, ‘can you just give me 5 minutes’. Oh my god.

He meandered over to me. I looked up at him. he stopped, held out his arms either side and pulled a face that said, ‘Yep, I know. Drink it in.’

“JASPER, OH MY GOD!” I said with the feigned shock-face of a substandard pornstar in a video titled ‘Young nurse gets her sexy medicine in doctor’s office’ when the guy ‘spontaneously’ pulls out his dick. I wasn’t going to give away that I’d seen him. By all means, I would let him tear off my black mom jeans and raw dog me literally in the middle of the café, but admit that I had noticed him first? No no no, don’t be absurd.

We set a date. Thursday, a cocktail bar in Hyde Park. 8-year-old me was screaming. 18-year-old me was sweating. I decided not to spend any more time considering how shagging him might feel. I needed a remedy. I dyed my hair.

(Quickly, whilst you're here!!! I must proudly recommend a certain tactic I like to use when I’m terrified to hang out with someone. I call it: drink 3 glasses of wine and watch half an hour of Trixie&Katya. I’m not saying it’s healthy, but it works every time. Trixie's confidence and Katya's IDGAF energy are infectious!!!!)

But back to it. I looked, on the outer layer, phenomenal. Due to the arctic northern climate, I approached the bar in 2 pairs of tights, a skirt, 2 jumpers and a coat. A decision I would later regret. This will only build tension when we do sex later!!!!!!! I’m like his Russian doll! Russian people are sexy!!!! The logic was infallible.

We met, stood awkwardly and struggled to find a free table as the whole bar appeared to be peppered with first-daters. I cracked some kind of shit joke about kicking off the couple who looked like they were clicking the least (classic me!!!!!!!!!) and he ordered me a glass of wine. We sat in the corner of the room, near ish a darts board. I always like to be sat within view of sporting equipment when trying to impress someone. I find it motivating. It gives the whole thing a very, ‘eyes on the prize’ kind of feel for me. Y’know, like a psychopath. In hindsight, I was objectifying the shit out of him. I really scrape the barrel trying to convince myself it was an act of reverse feminism.

But this geez really seemed, forgive me, like he wanted to be perceived as nothing more than a sexy statue. He said next to nothing. He silenced his own voice, and let me screech and squark about my own life (hmmmm, does that feel patronising I j'adore to ponder???? xxx). Instead, he decidedly punctuated the end of my stories with a coy look at the table, and then a very uncoy blue-steel-type look back up with a pouting of his lips. It was as if when he looked down, the table was made of perfectly reflective flax, he caught a glimpse of himself, his now animate reflection had reached out to smush together his cheeks, cooing in a baby voice ‘who’s a gorgeous little man’, and the remnant pout was left lingering when he raised his head again to meet my eyeline.

After tens of minutes of me grappling at embarrassing anecdotes that I thought displayed the perfect level of sexy-humility, and ultimately seemed to fall flat, I could feel the shag fading out of reach. I owed it to myself to get back on track somehow. 8 year old me deserved it. He was pouting and pouting, and in my desperation I momentarily wondered if actually this was the world’s most blatant signal that he is waiting for me to kiss him. How could I have missed the sign? It was so obvious it was entirely elusive! He’s been patiently sitting there waiting, already in position, for a kiss for the last 30 minutes! What a cruel, gatekeeping Mistress of sex and pleasure I am!

Don't fret, I didn’t do it. I didn’t brazenly lunge over the table. It would have been like merrily taking a step out onto a minefield whistling and holding a Greggs, then being instantly obliterated to a thousand pieces. Instead, I decided to turn to my inner Olympian; I decided that I would allure him with my sporting prowess. 19 summers of darts in a rusty old bar on the West Wales coast, drunk on 9 vodka cranberries, was about to come in unbelievably handy.

Darts in hand, I purred in a drunken slur, ‘Lets make thiss mroreere inntteresttingndgggg’, my eyes stumbling and rolling about in their sockets like that tragic, inebriated aunt alone on their niece’s bouncy castle at the end of the party. I imagine my vocal tone to have had a demurely descending, chocolatey quality, but I think it probably came off more as someone giving in to a gradually overtaking stroke.

‘What did you have in mind?’ He smirked.

Hook, line, sinker.

‘evvvreeyy tiymeee you get over fiffftiien with your drarrt, you get to asskh the ohterr peresresonnn a reallyy prreesonalll quewsstchunn ;)))))))))’

DJ please cue: ‘Let’s play a love game play a love game do you want love do you want fame can you win the game? HUH. Dans the love game.’88 (Lady gaga, 2008).

(If you don’t know that song, now would be a great time for you to leave the blog.)

He scored 21. Of course. Blissful. What would he ask?! What would I reply? Would I lie? I’m almost DEFINITELY going to lie.

He cleared his throat, surveyed my whole stature and stepped towards me. He gently cupped my face with his hands, looked wistfully into my eyes, and took an earnest yet reticent pause. Jasper, don’t be afraid. You’re perfect. You’re golden. I hovered on the precipice of his looming words. In this moment, I saw him as a shy toddler. I imagined him on his first day of the new school, bewildered and vulnerable. The edges of his face blurred with a new softness. He was so sensitive. I waited for the poetry to float effortlessly out of his mouth, like leaves on an autumn breeze…

‘You ever fucked a girl?’

He had such a way with words!!!!!!!!!!

*LIE. LIE LIE LIE.*

I looked away and looked back at him, chuckling arrogantly. Like a villain teasingly withholding the code to an ancient cryptex needed to save humanity. I was a Dan Brown character. I was literally any villain taking any loaded pause in The Vampire Diaries.

‘Yeah, *hairtoss* I suppose... I have…..’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let’s just say… it was something in between third and fourth base.’

Ever made a grown man grab his knees with exasperation? I have.

There, I had done it. I had literally fucking done it. He was mine. The mental image of me lightly grazing another girl’s thighs with my tongue and lunging into a scissoring position, was enough to send his bollocks into a manic dance of animalistic lust. I imagined them, flailing around in his Calvin Klein briefs like the Tube Man outside a petrol station on a windy day. That happens when boys get horny, right?

We indulged in some more meaningless chat, but the words were merely vehicles of distraction, all the while the air thickened with atmosphere, like it was being beaten in a bowl with a wooden spoon.

‘So we going back to mine, or?’

You bet your bottom fucking dollar we are.

Chapter 2

I sat nervously on his bed, sipping a luxurious concoction of Robinson's squash and vodka. I looked around and noticed his skin tone was almost the exact same colour as his bedroom. I pondered the significance of this. I wondered if his cock would have a bend in it.

‘Should I lock the door?’

I nodded.

He padded towards me.

I seductively took off my jumper. Another, almost identical jumper lay underneath. He took off the second jumper where a long sleeved thermal lay, teasingly. He chuckled and took off the thermal; a stringy vest top waited under it. He sighed, tiredly. He took off the vest top. And yep, you guessed it, there lay a crop top, taunting him.

‘Jesus christ’

The words rung in my ears. Oh yeah, baby. I’m your Russian doll; tear away my layers you ravenous cunt. God, I bet you absolutely love it.

I decided to save a fuck tonne of time. I quickly jumped up, loosened everything that snugged my waist and pulled down a skirt and two pairs of tights all at once.

I jumped on him.

At this point I’m guessing the stats are that 40% of you want me to descriptively recount the sex we had because you’re horny little sluts, and 60% want me to skip ahead to save you the taxing task of vomming on your keyboard. I’m a man of the people, so I’ll just say this, it was literally the best sex I’ve ever had.

There I lay in the hereafter, quite literally, the greatest woman in the world. No feat had been laboured at for so long. I had done primary school me more than justice. If I were a ghost, I’d finally be able to pass on into the spirit realm. No unfinished business here my friend. No no no. I was Napoleon’s life coach. I was Churchill winning WW2. I asked Jasper if I could have a cigarette, just like all the greats do after they’ve made a man cum. He said no. I smiled and snuggled into him like it didn’t matter, a vein subtly popping on my forehead.

Abruptly, he then turned to me, curious. These are the parts of sex that I adore just as much. The pillow talk. The only little nook of true intimacy that you can properly have with a total stranger. This is your cheat code, this is where you get to feign years of closeness and security for one night. Where, in this liminal space, your heart gets a false autumn. Where it can creep out and seep into the words you speak, and then you must fall asleep, during which, it must teeter back in again.

His lips parted. What would it BE??!?!!!

‘Would you…. consider yourself a…… deep thinker?’

His cum was still wet on my leg.

‘Ummmmmm…. Yeah???’ I responded, bewildered.

‘That’s good, because I’m a deep thinker.’

What the hell is going on.

Is he trying to pass off his brief episode of post-nut clarity as his entire personality?

‘What are you thinking about?’ I enquired. I bet it was still the invented image of me going down on another girl.

‘I’m not a feminist.’ He replied.

I had a tiny aneurism.

Right guys. Let me just loosen my collar a little here. I, to this day, find it so mentally jarring that someone can make a woman feel as good as he did, yet not identify as a feminist. ITS NOT POSSIBLE. If you really didn’t respect my existence, there’s no way you’d give my vagina as much sensitive care, time and commitment as you did no less than 15 minutes ago.

But you give girls such good head?????!!?!!????? Surely that automatically makes you a feminist?!!?!

I composed myself. ‘Aha, what?’ my twitching eye murmured.

Stiff upper labia, India.

‘No no, I do think women are just as good, I just think it should be called ‘Equalism’.’

My brain is bleeding.

The thing about idiots is that you can’t hate them. You’d be tempted to pick them all up by their dicks and bundle them onto a bus, and take them away to a nice, colourful land that had no pointy edges anywhere; one where unicorns and rainbows jump and prance, and everyone gets together at 3pm for their daily hour of singsong. Y’know, where they’d be happy. But this bloke had too much skill. He was too good at sex to be removed from society. He had a duty as a public service. He could single handedly remedy all the damage done by crimes against women in one 20-minute session of poon-licking. He was THAT good at it. Plus, he wasn’t an idiot. He was just… posh.

‘Okkrrrrr I’m not gonna like tell you what to think or whatever but like is there not a part of you that acknowledges that women are and have been since the dawn of time the downtrodden sex and like the reason we’re not calling it equalism is because we are currently not setting off from a level-playing-field and the verbal weight has to be placed on the woman’s noun because we are still literally miles beneath you in terms of socially implicit /systematic respect and equality so like we have to verbally emphasise the movement as women based because the job is still for us to raise females up in order to reach the balanced platform such as the one you describe?????????? ....Or something, ahahahah idk, can u suck my flaps again?????? xxxxxx’

‘I dunno I just… I like the idea of being kinda chivalrous, like old school, like getting the door for girls and stuff’

‘But can’t you see how inherently patronising that is?’

He was stumped. So, of course, ‘You’re so naturally beautiful.’

And I melted, ok? I melted. I’m a bad feminist. I schooled him, he didn’t know what to say, so he stroked my hair and gave me the kind of compliment girls have been swindled out of their savings and spare bedrooms by, for centuries. My heart turned to lighter fluid once again and dribbled all the way through me, dragging my dignity behind with it. I let him dive back into my pussy like he was on trial in Medieval times and it was the one task he needed to complete in order to stop his imminent castration.

We eventually fell asleep. I awoke at 6 am, and rose from his bed. "Jasper?? Where are you??!" Alas! His skin tone still rendering him almost invisible against the colours of his room, he was perched at his desk. Totally camouflaged, like a peringuey in the sand. But i'm hardly a predator, I thought. Though I was wearing platformed Doc Martens, which gave me the faux bolshiness of a girl who didn’t run away and cry after her first kiss.

I slipped on what I had time for, gathered the rest of my laundry-like, bundled clothes, and snuck out his room door. I reached the downstairs hallway and exchanged looks with his housemate, dutifully tipping my head at her. She gave me a knowing smirk, almost as if she were my ethereal life coach, the omniscient mother that had, behind the scenes, been guiding me through life since that first day in my red and white dress on the school playground. As if my dutiful nod was clueing her in; mission well and truly completed.

It had snowed in the night. Everything in Hyde Park was topped with a completely undisturbed white blanket. I was still fucked out my mind, may I add, and in this new 3D blank canvas, my sense of direction had been completely upturned. I gazed towards Krispies kebab shop on Headingley Lane. Perhaps I’m in with a chance? I pioneered towards it, with a half limp and a fully torn hymen. Like a real champion.

Momentarily, I gazed up at a huge billboard for student housing with a tagline that read, in big black letters, ‘Sign for your property now, so that it won’t be YOU doing the walk of shame!’ The timing was too suss to be a coincidence, so I took this as a personal attack. Fuck you, Sugarhouse Lets.

But I didn’t care. My primary school prince was finally home from his royal tour. And though we never spoke again, for one night only, I was finally his queen.