Too high? Too low? Doesn't matter, it's just a number....

In playing a game of “I Have Never” whilst on last weekend's hen do in Dublin, it came to light, that out of my group of 12 friends present, I’d slept with the most people.

Now according to a quick google on the matter, my “Number” appears to be quite high. Distinctly above average. I’m not entirely sure what I feel about this. I’m not sure I feel anything about it really. I don’t feel ashamed of it. It doesn’t make me feel like a “slut,” and I refuse to let other people try and make me feel like one. (Happily, none of my friends on said hen party did this, and I don't think they ever would). I don’t feel particularly proud of it. It’s just….a number. It doesn’t mean anything to me.

I know the name of every single one. I can list them in order. Some were boyfriends. Some were friends. Some were colleagues. Some were complete one night stands. Some started off as one night stands but I saw them again. Some were on holiday. Some were bad. Some were good. Some were AMAZING. I don’t regret any of them. I don’t really do awkward either, so seeing them again, holding conversations etc doesn’t phase me.

The funny thing is, if you’d have said to me as a teenager, that this is how I would end up in ten years time, I’d have laughed in your face.

I was such a frigid girl. Sex TERRIFIED me. Friends were losing their virginity/doing things with boys around me left right and centre, and I was just scared.

I lost my virginity at 17. It wasn’t great. It was with my boyfriend at the time, and the whole thing was so traumatic I only ever had sex with him again once. I think we went out for like 2 years? Dear lord.

Next time was with my first boyfriend I acquired at university, which was over  a year since I’d last had sex, and I’m pretty sure my hymen regrew or something, as that wasn’t much better as experiences go. Luckily, he’d only slept with one other person as well (which also seemed like it had been a bit of a disaster), so we were well matched. However, even after we broke up I don’t think I had sex for about a year. Heck, I barely even kissed anyone. Still fairly frigid it seems.

Things didn’t take off until Uni BoyFriend Number 2, aka The Ex, aka ToryBoy etc etc. Things started off slowly in the sex department, but as I got older, I got more confident, and you know, I was totally in love with this boy, it was great.

We broke up nearly 3 years ago now. I moved to London on a Sunday, started my first ever proper job on the Monday, he dumped me a week later. CHEERS! He was number 6.

And that’s when the number started to escalate. Single, heart broken girl, living in London for the first time. Yeah, you know how it goes.

(As an aside – what the heck do you actually count? If you’ve been naked with someone, in their bed, do other things but not actually have sex, does that count? How about if you both want to, and are prepared to, but the guy can’t get it up? Or, if it’s sort of there, but the erection’s so weak that you struggle to even get it in, and once there get about 3 thrusts before abandoning it? DOES THAT COUNT?? Bloody minefield this number malarkey.)

Since breaking up with The Ex, I’ve changed and grown so much compared to how I used to be. And I’m glad. I’ll always be thankful to The Ex for giving me that confidence. I didn’t think I’d ever end up here, going from the scared girl who was late in losing her virginity, to the woman who’s had her fair share of men and who just bloody LOVES SEX.

It almost feels like you’re not allowed, or not supposed to say that as a woman. You definitely weren’t allowed to fifty years ago. Things have changed yes, things are still changing (I could mention Fifty Shades of Crap here, but I won’t), it is more acceptable for women to talk about their sexuality, yes of course.

But having a so called “high” number is still looked down on. There was a film out a few years ago called, “What’s your number?”

Now I’ve not actually seen it, but based on the premise of it, I know I’d hate it, and it would probably be incredibly shit. Basically the main character reads a shitty magazine article which states that if you’ve slept with over 20 men then you’ll never get married, or some bollocks to that effect.

....

I don’t even know where to START with that crock of shit.

No wait, actually I do: Who even says that the main character WANTS to get married, huh?? Oh yeah, society. Crap. Forgot about that one. You’re not allowed to not get married, because then you’re WEIRD.

And what if the guy’s slept with more than 20? Does that mean he’ll never get married either? And literally why does it make a difference? If anything, doesn’t it mean she’ll be good at sex? WHY IS THAT A BAD THING?? Why is doing lots of  something that’s fun and exciting and enjoyable, and possibly one of the most natural things in the world a negative?

</digress>

Ok, so before I get more angry about this ridiculous rom-com and it’s patriarchal slut-shaming ways I’m going to conclude. I like sex, and I refuse to apologise for that, or feel ashamed by it. I never used to enjoy it, but by god I'm glad I've changed. 

Vomming and Crying in Dublin: A Hen Do

I've just got back from My First Hen Do. Obviously not my hen do, unless I've been spectacularly unobservant and gotten engaged to someone without noticing.

No, it was this lovely lady's. We went to Dublin. I have never been to Ireland before, let alone Dublin so was majorly looking forward to this. Dublin was meant to be a surprise, but at least 3 people managed to give the game away by accident, myself included. Twice. Once on twitter, once in real life. It's actually really hard.


Friday
For some unknown reason I'd booked flights from Manchester (I don't live there), think I suffered some kind of temporary stroke back in January or whenever it was I bought them.

Then, for some other unknown, temporary insanity reason I got to the airport ridiculously early. I had a pint by myself, and had a bit of a people watch in Terminal 3.


This taught me that basically Terminal 3 is full of boring middle aged people.



Thankfully, some of my friends, including the hen turned up and we got on the flight. It was a bit stressful as they had managed to get lost in the airport carpark, and then my friend Mouse got a spontaneous nosebleed, no-one in the car had tissues, so they improvised and used.....a sanitary towel. PAHAHA


Flight was mercifully short, and free of incident. We went straight to the hostel, got settled in, bought some booze, started to get ready etc etc

Gradually everyone arrived (we were coming from all over the country, the northwest, London, Ediburgh...), one girl missed her flight due to TFL f*ckups, but managed to get on a later one- phew!
We got ready, pre-gamed and the beautiful t-shirts were given out:

As you can see, they are a beautiful lime green colour. We actually looked hot in them. Mine was as long as my dress. Standard. I got asked later in the night if "I'd taken my dress off..." No. It's just short.



Also, as a side note, making everyone wear the same brightly coloured top is an excellent way to keep tabs on everyone, and an easy way to round everyone up to move onto the next club.



We went out for a meal and then onto some clubs. We had an inflatable man with us (complete with inflatable penis) who got thoroughly abused ALL NIGHT. Mainly by men. Funny, that. At one point he got confiscated by the bouncer and put in the cloak room. Poor Roger.....

The hen's cousins also made this huge cock model. It was fairly disgusting. At some point a condom got put on it, and it generally got waved/poked in everyone's faces at some point. Again, I feel this is pretty standard hen do behaviour.

So we went to 3 different places, but I'd struggle to tell you anything about them. I was pretty mashed. Some might even say I was Capital T. (Probably). I'll do a blog post about the concept of Capital T one of these days, but for the uninitiated, Capital T is the person on a night out who is "The Drunkest." I took my heels off at one point and replaced them with my flats, which unfortunately were flip flops. I was wearing tights. It's a good look. The token gay male in our group physically couldn't handle me doing this, and at one point actually threw said offending items across the club.

My shoes were returned to me by two American 18 year olds ("We're actually nearly 19") who we'd managed to pick up somewhere and followed us around everywhere. At some point someone called it a night and we went home. At least 4 people were sick.



Saturday
Well I struggled for quite a lot of this day. We got up, had food, attempted the Guiness factory but abandoned it on account of it being too damn expensive, then went for our Irish Dancing Lesson.


Yeah, you heard.


Irish Dancing. You know, Michael Flatley, Riverdance, THAT Irish Dancing.

I have never laughed so much in all my life.



The Second Night Out involved eating in the hostel, whilst playing a number of drinking games, including "I Have Never Ever," - possibly the most enlightening version of this game I have ever played. It established a number of things including:

I am the sluttiest of the group, the number of people I've slept with being the highest out of all of us.  (Remind me to do a separate post about this, I have lots of thoughts on this topic)


Being the only male in a large group of women means you will be targeted

If you ask people if they've ever had cum on their face you get the following responses:

• "He used to aim for it"
• "I've done it to myself"
• "I moved out of the way and he got his own face and mouth"

Questions about anal sex give you equally hilarious answers

So, after that we left and attempted a pub crawl. We got to two pubs. There was a bit of drama, and a bit of getting separated, but once that was resolved and we all managed to be in the same place, we had a ball. One of the hens fell in love with a bald Andre Agassi lookalike. Pretty much everyone decided to have a little cry at some point, myself included. Although that one may have to be a secret locked up post.....

Another hen managed to get lost in the club, had a bit of a cry, asked a bouncer for help, who then took her to the hotel reception part of the place (??), he then started calling everyone in her phone book, and the only person who answered was someone already back at the hostel in her PJs....

...who then returned to the club, complete with tracksuit bottoms OVER her PJs, then had to have a fight with the bouncer to let her in, which went something along the lines of, "I'm in my PYJAMAS, DO I LOOK LIKE I WANT TO COME INTO YOUR CLUB, I AM TRYING TO FIND MY CRYING LOST FRIEND."

Good times. 

So after my little cry, someone else's little cry we all came back to the hostel, and proceeded to have a bit of a group cry about life in general. Excellent.

Sunday

I had to get on a plane, ridiculously hungover. It wasn't fun. 

Conclusion:

1st night, nearly everyone vommed.

2nd night, nearly everyone cried. 

And that, my friends, is what I call a successful hen do. 

How I got hit by The Boyfriend Bus Part Two

So after hockey tour I still had some of SB's belongings (using my tried and tested method of securing further dates with men - keep some of their stuff/leave some of yours and you have to meet up again). We set up another date for the Wednesday, but I requested something "non-boozy" as I had my end of year exams the next week, plus the fact I needed to de-tox from tour somewhat.

We met up "for something to eat or something," and wandered off to an italian restaurant. He held my hand the whole way. You have know idea how much that made my heart just soar.
At the restaurant we had a proper laugh, and I felt really relaxed. We had a massive pig out, finishing off 3/4 of a metre of pizza....
I went back to his (really lovely) flat AND....we finally had actual sex!

2 days later was the re-opening of our student union, after it being closed for re-furbishment all year, i.e. a massive booze up. It was a pretty busy night with most of the student body being there, and because it was the night of the England Sweden game everyone was on pretty good form. SB turned up after the football and apparently I got in a bit of a mood, but only because I wanted him to be there! After we got kicked out at closing, I was hanging around outside, SB was next to me and talking to someone else, and WelshBoy came up to meet and asked me to come home. Pretty sure SB didn't hear, but I had to make desperate, yet subtle "GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY" eyes at him. He got the message eventually.

SB and I made our way to the nightbus stop, and he attempted the "soooo, should we have the 'chat?'" conversation. I pulled the idiot card - "what chat is that?"


"You know the one where we agree not to see other people?"


....!!!


I think I panicked a bit, and said something along the lines of, "ahh ok, let's talk about this another time."

And then the bus came.



Fast forward to the next week, and my exams start (which by the way, went very well, I passed with a merit!). They were all in the morning, and so on Wednesday afternoon we did that sickening annoying couple thing of draping ourselves over each other in a park. We even bought a picnic.

VOM.

I had to walk past all of my corridor revising as I left, and so got a rousing song as I left....after the picnic we watched Inception. And had a bit of a argument debate about it.


So there we have it. I went to Cambridge that weekend for a dinner, and R asked me for sex. And I said no, because of SB. The last week or so I've been over quite a few times, watching films, going for meals, hanging out over lunch, it's been rather lovely. I've even told my mum about him! Which obviously means it's official - I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!!

(Not entirely sure what I'm going to do with the premise of this blog....typical - I start writing about being single and then BOOM - I go and get loved up....)

How I got hit by The Boyfriend Bus Part One

[thanks to @singleinshires for the title :) ]

A week after I initially got with SailorBoy (SB) I was going on hockey tour to Holland. We were due to meet at the station at 5.30am (urgh) on the Friday morning. A few days earlier SB texted asking if I’d like to go for a drink and the only day I had free that week was the Thursday night before tour.

I wasn’t entirely sure my thoughts on him at this point in time, but I knew we were going on tour together and didn’t want things to be at all awkward so off I went. We went to a really cute little pub near where me live (he lives 10 mins down the road), and had really quite a few drinks. We got on really well, despite my body deciding it needed to go to the toilet about five times during the night….embarassing.

The next morning we were off to Holland. For those unfamiliar with the concept of sports tours it goes as such:

Go some foreign with a “sports” team.
Drink.
Attempt some sort of ramshackle attempt at playing something resembling a sport. Inevitably lose.
Drink.

It was both the men’s and women’s teams that went, plus some extra few who don’t actually play hockey but came just for the fun, SB included. We got the train out to…somewhere, and then got on the ferry to Holland which is where the fun really started. One of the other girls (who I really like), suggested that everytime someone said something that could be followed by “That’s what she said,” instead should be followed by “That’s what Vix said to Rob.”

This of course carried on all weekend. :D


The ferry was great fun. Once we got to Holland we then had to get more trains, which was definitely trough time for many people. At the campsite we then had to put up tents in the windiest conditions ever, to the point where tents were being destroyed. We all piled into the clubhouse where the bar was and proceeded to have a ball, excellent music, danced with SB. Ended up in his tiny one man tent...

It was pretty cold, so he offered to go and get my sleeping bag and a jumper from my tent. HE WAS GONE FOR AGES.

Apparently he'd wandered over to the girl's tents, and proceeded to enter every single one, trying to find mine. Most of the girls were in said tents and the whole escapade was recounted at length the next morning,
"Yeah SB came into our tent asking if it was yours, he tried to pull me out of my sleeping bag to check" etc etc

Again, we didn't actually have sex.

Saturday was spent "playing" hockey. SB was on funnel duty on day, and I had one embarrassing moment where I attempted a funnel and managed to spit it out everywhere. In front of pretty much everyone. Go me.

At some point on Saturday, (not entirely sure when, whole weekend was slightly blurry), I ended up in my tent with SB, and we'd pretty much got down to being naked when there was a voice outside the tent, "SB, fresher challenge, five minutes" !!! Cheers for that mate.

Saturday night was spent dancing with SB again, and again staying in his tent. We walked across the astroturf and he grabbed my hand.....once in the tent we both passed out immediately. Birds of a feather and all that.

Sunday morning: incredible amount of people winding me up about SB. We got kicked out of the campsite and trooped off to the beach. The boys were doing their own thing and getting drunk again so I didn't actually manage to say bye to SB. I did, however still have his toothbrush and his chain, which he'd left in his tent..

Still can't believe I lugged my heavy tent all the way to Holland, had a massive stress out putting it up, then didn't even use it....