In 1956 art critic Brian Sewell, then a student at the Courtauld, guided four rich American women on a tour of Paris:
“I decided to skip dinner with my charges; instead I bought a picnic—snails and salami, fruit, bread and wine—and took it to my tiny attic room.
“I had just pulled the table to the window so that I could sup in the setting sun, when Peg Heller knocked on the door with Mary Sowell behind her. ‘What are you doing for dinner?’ ‘Having a picnic.’ ‘Have you enough for three?’ Her response to my firm negative was to call room service and order.
“My scholar-gypsy evening suddenly became rather jolly. Peg sat on the chair, Mary on the bidet, and I sat on the bed; we drank too much and laughed too much; and Mary rocked a little too far, fell backwards and hit her head on the fireplace. She groggily recovered when doused with water by Peg, who then took her off to be put to bed. I had just finished tidying when the door opened. I assumed Peg had come to report on Mary, but she had not; instead she closed the door and stood with her back to it, her arms widespread, and froze me to the bone with ‘I’m old enough to be your grandmother, but I’m going to bed with you.’
“And she did, after a fashion. I had no wish to tell her that I was queer, and it says something of the weakness of a young man’s will and the overwhelming strength of his sexual triggers, that she so easily had her way with me. I remember more clearly than all else the interruption of pleasure when her diamanté spectacle frames occasionally plucked a pubic hair; as for the rest, what we did was entirely determined by Peg and she seemed well pleased. She stayed in touch for several years, sending cookies peculiar to South Carolina, accompanied by explicitly pornographic letters, minute in detail.”
In 1967 businessman Richard Branson was a schoolboy at Stowe:
“During the holidays I came tantalisingly closer and closer to losing my virginity at parties when the lights went out and everyone lay around on cushions. I finally found a girl who was reputed to go the whole way, and at one party we slipped upstairs. I was amazed when she let me push up her skirt and take off her knickers. As we began to make love, she began to moan and groan. I was pretty pleased at how well I must be performing as she was panting and tossing her head from side to side. I put up a great show and finally came with equally impressive gusto. Then I rolled off her. To my astonishment she carried on panting, apparently having what I took to be multiple ecstatic orgasms. Just as I was beginning to feel a little bemused and somewhat redundant, I finally realised she was panting for a reason. ‘Asthma! She wheezed in breathless panic. ‘Inhaler! Ambulance!’”
In 1971 novelist Janice Galloway, aged 15, met her first boyfriend:
“Bradley came up with a floppy multi-part encyclopedia called The Human Body. Together, we opened out a centre-spread of what looked like lost Picassos from his blue period. Tinted turquoise so they didn’t look obscene, sore or angry, the pictures purported to be of something I’d never seen before. The name was delicate, Edwardian-sounding, a name like a flower. Gen-it-a-li-a. The word attained, I let my eyes flip the drawings into focus. One side showed something funnel-shaped with what looked like layers of ribbon-tie trim around the edges while the other was a series of bulges... Bradley, to his credit, was persuasive. Engineer to his fingertips, he pored over the technical drawings, explaining the parts, then showed me how they fit, locked, ticked over as one. Then he offered to show me where I kept mine. Astonishing, what you hold within and never know until someone tells you. I was grateful as sin...
“That I learned the word virgin only after I wasn’t one, seems typical. I can’t have been the first and anyway, to regret having lost some notional treasure I’d never known I had in the first place seemed churlish. What I had felt was not, would never be, loss. It was learning. And learning, the keener and more dedicated the better, is always gain.”
In 1989 film critic Antonia Quirke, aged 18, was working for Scottish Amicable in Manchester:
“Had I but known it, my boyfriend was very cool. I had seduced him by the length of my jumper. I hadn’t seen my hands in 18 months. He was a musician called Mark and I adored him. I loved him. There was nothing else. But when he suggested we go to bed together, I was baffled. It was as if he had suggested we move to South America, or that we weren’t English at all, but French. Or aliens. A bizarre and totally irrelevant suggestion. Sex was abstract and ever present but it never actually happened. Like maths. I was horrified by the voice-over in Betty Blue which insisted that the principals had been ‘screwing for a week.’
“Screwing for a week! Screwing! Screwing! Screw-ing! Skerreww-ing! For a week? Can you imagine?’ ‘Yes,’ said Mark.
“Eventually I acceded to Mark’s request. ‘Tonight, on the 12th December 1989, I, Antonia Quirke, became a woman,’ I thought tremulously to myself. Or had I? A couple of days later I thought: ‘Tonight, on the 14th December 1989, I, Antonia Quirke, almost certainly became a woman.’ The day after that I thought: ‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell! ’ and proudly munched my way through half a packet of Anadin.”
“I decided to skip dinner with my charges; instead I bought a picnic—snails and salami, fruit, bread and wine—and took it to my tiny attic room.
“I had just pulled the table to the window so that I could sup in the setting sun, when Peg Heller knocked on the door with Mary Sowell behind her. ‘What are you doing for dinner?’ ‘Having a picnic.’ ‘Have you enough for three?’ Her response to my firm negative was to call room service and order.
“My scholar-gypsy evening suddenly became rather jolly. Peg sat on the chair, Mary on the bidet, and I sat on the bed; we drank too much and laughed too much; and Mary rocked a little too far, fell backwards and hit her head on the fireplace. She groggily recovered when doused with water by Peg, who then took her off to be put to bed. I had just finished tidying when the door opened. I assumed Peg had come to report on Mary, but she had not; instead she closed the door and stood with her back to it, her arms widespread, and froze me to the bone with ‘I’m old enough to be your grandmother, but I’m going to bed with you.’
“And she did, after a fashion. I had no wish to tell her that I was queer, and it says something of the weakness of a young man’s will and the overwhelming strength of his sexual triggers, that she so easily had her way with me. I remember more clearly than all else the interruption of pleasure when her diamanté spectacle frames occasionally plucked a pubic hair; as for the rest, what we did was entirely determined by Peg and she seemed well pleased. She stayed in touch for several years, sending cookies peculiar to South Carolina, accompanied by explicitly pornographic letters, minute in detail.”
In 1967 businessman Richard Branson was a schoolboy at Stowe:
“During the holidays I came tantalisingly closer and closer to losing my virginity at parties when the lights went out and everyone lay around on cushions. I finally found a girl who was reputed to go the whole way, and at one party we slipped upstairs. I was amazed when she let me push up her skirt and take off her knickers. As we began to make love, she began to moan and groan. I was pretty pleased at how well I must be performing as she was panting and tossing her head from side to side. I put up a great show and finally came with equally impressive gusto. Then I rolled off her. To my astonishment she carried on panting, apparently having what I took to be multiple ecstatic orgasms. Just as I was beginning to feel a little bemused and somewhat redundant, I finally realised she was panting for a reason. ‘Asthma! She wheezed in breathless panic. ‘Inhaler! Ambulance!’”
In 1971 novelist Janice Galloway, aged 15, met her first boyfriend:
“Bradley came up with a floppy multi-part encyclopedia called The Human Body. Together, we opened out a centre-spread of what looked like lost Picassos from his blue period. Tinted turquoise so they didn’t look obscene, sore or angry, the pictures purported to be of something I’d never seen before. The name was delicate, Edwardian-sounding, a name like a flower. Gen-it-a-li-a. The word attained, I let my eyes flip the drawings into focus. One side showed something funnel-shaped with what looked like layers of ribbon-tie trim around the edges while the other was a series of bulges... Bradley, to his credit, was persuasive. Engineer to his fingertips, he pored over the technical drawings, explaining the parts, then showed me how they fit, locked, ticked over as one. Then he offered to show me where I kept mine. Astonishing, what you hold within and never know until someone tells you. I was grateful as sin...
“That I learned the word virgin only after I wasn’t one, seems typical. I can’t have been the first and anyway, to regret having lost some notional treasure I’d never known I had in the first place seemed churlish. What I had felt was not, would never be, loss. It was learning. And learning, the keener and more dedicated the better, is always gain.”
In 1989 film critic Antonia Quirke, aged 18, was working for Scottish Amicable in Manchester:
“Had I but known it, my boyfriend was very cool. I had seduced him by the length of my jumper. I hadn’t seen my hands in 18 months. He was a musician called Mark and I adored him. I loved him. There was nothing else. But when he suggested we go to bed together, I was baffled. It was as if he had suggested we move to South America, or that we weren’t English at all, but French. Or aliens. A bizarre and totally irrelevant suggestion. Sex was abstract and ever present but it never actually happened. Like maths. I was horrified by the voice-over in Betty Blue which insisted that the principals had been ‘screwing for a week.’
“Screwing for a week! Screwing! Screwing! Screw-ing! Skerreww-ing! For a week? Can you imagine?’ ‘Yes,’ said Mark.
“Eventually I acceded to Mark’s request. ‘Tonight, on the 12th December 1989, I, Antonia Quirke, became a woman,’ I thought tremulously to myself. Or had I? A couple of days later I thought: ‘Tonight, on the 14th December 1989, I, Antonia Quirke, almost certainly became a woman.’ The day after that I thought: ‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell! ’ and proudly munched my way through half a packet of Anadin.”
