Group Post: Do You Come Here Often? Stories of First Orgasms

Like some of the best and worst ideas, this post was inspired by a slightly wine-fuelled conversation – when did you have your first orgasm? Orgasms can be a tricky subject for women – unlike the vast majority of men, many women don’t have orgasms until well into adulthood, and some never have them at all. Some never have them through penetrative sex, while others can never really please themselves. Here, some very anonymous Anti-Roomers remember their first times. And yes, this is totally anonymous – not even the editors know who wrote these confessions.

We'll have what she's having

Orgasms were treated with scepticism among my teenage friends in 1980’s Dublin – there was an impression that only men got them and that women’s orgasms were invented by women’s magazines. That they were a myth.

Anyway, I soon knew better: I got my first orgasm was when I was 15, standing at my parent’s front door with my then boyfriend. It was about 7am, we had been to his debs and were crawling home. He fumbled for a bit under my bridal hoop (yes, the dress was a disaster!). His groping was less inept than usual and suddenly I was enjoying it. Woo! It felt like I had wet myself, which was weird but I was chuffed when I realised that I had had my first orgasm; I felt a bit superior. I dumped him a few days later. Job done.

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My first orgasm happened during a blackout under a fish tank. Not an electricity blackout: a gin one. Worse than that, it was at the hands of a woman and I wasn’t even gay or bi. She was the daughter of psychiatrists – recovering from an abortion – her best friend had just died of moles. Some of the best friend’s clothes were vacuum-packed in the wardrobe. Kate Bush waaa waaa waaaa’d in the background. “She wouldn’t leave the sun alone,” she said, pouring more gin down my throat. There was a Victorian bath in the house which she showed me just before I collapsed. My last memory was her standing on the scales announcing that she’d stay seven stone all her life because all she ate was a small bowl of tuna & pasta per day: no biscuits or crisps, pastry made her sick. Six weeks later she told me that we’d slept together on our way to a History of Ideas exam. I never remembered the moment and never got over missing my first orgasm.

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I was 18. He was 35, unavailable and therefore deeply unsuitable. But I was in thrall to this experienced man, convinced we were in love. Our meetings were infrequent, clandestine and unbelievably thrilling.

He would pick me up in his car at a prearranged spot, well away from my house (I still lived with my parents) and we would drive to a quiet seaside or country spot. After a walk or a drink in the pub we’d head back to the car for some action.

Man, did that guy deliver on the orgasm front – I got quite an education. Oddly, we never had penetrative sex (but hey ladies, no woman gets orgasms from penetration eh? Am I right?). He never even took his trousers off. Everything was done for my pleasure, things progressed with exquisite slowness – he always made sure I was ready before moving on to the next stage. I had the time of my life, but I was never quite sure what he was getting out of it.

Our meetings came to an abrupt end when my parents confronted me about my secret life – a concerned person had reported his suspicions. They agreed when I begged to be allowed meet him one last time. No orgasms that night, he couldn’t wait to get away when he heard my news.

That was the last time I ever saw him. I was technically still a virgin, but I had had some amazing sex.

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Which kind do you mean? Because I know there are at least two.

Would you believe me if I told you I have never had an orgasm brought about by having penetrative sex? I’ve had lovely lovers who knew what I was talking about, but not one of them ever made my body convulse through repeated stimulation of my g-spot with their erect penis. Am I weird? Do I not have a g-spot? Is it a myth?

I love having sex, I have a high sex drive, I’ve been an active masturbator since my early teens, and probably before. My clitoris jumps when I click my fingers, and swells and shivers under an expert tongue. The orgasms it fires through me are heaven. It’s brought me more fun and games than I could ever record. But inside, deep inside, where The Other Orgasm happens? I draw a blank, or it draws me.

This is the truth. I just haven’t met it yet.

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My turn. I so get you. I’ve had precisely one proper penetrative orgasm in my very long sexual life, and I actually stopped what I was doing in surprise. The only thing that was different from the usual (perfectly pleasant) experience was, well, it was outdoors. Must have been the moonlight.

I’m expert at faking it. Why? Because it’s the only way to get a guy to stop before you get friction burns. I’ve tried explaining that penetrative orgasm is stupidly rare, almost mythical, but each man wants to think that he’s different and that he’s got the knack. Bless. It’s sweet, but not biologically likely.

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Mint ice-cream. When I remember my first orgasm, I can never forget the mint ice-cream. It was a wintry, Sunday afternoon and I was sitting on the bed of my first boyfriend, who lived at home. We had just had dinner with his parents downstairs and brought our dessert upstairs. Our relationship was three months old and I was 17. It was intense, first love stuff, but had been very physically innocent, that is until he removed my underwear that afternoon, placed mint ice-cream between my thighs and proceeded to lick it all off. When the orgasm finally happened, I thought my head would explode. He never made me come from penetration, but he was spectacularly good with his tongue.

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I was 21 before I had an orgasm, which in retrospect makes me quite angry because if I’d known how easy it was, I’d have had plenty of them a lot earlier. Thanks to a sex education which paid absolutely no attention to female pleasure, I wasn’t exactly sure where the clitoris was, and teenage attempts at masturbation had involved trying to stick in my finger in, which wasn’t in any way pleasurable. A few inept boyfriends later, I thought I’d had an orgasm – a sort of quivering feeling – but as it turned out, I hadn’t. I finally discovered what a real orgasm felt like when I was away for the summer and went out with a very talented young man who was particularly good at cunnilingus. And this was how, on hot July morning, I came for the first time and realised that there was no mistaking this particular feeling. Luckily, I was able to make up for lost time. He was so good that one morning I came so many times I was literally too exhausted to go to work and had to call in sick. Once back home, I realised that I couldn’t live without coming, and quickly figured out how to give them to myself. I haven’t looked back since.

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Strangely, I can’t remember my first orgasm but I know where it happened and with whom.

I met my first boyfriend when I was sixteen, by which time I was proficient at The Art of Self-Love. Two years previously, my hippy aunt had loaned me her copy of Our Bodies Ourselves, which had an entire chapter devoted to masturbation and was full of stories of sexual awakening that I found very…err…inspiring. Needless to say, the book was never returned.

At sixteen, I’d never gone further than kissing but that all changed when Boy #1 appeared on the scene. After the preliminary niceties had been observed, it was all fumbling, all the time. My earliest orgasms with him came about in a frenzy of fully-clothed grinding on the gravel footpath of a park near my house. Neither of us was deterred by the possibility of discovery nor by the painful grazes caused by our encounters and it was several months before we moved on to more comfortable locations.