How to Build a Girl

  Losing your virginity is an odd thing, when you’ve thought about it for years. Nothing about the sex was surprising – other than that supernova kissing, which not even the Nostradamus of masturbation could have foretold, until it had happened, to his mouth. The basic mechanics of it were all that I’d thought – wet fingers, mouths; suddenly – finally! – having someone inside me.

  I didn’t come – but that, also, didn’t surprise me. Because all I had wanted was to have sex. I had never known what kind of sex. I just wanted – some sex. It was all enormous, tumbling, urgent fun, and when we were exhausted, we lay next to each other, laughing. And that was losing my virginity, to Tony Rich, who had once been just words in a magazine, but had now left bruise-marks on my thighs, where his fingers had gripped, when he called out my name. I made him call my name – ‘Dolly!’ – loud, like the first word ever. And when he said it, I was momentarily and unexpectedly sad he wasn’t saying ‘Johanna!’ – but I ignored that feeling, for now.

  I could finally see myself appearing in the world. Having sex, and printing words. I was slowly assembling, into vision, at the end of a telescope.

  So no – the sex wasn’t the surprising thing, the unknown thing, I needed to actually fuck to know.

  It was all the other stuff that was the surprise. Here’s the amazing thing about sex: you get a whole person to yourself, for the first time since you were a baby. Someone who is looking at you – just you – and thinking about you, and wanting you, and you haven’t even had to lie at the bottom of the stairs and pretend you’re dead to get them to do it.

  I enjoyed taking Rich’s shirt off so much I thought I would die – to take the shirt off a man is to finally feel like a grown woman. That’s no fourteen-years-old shit. Only women do this.

  And you are in a room with a closed door, and no one else can come through it. No one can come and interrupt – no one will come and sit next to you, and spoil the conversation. There is no kicking-out time. There is no sad moment where the phone call will end – or the lights will suddenly come up, and the music ends, and you have to go home, alone, at the end of the gig, or a party.

  It seemed to me that this was the real reason people wanted to fuck so much. To get here. To get to this tiny, quiet place where there was nothing else to do but be with each other. Just to be two humans who had – for a short while – stopped wanting. This is the beautiful, final destination. The end of things.

  It’s so friendly, lying here. In the lamp-light, he holds my hand, and turns my arm, to see the inside. There are bite marks all up inside it, from when I was unhappy.

  ‘Have you been giving yourself love bites?’ he jokes. ‘Have you been getting off with yourself?’

  ‘Yes – but it’s a pretty open arrangement. We’re seeing other people, too.’

  He makes cheese on toast that has mushrooms on it, too – ‘The main thing I learned at Harvard’ – which feels exotic, and he finds red wine – ‘From the corner shop, sorry’ – and we drink it out of green glass tumblers, and oh! It’s so lovely. I didn’t think picking up and casually fucking someone was supposed to be lovely.

  Books had always led me to believe that the second fuck was supposed to be slow, and dreamlike, and more satisfying, but when we had finished eating, the second fuck was even more urgent than the first one, and I still didn’t come, but when he came, I felt enormously … useful. Men need to come – and I had made it happen. I had a simple purpose.

  And in the morning, I said, ‘We should do this again,’ and he said, ‘Come back soon,’ and kissed me at the bus stop until my bus came, and took me away – my mouth pressed up against the glass to cool it, now, from all the kissing. Kissing hadn’t cooled me at all, in the end. It had made me hotter.

  Walking back into the house, in Wolverhampton, was bizarre. I felt fresh from battlefield victory. Within the weekly achievements of our family, I had, surely, pulled off the greatest deed. In any just world, I should have been able to kick the front room door open, like Lord Flashheart in Blackadder, and shout, ‘OH YEAH. THAT HYMEN’S GONE. DON’T YOU WORRY ABOUT THAT,’ and then run round the room, getting high-fives from my parents, and siblings. I had taken one, literally, for the team.

  In reality, of course, I knew that was not the correct thing to do. However unfair it was – and it was massively unfair – I had to pretend that this was just another normal week, where I’d gone around making no erections, had not been half of an Olympic-standard kissing double, and had failed to make a man who went to university IN AMERICA ejaculate into my comprehensive-educated genitals.

  Trying to find a way to mediate this clash of my instincts vs societal boundaries, I settled on walking around being very smug, instead.

  ‘What are you doing with your face?’ Krissi asked, as I made myself a cheese sandwich in the kitchen. Having been away for two nights, I had a sudden, giddying perspective on just how much margarine seemed permanently smeared on our worktops. This whole room was a health risk.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked – increasing the smugness as I sliced the cheese.

  ‘Your face – it’s clearly telling me to slap it,’ Krissi said, staring at me. ‘It’s communicating with me on a frequency you can’t hear. It’s begging me to slap both cheeks at the same time – like Cannon & Ball.’

  ‘Nothing’s up,’ I said, continuing to grate cheese onto the sandwich. ‘Just … feeling kind of hot right now. You know. Kinda … foxy.’

  ‘You are quite foxy,’ Krissi said. ‘Really quite foxy.’

  ‘Thank you!’ I said.

  ‘… foxy, like Basil Brush,’ Krissi continued. ‘You have the same ability as Basil to laugh, piercingly and lengthily, at your own jokes. And,’ he added, leaving the room, slyly, ‘you’ve had a man’s hand up your bum.’

  Later that evening, I say the word ‘Ptarmigan’ to Krissi, which is our old code word, meaning ‘Meet me in the wardrobe, for secrets’. We tell all our secrets in here. This was where I admitted I fancied Jason from Battle of the Planets, and Krissi told me he did, too, and we agreed that, when we grew up, we would marry someone from G-Force, or no one at all. That was a long time ago.

  We sit in the wardrobe, crushed against each other – so much bigger than we used to be, when we started doing this.

  ‘Yeah?’ he says, cagily. ‘What?’

  ‘What did you mean – when you said I’d had a man’s hand up my bum?’ I ask.

  ‘You know,’ Krissi says.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I don’t!’ I do.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ Krissi says. ‘Well done.’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you want to ask me any questions about it?’

  Krissi, immediately: ‘NO!’

  Silence. Krissi was obviously wrestling with his curiosity vs his horror. Finally:

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘N–’

  ‘Actually I don’t want to hear this.’

  Krissi starts climbing out of the wardrobe. I pull him back in, and we sit in silence, until his obvious nausea subsides.

  ‘Did you,’ he asks, eventually, ‘take all your clothes off?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I add.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  Krissi sighs, repeatedly. He huffs and puffs. Eventually: ‘Thing is, I want to ask you questions – but the answers are literally intolerable, because then I imagine you having sex and that, inevitably, makes me want to kill myself, and everyone in this family. And everyone I’ve ever met. And God. I don’t want to think about you having sex.’

  ‘You have to think about me, having sex.’

  ‘No! It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Think about it … me having sex.’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Me having sex me having sex me having sex.’

  Kriss gives me a sibling-punch. Anyone who has a sibling will know what that is – a punch which really hur
ts quite a lot, and which is meant to, but which you cannot take offence at, or retaliate against, because you went out of your way to get it – because, sometimes, you want your sibling to punch you. No one knows why this is. We sit in silence again.

  Eventually: ‘Why don’t we give the protagonists different names?’ I suggest. ‘Not me and Tony Rich. Say, Peter Venkmann and Dana Barrett?’

  Krissi agrees.

  And so I tell him all about Dana Barrett from Ghostbusters losing her virginity to Peter Venkmann in Ghostbusters, and he asks a couple more questions, and only says ‘UGH!’ or ‘I WANT TO DIE’ three times.

  At one point, he puts a pillowcase over his head, and says, in a very quiet voice, ‘And what did his cock look like?’ and I tell him:

  ‘The skin was dead soft, like baby cardigans, and it curved a little, to the left – I think because he’s left-handed, and bent it that way from wanking. I was dead proud of working that out. I felt like … David Attenborough, working out what some ants were doing.’

  And when I finish, I have told Krissi all about what it is like to have sex for the first time, and we both agree, without saying a word, that we will never, ever discuss this again.

  When we get out of the wardrobe, we leave the loss of my virginity in there, among the black bin liners full of old coats. And Krissi goes downstairs and puts ‘Gotta Get a Message to You’ on at full blast until the twins wake up, and cry, together – the only sound on Earth higher and more persistent than the Gibb brothers’ harmonies.

  NINETEEN

  All this time, I have been writing to John Kite – two, three, four letters a week, and the same back from him. Mine from my desk, looking up at pictures of him, flicking ash into his ashtray; his from the studio in Wales, where he’s recording his new album.

  He is the first person I tell about losing my virginity – long before I pulled Krissi into the airing cupboard and traumatised him, I’d been on the train on the way home – still sore – writing to John about what had happened that night.

  Even though I had, at that point, been a non-virgin for nearly fourteen hours, it was still essentially the letter of someone very inexperienced – I would blush to write something so oddly, innocently pornographic now. I did not know that you don’t usually write letters to ‘friends’ that have graphic descriptions of being turned over and fucked until you wail – that talking about being slicked with sweat, and riding someone, naked but for the necklace banging on your collarbone, was … too much. I thought that once you entered the land of fucking, this is how all the fuckees and fuckers talked to each other – regardless of the social situation.

  ‘People of Fucking probably talk like this in the supermarket,’ I thought, ‘or whilst waiting, at Kwik-Fit.’

  And, to be honest, even if I had been aware, I still would probably have written that letter, anyway. And all the filthy ones that came after it. It was no coincidence that I’d gone after the first man I set eyes on after John had kissed me – John had started something that he couldn’t finish and, sparking, I had gone to find someone who could. I basically lost my virginity at John. When I wrote to him about it, I wanted him to imagine himself in the fuck. I wanted these letters to disturb him – to make him come and get me.

  But his reply was peerlessly even-handed: ‘Christ, Dutch, you’re wasted on music criticism. This is top-quality grumble-mag stuff – you could send this stuff off to Razzle and never have to review Bum Gravy at the George Robey again. It’s definitely five wanks out of five. Although you will forgive me if I pretend it was someone other than Rich you were boffing? It’s just that I find his support of Lou Reed intolerable. I hate Lou Reed. He looks like fucking Erik Estrada from C.H.i.Ps, with a cob-on.’

  But then, if I’m being honest, I want everyone to imagine they’re fucking me. Because, now I’ve lost my virginity, I use it as the springboard to go on what is basically a massive Shag Quest. I wish to be like James Bond, who never leaves a party without either shagging someone, or blowing something up. That is my role model here.

  And it is one initially chosen more in hope than expectation. For, up until I got off with Tony Rich, my understanding of the world had been that, as a fat girl, I might only get laid three or four times in my life – half of those fucks instigated out of pity; all of them drunken, and careless – before I settled down with a fat husband and left casual sex, once again, to the beautiful thin girls, for whom this pastime was constructed. If I were to be a Lady Sex Bond, then the film I would be in would be You Only Shag Twice – If You’re Lucky.

  But now I’ve discovered the truth of the matter: that any woman can get laid, any time that she wants. Any woman. Any time. It is the greatest and most amazing secret on Earth. It really doesn’t matter if you’re some fat chick wearing a top hat and speaking with a Wolverhampton accent. It’s ridiculously easy. You go to a party, or a gig, start talking to someone, introduce the topic of sex – it doesn’t matter how; and everything’s kind of about sex anyway – and, twenty minutes later, you’ll be frantically getting off with someone in a dark corner, trying, in between kisses, to find out where they live.

  For, in the summer of 1993, I have a carefully calibrated map of which areas of London I will fuck in – all triangulated out from Euston Station, where I will inevitably have to return to in the morning, to get back to Wolverhampton. No further east than Clerkenwell, no further west than Kensal Green, no further north than Crouch End, no further south than Stockwell. If it’s more than twenty-five minutes in a cab from whatever inevitable Soho venue we’re in, I will, ultimately, decline sexual intercourse – having learned the hard way how unpleasant it can be, at 9am the next morning, to get from Putney into the centre of town with a love-bite on your face.

  I also have an irrational hatred of the District Line, and will use it as the final decider in borderline cases:

  ‘Why don’t you come back to mine, and let’s [putting hand down bra] talk about this further?’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Earl’s Court.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m working a shift in a homeless hostel tonight, and I’d rather get laid there. Bye.’

  I learn a lot along the way. If you talk about sex to every drunken man you meet, you access generations of sexual attitudes in a matter of minutes – a stockpile of received wisdoms and beliefs. One rock star tells me that he ‘can always tell how intelligent a girl is by the way she walks’.

  This confuses me. I have very weak ankles that mean I basically walk like a penguin. I’d always thought I was fairly bright – but perhaps my ankles know better? Or maybe it’s just my ankles that are stupid?

  I spend weeks trying to alter my gait – trying to guess how a clever girl walks. The most likely answer seems to be ‘Quickly and determinedly’ and so I start moving very much like the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, when it starts running after the car. It’s absolutely exhausting, and also, I can’t help but think, quite menacing. I’m not sure it says ‘clever’. I wish I’d asked for more details.

  A bass-player tells me, during a drunken interview, that the key to a woman being good in bed is to ‘Never leave one hand idle – always be doing something with both hands’.

  Again, this leads to worry. The next time I’m having sex, I remember it, and end up absently patting the back of the man on top of me – as if trying to wind a baby. Is this what he meant? It doesn’t seem very sensual. All these men are being too vague.

  Other men are not vague enough. A Cockney A&R man – who isn’t the person I want to have sex with, but is standing next to the person I want to have sex with, and so gets caught up in the flirty cross-fire – tells me, confidently, that he knows ‘all about’ fat girls: ‘They’re great at two things: swimming and blow jobs.’

  He explains that this is because, at school, fat girls don’t like sports that involve running, ‘Because their tits all jiggle about, innit?’, and so enjoy being in the water, ‘Because they don’t feel heavy. They like floatin
g.’

  As for blow jobs: ‘You don’t have to take your clothes off. Fat girls don’t want to take their clothes off.’

  Needless to say, I don’t have sex with him – even as I’m thinking, ‘My God! I am very good at swimming!’ and grudgingly wonder if he might actually be right about blow jobs. I haven’t tried one yet – but it’s definitely something I want to be good at. Getting good at blow jobs is totally something I intend to do, in this year that most of my peers are concentrating on their A levels, instead.

  I want to be knowledgeable about sex – most of my jokes are heavily based on innuendo, and I need to know what it is that I’m actually making all these jokes about. So far, I’m just doing a lot of guesswork, based on books, and things I’ve read people saying in interviews, and in films.

  I feel, urgently, that I want to be knowledgeable about fucking. It’s an attribute I wish to have. I want to be respected and admired for what a legendary piece of ass I am – I would actually like to be introduced as ‘This is Dolly Wilde – she’s a legendary piece of ass’ – but the only way of doing that is by going out and having a lot of sex. And that has repercussions.

  For in a way that feels quite unfair, the only way I can gain any qualifications at this thing – sex – that is seen as so societally important and desirable, is by being a massive slag – which is not seen as societally important and desirable. This often makes me furious.

  ‘You wouldn’t denigrate a plumber with a lot of experience in fitting bathrooms!’ I rage to myself, whenever I see the phrase ‘massive slag’, and remember it applies to me. ‘You wouldn’t hiss about a vet who’d saved the lives of over 300 guinea pigs! Well it’s the same here! I’m learning on the job! I’m expanding my CV! I’m becoming a safe pair of hands – around a cock!’

  By way of a shame-busting exercise, ‘massive slag’ is a phrase I often repeat to myself, in order that it not seem as hurtful as I find it. ‘I am a massive slag!’ I think to myself, in a motivational way. ‘I’m a Lady Sex Adventuress! I’m a Pirate of Privates! I’m a swashfuckler! I’m a friendly, noble, massive slag – and now I’m going to have my slag breakfast.’ I think of ‘Teenage Whore’ by Courtney Love as by way of my personal anthem.