Review: Virgin Project 2

I’d been charmed by the first Virgin Project book a couple of years ago, which presented the stories of real-life first times in the words of the people involved. I’m equally happy to say that this second volume, which was published a few months ago¹, manages again to cover a large part of the spectrum of first times in our society (I’m saying “our” because I doubt things are that different in the USA and in my own country).

From one of the gay stories

For this new volume, authors K. D. Boze and Stasia Kato got a sociology professor to write an introduction, and as the guy writes there, one of the main draws of this book is the way that expectations and stereotypes are shattered by the variety of experiences recounted here.
Even if we only consider the queer stories (about 20% of the total, as in the first book), we read about people from their early teens to their twenties and thirties, from the soulless experiences to enjoyable time spent with first boyfriends and girlfriends…and, unsurprisingly, it’s the same with the straight people who tell their own stories. I guess it boils down to the fact that some people are lucky for their first time, and some aren’t. Not a very original thought, but if there’s one aspect of human behavior that should be simply seen as both enjoyable and varied, it’s sexuality. And chocolate. But I digress.

From one of the lesbian stories

Some of the stories are harrowing (one of the gay ones made me stop reading the book for a while), but, as much as we’d prefer it not to, that’s part of life. That being said, a large majority of the stories presented here are a celebration of life and love.

Everything I said about the first volume of Virgin Project still stands with its successor, including the quality of the art. Actually I thought it was even more constantly solid and full of warmth. I think these two books should be offered to everybody who’s open-minded about sex and love, because they’ll be able to enjoy them for what they are, a snapshot of the beginnings of sexual life in the current, Western society, as well as to everybody who’s stuck up about the Naughty Bits and their uses, because they might get their eyes open. One can dream, can’t one?