To most men, losing our virginity is almost a right of passage. Even if we don't acknowledge it to our fellows, it is the hurdle that looms largest the further we venture into the quagmire of maturity. It is the jump to manhood, from the furtive fumbling of adolescence. To each of us males, the tale of that first cherry pop is as individual as the tail that popped it. For those of you that have managed to stomach the story so far, this is mine.

I had led a very monastic life all the way to the age of sixteen. I use monastic in purely a societal sense, in as much as I had very little to do with the opposite sex. In fact, the female of the species may just as well have been a goddess for all that it affected me. I mean I worshiped, but didn't make overt communication; after all, I was a follower from afar and not a donator from above. I had been educated in purely male surroundings since the age of seven. From seven to eleven, (seriously), I was a victim of one of the most sadistic forms of child abuse yet to be eradicated from the face of the Earth; the British boarding school. After five years of which, it is still amazing to me that I remained both sane and heterosexual. Passing the old British eleven plus examination meant that my IQ level placed me in the top ten percent of children my age, and qualified me to yet another five years of male centric education at one of Britain's Grammar Schools. A school most notable for its production of prime ministers and doctors. After my brother and I, they can probably add drunks, druggies, and the mentally flagellated to the list. I was spiraling down to the nether world of the also ran, when my domestic life saved me.

I won't delve too far into life at home, but suffice to say that I would have crawled over broken glass to escape it. In Britain at that time, sixteen was the earliest age that freedom was offered to those such as myself, and I jumped at it. I was packed before the headmaster could remember that final detention, a wave to my tearless family, and within a year I was steaming across oceans both salty and alcoholic, as a deck boy on the most beautiful chemical tanker afloat, the Athel Queen.

I had an accent so upper class in origin, and a personality so singed by life that I slotted into my position aboard ship as neatly as a fart in church, (you know the quiet part just after the vicar has said "let us pray"). Now don't get me wrong, I loved life at sea, and if I could still feel my right testicle,

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