I lost my virginity to a sofa. Funny, but true. I don’t know whether it counts as a bonafide sexual experience, but it felt meaningful at the time.

Scarborough in the summer of 1984, I was at the age of permanent arousal. My face a hormonal explosion, my pants a nether region of heat and mystery, my voice a rollercoaster of conflicting emotions. The girls our age were at it, just not with us. They were hopping on the backs of scooters and getting whisked off to the local park for cider and fingering; I was round my mate’s house and fancying his mum. She’d ask me whether I fancied a drink. I’d say yes. She’d bend down to open the fridge and I’d collapse in the doorway on the verge of ejaculation.

To that point I had never orgasmed. My situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I hadn’t worked out how to relieve myself. Everyone was doing it, of course, nipping off during the day to tug themselves to bits. I’d tried, settling on the method of flicking my genitals, a not unpleasant feeling but, if anything, it only increased my general agitation. So then to the sofa.

I had developed a routine of going round to my best mate’s house after school to play computer games, eat crisps and make and tape fart noises. We would jump and laugh and gurn on the sofa, planning our future conquests. And then I realised the potential I was sitting on.

Just a normal family sofa. An off-brown, feathered, wool texture, split into two sections. It was at the juncture of the two halves at the front that I spied my opportunity. I suddenly thought to myself… I could fuck that.

Clem was more experienced than me, having had sex with a wall on and off now for a few months. He had padded out a hole in the wall of the outside toilet with bog roll and a sponge and could regularly be seen enthusiastically pumping it of an afternoon. A few of my mates had shagged a tree. Bottles were also popular. Anything hole shaped. By contrast, a sofa felt alive with possibilities. Supple. Warm. Homely. I suggested it to Clem. Such was our state of depravity at the time that he deemed it perfectly reasonable. He threw a plain, white hanky in my direction, suggesting that wrapping my cock in it might soften the coarse bristles of my future lover. Then he left the room. Perfect.

For some reason, I got naked. Shaking with desire, I encircled my erection with the hanky, holding it on as I knelt before the object of my desire. I nearly came before insertion but managed to calm myself, and gently slid my member betwixt the two sofa-like folds. With my own weight pressing down and the warmth of the wool, the pleasure was unbearable. I felt a surge in my groin and bucking even more furiously, afraid but determined, reddening suddenly, I came loudly for the first time in my life. I was almost in tears and flopped off, exultant and suddenly bereft.

There was no happy ending, however. I rarely saw her again and nine months later she did not give birth to a couple of scatter cushions. My mate’s mum found the discarded hanky, reached her own conclusion and banned me from the house. It has to be said though – that sofa made more noise than many of my future human lovers.