Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [6]
Finally I had suitor who lived up to my girlish fantasies - he didn’t quite arrive on a prancing white steed but a Boeing 737 is not a bad substitute.
He was only my second serious boyfriend. As you’ve heard, my teenage years were not very successful in that regard. In fact the only satisfactory relationships I had during that time were those where the entire drama - from star-crossed meeting, to impassioned declarations of love, right through to poignant parting - was played out exclusively in my head. Fortunately, I had my books to sustain me and during this time found a whole new form of literature to keep me occupied. I was rummaging around in an old cardboard box of Mum’s books one day when I discovered How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong, the author of the notorious Fear of Flying. What’s this about? I thought, as I glanced idly inside. Well, well, well…I can’t remember when I next came up for air. There was one particular scene that sticks in the memory where the heroine gives another woman an orgasm using the neck of an empty bottle of Moët and Chandon. This was an eye-opening experience for the young Eleanor and, I can only imagine, an eye-watering one for the recipient of that orgasm. Then I discovered more books of this type in Mum’s collection, including some wonderfully trashy novels by Judith Krantz, which included numerous romps in the hay - oral sex, lesbians, you name it - depicted in glorious anatomical detail. This was a very different sort of sex to the tame procreation I’d been taught about at school.
It was then I discovered that my mum - far from being the quiet suburban teacher/librarian I’d assumed - was in fact a raving sexpot. This probably explained the unplanned conception of Emma.
I resolved to put this new found book knowledge to use, deciding that I was going to need a few notches on my belt if I was ever going to convincingly seduce my Year 11 biology teacher. My unspoken New Year’s resolution that year was to lose my virginity. Unfortunately the actual act was not quite the romantic Sunday afternoon deflowering by a tender young lover I’d envisioned. It ended up being a drunken shag in the back seat of a car with a boy from the neighbouring school.
The two of us were sitting out the front of a party at the home of Susie, one of my school friends, when the cops arrived. Susie’s parents had gone away for the weekend so as a matter of course she’d organised an impromptu party, but it turned into a much bigger event than anyone anticipated. In addition to the under-age drinking we knew there was a bit of minor league drug taking happening inside, so at Justin’s suggestion as the cops filed past us we beat a retreat to his car. Then he drove to a deserted park and put the hard word on me, which was probably his plan all along. The ridiculous thing was he kept apologising to me about not being ‘very big’. If only he’d known I had no idea, he could have saved himself an awful lot of embarrassment that evening. It’s possible he was just seeking reassurance but if so he picked the wrong girl. I am now much at ease in the world of the phallus (more on that later) but at this early stage of my sexual development I was too bashful to even look! Anyway, the way I saw it, this revelation was actually a positive development. Given the choice between losing her virginity to a guy hung like a horse versus one tending towards the under endowed side of the equation, I think any sensible girl would choose the latter.
To cut a long story short, I did manage to achieve my objective that evening but the whole experience was awkward and clumsy and completely unerotic. I comforted myself that, starting from such a low base, things could only improve.
My love life spluttered along in fits and lots of false starts until I met John in one of the university bars. He was two years my senior: a tall, thin vegetarian,