Sam is in his mid thirties and lives in London with his fiancée.
My mum and dad were, shall we say, refugees from unhappy families, who both were from North London, and they left at the end of the 60’s to find a better life outside London away from their families. So they had a bit of a nomadic existence for about 3 or 4 years, by which time myself and my sister were born, and then came to Herefordshire in 1972/73, something like that, and my dad worked as an electrician and my mum looked after us. I would say that my dad was a very distant figure, so he just wasn’t there – he was into family life when we were small but not much after that and... problems between him and my mum which were never really resolved. Therefore he sought his entertainment elsewhere, if you know what I mean. And so in terms of all those things you want dads to do, like teach you this, teach you that – never happened. And so I felt like I grew up in some sort of paternal vacuum. All I felt was that whatever I did was never very interesting to him. And what he wanted me to be interested in, I wasn’t interested in. So I suppose giving you the background to this particular event, that probably explains quite a lot of why I felt so really under-confident.
I became aware of my dad’s infidelity when I was 12, maybe 10, 11 or 12. And in his sock drawer he kept a letter from his mistress, or from this woman he’d been having an affair with, which I found aged about 11 or 12. And that was kind of… I knew unconsciously that he, you know, that there were issues between him and my mum, but it really brought it home to me. I don’t know if she knew about the identity of that letter and where it was, but she certainly knew that he’d been playing away - yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, and he’d had maybe 4,5,6 affairs so...
They separated Christmas 1983 and then 4 months later my mum found out that he’d been having an affair with one of her best friends for two years. And what was supposed to be just a trial separation, it became obvious that it was forever. And, yeah, it was sort of a pretty horrible, horrible year. I was 13, turning 14. And so what I remember at that point was a lot of isolation, a lot of isolation, and, well, where we lived was right out in the sticks, and so I would come home from school and I’d be really left to my own devices a lot. There was a lot of time to be with myself, but I didn’t find that comfortable at all, so I always tried to kind of express it outwardly rather than sit and reflect – I didn’t ever want to reflect on things, didn’t ever want to feel sad. So I found as many things to possibly do as I could. And… so yeah, so I was kind of insular without being introverted, if you know what I mean.
I learned about sex from friends. There was one kind of classic 1980’s sex education lesson where a youngish biology teacher said ‘Alright guys, write all the questions you want and I’ll answer them one by one.’ And it was just excruciating, excruciating. Because it was the trendy vicar syndrome and, you know, I can’t remember but somebody basically gave him a really hard time with a question, you know, like - not to this extent, but sort of a milder version of - you know: ‘When you take it in the mouth, do you swallow Sir?’ Hah, hah. So it was lame. Just awful. I didn’t learn anything at all from it.
A lot of my friends, um, were enthusiastic readers of top shelf magazines, so they’d kind of get into that – that was your anatomy lesson. But I never really… that kind of visual porn never really did it for me, so I never wanted to look at those magazines that much. So I suppose I didn’t have that sort of biological awareness of where things were that my friends obviously got – thinking OK, well I’ve seen enough of them, so I know that that’s where your aiming for, you know, that’s where the mission’s heading. So just thinking about it, I don’t know. I don’t know where I found information from – I couldn’t tell you. Nothing from my family, no, nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Alright, I remember my friend Tim saying – we were on a football tour so we would have been about 12/13 - and I remember the phrase, ‘Here lads,’ and we were like ‘What?’ He says ‘Yeah, I’m gonna do it in my bed I reckon.’ And we all went ‘What?’ And he said 'I’m going to spunk up in my bed,’ and we were like ‘Hah, hah… What?’ And I remember thinking what’s he going to do? And him going into his hotel room and he was all very proud of himself and that kind of stuff, and there was this kind of - you know Swarfega? It’s got that kind of gritty substance - so I was sort of presented with this stuff that looked, that looked like it should be egg white, but it had this Swarfega quality looking at it, I mean, what the hell is that? Where did that come from? And this was Tim's spunk. Which he was very proud of. Good lad. And so I... I, so yeah, so that was that.
OK, so he produced this stuff that I was fairly freaked out about. And then about 4 months / 6 months later I had a wet dream and I was quite freaked about by that, and my main priority is that I didn’t want anybody to know. I didn’t want anybody to see the evidence of this. That was really embarrassing to me: the whole thing that like sheets were sticky and I didn’t wear pyjamas or anything like that. And I was thinking, if this is going to happen again… I think it did happen once or twice and I remember whipping the sheets off and trying to put them in the wash basket or put them in the washing machine so my mum didn’t even see them, so no evidence could be seen. And then about, yeah, around the same time, routing around the back of the airing cupboard, I put my hands on something plasticky and pull out a pair of plastic pants, the sort that babies and toddlers wear over nappies. And the fact was that they were really big. And I was thinking well, how come they’re so big? - and remembering that a friend of the family had come to visit and brought their son, who was probably 6 or 7 and wearing them at night. And I thought, if they fit, this would be a really good way of sorting it out. So I sort of spirited them back to my bedroom, shut the door, made sure no one else was about, and put them on. And they fitted actually quite fine. And so I thought all right, that’s good, I’m going to try wearing these tonight and see if that works. So I did it that night, and again, made sure no one else was around, made sure my light was off so no one’s going to come in, and put them on. And then thought that I would just fall asleep and that would be fine and it wouldn’t be a problem. But what happened was, putting them on, they felt really nice, so I got this fairly huge erection. And started, without knowing how to do it, started kind of masturbating. And without knowing really what I was doing, sort of just a sense memory that boys have, made myself ejaculate. And initially it felt amazing and at that point, I didn’t really understand, I just knew it felt good, and pretty much fell asleep. And then did it the next night, and then the next night. And the next night. And what I did was I started to get a bit worried that I was enjoying it, but how much were the plastic pants involved? So I took them off and tried doing it without them and it still felt good, but not anywhere near as good. So on they went again and I was sort of enthusiastically doing it for about 2 months and then they split, and I was really gutted. So I thought, OK, what do I need to do? However, I found out the solution, I went to the local chemist, and suddenly, and heart beating massively at this point, saw that there were all these plastic pants there and all in age groups, and the largest ones were 3-5. And I was thinking well, maybe that would work, so I bought them, got them home, and I was fairly skinny, I’m sort of 12/13/14? 12/13 at this point, but still skinny enough, and they fitted perfectly. And so there it was. So basically, you know, I’d wear them, masturbate in them as regularly as possible, until they’d split and then go and get a new pair.
And I was aware of girls and I knew there were certain girls I was really attracted to, but I was so scared of the whole process of getting involved, that I just couldn’t approach them. And I had this, this really tough dichotomy of being verbally incredibly articulate, and very confident, you know, as friends of mine subsequently told me, scarily so, intimidatingly so. So, the verbal ability, and yet feeling entirely the opposite physically. So, as much verbal confidence as I needed to be witty and blah, blah, blah, and put people down and assert myself, but absolutely nothing, nothing physically. And what I now realize, things that girls said to me which were kind of almost come-ons, saying, 'You know I’d be interested in having a go…' I either didn’t see it, or I didn’t acknowledge it, saying, no, they can’t possibly, they can’t possibly have felt that way. So there it is. I’ve got this kind of public persona as being, you know, kind of quite smart and quite prickly and, sort of verbally beyond my years, and then I’m going home and in my private life, feeling way younger and smaller that everyone else, and then kind of compounding it by kind of infantilising myself with these baby pants. And that’s pretty much the story of a lot of my early to mid teenage years.
The other thing that happened was that I was living this massive duality of a life. OK, that’s a really major thing and I mean real duality. And what I did was, unfortunately, I started to have these really intense relationships with girls, that never ever became sexual. There was a girl called Christine who, if you can imagine this, looked like a local 16 year old version of Daryl Hannah, and she floated my boat. So for me, it wasn’t like I had this completely all encompassing fetish that meant I didn’t care about anyone else, it’s what I did as a viable substitute, because I just didn’t feel like I was ever going to get off with anybody. But you know, I wanted Christine big time, and yet it just didn’t happen. And then I got into what Chris Rock brilliantly calls ‘The Friend Zone’ and just ruined it. And then, after Christine, I kind of realized that perhaps she wasn’t as Daryl Hannah-ish as I wanted her to be. I then suppose I started looking around for a new target, or a new object of my affections, and got very friendly with Maddie. And then the pattern was unfortunately really set. We just developed this ridiculously intense and you know, teenage relationship that was as powerful as it needed to be and ... very, very deep connection, but always, the bollocks at the centre was that there was no sex involved, So having this ridiculous emotional intimacy but none of the physical intimacy to go along with it. And I internalized this completely as she just wants to be my friend, but she thinks I’m really ugly, or thinks I’m really unattractive. And I was totally hung up on the physicality of it, that I’m too skinny, too this, and too under-developed muscularly and I now look at it and I now think that the one thing that girls cannot cope with are boys who are really physically unconfident. You can be the biggest munter in the world, and my friend Mark was a skinny little runt, but he got laid like a nutter! It pissed me off so badly...
And so what I was having was, I had this secret life where I was able to sort of gain sexual pleasure, but it wasn’t in the way I wanted. Or it wasn’t in the way I needed. Here’s the issue – not just this sense of feeling physically unconfident, but deeply sort of ashamed as well because, I don’t know, if you had a sort of, a fetish for boots or something like that, even, kind of, women’s underwear has got a sense of being adult about it – but sort of feeling like a baby? Or feeling like…there’s just no kind of like, there’s no strength in it – there’s no sense of like, “Here’s me in a rubber gimp mask.” Even that’s got something to it, but, you know: baby pants? Rubbish. So that just mirrored the sense of inadequacy inside. I don’t think it drove it; it was a symptom not the cause. But you know, what better metaphor for feeling less, and younger, and smaller, and more insignificant than everybody else?
By about 17/18 I don’t really remember having masturbated in plastic pants. I wasn’t having sex, but at least I was starting to get off with girls. And also, I sort of look back and this is the other ridiculous thing, how I could have such a negative self image, when actually I was getting off with quite attractive girls. I got off with Susie who went on to be a model – cha ching! Now you would think that that would give me enough confidence. It didn’t. And whether it was a fear of getting more intimate or whether it was a physical fear of body parts, or whether I just didn’t want to take off my clothes because I didn’t want them to see my body. It just never really got past what I suppose is second base, I don’t know – which is rubbish.
I went at 19 to University. It was a terrible year. I came back to Herefordshire. Had another terrible year. Had what I see as quite a depressed year: getting up really late, going to sleep at 5/6 o’clock in the morning- classic depression really. And I thought I really needed to sort myself out. And I went to see a counsellor for three months. And just talked about all the insecurities ... blah blah blah. Finished counselling in May, and lost my virginity two weeks later.
I was 21 – I don’t remember specifically, um, but, 21, 2 months, and 13 days. Anywhere between 19 and 16 hours depending on technically judge as the actual moment itself (laughs).
Ok so, I met a girl called Carol, and Carol was a folk singer, very, very good folk singer, and she wanted a guitarist partner... And so I played guitar with her and she sang and we had a little act and went to the folk clubs which were hilarious, but that’s another story. Part of this folk scene included a girl that we’ll call Sally, because it’s her real name*. She dumped me so she can fuck off (laughs). So, Sally was kind of cute and elfin, and quite kooky. And we used to go around the house, like a load of us, and she was particularly enamoured by the fact that I didn’t take the folk thing too seriously. A lot of them were really into it, and I used to do impressions of all of them, because I just.... they were so fucking ludicrous. You know, when the rest of it was all about acid house and that, they were stuck in this ludicrous time warp. Anyway, she had a lot going for her. She was small and cute and kooky, she was elfin, she had her own house, she thought I was hilarious and witty and intelligent and funny, and she had a very, very gorgeous black Labrador dog called Sid, who I just adored. However, I didn’t think of her as a possible sexual partner because by that time actually, to be quite honest, I was really quite enamoured of Carol. But she was married - very unhappily married - but she had a five-year-old daughter, so it wasn’t going to happen.
And anyway, after - this was about 6 months after being involved in this thing - we were at a night club and it had this folk club and we got talking about stupid things and the line that started it was - 'It really annoys me,' - she says, 'about how stupid people are when they want to have sex with each other, why do they have to go around this really absurd mating ritual?' And I was going, 'I couldn’t agree with you more…it’s so ridiculous.' Just not… being so unattuned to the female psyche that I didn’t get what she was saying in a million years. I didn’t have a clue. I thought she was just being sort of silly and flirty and just purely theoretical, abstract. Talking around it – no, didn’t understand the ways of the woman. At all. She said 'People should just come out and say "would you like to have sex?" And you know, then you could go, "Yes please."’ And I think something in me twigged, and I said, ‘Do you want to have sex?’ and she said ‘Yes please’. And I went, huh? (laughs) and then it hit me, fuck – you're serious aren’t you? And I hadn’t… I don’t know my modus operandi had been get to know somebody, get really obsessed with them and get really besotted with them and just talk and become really connected with them and, I’d had a laugh with this girl, and she was not unattractive, but it came from left field. Thinking OK…
First thing, because I was a good boy and I recognized all the AIDS messages: went to the toilets and got some condoms. I thought, ok, yeah, ok, I’m on it. And she said 'I’ve got to go do some stuff so I’ll see back at my house about 10 o’clock.' And I went 'Yeah, sure, fine, good, no problem, see you there, 10 o’clock it is, 10, o’clock, that’s the hour after 9, one before 11, 10 o’clock your house, yes, I’ll be there, you’ll be there...' And she went off, and I thought, OK, this is kind of abstract…she’s saying she wants to have sex with me – I’m going to have sex. I hadn’t planned to have sex with her… I’m going to have sex. OK.
And so then I went to her house, and it was all done in a kind of, imagine a sort of romantic comedy from the thirties. So it was like 2 actors knowing what they’re going to do, but sort of talking around it: 'Where shall we start to have sex? Oh, let’s start here, that will be fine.' So anyway, we started kissing, and that was fine, I’d done that enough times before to know I was alright with that, and so we kissed. And that was good. And I can’t remember what she said, but it was something like, 'Let’s take it upstairs...' So we went to the bedroom. And she sort of had a hippie, kooky bedroom, lots of candles… Now I can’t remember how I felt in terms of nakedness – I can’t remember, but it seems to me that I just did it. I just, yeah, took my clothes off as she took her clothes off, or we stripped down to underwear or something like that. And it was quite cool, you know, sort of, I don’t remember thinking I’m touching a naked body, I’m going further than I’ve ever gone before! It was just like, I’m on a mission and this is part of the mission, and, OK, now I’ve reached that stage, it’s complete and now I’m to the next stage...
What flipped me out was when it actually started to become real like: I’m actually going to have to put my penis in her vagina and do stuff. Now no sex education tells you… you can read Joy of Sex, but quite frankly once you looked at the beardy guy, you don’t want to look at any more – that’s not sexy – he’s got a beard! That’s wrong in so many ways. I didn’t remember any of it – it’s not like I revised it, it’s not like I went through and took the the bullet points saying summarize it, you get full marks if you actually remember you need to go around. Clitoris? Who? No – I personally I didn’t know any of this, and that’s when the nerves started to kick in and I was thinking what am I fucking doing here? What am I doing? What am I doing? Didn’t know. And then, of course, the major problem was I could not get an erection, and without feeling scared, then suddenly being aware - I am terrified, I cannot get an erection. And then thinking, after getting this far, if I say to this girl I’m really sorry, I can’t get an erection, it’s just going to be lame. I hadn’t told her I was a virgin, nothing was said. I’m thinking, I’ve got to keep her interested. You know, I’ve got to step up to the plate here.
So the one thing that really saved me is that I was a real avid reader of Cosmopolitan. That’s secret’s perhaps even more shameful than the plastic pants. I love women’s magazines! I used to read them avidly. And so things like 'What to tell your man when…' All this kind of stuff. And so I improvised. And so when I think back now, it was a great performance. I remember thinking (as if reading from Cosmo) ‘A little bit of inability to move is really exciting, try to get your lover to tie you up’ and all this kind of stuff. And because she was so petite, I was able to lie on my back, she was lying on top of me, and I basically had her arms down like that (demonstrates) and my legs were over her legs so she couldn’t move, and I was manipulating in a general area... Shall we say, she was loving it! And I did not know what I was doing, it was purely by chance. And so I kept on trying all these things that I remembered, thinking right... how about that? She must have thought she hit gold dust! And so you know, it was like the longest foreplay ever because I still couldn’t get an erection. Nothing I was doing… and I wouldn’t let her do anything to me because then she’d see no erection and think, what’s going on? Wow. It was all about me doing stuff for her. And I was thinking, I don’t know (as if reading from Cosmo) ‘a little bit of role play is really good; get your lover to smack you,’ and all this kind of stuff. So I figured, try that. So I was like, ‘Have you been bad, have you been naughty?' Thinking she’s going to just look at me and go, 'What? What are you talking about?' Instead she looks at me and goes, “Yes, I’ve been a very very bad girl!” And this kind of stuff. So I start spanking her, and that’s getting her really turned on, and so you know – it was like: keep going, keep improvising, keep going! And so I can’t believe she didn’t end up saying, 'I’m too tired now,' but she seemed to be enjoying it enough. And then finally, it was probably at least 4 in the morning, I managed to get this kind of workman-like erection and I cannot remember what it was actually like. It was more important to do it than to do it, if you know what I mean. It was more important to have it done than to do it. So that was probably the least exciting part of the whole thing. For me and for her probably, I don’t remember how long I lasted, probably not very long. But she’d been so foreplayed I suppose she wasn’t that bothered. And that was it. And then: woke up, and leaving the house it was really like: I have crossed the Rubicon; nothing will ever be the same; the world has changed. Which of course it hadn’t. For me, it had changed profoundly, because I then – I probably came on way too strong with her and it’s like ‘wow, we’ve had sex, you’re my girlfriend now right?' And that wasn’t her interest. She had an interest in basically having sex with boys younger than her, that was her thing. Because then she just totally withdrew and went off with somebody else who was even younger than me, that kind of thing. And I was sort of really pissed off about it...
I didn’t look back. I went to university and sort of had sex with about three different girls in a term, which for students isn’t that much maybe, but for me it was. So it was almost like this straight jacket that had held me back had been taken off, and I suddenly thought no there’s nothing physically wrong with me so I can’t do this, so I just did it, and I just went on, and went from famine to feast really. But it all came from that one person saying ‘I want to have sex with you, you are an OK person to have sex with.’ And that broke all my physical insecurities. And to be honest, I mean, it’s a word that people shy away from so much because they just don’t want to deal with it, but inadequacy. Inadequate. I’m not adequate enough to do this. And I think that’s the secret that lies at the heart of so many men, thinking I’m not man enough. What is a man? Do you need power tools to confer that status, do you need a shed? What do you need? It’s an internal fear, isn’t it? And, that was it. It was like, I can do this now. And the other thing was I told her, a couple of months later, Sally. She said, you came on so strong, blah blah blah, and I said, ' 'Cause I was a virgin.' She said, 'No you weren’t.' I said, 'Yes I was.' She said, 'No you weren’t.' And I think she said something like, 'You were too good to be a virgin.' Or, 'You knew too much to be a virgin.' And I was like 'Nope, virgin.' And then she went, 'Ok, that explains it.' So there you go…
Do I wish I could change me at that age? Yeah. Profoundly. If I’d had more physical confidence it would have happened a lot earlier and that would have been better. I think the optimum age is about 16 really. If I’d had more physical confidence you know, I might not have retained friendships, but actually I don’t think that would have bothered me so much. I think I’d have cared more about saying I was able to go to bed with that person, than I was a good friend to that person. Yeah, fuck friendship. That’s terrible, isn’t it? Fuck friendship man, I don’t need the friend zone. And you know what, I know this sounds awful but it would have helped if I was more of a bastard. If I had a son, I’d say, be nice, but don’t be too nice. Don’t be too nice, keep a bit back. Definitely. Because actually my experience was teenage girls do not respect boys who are totally respectful of them. They do not. They just didn’t. Maybe they would now, maybe things have changed now sufficiently that that would be very different, but then, uh uh, they just didn’t. So if you want to get some action, you don’t want to be in the friend zone, then - you know - don’t be so nice.
* Sally's name, has been changed along with other names and identifying details.
