Clayton Pettet, 19, isn’t going to lose his virginity in a cliché manner. There won’t be a candle lit dinner or a drunken “let’s go back to my place” after a party. Rather, Pettet is going to have sex with a man for the first time in a London gallery full of 50 to 100 onlookers in a performance art project called “Art School Stole My Virginity.”
Pettet wrote on his Tumblr that the idea “came around when I was Sixteen, when all my peers at school were losing their Virginity it was incredibly hard for me to ask why I was still a Virgin and why it meant so much to the people all around me. My piece isnt a statement as much as it is a question.”
He will ask spectators about their takeaways after he has sex with his friend, particularly focusing on if the audience witnessed things change between the two partners–though some gay activists told HuffPost UK that they think the performance, set to take place Jan. 25, risks cheapening the community’s sexual relationships.