I�m dealing with the fun and exciting emotional fall-out where your dream world provides hours of fun-filled entertainment and fodder for therapy. All while you sleep in the comfort of your own bed. And for free!
Last night in my dreams, I watched Brian with a new girlfriend, helped an old boyfriend cheat on his girlfriend (not cheat with me, I was just with him and cheater-girl) as they bought some new condoms (on sale! 6 for $5). Then just early this morning, I got drunk in Old Town San Diego with my high school graduating class (which was, as dreams tend to do, not my real high school graduating class, as I went to an all girls school and this was girls and boys). In that particular dream, I was propositioned by the hottest girl in town. And I liked her too! There was also another dream in there about being rejected by all my old co-workers as they went to dinner together but purposely left me out.
Brain, I love you but please just give me peace at night. Actually, maybe I�d like to go back to my last dream of the morning and kiss the girl. I think she would be a good kisser.
So the other day, I was reading a book (insert just about any suspense/romance/chicklit title) and I was thinking about something. I was thinking about how in most books these days, it is rare for me to read the sex scene. I mean, how many different ways can they describe passion? The thrusting manhood, the waves of an orgasm. Been there. Done that. Prefer it in real life.
I remember stumbling into books when I was a child. I was an early reader (4) and also quickly an advanced reader. So when tiring of Janet and Mark (I was a celebrity!) and their dog Rex, who was very good at fetching the red ball (but never a green or blue ball, poor rex), I would often raid either my sister�s bookshelves or my parents. In this way, I was introduced to adult themes at a young age.
I think there was probably a time when the words just floated past my brain in an �what are they talking about� sort of way. But as adolescence approached, so too did my desire for these types of books. I remember when the book Forever came out by Judy Blume. We all had to read it. And Endless Love, I never actually read that book but skipped straight to the 3 steamy love scenes.
I did not have a firm grasp on my (I hate to use this word � it reminds me of panties and making love) blossoming sexuality. Growing up catholic, growing up fat with low self-esteem, going through the height of adolescence in an all girls school, my sexuality was really something I didn�t want to deal with. I had dreams, I had fantasies of my future life with my future husband (named Jean-Michele Rene SomethingFrench, he had short curly brown hair and green eyes), but any sexuality that tried to express itself in the present was quickly squashed down to nothing. I did not masturbate, or watch pornography, and even when I did have a boyfriend my senior year, we really didn�t participate in anything sexual. (He later came out of the closet so this made much more sense then).
My one outlet for my sexuality was in books. I devoured them, reading and re-reading the scenes of sex and passion, not really understanding them since I hadn�t experienced any of this for myself. I was thrilled when I stumbled upon two amazing finds during our family trip to Norway � the biography of Linda Lovelace (also known as Deep Throat) and Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. Both of these books were like literary pornography to me. I felt nerve cells in my body spring to life and say, hey, can we get some of that?
But of course, the sexual repression, the poor self-esteem, the all-girls high school did some serious interfering so all I had were the books.
As I look back to my high-school years, I recall that I had frequent crushes on women.. not women my age but women 15 to 20 years older than me. At the time, I viewed this more as a result of my mother�s absence for most of my life from 10 on (she lived with us, just worked a lot and my dad was primary care-giver). I felt that I must be looking for a maternal image to replace her with. I think I even had fantasies that if my parents were to die, one of these women would take me in and shelter me.
Now, with the benefit of a much more open sexuality, I think it was more than that. I think I was also sexually attracted to these women but unsure what to do with that knowledge. I remember my high school years as being very confusing for me. I had been molested as a child by three different people. It wasn�t regular molestation that many women have had to endure, but because it was three different people (and one of them a stranger), I think a part of me just learned that the only men that I could trust were family members (none of my molesters were direct members of my family). Since I went to an all-girls high school, I was not around men/boys in a daily way� I never got to see them as people. They went to a different school, they were a different species from me. And being fat and having poor self-esteem, they also seemed unattainable.
I�m pretty sure the only reason I had a boyfriend my senior year (and he looked like Rob Lowe, I�m not kidding. Sometime I�ll have to find a picture of him) is that he was going through his own challenges concerning his sexuality. We had met in a Summer Theater internship at the local university. After spending all summer together, we became friends. As neither of us were very sexual, we just sort of evolved into a dating relationship without the physical aspects of it.
When I went away to college, I can look back with some clarity and now admit to myself that I had developed a crush on my roommate. I was also interested in boys but I believe I had a strong crush on her. A crush that seemed to be something I could and should never act on. So now I can say that part of the turmoil of my first two years of college revolved around my deep desire to be with her and my jealousy as she dated other people. The jealousy was two-fold, I wasn�t able to make friends as easily as she did, so I spent much of my time alone or in the company of the 2 friends I had made. The second part was that I didn�t want her with other men. I wasn�t exactly sure I wanted her for myself but I didn�t want her with other men. Does this make sense? Once, I guess we must have had a conversation about how I never do anything shocking. A couple of hours later, I told her I could shock her. I then grabbed her breast. I enjoyed feeling her breast but I am now humiliated by the thought, as I know it must have felt so violating to her. If she remembers this moment, I believe she has carefully filed it away with all the other bad memories she has of me (the rages, the cutting, the curling up in a ball on the sidewalk). We are friends now, in fact I saw her when I was in Seattle, and I have been honest with her about what I was going through at the time (the bi-polar), but until recently, I�ve never really admitted to myself or anyone else that a lot of my feelings towards her at the time, a lot of my anger and frustration resulted from my crush.
At some point during these first two years of college, I met a few penises. None of them were remarkable in their ability to bring joy to my life, but they didn�t turn me off penises either. I still had crushes on boys. I still struggled with making friends. Most of the boys that became my friends were gay. They were more comfortable for me. I learned to masturbate. I learned to masturbate well. I forgot about dating much.
I think during these few years in Santa Cruz, there was a point where I could have gone either way in my sexuality. If the right woman had come into my life and provided a little magnetic pull in the lesbian direction, I would have gravitated more to women. If a strong man had tried to have a relationship with him, I would have become firmly heterosexual. During those years, I think I became more asexual than anything else.
After I moved away from Santa Cruz (a place where liberalism knows no bounds) and back to stodgy Orange County, these thoughts were already safely entombed in my brain. Plus, I was definitely asexual. Masturbation and books were my only allowable outlet. I was too shy and had too poor of a body image to actually date or even imagine that anyone would glance my way and find me attractive. Shortly after moving back to Southern California, I became involved with a very strict cult-like form of Christianity. In this particular form, sexuality was very repressed as impurity, even of thoughts, was considered to be a sin. Even dating couples did no more, supposedly, than hold hands and peck on the lips at the end of a date. Masturbation was a sin to be confessed. Even thinking about sex was a sin. There was certainly no room in there for any thoughts of homosexuality. During this time, I began my sexual celibacy which lasted for 11 years. I won�t blame it entirely on this church, as my poor self-esteem and body image played just as great a role. There was even a three year stretch where I did not masturbate, not one time.
After leaving this church, though I was more open to explore my sexuality on a personal level (and I did!), my body image still held me back from dating in any real sense. I believe that at this time, a woman with a magnetic charm would have been enough to take me into a life of homosexuality. I believe I just walked a line on top of a hill, sexually speaking, girls were on one side and boys on the other. Either side had the power to knock me off the top. But my self-esteem worked day and night at shutting out anyone who may have even made a tiny advance in my direction.
After turning 30, I was reading a magazine called Mode. It was the first Cosmopolitan type magazine aimed and marketed for women who were bigger than average. As I read articles and saw pictures of real women in the magazine, I began to have a better view of my own body. It was during this time that I took an active role in changing my body image. Each day, as I was getting into the shower, I would stop and stare at my body. As my brain said things like �look at my fat ass� and �oh my god, is that my stomach, are those my thighs � they�re huge�, I learned to replace those thoughts with the neutral �This is my butt, those are my thighs�. I learned not to have judgment of my body parts but just accept that they were mine. The sight of myself in the mirror, though it did not become welcome, did become something that was not a horror to behold.
I also began to read about how there were groups of men who found large women (known in the circles as BBWs) attractive. There were dating sites and dating clubs and this whole world for people like me. I soon placed an ad at an online site and began talking to men online. It didn�t take long to meet John. John was a charismatic, charming penis owner. He was sexually aggressive (not in a rape/violation way) but in a way that made me feel sexy. He took charge and ignored my shyness and fear. After 11 years of celibacy, it all felt so good and amazing and my sexuality just (here�s that word again) blossomed. The man and penis had taken me from my sexual ambiguity and I�ve been whole-heartedly a penis lover ever since.
But I do still find breasts very fascinating!
Now I notice, when I read books with sex scenes, I barely skim the pages, looking for the end of that scene so that I can get back to the story. With a healthy sex life (toys! Experimentation! Sex in my parents house! Sex with the lights on!), I don�t need books to fulfill that side of me and tell me it�s okay to feel, to want, to need and to release. But maybe I'm at a crossroads again. I'm growing tired of what the penises are bringing into my life,the pain and frustration and their secret language that I'm supposed to understand (when I say Hi, that means I love you and want to see you). Sometimes it's all too much for me. Maybe I just need a break from all sex for a while, and when I find myself interested in the sex scenes in books, I'll know it's time to jump back into the water.
An additional thought added at 2:25 PST And why is it that I'm so comfortable with the word penis but find "panties" hard to say?
