This week I got an email from a guy who is a virgin. In his words:

!’m 28, male and a virgin. I got brought up religiously. I so wanted to lose my virginity – but it didn’t happen. Let’s just say meeting girls wasn’t something I did. I went to university when I was 20 and well, it didn’t happen. Then I came home and it didn’t happen and… well, although I’ve never seen it, I’m like that 40 Year Old Virgin guy.

Long story short: he is worried that being a virgin makes him less attractive to women. A sticky problem, because if it’s true then being a virgin beyond a certain point means you fall into a vicious circle of not-getting-laid, making you less attractive to potential partners the longer it takes you to get laid, and so eventually diminishing your chances of getting laid to almost zero.

Scary stuff. Luckily, the world is not such a bleak and awful place that women will, en mass, refuse to sleep with you if you haven’t hurled your virginity away by your X-teenth birthday.

What’s the right age to lose my virginity?

The answer to this question is “literally any age you feel comfortable losing it.” Fun fact: this might mean ‘never’, if you never feel the desire to. Before I wrote this blog I Googled “ages to lose virginity by country” and came across this excellent map. The link to the original source is broken (if anyone’s got updated links do let me know in the comments) but I’ve no reason to believe it’s not true – it lists the average age for people to lose their virginity by country, with the ages ranging from around 15 to over 20. The overall average is 17, which would probably surprise the British teenagers I went to school with, who seemed to think that if you hadn’t rid yourself of your virginity by the age of 16 you were definitely frigid and/or ugly.

I digress.

The most important thing to note is that these ages are average: they are the age arrived at when, on balance, everyone’s experience is taken into account. If we all lost our virginities on or before the average these figures would plummet, so from this we can deduce that there are plenty of people losing their virginities much later than the average age, as well as people who lose it before.

Will girls not want to sleep with me because I’m a virgin?

Sadly I can’t answer for all girls, no matter how much I’d like to have an ‘official spokesperson’ badge. But what I can tell you is that there are definitely some girls who will want to sleep with you even though you’re a virgin. Moreover, there are girls who will find the fact that you’re a virgin a distinct turn on.

Over the course of my life I can count the number of virgins I’ve slept with on one hand. Or, to be more precise, one finger. The sex was stunningly hot. Absolutely, achingly, delightfully hot. His nervousness and desperation to do the deed combined to produce a tension that was utterly unique: never before or since have I felt someone trembling so violently as he touched me, or moaning with such beautiful, lustful agony as he slipped his shaking fingers into my knickers. You can read more about him here, or [SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT] buy my book for the full story.

So, in answer to your question, I certainly wouldn’t be less likely to sleep with someone if I knew he was a virgin. On the contrary, I’d be more likely to savour the moment, flattered in the knowledge that he’d probably remember me for the rest of his life. Not all women will think like this, of course, but those that do will appreciate you so hard they’ll make up for any other judgmental ones.

If all this is true, why do I feel bad for being a virgin?

Because some people (I like to call them ‘fuckwits’) speak and act as if your virginity is a troublesome mess to be disposed of. Like you’ve been carrying a used tissue around with you since you were born, and when you hit sexual maturity you must dispose of it as quickly as is humanly possible.

Whether it’s the arsehole kids at school calling you a virgin because you’re not behaving like a sex pest, to the adults who really should know better using ‘virgin’ as slang for ‘pitiable loser’.

Like those who think sleeping with more than the ‘average’ number of people makes you a reprehensible human, some people act as if ‘losing your virginity’ is a chore you need to get out of the way before you can become a fully functioning adult member of society. It’s balls, of course. I remember the night after I lost my virginity lying in bed thinking “huh. So that’s it. I’m not a virgin any more.” I expected to feel different: more grown up. I’m not sure how exactly – I don’t think I expected flashes of light or a tingling cunt or a sudden and comprehensive knowledge of the Kama Sutra. But I didn’t feel different at all: I felt like just the same slightly clumsy, neurotic twat that I’d been before, just with a new experience to hold onto.

I’d rather be a virgin than a bastard

In my experience sex is a very nice thing to have, and if you want to have it and haven’t yet then I understand your desire to hump things, in the same way as I understand why people want to go to Disneyland, or stay at the Ritz. I’m not going to patronise you and assure you that “it’ll definitely happen one day” or that you just have to wait for the “right” person – these things will depend utterly on how you feel about it, what you do, and who you end up meeting.

What I will tell you, though, is that not everyone is going to think badly of you for being a virgin. And I can assure you that the people who make you feel shit because you’ve missed out on a life experience they happen to have had are probably not worth fucking. They’re like braying gap-year-ites who tell you you’ve ‘never lived’ because you haven’t been to India, or got off your tits on mushrooms at a beach party in Thailand. Like arrogant city boys who brag about their salary in front of lower-paid friends. They are the the cool kids from school who never grew up, and remain convinced that happiness can only be measured in comparison to other people.

There are plenty of people for whom your virginity will not be an issue – there are many who will actively find it a turn on. There will be a few – and I suspect it’s only a small proportion – who will judge you for it. Don’t worry about whether these people will fuck you: if they judge you for being a virgin then they don’t deserve to have nice sex.

Sometimes guys ask me for my advice. Stop laughing at the back.

Although I’m as incompetent as the next person, feeling my way through sex and relationships like a horny blindfolded girl groping for the light switch, people occasionally email me and ask for help with their problems. The following predicament concerns a guy who wants to make his fantasy come true, and it struck me that there’s a theme which runs through most emails I get about this subject: whether it’s throatfucking, swinging, threesomes, or something beautifully sweet and simple like the one below, quite a few ‘how do I achieve my sexual fantasy?’ emails share a common theme. So, to try and kill a few extra birds with my stone of shoddy advice, I asked the guy for his permission to post the question, and my response.

Please chip in your own advice in the comments – I’m not an expert, and I am frequently wrong about things.

The problem: how do I make my sexual fantasy come true?

I am obsessed with girls and especially the female body. I absolutely love the female body and how it reacts to sexual stimulation.

I am 19, male and I haven’t had actual sex yet. I have been masturbating and fantasizing for several years now and really want to finally have some sexual action with a hot/cute girl. I don’t want full sex with her but I really really want to make out and pleasure her. I am very curious about how it feels for a girl and how close sexual stimulation feels with her body and words.

So as you can tell I am absolutely mullered by the fantasy of making out with and pleasuring a hot/cute girl who’s OK with not having actual sex.

The thing is: I live in a Christian community and I’m not really attractive or athletic and I don’t have a girl friend. I’m extremely introverted and so I think it’ll be while I’m in my mid or later 20s when I ‘d find a girl friend.

And my parents would wonder what I’d be doing (and against it) if I just went into town to hook up with a girl for a bit. I can’t be openly driving to people’s houses or strip clubs or whatever with my parent’s car.

So I think the best bet would be that I take a walk and have the girl pick me up while I’m doing that and us make out in the car or something like that.

But so far I haven’t found a legitimate website that I can find actual local girls to hook up with for free. I live [location redacted – somewhere rural in the US]. Do you know of any legit and free sites that will allow me to possibly find a girl willing to do this with me?

So far all I have found are scam sites and ones that I need to dumb paid membership for. And for me, I really can’t afford that risk atm. I’ve tried CraigsList but that’s all a bunch of scams..

Oh what am I to do?!?

Answer:

The good news (OK, the fantastic news) here is that what you want isn’t in any way unusual. There are lots of people who want to make out – they want the awesome touching, horny kissing, etc, but not necessarily the sex. Perhaps because they’re not ready for sex, or just because they don’t enjoy sex as much as the other parts. But I assure you, there are many people who want this. So you’re in a good position.

However, there’s a really big problem with your exact situation, and that is that you seem to want a very specific thing, and you don’t seem willing to do anything even vaguely out of your comfort zone in order to achieve it: you can’t drive anywhere, you won’t pay money, you won’t use free sites because of scams, you won’t speak to women because you’re shy. In short: your easily achievable fantasy becomes almost impossible because you need it to land directly in your lap with very little compromise or effort on your part.

If I knew what the effortless solution to your problem was, I would have bottled it, sold it, and be typing this on a gold plated laptop right now.

I don’t blame you at all – this is not my way of calling you a wanker. It seems that you are worried about so many things that all seem insurmountable. Instead of trying to overcome one, or all of these issues, you have made them conditions of your fantasy and I think that’s why you’re struggling to achieve what you want.

To sum it up, your ideal fantasy is one in which you kiss, touch, and generally have sexy fun with a girl without having penetrative sex. Big tick in that box: loads of people like doing it, so your pool of potential partners is huge. But you don’t want to have to speak to a woman much, or develop a relationship with her, because you’re shy (totally understandable, by the way: some of the guys I’ve been hottest for have been shy). You don’t want to pay for membership of a dating site (and who does? They’re pricey!). You can’t use a free site because you might end up getting scammed. You don’t want to have to drive and pick her up in case your parents find out (again, understandable, if you think that the consequences of that would be horrible for you). Basically you want all of your ideal conditions met. And that makes giving you advice almost impossible, because any advice I give would mean compromising on one of your conditions.

So, bearing that in mind, here are three advice options:

• Keep trying with free sites (I am a big fan of OKCupid, and I think you have that in the States, but if anyone else has suggestions please leave them in the comments!), and trying to weed out possible scammers wherever possible. Accept, though, that you will meet people on it who are either scamming you, who want something slightly different, who might want a relationship before makeouts, or who don’t have their own car: that’s just how humans work, and it’s impossible to recommend a site which can deliver you someone guaranteed to fill every aspect of your fantasy.
• Go pro. When I read the first half of your email it occurred to me that if you really want this specific thing, but without having to develop a relationship, then speaking to a sex worker could be ideal. Find someone in your area (on Twitter I see adultwork mentioned often by sex workers, so I’d recommend heading there first, unless any sex workers have better suggestions that they can leave in the comments, pretty please!) who you can have this experience with. This involves compromising on your ‘free’ rule, but it’s one of the simplest ways to guarantee that you can have what you’re looking for.
• If you don’t like the above ideas, then the only thing I can recommend is to compromise on the ‘shy’. Which I know I know I know is hard to do. Speak to women, and try to develop a relationship with one who would like to do this with you. You don’t necessarily have to be boyfriend and girlfriend if that’s tricky for you, it might just be a girl you get along well with who also wants to have a go at making out and touching: it’s fine. I know this is scary if you’re shy: incredibly so. But it won’t get any easier if you never do it, and if you don’t manage to find a girl who’s willing to do this with you, you may still have met some nice people and had fun with them.

And that’s it, I’m afraid: I don’t have any magic bullets. As I said originally, I’ve been asked similar questions quite a few times, and I struggle to give advice because often I think what the guy wants is for his fantasy to just happen. You’re luckier than others in that usually their fantasies are things that are a bit more niche or kinky, so their original pool of potential partners is limited by the fact that only a small slice of the population would be up for the act itself. But either way I’ve seen lots of variations of “I need X but I have to get it without doing A, B or C”. As with you, they’re all usually legitimate concerns, and understandable problems. The trouble is, when you add them all up, the only way the fantasy is actually going to happen is if a passing woman just happens to fancy making out with the stranger she’s driving past, and has the confidence to shout out of her car window and ask for it.

So, to summarise, my advice would be that you need to pick one of your conditions and either compromise on it or make some effort to overcome it, or you need to cross your fingers and hope really hard that the very unlikely happens, and do a hell of a lot of wanking in the meantime.

Oh, and worry about the car situation when you get to it.

“Tribute wank” is a term that I was unfamiliar with until this week, making me think I should spend less time wanking myself and more time conversing with other humans.

A tribute wank is, from what I gather, a wank you have about someone in particular, which you send them evidence of later. It could be anything from phoning them to say “hey, I cracked a quality one off over you yesterday when I was thinking about the hot sex we had last week” to sending them an actual physical photograph covered in your own jizz.

The hotness

I once received a fantastic video from a guy which had – as most of my favourite videos do – his cock in it. He stroked vigorously for the requisite few minutes, just enough for me to start salivating a bit, then came nice and hard all over his hand. So far, so traditionally excellent.

But in the background of the video he had his laptop open, with a picture of me comfortably full-screened. He’d used one of the pictures on this blog, downloaded it, opened it in a new window then – most flattering of all – focused on it for the duration of an entire wank.

The not-so-hotness

So having established that I think tribute wanks can be really hot, I’m going to backpedal madly and tell you to think very very carefully before sending your delightful post-wank picture/video/text. Apart from the obvious problems (once it’s out there, it’s out there), you need to be really sure, before you hit the ‘send’ button, that the person at the other end will be pleased to receive it.

Even as a lover of hot pictures and homemade porn, there are certain things that will turn me off quicker than if you’d taped a picture of Jeremy Clarkson to your bellend. For instance, if you demand an immediate response, you might as well put your camera away and just chuck a bucket of cold water over my privates. Equally if you decide to send me something when I’m pissed off with you, I’m unlikely to leap joyously from my seat and shout “my God, what a touching kiss-and-make-up gesture, I must hump this man into a sticky mess immediately.”

So, if you’re tribute wanking over your partner, and you know they’d be keen to see the evidence, my advice would be to time it carefully: try not to send it when they’re in the middle of a conference call, or angry at you because yet again you’ve failed to do the washing up.

The downright awful

This might sound shocking, but many people just don’t want to be sent homemade pornography at any time. They’d rather you kept your dick/tits/arse/that cool trick you’ve just learned with a Hitachi magic wand out of their inbox.

I’d hazard a guess, based mainly on how many cock pictures I (sex blogger but basically a nobody) receive versus the number of cock pictures my friends (nobodies who don’t also happen to run a sex blog) get, that most of the cock pictures flying around the internet are unsolicited. That is to say, they are not sent between two consenting adults, but sent from one consenting adult to another adult they are really hoping will enjoy the picture.

I fully understand why you might find it hot to send your naked self to a stranger, but do you see the problem here? You can hope, you can wish, you can dream, but if you send any part of your anatomy to someone you don’t know, who has never asked you to send anything, you can’t guarantee that they want it.

So here lies my problem with tribute wanks: while some receivers find them amazing and sexy, I know a lot of people who would find them not just undesirable but awkward, horrible and downright terrifying. Others, of course, might enjoy receiving one from a person they really fancied, but wouldn’t extend this enthusiasm to everyone on their contacts list.

We receive spam all the time, and of course it’s easy to hit ‘delete’ or ‘unsubscribe’. But this is different. It’s not the equivalent of a delivery driver shoving some useless local pizza deals into your mailbox, it’s more akin to … well … a photo of an anonymous nob in your mailbox.

So, in conclusion, tribute wanks are like any other sexual act under the sun: some people like it, some people don’t. If you want to do it you need to make sure that the person you’re sending it to is not just ready but eager to receive it.

Note: I used to ask guys to send me pictures. It was amazing and lovely. I’ve since realised that was a bad plan, as I was inundated with pictures, many of which I didn’t have time to reply to and some I didn’t even have time to look at. I’m sorry. I have learned my lesson.

The vast, vast majority of the time, I am a loser. A lank-haired, jeans-wearing, slouching drunken loser. With a cider in my hand, a chip on my shoulder and a face like a bulldog chewing a whole hive of wasps.

I say this only to counter what’s coming next: right now I am hot.

I’m hot because I’ve had my hair cut – it swishes in that shiny way that some people achieve daily, but for me comes round only twice a year when I go for my biannual hack. I’m hot because I’ve spent the last week doing more exercise than I normally would and – although there’s no immediate visual difference – I feel stronger and livelier and readier to bounce around like a puppy on MDMA. I’m hot because I’m wearing knickers that cup my arse comfortably, and because I’ve been doing DIY in hot pants and getting dirty and sweaty and wet.

We need to deal with your high self-esteem issues

I’m British, of course, so writing the above paragraph was torture – it took me a good ten minutes to bash out just a few sentences without tagging something self-deprecating on to the end. I’ve been trained, through years of TV, magazines and friendly banter, that to talk about the things you actually like about yourself is a social crime. Like eating steak with the fish fork or passing a joint to the right.

Most of the time this makes sense. After all, we’d all be excruciating and insufferable if our conversations started not with “how are you?” but “how hot am I!?” We’d barely get beyond introductions before we were hurling into buckets at the appalling displays of self-love.

No, instead we must only ever speak of the bad stuff, while desperately hoping that other people notice the good. We’re trained to make the best of ourselves, so we spend hours primping and preening and picking out just the right kind of shoe only to shit on all that effort later on by replying “no, really, I look awful” when someone says something nice. It’s a reflex gesture, and one which makes sense most of the time. When the hard-earned compliments come, we bat them away with great force, because self-hate is a much more attractive quality than arrogance.

Start fancying yourself

I’ve got nothing wrong with light self-deprecation, and on an ordinary day I’m far more likely to make a tedious aside about my weight than to bounce into a room and shout “Look! Aren’t my tits brilliant?!”

But not today. Because, fuck it, I don’t always feel good. And on the rare occasions that I do, I want to start making the most of it. In fifty years time I’ll be yearning for the chance to wear this arse again, to sit in hot pants on a stepladder sugar-soaping walls and enjoying not just being me but looking like me too.

You should do it too – go on, do it. Fancy yourself a bit. There are bound to be bits of yourself that you’re not a fan of. But isn’t it bizarre that it’s these disliked bits that get all the attention? Hours in the gym toning a stomach that you hate. Days in front of the mirror shaping eyebrows or facial hair in some sort of damage limitation exercise. Weeks spent traipsing around shops that make clothes for people who always seem to be a different shape to you. All that time spent rectifying or changing or enhancing – how much time do you actually spend appreciating?

You don’t have to take pictures of yourself in sexy poses and pin them on the fridge, or give yourself cringeingly awkward motivational pep-talks about how beautiful you are. Just give yourself a bit of time to appreciate the things you fancy. The things that your partners will go primal for. Stand in front of a mirror if you like, touch yourself if you want to, put on or take off the clothes that make you feel best, and just revel in a bit of self-lust.

Because no one else can love you like you can.

I hate olives. In my opinion, these disgusting, overly-flavoursome nuggets of not-food are the best way to ruin a salad. Even so, I am repeatedly told by friends, family, and others who I suspect are getting secret kickbacks from olive farmers, that when I am older I will grow to love them.

Sadly, despite the olive I eat once a year to test whether I’m officially an adult yet, I have failed to start throwing them gaily into my mouth like someone at a posh dinner party.

Why am I banging on about olives? Because, although I still hate them with a passion only usually reserved for mushrooms, there are other things that I have acquired a taste for as I get older. In no particular order, here are a few adult sexual tastes that I’ve acquired, that are far more fun than olives:

Sexy massages

I used to feel the same about massage as I did about tickling: that it was something people were forcing on me in the misguided belief that I’d like it.

Now, at the grand old age of ‘oh shit I’m nearly 30’, I find that having moisturised hands pummeling my back and shoulders is not only nice but borderline orgasmic. The slickness, the power, the feeling of being so utterly cocooned and caressed by someone is delicious. Even more delicious when the massage goes south, and his slippery hands are mainly just lubing up my arse.

Only from someone I love, though – getting any sort of massage from a stranger still brings me out in a cold and unpleasant sweat.

The word ‘panties’

I have no idea why. Perhaps because when I was younger the word sounded too childish. As an almost-woman I was keen to project the image of an adult seductress. But now this dainty word makes me feel ever so slightly younger. It also conjures images of small, candy-coloured scraps of knicker fabric which makes me feel sexy even when the reality is less ‘miss’ and more ‘M&S’.

Spending more than a tenner on bedsheets

I know, it seems profligate. At University I’d have been happy to use the same cheap polyester sheets for an entire term, taking only short breaks to crinkle them a bit when they became too stiff with sex juices.

Now, as a much more mature adult, I find there’s something tingly and sexual about not just clean bedsheets but quality bedsheets. Soft cotton with a hint of fabric softener puts me in mind not just of sex but of the kind of sex I’ve had in hotels. Passionate, filthy, do-it-in-each-corner-of-the-room sex. Sex with bubble baths afterwards, and fresh towels, and occasionally complimentary slippers. Young me didn’t know the joy of this sex: adult me wants to reminisce about it by spending money in John Lewis and constantly loading the washing machine.

Sober sex

Naturally sober sex has always been good. I’m just not sure I realised how good, until I hit 25 or so. The older I get the more frustrated I am with my drunk self for not being able to fully appreciate every stroke, slap and sigh of a really decent fuck.

Drunk sex can be fun: giggly and uninhibited. And the slight spinning of the room makes you feel like you’re fucking in a fairground. But with sober sex you can feel every stroke, squeeze at just the right moments, and above all avoid falling off the bed.