If you lost your innocence and there was no badger involved, you were one of the lucky ones.
Growing up on an island in North Wales, life was pretty sheltered. That said, if you lost your innocence and there was no badger involved, you were one of the lucky ones.
I was seven when Alwyn first called me a ‘virgin’. Alwyn was really cool – he was always the one who introduced new insults to our school. I was six when he first called me a ‘bastard’, five when he first called me a ‘cock’ and four when he first called me a ‘cunt’.
Alwyn always learnt the words from his dad, Gwyn. Gwyn was really cool too – he must have been cool to know all those words. When I used to go and stay the night in their farmhouse I’d hear him shouting them from the living room pretty much all the time: bastard, cock, cunt. I knew what all those things were though, so they didn’t bother me anymore. But when I was seven, ‘virgin’ was a new one.
Obviously, I spent ages saying I wasn’t a virgin, but I couldn’t prove it because I didn’t know what one was. Alwyn never taught you what a word meant – you had to work it out.
I asked my sister, Siân, because I was the only one with an older sister. Siân was fifteen and she said I was a virgin, because of something to do with a ‘condom’. But I was playing Mortal Kombat then, so I was only half listening.
Anyway, I thought I was really clever the next day, when Alwyn called me a virgin and I said, “Shut it, you condom.”
But then he said, “You’re just jealous cause the Virginity Badger hasn’t come to get you yet.”
And I said, “What?”
And he told me that if you didn’t want to be a virgin, you had to put a ‘condom’ under your pillow to protect you from the Virginity Badger – so that when he came you’d be okay. That’s what a ‘condom’ was – protection. My new word and Alwyn knew what it meant before me. That was pretty gutting. Not only that, but I’d never even heard of the Virginity Badger before. Only boring stuff like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
Anyway, while Siân was away one week, I went through her stuff and after loads of horrible fluffy, slimy, glittery things that I didn’t understand, I found a box with ‘condoms’ written on it, and took one and put it under my pillow.
I didn’t know what I’d do with it when he came. I didn’t know what he’d do with me when he came either, but I was pretty scared.
Alwyn suddenly moved away and he never came to say goodbye and the headmaster just said he’d gone and didn’t explain it. I was pretty gutted then because my sister would get annoyed if I asked her too many questions and you don’t ask your mum questions like that, not if you don’t want a slap.
Anyway, I had that condom under my pillow for years – I even carried it around with me in my wallet. Once a teacher confiscated it in class, but I got another one before the badger had a chance to get me. One year at Centre Parks there were badgers on the patio, snorting and grunting really loud every night. I didn’t get any sleep at all. I just held on to the condom, ready to rip open the packet in case they came in and tried to get me.
When I went to big school on the mainland, I met Alwyn again and pretty much the first thing I asked him was about the Virginity Badger and he said,
“You stupid bastard, it’s just your dad dressed-up in a suit – like Santa Claus.”
So I felt pretty stupid after that.
