Virgin (16 page)

“I’m sorry. So far my list pretty much just consists of licking it like an ice pop.” He looked crestfallen and I realized I had to help. “But maybe we can learn together?” I offered. “I have a bit of a skill when it comes to Googling this stuff, so if it isn’t too weird, we could, like, watch a video together?”

“Um, what kind of video?” he asked cautiously. “I don’t really want to watch a porno with you, Ellie, no offense.”

“None taken, thanks very much,” I said primly. “Besides, I wasn’t suggesting we watch porn . . .”

We opened a bag of popcorn and wordlessly ate it as we stared at my laptop, transfixed. A blond American woman called Gabby was educating us on how to give the perfect blow job. She was seated on a stool in a white room.

“Welcome,” she said. “Today I am going to share something with you. I’m going to share the glorious secret of how to give your partner that perfect moment of pleasure: a blow job.” Her mouth lingered in an O-shape as she emphasized the vowels. “I don’t want you to think of it as just a blow job, though.” There was a dramatic pause before she carried on. “I want you to think of it as a blow
gift.
”

Paul and I exchanged a glance and burst out laughing. We paused Gabby as we cracked up. Bits of popcorn sprayed out of my mouth as I repeated, “It’s not a blow job, it’s a blow
gift
,” in my best American accent.

“Oh, man,” said Paul, rubbing his eyes on his jumper. “This woman’s fucking insane. We have to watch more.”

We un-paused her, and Gabby took us through each step of giving the perfect blow gift. Apart from the occasional snort of laughter, we listened avidly and took notes. By the time we got to the end of the video, my notebook was filled with a systematic list.

1. Take the penis into your mouth with plenty of saliva, or use a lubricant.
   
2. Suck up and down the shaft and DO NOT GRAZE WITH TEETH.
   
3. Vary rhythm, speed and intensity.
   
4. Gently caress his testicles with your hand, then up the pace a bit.
   
5. Tease him—go fast and then when he gets revved up
   (Gabby’s choice of phrase, not mine)
   , slow down.
   
6. Use your tongue—if you can multitask, lick it while you’re sucking. Or just lick and play with it when it’s erect
   (the ice pop technique again).
   
7. Listen to his reactions so you can see which bits he likes.
   
8. Linger on his sensitive areas—the penis tip, the testicles and the perineum.
   (That last one seemed a bit more up Paul’s alley than mine.)
   
9. Use your hands and mouth together—put your mouth at the tip end, and suck up and down, and use your hand at the shaft end to do the same, to save you having to deep-throat.
   (It also seemed like the perfect way to combine doing a BJ and an HJ. Maybe I could revisit both fears in one slick move?)
   
10. Maintain lots of eye contact during the blow gift.
    
11. If you gag, tell him it’s because he is so massive.
    (Making the best out of a bad situation. Well done, Gabby.)
    
12. Very,
    very
    gently suck his testicles one at a time.
    
13. Then the final goal—the ejaculation. It’s up to
    you
    to choose where you want him to come, said Gabby. Either tell him to withdraw and come on your body, breasts or even a tissue
    (seemed kind of sad)
    —or let him come in your mouth and choose whether to spit or swallow.
    

She ended the video with a quick reminder. “Remember, girls and guys, a blow gift is something
you
should enjoy too. Share the pleasure and enjoy the gift that keeps on giving.”

After Paul left, I started to think about Lara. That was the kind of thing she and I would have done together. Paul was lovely and had the best sense of humor I’d come across in a guy, but he was no Lara. She could make me sob with laughter with descriptions of Jez’s penis—he had what was onomatopoeically known as an almost-chod, which meant it was weirdly thick and the width was almost bigger than its length. Lara told me it was like sucking a loaded tree stump.

I missed her. She was my oldest friend and we once stuck needles in our palms to be blood sisters. Our bond was too strong to be ruined by a hungover fight, and I was determined to revive it. I grabbed my phone before I could chicken out.

“Hello?” she answered cautiously.

“Hey,” I said, suddenly realizing I had no idea what to say to her. Fuck. The nerves rose in me and I tried to make my voice sound normal. “How are you?”

“Fine, thanks,” she said. Why was she being so formal? She must still hate me. “You?” she ventured.

“Yeah, fine too, thanks,” I lied, fighting the urge to start crying and say how much I missed her. Instead I stated the obvious. “We haven’t spoken in ages.”

“No, we haven’t.” Why was she making this so hard for me? I’d taken the first step by making the phone call. Didn’t she want to speak to me? “How have you been?” she asked neutrally.

“I . . . I’ve been good,” I said. I wanted to tell her about Jack and Paul and Emma but I didn’t know how. “What about you?” I asked lamely.

“Me too, thanks,” she said.

“Have you seen Angus again?” I asked, bracing myself to hear that they were officially a couple.

“Uh, no, that didn’t really work out. But, you know, things are good,” she replied.

“What about stuff with Jez? And uni? Are you still in Surrey or back in Oxford now?” I asked.

“Yeah, everything’s good. I’m back in Oxford, just getting some work done. How is work going for you?”

“Errrm, the dissertation is going well, thanks.”

“Okay, that’s good,” she said as I racked my brains on what to say next. This was worse than small talk with one of my mum’s friends.

After a pause, I gave in and let my feelings rush out of me. “Lara, this is so weird. I don’t want to fight. Let’s go back to normal. Please?”

She sighed. “I want to as well. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. I didn’t mean to let things get so weird between us.”

“Hey, now you sound like you’re trying to get back with me after a breakup,” I joked.

“There is no way I’d ever date a male version of you,” she retorted, and it started to feel a tiny bit more normal. Except we hadn’t spoken about all the hurtful things we had said to each other. I didn’t want to bring it up. It seemed like Lara didn’t want to either.

“Sooo, what’s been going on with you?” I asked.

“Meh, just . . . you know . . . life,” she said. “It’s too boring to bother you about.”

“Um, we’re beyond that, Lara. The whole point of our friendship is that we’re allowed to bore each other.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She paused and then carried on brightly. “So, what’s new with you? Any progress on your mission?”

“I don’t know. I’ve kind of started seeing someone, if I can call it that. It’s really new.”

“Amazing, I’m so happy for you!” she cried out.

Cheered on by her warm response, I carried on. “Yeah, it’s good, I guess. And I’ve made a new friend, Emma, who is really fun. No replacement for you, obviously, but we’ve been going out, which has been really nice.”

“That sounds so fun,” she said. “Ellie, I’m so sorry but I have to go. I need to get ready for a ball tonight—don’t ask, it’s another weird Oxford thing.”

“Oh, okay. No worries. Well, if you want to talk properly, you know where I am.”

“Yeah, and the same goes for you. I promise we’ll catch up soon, okay? ’Bye!” she called, and as I replied with an equally cheery “’Bye!” we hung up.

I suddenly felt very alone. This was the first time Lara and I had ever had such an intentionally short phone call—especially since one of us had boy gossip. I felt empty. I pushed Lara out of my mind. She would call me again when she was ready; she had pretty much promised she would. In the meantime I had a whole season of
Beverly Hills, 90210
to get through.

It was Saturday evening and I was ready. It was time to face my fears and have fun with a very cute guy who might definitely become my boyfriend. I met Jack in Soho and we wandered to a pub off Carnaby Street. He was wearing the worst shirt I had ever seen. It was possibly worse than Paul’s black hoody and grunge-meets-geek look, although at least Jack’s hair always looked washed. The shirt had short sleeves. I hated short-sleeved shirts on men. But he was the only person I could see half-working it, and when he grinned at me in his cute half-Irish way, all I wanted to do was rip it off him.

Instead I asked him how his week had been.

“Oh, you know,” he said. “It’s been pretty busy. I’ve been writing a lot so that’s taking up a lot of time. I work these really long days, then go back to my flat and write.”

“It’s so impressive that you make the time to write after a day at work. I sometimes struggle writing in my diary after a day of halfhearted revision.”

“Yeah, but that’s student life for you. I guess because I finished uni a couple of years ago, I know what I really want in life now so I find the time to do it.”

“Either way, it’s still very impressive.” I smiled at him. “So have you been doing your political stuff or the, um, short stories?”

“Bit of both,” he said. “I’m getting so into the creative writing, though. I really feel like I’ve discovered my voice.” I laughed at his cliché without thinking but he just grinned. “Okay . . . I know I sound like a dick, but seriously, this inner voice thing makes so much sense.”

“No, I do think it is really cool that you’re getting into creative writing. I would love to do that some day, but I think I’m just going to stick with journalism for a while. I don’t think I’m ready to write a novel or anything yet.”

“You could always start with short stories,” he suggested.

“Yeah, maybe I could,” I mused. “With your expert guidance, of course.”

“Oh, well, with my wisdom and your wit we’d definitely have a bestseller on our hands. You wouldn’t even need to find a job.”

“Thank God, because none of the places I applied to intern for have gotten back to me.”

“Why don’t you just take a gap yaaah,” he drawled in a faux-posh accent as we walked into the dark pub. For a split second I wished that was his normal accent and he could afford to take me to fancy restaurants.

“What? The working-class Socialist is encouraging me to spend a year wandering around Third World countries in multicolored native clothing?” I asked in mock horror.

He laughed. “Yeah, well, I would have thought it would be right up your street, going on a gap yah. What with the kind of TV programs you love.”

“Darling, a gap yah? I think you mean a five-star yoga resort,” I replied, and he winced at my horrendous posh accent.

“What can I get you?” The barmaid interrupted us and saved me from further humiliation. We both ordered a pint of cider because, as his short-sleeved shirt demonstrated, it was the first really warm day of spring.

At our table, he sat on the leather sofa next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “You look pretty today,” he said simply. I looked up at him in surprise, feeling pleased. I was wearing the same floral dress I’d worn to dinner when I turned Paul gay. For a girl who hated dressing up, it was a noticeable effort.

“Thanks.” I grinned. “No one has ever said that to me before,” I added, immediately regretting it. Now I just sounded like a total no-hoper who never got compliments.

“Seriously? No one’s ever told you that you look pretty?” he asked. “I mean, I know I can be a bit of a dick, but you must know some serious wankers.”

I blushed. “Yeah, that could be it . . .” Or it could just be the cold, hard reality that he was the first guy I had ever properly dated. “You’re not a dick though,” I said. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“With me, what you see is what you get. If you don’t think of me as a dick then I reckon we’re doing pretty well. I know I go on way too much about politics and occasionally talk too much, but those are my only flaws, I promise.” He grinned, and I had a sudden urge to kiss him.

I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the lips, feeling ridiculously daring and femme fatale. I almost felt like the kind of girl who could pull off bloodred lipstick. He kissed me back gently, and when we broke away I looked up straight into his green eyes.

“That was nice,” he said, smiling, and I hoped he hadn’t been analyzing the virgin-factor of the kiss I’d just given him.

I went an unattractive shade of beetroot. “Um, thanks,” I replied, looking at the floor awkwardly.

“Anyway, I’m going to stop making you blush now,” he teased, which made me blush more. “How was your week?”

“Um . . .” I racked my brains for something normal to say. I couldn’t tell him about yesterday’s porn session or the Lara fight, so I was at a bit of a loss. “I think I turned someone gay,” I blurted out.

He looked at me and then burst at laughing. “What the fuck are you talking about? Please don’t say you mean me . . . I knew this shirt was a mistake.”

“No, someone else. A family friend. He . . . he kissed me and then told me he was gay.”

“I know I should be focusing on the fact that you turned someone gay—and I should probably be scared you’re going to do the same to me . . .” he said as I slapped his arm in mock-annoyance. “But I think I’m just jealous that you kissed someone else.”

Ohmigod, he was
jealous
. This was possibly the first time in my entire twenty-one years that I’d made someone jealous, and it felt
good.
I was like a female Austin Powers with my unstoppable mojo.

“Well, in my defense, it was Paul who kissed me,” I offered innocently, with my most flirtatious eyes.

“Right, well, do I have to be worried about any other Pauls trying to take you away from me?” he asked.

He was so confident and sexy that my clitoris started throbbing. It was like a female erection. I tried to make it stop pulsating and crossed my legs, wondering if other women got hard-ons too.

“I think you’re more Paul’s type than I am,” I answered back, desperately trying to ignore the clit throb and hoping he wouldn’t figure out what was going on down south for me.

“Am I just Paul’s type, or yours too?” he asked as he leaned in towards me and I felt his breath on my neck. My knees turned to jelly and I felt like a Judy Blume character—except she never would have talked about the side effect of the vaginal throb.

He kissed me before I had a chance to answer and I melted into his arms. I was a living, walking cliché and I was on cloud nine and three-quarters. The words MARRY ME kept flashing across my head as he kissed me without tongue and then put his hand on my vagina and discreetly rubbed it under my dress. I gulped. He was groping me in public. This would be such good material for a game of Never Have I Ever.

I slipped my hand onto his crotch and rubbed him a tiny bit too. The alcohol was already doing wonders for me and I was imbued with Dutch courage. I’d read all the rules and now it was time to
live them.
He pushed a bit harder on my vag and I suddenly felt the tampon string rub against my skin. OH FUCK, the tampon. I shifted my position and gently moved his hand away from there.

He broke away from me and grinned sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “Probably a bit inappropriate for the pub.”

“Maybe just a bit,” I acknowledged. “Maybe, um, maybe we should get out of here?” I was an actual femme fatale. A go-getter, a woman of the world. A Samantha, not a Charlotte.

“Let’s go,” he murmured, and his breath tickled my skin again and I knew that my vaginal hard-on was making me very damp down there. Or maybe it was just my period.

There Will Be Blood

Yes, Daniel Day-Lewis, there will be. For about five days every month. Bet that’s not quite what you were thinking when you starred in your well-named blockbuster.

Which brings us to period sex. EM is going to take over here because EK hasn’t had any kind of sex yet, let alone period sex. She is, however, all for it in theory.