Day 2: Too Much Too Young?

Do you remember those Troll doll things that were hugely popular in the early ’90s? When Valentine’s Day came around they would bring out a whole special range dressed up in mini-boxers with the words: “Sexy Lover” and other awful inappropriate crap printed on the side. They had garish hair that stuck up and little squashed faces. Have you got one in mind? Right, now remove the hair and replace it with a blond, curtain-style human barnet. You got it? Now you know more or less exactly what my first love looked like.

To spare his embarrassment (and mine), we’ll call him Mr T. T for Troll. Despite resembling a creature that wouldn’t look out of place on the Yellow Brick Road, Mr T was an incredibly cool first boyfriend. Not only was he 18 - five years older than naïve little me - but he also (get this!) had his very own motorbike. I know! He used to pick me up after school sometimes, which I’m sure the teachers really loved. (In fact, they really didn’t. They told me). Mr T got a certain amount of stick from his mates when he started seeing me, but to his credit he persevered. Well, he did when he wasn’t dumping me for a) a girl who looked like a frog and b) a girl who was often mistaken for a boy.

I don’t regret choosing Mr T as my first, far from it. I just wish I’d met him four or five years later. While I felt “ready” and wasn’t scared and even started taking the Pill in preparation, 13 probably was too young. If sex was just a simple, physical act, then 13 wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but it’s all the emotional toil that goes with sex. My feelings for Mr T definitely weren’t the more adult feelings of mutual love, trust and respect that I felt in my later relationships, they were a kind of brain-melting infatuation. I can clearly remember the hours I spent sobbing over him, listening to Dreams by Gabrielle over and over again (which was an effort in those days, as you had to rewind the cassette each time). Our on/off relationship lasted just over three years, until I finally felt as if I’d outgrown him. Ironic really, considering the age difference.

What I was left with was a very warped idea about sex, and about relationships. Sex was something you just did with the boys you liked. Looking back now, I can’t claim I was ever duped or talked into it. I didn’t do it to hold onto boyfriends or to be part of the ‘cool’ crowd at school, I just saw it as the norm.

Over the past five years, as another three of my relationships have disintegrated into disaster, I’ve started to wonder if this early experience with Mr T has had more affect than I care to admit. It’s true that I’ve come away from sexual encounters feeling like something you’d see hanging in a butcher’s window. It’s also true that in the past few weeks I was told by one guy I liked that I was “too forward” because I wasn’t afraid to talk about sex. Talk about it, for God’s sake, not offer it up on the corner of my road.

But for now, let’s just agree that this is an issue I need to explore in more detail at a later date over the next 12 months. In the meantime, I think it’s about time we addressed the dreaded “first-night sex” subject. Does it really put guys off? Is it an early nail in a relationship coffin? Who does it? Why do we lie about it (because we all have)? And does first-night sex ever lead to marriage and babies? I can’t wait to find out.