Extra Virgin

1993 was a great year. Pearl Jam released Vs., a perfect rock record; Nirvana released In Utero, their best record; the Toronto Maple Leafs couldn't get to the Cup Finals despite gut-wrenching performances by Doug Gilmour and Félix Potvin; and the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup for the last time so far, a miracle-working Patrick Roy taking a very average team to the highest honours almost all by himself against Wayne Gretzky's Los Angeles Kings.

In what was probably June of that year, the decisive Cup Finals game between the Kings and our beloved Habs was at home. My family had season tickets, but I opted out of going and instead set my sights to La Ronde, the local Six Flags amusement park, with a bunch of friends and maybe catch a bit of the end of the riot afterwards; I didn't end up with a free TV, but I lost my virginity to a 19 year-old chick I picked up at La Ronde, so all in all, I must say it was a decent night.

It was a time when I was slimmer, when I would wear two band t-shirts at once and tie a third one around my waist with the logo facing outwards toward those behind me; it looked pretty fucking cool to me, and I was the only one doing it - it was my style, easily identifiable.

It wasn't rare for me to get hit on in those days, what with a tall athlete's frame, long straight rocker hair and a shyness I hid behind feigned confidence. Often, I would leave with girls' telephone numbers. That night, I left with the girl.

Normally, at almost 15 years of age, after a day of walking in the sun and light entertainment, I'd be ready to go to sleep by 1AM - but not that night. That night, in the basement where I often slept (I had an actual room on the second floor, but my little brother and parents also slept there, so I had the basement as additional living quarters where I could sometimes get more privacy, especially at night) it seemed I was going to get a go at it. She was older than me, at least 4 years, and she knew what she was doing. She even interrupted a make-out session to ask, specifically, ''do you know what you're doing, have you done it before''?

''Yes'', I was quick to reply, ''of course''. It wasn't really a lie, because I had lived that moment time and time again, millions of times, in my head. And already I knew the gizmo I carried around in my underpants through and through - I'd lived with it my whole life, after all. And I knew ladies' equipment pretty well, too, having already toyed around that area enough in the couple of years previous to this night on an average of maybe once a week - just not actually been inside there with my machinery.

So the mouths went from the mouth to everywhere our hands had been previously, and came time for the fatal question - one that I'd previously had the answer wrong to, which had cost me an earlier deflowerization: ''do you have a condom?'' This time: ''yes''! We had a winner.

So together we struggle to release the condom from its packaging, succeed, and together we put the fucker on.

KABLAM!

I ejaculate right then and there.

I had tried condoms on before, even jerked off into them. Never had it had that impact on me. But this time, maybe it was the nerves, the sexual tension, the fact that she was so hot despite wearing way too much make up, the lack of experience on my part, but it happened. I came in the condom before even entering the comfort zone.

I tried getting away with it, too, and lucky for me I'm still pretty well hung even when getting flaccid, so we made do, having soft-cock sex. She did her best to pretend not having noticed, and we still went at it for a few hours.

Believe it or not, that was not the most embarrassing moment of the episode. No, that came the next morning, when we went upstairs for breakfast, with the parents at the dining table.

''So, Sébastian, are you going to introduce your friend?''

Oh, yeah.

Her name was Katia, and I never saw her again. But I did see a few of her friends for a while, including a very short but very hot girl, my age, named Manon - a name usually reserved for people over twenty years older than she was. She was a blast - and she still has a cap of mine that I really loved, corduroy, all black, with an Esso insignia in front - sarcastic branding was all the rage then, and would be even more so the following year.

Poor Miley Cyrus!

So it's been a long fucking while, eh? I know there are tons of more important stuff to be taking on, but, I need to start somewhere...

So I'm in my boxer shorts and t-shirt, waiting for a friend to tell me if he's coming over or not, and I stumble upon this very funny piece of non-news: Miley Cyrus, daughter of Billy Ray (the achy breaky heartbreaker from almost two decades ago, now going the Jon Bon Jovi washed-up-singer-turns-actor route) and pop star of the moment, was given the cold shoulder by none other than Radiohead at the Grammys.

She couldn't take it, so she left - didn't even stay to watch them perform.

If, really, they were her favourite band in the whole wide world, then she might've tried reading up on them once in a while... we're talking about a band that:

- after making it big with the song Creep in 1993 (the third time it was released as a single, by the way), stopped playing it, a few times even replying ''we're not a fucking jukebox'' when it's requested live

- after releasing one of the best, if not THE best, rock record of all time, OK Computer, in 1997, pretty much stopped making straightforward rock music altogether

- as a matter of fact, their next record, Kid A, could well have been made by an electronica/experimental/psychedelic act

- from Kid A onwards, during their live performances, Jonny Greenwood, the band's best guitarist, possibly among the best rock guitarists in the world for the past decade, pretty much stopped playing guitar on stage, playing with bleeping machines and transistor radios instead...
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So... regardless of what anyone thinks of Miley Cyrus talent-wise, intelligence-wise... she is still a modern day bubblegum pop star, bred for kids, hoping to stay long enough to make a dent in pop the Aguilera/Spears/Simpson way.

I'm not sure Radiohead would give Coldplay the time of day at the Grammys. So, sorry, Miley, but what you represent is of no interest to Radiohead, and even if you weren't you, with everything that implies (family history in music, starting out as an actress rather than a singer, having your own fucking wing in your dad's mansion, etc.), they probably wouldn't have wanted to meet you anyway.

It's not you, it's them. And it's also a little bit you.