“I’ve never met a penis before!”
In which the throbbing members discuss losing their socially constructed virginity. It’s about as cringey as it sounds, so you better listen.
Virginity References
DISCLAIMER: VIRGINITY IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT AND IN OUR SOCIETY TYPICALLY HAS A PHALLO-CENTRIC DEFINITION!
Now that that’s out of the way…
Sissel
Let’s begin with Sissel’s story. She was very sexually frustrated… for most of her life, but also kind of scared of it all? So she eventually forced the issue. All of the unrequited crushes never worked out, so she “found” a guy getting off a bus to have sex with instead! Tall, dark haired, pierced ears, her type. 😉
So she and a friend texted a boy, who texted a boy, who eventually texted Sissel back… This began a month long text affair, that fizzled till until Sissel said the magical words that will make any teenage boy fuck you… “I wanna climb your body like a jungle gym.”
So she finally met him in person, and they made brownies. And after he pulled some smooth moves she had her first kiss!
Eventually after some teenage crime together she met up with him and had her first sexual experiences! Cunnilingus! Then the next night she came over to his house and he…fucked her really bad. It was very bad. It was not good.
It was an awkward first time… It hurt, and then once inside she couldn’t feel anything. So it was weird and awkward and they only had a short term little fling with a few more sexscapades until he started dating some other girl and she found out on Facebook. #2010breakups.
She didn’t necessarily describe it as badly to her friends after the fact, she did focus mostly on the cunnilingus… because that shit was baller.
It was not a traumatic experience and her heart was not broken.
The media has portrayed first time sex as something between two committed partners OR rape, lol. Sissel wasn’t really looking for either of those things. Fortunately, prior to her first time had a friend with benefits scenario showcased to her that made her decision to lose her “virginity” with a relative stranger much easier.
Sissel had a goal: losing virginity. And then she did it! Check.
She contemplated being in a relationship with this younger man, but the circumstances never really fell into place to make that work. He was a “bad boy” (he wasn’t really) who got sent away from his parents to live with his aunt, and he smoked pot… Scandalous.
#noragrets though
Hannah
Picture this somewhere in the Midwest 2011… Hannah had already had her first kiss in the past, and it was now her freshman year of college. Fingering is weird and bad unless done properly. Why was she naked with his fingers inside her? Who knows…
They went on an awkward cute date beforehand in which he tried to appease Hannah’s vegetarianism by ordering just broccoli. (Where is the protein???). Later, they tried to have sex and it hurt so they stopped. The next day she came back to watch “Winter’s Bone.” Hannah does not like this movie… but it really created the space for her to be like fuck this lets have sex.
He tried some different positions. Hannah was underwhelmed by his efforts but it was fine. There was a baby wiping sort of position? She was never very interested in him, she was mostly using him, he was mostly using her, and they never spoke again after their first couple times having sex. He left back to the military. C’est très tragic! But not really.
There was blood, which Hannah was characteristically underwhelmed by.
(Kelly & Maisie used to work at a B&B and they had some great stories about sexscapades on those sheets. The best story was about some newlyweds who were traumatized by the owner (massage oils stain sheets!) but still had sex and left a large stain of blood and lube on the bed. So fun to clean.)
Hannah met the guy through a mutual friend, her army buddy. He was a good first lay, no strings attached.
Gina
We’ll try and end this on a happy note, though parts of this story are, in Gina’s words, a bummer. Gina had fooled around, been fingered in a hot way in high school. She met a guy in college and they had some amazing make out experiences together. She has always looked 25 so the guy was rather surprised when it was “revealed” that she was still a virgin. She thinks that he was a bit freaked about the virgin thing, so they went their separate ways… Until The Horniness took over.
She texted him that she wanted to do him, he warned he was large (he was large… the biggest she’s ever been with still), she said she didn’t care.
PSA: Big Dicks Do Not Equal Good Dicks
They ended up having sex on her dorm room floor. It was not comfortable. It was painful. They didn’t really do any build up to prepare her. And as previously stated, he was REALLY big. He also made her feel uncomfortable about her body hair choices… Not cool dude.
Karma is somewhat real, in that he ended up dating a mutual friend of theirs and lying to her and all their friends about dropping out of school.
It wasn’t a great time.
BUT Remember Remember the First of November! Because Lucy and Gina lost their virginity on the same day! November 5th.
She sees this as when she lost her virginity, but she really started reevaluating her definitions later this same year. Gina’s definition of sex has changed as she’s aged. She now sees sex as the mutual ability for both parties to get each other off, and has had much better sex since then. THE END.
Lucy
In a different state in the Midwest, on the same day, possibly the same hour, Lucy also lost her V card. And…doesn’t really remember the details of this event. (Stay tuned for possible updates as she scours her diary entries from that time.) She had a more “traditional” story: met a guy, started dating, and she was a virgin. He was respectful of what she felt comfortable doing sexually, which she really appreciated. They previously did other sexual activities but eventually it just felt right. In the midst of fooling around she was like, we’re doing this!
She doesn’t remember some parts, though she does remember the futon in the dorm room. She remembers it felt different than her previous sexual activities. It was a new experience. And that’s that on that.
Lucy thinks that whatever you want to consider your first is cool, it’s all valid.
Maisie
We begin with Maisie at a field work farming experience in the South East. This is when she first realized she was bisexual. She was also the youngest, and undergrad among grad students.
It was near the end of the trip, a party was held at the ranch. There was some fresh blood there, and Maisie was ferociously drunk. She was talking to these coworkers, and it happened to come out that Maisie had never seen a penis before… Whoops! That wasn’t supposed to come out. So the guy (maybe Charlie? Eh, who remembers) offered to introduce her to his.
Maisie and Charlie went off to a shed, and they started kissing and he felt her up. And looking back Maisie really shouldn’t have been in a position to be having sex because he was drunk and she was numb drunk. But thankfully it ended up being a fairly non-traumatic experience.
He was fingering her, and she was feeling nothing, and eventually it was like nope don’t want to be doing this anymore. She pulled up her pants and promptly threw up on both of their feet.
She wandered off and fell asleep in a bathroom only to be awoken by her lesbian coworker, who she informed that she might be a lesbian after seeing a penis and then throwing up.
This is the story of how Maisie DIDN’T lose her virginity. Bait and Switch.
So to really get back into things…
Now it’s Summer 2015 and Maisie is working with a Greek-sculpture-shaped man and they’ve gone to a bar. Most of the Throbbers were in attendance, and so was ranch dressing. Maisie had invited him to feel out the sexual tension, and they proceeded to get a wee bit drunk prior to the Throbbers arrival.
All Maisie remembers is chatting with everyone, and then making out with him. And thinking, well, this is a bad thing to do in front of your friends. So she and the guy ran a mile or two back to her place. (He was a very fit dude.)
This is what Lucy remembers: Being kicked by this guy, and him dipping his whole hand into the ranch dressing and accidentally spreading the ranch all over Maisie. Sexy.
Sissel remembers being extremely amused at all the drunken debauchery. Greek statue man was so drunk he didn’t realize that his fingers were attached to the cheese curd being dipped in ranch. Can you tell this happened in the Midwest?
Back to Maisie. She remembers running back to her place and that it was near the solstice. (Important detail.) They made out, got naked, he put her on top, and somewhere in the middle of this she revealed she hadn’t had sex before. He very appropriately replied, “huh, interesting” but soldiered on. (We feel this is a good response to someone telling you they are a virgin. BECAUSE IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER.)
Meanwhile back on the ranch, Sissel, Gina, & Lucy were pondering whether it was good of them to let Maisie drunkenly run off with her coworker to bang. So of course they sent check-in texts. They were rewarded with the message: “had sex. very sweaty” and felt relief. They took comfort in the mutual running to have sex with each other indicating some extremely enthusiastic consent.
It was a fine time…but one crucial detail of this story is that Maisie didn’t have a condom and wasn’t on birth control. Maisie knows that it was stupid, but she really did get carried away. Soon after, Hannah bought her Plan B and yelled at her profusely. Maisie also talked to her mom and got on regular birth control, and got tested for STIs because that’s what responsible adults do.
Wear protection!
They fell asleep after having sex, or…during sex. Unclear. They were drunk, and she was never really sure if he came. But they woke up with him still inside her and had some more sex. He also would have sex with her in his sleep? He also sleep walked? And also did a bunch of drugs. (Of the health and also non-health variety.)
Honestly he was a really fun lay, and while there was no emotional connection he was down for experimentation and they always had an interesting time. They continued to have sex for the remainder of the summer.
We should probably do an episode about the first time we really enjoyed sex. We digress from the topic at hand… Virginity!
Maisie never did talk to her lesbian coworker about being a lesbian… So sad.
Kelly
It was the summer of 2010. Just Kidding. Kelly has never had sex. She has a lot of thoughts about the topic, and thus an interesting perspective. She’s not waiting for marriage or anything in particular, but she does have anxiety that really impeded her sexual exploration in college.
She’s much better now, but still neurotic and guarded about meeting new people. In the last 10 years she’s only had two serious crushes, and she’s just not that into treating sex like a check-off activity. She’s waiting for the right circumstances to fall into place. You know what they say about making plans and life getting in the way.
Sissel has not experienced this falling into place scenario, and has always had to put in the work. Gina agrees, it’s always hard work and frustrating to be this horny.
Kelly and Maisie do not have the sex drive to make the effort worth it.
Lucy thinks it’s all about objectives.
But we digress… away from virginity again…
Kelly’s time curled up as a ball was during her college years when the majority of the Throbbers were experimenting sexually for the first time. She was dealing with something that only she could truly fix and Lucy and Gina were trapped outside the struggle trying to help the best they could. Which didn’t leave much space for sex. Mental health really be that way sometimes.
On purity and innocence
One of these thoughts that Kelly has about this topic:
One time she read about a boy who said he wouldn’t even want to kiss someone he wasn’t going to marry. Bold choice, my dude, but his reasoning was the real problem. He was talking about how people who have trauma and experiences are less worthy of love.
You learn so much from these experiences, the traumatic and the not traumatic. Basically it’s a horrible world view and it made her so angry.
In religious ed she had an instructor who took two pieces of duct tape and stuck them together, and proceeded to pull them apart. Explaining that the tape gets more and more ruined as they pulled them apart and put them back together as a metaphor for saving yourself for marriage. Good thing people aren’t tape.
Sissel was briefly influenced by a religious speaker who talked about saving yourself for marriage. But then she got horny and that was over.
There are some interesting statistics about living together before marriage, the jist of which is basically:
- People who don’t want to get married nowadays aren’t really getting married
- Divorce is more socially acceptable and that’s okay
- Making decisive decisions makes you more likely to stick to them.
These are the tales of losing our virginity, I hope they bring you joy. Virginity is a social construct. Let your experiences teach you what you really want.
The End
Thank You For Listening!
We are all able-bodied, cisgendered white women. We know our background and experiences only cover a percentage of those around us which is why we want to supplement this with guest speakers, research, and you. If you have opinions and experiences you’d like to share we would love to hear it! If, however, you just want to spew hate at us then we can’t stop you but instead we invite you to suck our collective clitorises. Hater. This podcast also contains mature sexual themes and swearing. No, clitoris isn’t a swear word.
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