Virginity I

When I fell in love with N I fell in love with him like most of us do. Orbital and dazzled like he was the centre of the universe and my blinding sun.

We see the good, ignore the bad and use our peaking energy levels to sustain an intrepid idea of a wonderful future together. I was so magnetically infatuated, he could’ve asked me to become a Muslim, wear a veil and forsake my entire heritage and I would’ve done so in an instant. Oh wait, he did ask me but I respectfully declined. I guess I wasn’t so in love after all.

Or maybe I was? I’m not sure anymore but what I do know is that our beginning was très magical. We rocked. The sex was an out-of-this-world-wtf-kind-of-heavenly, and he actually liked listening to whatever it was that I needed to say. All was fabulous.

There was just one thing that threw me off. A bit. A lot.

His mother, brothers and sisters didn’t approve of me. They felt I was beneath them and not worthy of entering into a family with the highest of morals and the purest of ethical codes. And I suppose they were right. I mean, if you look at it from their perspective, I in fact wasn’t worthy.

I was older than he was and Indian. I was brown and a Hindu. I was a single mother of an 11 year old and I’d never been married, so my child was also a bastard. Now, when I look at this curtailed but very accurate specification of myself, I fully understand why they wouldn’t want their son and brother to choose me. I represented impurity and immorality.

A woman that chose not to marry but lived with a man, conceived a child out of wedlock, and on top of everything else became a single mother, was at the very least obstinate. I can imagine that to people who had lived their entire lives under the scrutiny of the masses this most likely screamed doom. In some parts of the world leaving a man is as good as forfeiting your rights to live. Such a woman is perceived as used goods and many say it’s even blasphemous. So, if this is what his family believed then it was nothing more than natural for them to set wholeheartedly against me and try with all their might to make N forget about me.

And try they did. After all, there was no logical reason for a man like him, handsome, educated, young and successful, to fall for a woman whose perishable date was long expired. This was hardly fair on him. My life, evidently, had been lived and I wasn’t eligible for happiness anymore. I had to accept the situation I was in, not voodoo this golden boy into a deceitful relationship, and make way for an eighteen year old pristine bride. It was wrong of me to be this selfish and would reflect badly on them. Honestly, what would people say?

Indeed. What would people say?

Well, probably everything that they were already saying, and that he must have been in dire straits to even consider having a relationship with a woman such as myself.

Now, on the other hand, everyone on team Monique didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. To them I am the promise of a new world. Beyonsingh if you will .

Furthermore, I have my father’s sense of decorum and my mother’s need for rebellion. An antithesis it seems, but the combination always worked awfully well for me. I grew up in a community where boys weren’t necessarily more important than us girls, but where girls were held responsible for those boys’ importance. In other words, the heavy load of being born with a vagina was hanging over our pretty little heads (or actually safely tucked away between our legs) from the get go.

As a young girl I didn’t quite foresee what being born with a vagina would entail but believe me when I say that these unwritten social rules are so ingrained in patriarchal DNA, that going into virginal mode was almost natural for me. If it weren’t for the continual suggestions and remarks, that clearly implied that all hell would break loose if we got ourselves knocked up, one would probably believe that all Indian girls like playing with dolls until they’re 25 and/or married.

Keep your knees together when you sit (we don’t want anyone to see your ‘My Little Pony’ underwear), don’t jump around (if there is even a hint of breasts emerging), there’s no need to play outside anymore (ever again, after you start menstruating), and let’s sit in the kitchen where all the women are (when all I could sulkily think was, ‘I’m going to miss the season finale of Knight Rider’), were key phrases to softly introduce a girl into the life of inequality.

As a result of this stealth brainwashing I developed a hefty antipathy for all things curry and grew up ignoring Indian, Turkish, Moroccan and any men from countries ending with ‘stan’, to focus on all things blond and open minded. It would at the very least keep me safe from momma’s boys and meddling in-laws. My evasive techniques worked for about 30 years before I succumbed to N’s mating call. The heart wants what it wants you see, and apparently my heart yearned for conservative kebab eating moustached men.

So, when I found myself looking into long lashed Afghani eyes I, a true feminist at heart, had to ask myself a daunting yet inevitable question. Could this delectable broad-shouldered man, smelling of frost air  and overripe mulberries, exuding rogue like masculinity and exotic tales of endearment, be the one?

Feminist squad: ”I beg your pardon?!”

Yeah yeah, before you all slaughter and jail me for selling you out, I know that it’s not the most emancipated thing to say, but in my defense, he was pretty hard to resist. Nevertheless, hot or not, I’d gotten myself into a predicament and my reality became serious over night. Should I give him a chance, follow my heart and let him prove me wrong? Or should I walk away and avoid getting hurt because the chances of our story ending well was close to none?

I should’ve walked away but I didn’t. I was in love with the prince of Persia and indulged in it. Besides, I wouldn’t have been me if I didn’t expect everything to be rigged in my favour so naturally I jumped right in. Nothing was ever the same after that and when I look back on it now, even after all this time, I still feel somewhat uneasy about it.

To make a long story less long, life goes on whether you’re ready or not, and oftentimes you won’t get the answers you think you need. A lot of things were left undefined and unresolved. But you know what? It didn’t matter. Despite of all my insecurities, I was also becoming aware of the change happening in and around me.

It was one of the most challenging experiences in my life, but it allowed me to rediscover myself and redefine who I was, because however confronting and offensive the situation was, it also set me free. Free of the need to feel accepted by anyone who wasn’t going to accept me in any lifetime in any way. You can be the peachiest peach and taste like sunshine and magic but there will always be someone that doesn’t like peaches.

It wasn’t me. It was what I personified, but it was never about my heart. Just the depreciation of my vagina.

The drift of my story can be summed up in three things.

One, my worth is not a matter of discussion.
Second, people like to fuck. Yes, women too.
And third, virginity is stupid .

For those who lost me a few paragraphs back, thank you for your time spent on this psycho-therapeutic account of one of the most shittiest times of my life. I bid you a good day and a better life. For those who think I should end on a more sensible note and with at least one sound argument to support my statements, here’s VIRGINITY II with my explanation on personal opinions 1 to 3.

Sending you a bucket full of wild consensual sex all the way from here to wherever you are.

Monique