Starting at the top of my head, he softly ran his fingers across my skin, following his fingers with a trail of kisses and whispered words of my beauty. I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, tickled the sides of my face with butterfly kisses as we both laughed at how ticklish I was. “What happened here?” His fingers traced the scars on my forehead, barely noticeable by then, signs of a little girl who didn’t listen when told not to scratch her chicken pox. He found the mole on my neck with fingers and tongue, traced the lines of my collarbone, and shushed me when I tried to stop him from pulling my nightgown all the way up and over my head. We had made love before, but I had always kept an article of clothing on, trying to hide my scars, the stretch marks on my breasts that had appeared seemingly overnight when my breasts had sprouted out so quickly as a young girl, my rounded belly, my full thighs, the birthmark that no one had seen except for family members, back in the days when I was still young enough to run freely in a swimsuit, to slip in and out of swimming pools without a thought of my body and its flaws.

“Even your fingernails are pretty”, he whispered, and he took the time to slowly rub his thumb over them as he held each finger in turn. I smiled in the darkness, happy that I had taken the time to paint them before he had arrived.

His hands didn’t linger on my breasts; instead they found my stomach and I tried pulling the covers over my midsection to hide. He pushed the blankets away and I replaced them with both hands. “I am….fat.” I said, and I could feel the tears spring to my eyes. “No”, he replied, gently removing my hands and replacing them with his, “you are soft and beautiful.” He stroked my stomach in slow circles, slipped a finger into my belly button, and ran his hands down to my thighs. He looked at my knees and then back up at my face, his eyes asking. “Roller skating down a hill in shorts, third grade.” It was getting easier somehow. My breathing had slowed and I was starting to relax. He almost had me believing what he had said earlier about wanting to really know me.

The part of me who couldn’t believe I was spread out naked on a bed while I let my first love touch every square inch of me was shushed by the other part of me who was intrigued by his desire to bend me this way and that way, to find out the story behind scars I had forgotten about, to listen and to reassure over and over when I would become overwhelmed with insecurity.

He kept all of his clothes on. I can still see his hair falling into his eyes, his red flannel shirt open at the neck far enough to flash a fraction of his chest, his tight jeans straining to hold his erection, one he stopped me from touching every time I reached for it , his hands gently grasping mine and leading them away.

It was now time for my calves, summer’s reminder resting there in the marks left by mosquito bites I was told not to scratch but I could never resist. I recalled how it felt so good to finally dig my nails in and scratch until the blood ran. My mom tried spanking me, tried forcing me to sleep with socks taped onto my hands but even then I would rub at my legs, longing for relief from the itchiness, not caring at the mess that I made of my legs and the scars that were left there. I found myself feeling stupid in the retelling, and “No, I can’t remember where the scar on the sole of my foot came from.” I would hear the story from my sister years later, a “Don’t you remember that time you stepped on…” but by then he would be long gone.

He slowly turned me over and started on the other side.

***

I saw him at a party many years later. We both had children, were in relationships that appeared to be promising. He was drinking beer, avoiding eye contact, looking a little green in the face. He approached me later and offered me a beer but I was not drinking at that time; I was still breastfeeding. I shook my head and said, “No thank you. I don’t drink.” His eyes met mine and the corners of his lips turned up as he said, “I don’t believe you.”

I felt a flash of anger as I quickly walked away.

Later, I was sitting in a lawn chair watching our children play together in the grass and he plopped down easily into the chair beside me. I envied him the bottle in his hand. He was no longer green in the face but flushed with the slight red of alcohol. “Hey!” he said suddenly, “Have you seen my hand?” I turned toward him prepared with a witty comment about not having seen him or his hand in years but his eyes were earnest, almost pleading, and his hand is outstretched. I was uncertain what I was supposed to do with his outstretched hand so I lightly traced the scar with my finger and broke the uncomfortable silence by asking the first thing that popped into my head, “Did it hurt?”

I immediately wished I could go back and time and take back my stupid question, but he didn’t laugh. “No Tam, not too much.” And then he began to tell me his story, the accident, the hospital, his surgery and subsequent recovery. I listened and soon I was no longer angry at him, just emotionally exhausted. I listened and I wondered if he remembered that night so long ago.

A few years back whilst at work, I was operating a dough sheeter to roll out puff pastry. The sheeter was located next to the time clock, so I often had constant streams of people asking me who was punched in, who was out, who was on lunch etc. I found it irritating, to say the least, and I really only attempted to answer truthfully if a supervisor asked. On this particular day a young man approached, walking with difficulty. I had seen a coworker get his hand caught in the sheeter, fracturing several fingers, so I merely used my peripheral vision to glance quickly. I figured he was a visitor, perhaps a relative of an employee. When he made it to the cards and reached for one I remained silent as it took him fifteen minutes to grasp his card and drop it in the slot. The whole time was agonizing. He said nothing, but I wondered if I should offer assistance. As I rubbed the dough down with more flour and checked its thickness I glanced at him again. From the way he held his hands and his walk it appeared to me that he had cerebral palsy.

Hours later when my supervisor and I had time to slip out back for a quick smoke break I asked her who he was. She explained that his name was Ben and he worked in a separate part of the buildings. Our paths had never crossed before because we worked opposing shifts, but with the upcoming holiday everyone was on overtime. I wondered aloud to her what job he could do as his hands were practically frozen at his chest and his gait suggested wheelchair needed more than high volume, fast paced production work. She exhaled a long stream of smoke, smashed out her cigarette, and said his parents were friends with the owners. I nodded.

As the days went by I was introduced to him and we started doing the hi and the bye and the have a nice day. When bread roll season arrived he started hanging around my area at the moment I was racking up the rolls and rolling them to the cooling area. The kid had a good nose and an affinity for fresh from the oven bread. Even though I had been sternly warned by the owner about the employees eating the profits and instructed to make anyone who asked for one to produce a receipt I turned a blind eye to Ben’s sneaky fingers. He started smiling a lot in my direction.

Soon after, pie season hit its peak and I struggled to keep up. When the orders hit the thousands I was promised a helper. There I was, filling and topping pies, when who should appear but Ben. I had trained several women to make pies before Ben and I told them to try to keep my pace. I could fill, top, egg wash and sugar a pie in 45-60 seconds. To Ben I just showed him the steps and let him try. So much egg wash, intended for the lip of the bottom crust, ended up in the fruit filling while he was trying to work the pastry brush that I feared he was turning them to quiche. After a few hours I had him sprinkle the sanding sugar for me while I did the other steps. He was quite chatty, rather smiley, and I found myself liking having him around just to help the hours fly by.

Soon he was in my station everyday. He told me his life story, in a way, but he never mentioned his disability. I did my breathing exercises through the panic attacks that kept washing over me while I worked and smiled at his jokes, funny or no. At some point, as it always has when I’ve worked side by side with anyone for awhile, the topic turned to sex. He admitted that at 24 he was still a virgin and had never even had a date, let alone a girlfriend. When he said that he would probably never get laid, not ever, I looked up from my work as he tried to push his glasses up off of his nose, leaving a slimy smear of egg and course sugar across his face. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” I told him, “If I was single and younger I’d totally go out with you.” His smile lit up his whole face and I felt good to have made him smile. He was a nice guy and I wondered to myself if I knew anyone I could set him up with.

I thought that I had handled myself well until the other bakers started teasing me about my new boyfriend. Apparently, Ben had mentioned my comment about how I said I would date him, only he substituted the word “fuck” for “date”. I was mad at Ben and shocked for a moment until my coworkers started talking about how Ben couldn’t even get a pity fuck and he was destined to remain a virgin unless he hired a prostitute and paid big.

“You didn’t really mean that you would fuck him, did ya?” they asked me. I decided that I needed to put an end to this so I selected my words carefully. “How do you know I haven’t already?” The whole kitchen erupted into laughter, hoots and hollers.

Later as I was pulling off my hair net and tugging on my coat I saw Ben again. This time he was with the other guys and they were teasing him about me and slapping him on the back. His eyes met mine and he waited for that instant, his eyes shifty, nervous. I smiled at him and winked as I left the building.

Chantix, day seven. Or six, I can’t remember. Years ago, I had a lovely female psychiatrist who got me started on the road to wellness with the aid of sample boxes from every pharmaceutical rep. she made acquaintance with. She knew that I could barely afford our household expenses at that time, let alone expensive co-pays for name brand meds that hadn’t released generic versions yet, and so she really went out of her way to help me out. She also removed every single package insert from every box she gave me because she believed that if I read those inserts I might be inclined to develop the side effects listed therein. She was a smart woman. How did she know that? She later dumped me over the phone, calming trying to explain that she felt it would be better if I found another doctor, and as I stood there in my kitchen, my legs giving way beneath me, I cried, feeling as if I had been dumped by a boyfriend I still really really wanted to be with.

Anyway, she hasn’t been around me in years, and now I navigate the waters of prescriptions with the inserts intact. I am lucky and blessed even to have good health insurance that makes my pills affordable. When I first started Chantix I skimmed the package insert. I ended up tossing it aside.

The first side effect I noticed was a funny taste in my mouth when I smoked then came a funny smell in my nose. The next day I noticed that a pot of lentil soup I had prepared from scratch tasted so unbearably salty I couldn’t eat it. It had tasted fine the day before. The next day I noticed the unbearable stench of cat piss, as well as a lack of appetite. I blamed all of this on CHANTIX until I realized I had forgotten to clean the cat box. I vowed to quit being ridiculous and went on without another thought until the stomach upset came and I blamed it on hypochondria. Progress!

A few nights later I snuggled into bed and quickly feel asleep. It was time for the deliciously erotic sex dream to begin. I flew to Las Vegas to meet a man. He picked me up in a town car. As we sped along the freeway he joked that I was the only person he knew who would show up in Vegas with only four dollars. I open my purse and sure enough, four bucks are there, nothing else. There was a nervous tension that I ended with the slightest of kisses, short, soft and sweet. When we arrived at the hotel we got into the huge shower and began to lather each other. With our hands we made so many bubbles, there was slippery skin, fingers everywhere, teasing, and waiting. There were those huge soft white robes to climb into. I have always wanted one of those robes.

Next we are on the bed and I was watching us from above, his hands sliding slowly over my body. There were no scars or stretch marks or saggy skin on me. This is dream sex. After pinching me, pulling me, teasing me, I was ready. He slid his hands under my bottom and lifted me to him and…my back went out. No kidding. I threw my back out having sex in my dream. When I woke up my back was throbbing and I could hardly walk. It’s been like this for three days now.

I am writing this from my bed on my stomach because it hurts too much to sit in a chair.

FUCKING DAMN YOU CHANTIX!

P.S. Without even trying, I am smoking about half what I was. I have a callous on my right thumb from flicking my lighter, so that’s really saying something.

Never could I have dated. I am too self conscious, too unaware of the rules, the jargon; too willing to hide myself as well as I can without exploring the possibilities of someone else discovering me. My husband knows me, but it remains unspoken; a space between us that doesn’t exist; a topic only broached if I bring it up or he vents in frustration, which is rare.

Having spent years in the kitchen doing food service related jobs, I became used to hanging out and working with men. As a teenager it was easy to feel that I fit in as just one of the guys, but when I returned to the kitchen as a baker at age 29, after spending ten years screwing around and watching Sesame Street; I was hopelessly, impossibly out of touch.

I kept quiet as I did my job, trying hard to keep up with the younger stronger men who seemed like boys to me. As I worked I would listen to their back and forth banter with a smile on my face. I quickly realized the three stages they went through on their shifts: Hunger, Horniness, and Sleepiness. A few of them went through the stages in that order, others mixed it around a bit before they clocked off.

I had no problem with their crude humor; their attempts to shock me were futile. I had the dirtiest mind out of the whole crew. As I grew more relaxed in the environment I entered into their conversations. For the most part I did alright, but I embarrassed myself, and a few of them, by not having any idea what they were talking about on a few occasions. Once, a coworker was telling me a story about getting a reach around. I stopped him and asked, “Hey, what’s a reach around?” He stopped, tomato red, speechless. I seriously wanted to know, but it wasn’t until my older female supervisor who had been listening from the next station pulled me aside and told me that it clicked in my head.

Around Halloween, pumpkin pie season started. We made so many gallons of pumpkin pie filling we had to use garbage cans to store it in. At first the smell was a refreshing change, the color gave a bit of visual interest to what can become a mundane task, until finally it settled into a crusty orange substance I had to scrape off my shoes. We mixed that pie filling and teased each other with the huge paddles and whisks, pointed out the spanking possibilities with the giant size kitchen utensils, labeled the cans with masking tape and sharpies and tried to wheel them into the walk in coolers without tipping them over.

After a fortnight or so I started to notice the labels were changing. Someone had written, “Blumpkin Pie Filling” on one, another one was labeled, “Plumpkin Pie Filling”. My boss, looking at the buckets with me one evening to assess whether we needed to make more, pointed and said, “These young boys today, they cannot spell.” I nodded my head, pretending to understand the gravity of generation Y, and waited. As soon as I could I asked one of the other bakers about blumpkins and plumpkins. He shook his head NO.

I waited until I had a spare moment with Alex at home and mentioned it to him. He shook his head, sighed and told me the meaning. I asked him how it could be that we could have lived together for so many years and I didn’t know what he knew. “I’ll bet you know what a reach around is too!” I said, and he did. I had held his penis a million times and the thought had never occurred to me. I told him that the guys at work were laughing at me and he laughed too.

The jokes at work grew tiring eventually and everyone settled into a more reserved state of chronic fatigue as the holidays approached. Thanksgiving and Christmas are not the most wonderful time of the year for a baker. As I stirred the pumpkin filling with the four foot whisk my eyes burned and filled with tears, making the sea of orange with flecks of spices blur, then disappear completely.

“Tammy?” Rodney said from across the kitchen where he stood mixing chocolate cake batter for Yule logs, “How far south do you go?” I looked at him for a second and answered, “I’ve been as far as the California Mexico border before turning back.” As the laughter broke out in the room I realized; I’d done it yet again.

First, a big thank you to Robyn for linking to me and sending so many readers my way. It is very exciting to have someone I have been reading for so many years find my journal and recommend it.

I have been answering a larger than normal array of emails, which has been fun, really, as I like to get to know my readers better. Due to the fact that I have publicly shared my own battles with child abuse and drug addiction, depression and panic disorder, it is not uncommon for people to tell me of their own struggles. What I haven’t learned is how to achieve a balance between writing here and answering email. So here I am again, and if you’re still waiting for a response from me I hope to get caught up on all email this weekend.

From the comments: Lori, thank you for pointing out your new url. I was indeed wondering where you had gone and was about to get all stalkerish and email you. MichelleW why oh why didn’t I know about the pain that is Spanx before I wasted my money? I should have known better when the overenthusiastic woman at the clothing store kept pushing them on me, telling me that, “Oprah recommended them” and “She’s got like a trillion dollars and can have the best of anything so you know if she’s using them they must be good…”

Belle, I loved this line , “As long as it holds the fluff in and the straps are wide enough, I’m happy!” Fluff! I might have to borrow that word.

In other news, I have had a rough week with the depression and the anxiety. Sometimes I can go quite some time forgetting I even have panic attacks and then bang! one will hit, hard. The same goes for my depression. I could feel myself slipping lower and lower after my nanny died so I thought it was related to that. I emailed my favorite cousin because chatting with him always makes me feel better and he wrote back describing the funeral and I felt worse. It is hard to be so far away from family.

I contacted my doctor and she wanted to speak with me again face to face. I told her about the constant sadness, the thoughts of suicide, the never ending anxiety , and the panic attacks that come from nowhere and I can’t seem to calm down. She likes to play around with my medication so I didn’t even want to be there, even though I really like my doctor, and not only because she uses google when she can’t remember something. She’ll just log on to the computer while we’re talking and double check something. I don’t know why I find that endearing but it might have something to do with the fact that she doesn’t hide it, she’s just human. Plus, she laughs at my jokes. That is a big requirement in a doctor.

I have been smoking so much lately that I have a permanent wheeze. My doctor asked me to try Chantix. The only problem is Chantix has been linked to depression and suicide. I went ahead and filled the prescription. When the pharmacist called me over for a consult, she asked more questions than she ever has, “What other methods had I tried?” Well, I tried cold turkey but I am a vegetarian, so that one didn’t work and I tried Wellbutrin but my anxiety went up so much I stopped it after a month because my smoking doubled, and I tried the gum, but I could remember to tuck it into my cheek, I kept chewing it, and I tried the nicotine patches but they didn’t work either. She asked if I had nightmares while using the patches and I said no, but as I told her, I had the wildest, sexist dreams I have ever had in my life. Seriously. I almost kept using the patch for the aphrodisiac properties. That was all I needed to say. Drug stuffed in bag and I was out the door.

I am committed to getting healthier. The photo above shows me starting the day with a well rounded breakfast. Alex brought cookies home  because they were left over from some meeting he had at work. Waste is wrong and I had to have one.

There are a few online journals that I have been reading for so many years that I can’t remember when or where I found them. There is Heather , who is also the founder of Scarleteen ; there is Noah Grey, who recently started writing again after the death of his husband, and Jane from JanesGuide. Jane is no longer writing a journal so when I received an email from her old notify list I was excited to click on it, thinking that she had changed her mind. She was pointing out a contest on her site where she would be giving away sex toys. I commented and won. I was shocked because I wasn’t even thinking about that when I commented. It was nice to correspond with her via email after reading about her for close to ten years. I had a similarly heartwarming moment earlier this year when Heather emailed me and offered her friendship when I was trying to decide about the hysterectomy. I’ll keep the details of the sex toys I won a secret for now in case Alex peeks in here, although he usually doesn’t read, because the package of goodies is a surprise for him for Christmas.

Jane asked me what size T shirt I wanted and I said that I didn’t have the body for the shirts, having seen her wearing one on her site. She sent me two anyway, because she is sweet like that.

As much as I think breasts are beautiful: my breasts, your breasts, all breasts; I have spent the years of my life between nine years old and today hiding mine under baggy clothes. When my package arrived I tried on one of the shirts from Jane and walked by Alex. This man has seen my breasts for almost two decades and he might be just a wee bit bored with them by now, but he actually turned away from the computer and stared at me. I felt funny, strange, self conscious.

I am trying to raise my daughter to love her body just they way it is and I can’t love myself. How does that even work? Today I took a picture of myself wearing one of the shirts. I was trying to get a close up of the words, but it’s still hard to read. The shirt says “This is Jane. (Jane likes it dirty)”

I was thinking about the women I have known who have lost their breasts to cancer. I thought about their strength and their sense of humor regarding the subject. I’ve never been able to fathom strength like that. Everyday I hope that I can get just a little bit more comfortable in my own skin; in my own mind.

Thank you Jane for the beautifully wrapped gifts. I was very touched by your thoughtfulness and the handwritten card.

Being in a relationship for 19 years means that certain rules are established; there is no need to speak of them, they are silently there. Since my husband works the graveyard shift things are a little wacky in the rules department, but I stupidly thought we had established rules for when it is OK to wake one another up years ago. In order for me to wake him up, it must be a true bona fide emergency. That is the only rule, and I’d better be sure that is in an emergency, not a pseudo-emergency, otherwise he’ll whine about it all day.

In order for him to wake me up the following rules apply:

1) He wants sex? Sure, wake me. 99% of the time I am game as long as he doesn’t expect any reverse cowgirl acrobatics or anything else that requires amazing amounts of physical exertion and/or stamina on my part.

2) One of the kids is sick? Yes, wake me immediately.

3) One of the animals just barfed or shit on the floor? If he wakes me I will clean up the mess, go back to bed, and then secretly wish death on him for the rest of the day because he didn’t deal with it himself.

4) He can’t find something? I say no on this one, but he does it all of the time. He can’t find the Advil? He wakes me. It isn’t on the medicine cabinet so I get up and find it sitting on the desk or on top of the fridge. I shoot him hate rays as he blames me for things not being in their place. Apparently, as wife and mother, I am responsible for the proper whereabouts of every item in the house. This has happened with things in the fridge. I have stumbled out of bed, shoved aside the milk and pointed to the mustard, and then fallen back into bed. My word on this one is look harder for said item, or live without it.

5) To ask me if I am hungry? No. I am not hungry. I am tired. That is why I am sleeping. I must admit that I have caused this one to backfire on me many times when he has set a warm plate of freshly cooked hash browns by my head in the middle of the night and I have eaten them eagerly.

This morning, before the sun had its chance to rise, something new happened. I heard a loud whisper above my head, “Are you awake?” I mumbled “mmmm hmmmm” and he asked, “Could you tell me if this noodle is done?” I looked up and saw him standing there with a strand of spaghetti over my head. I mumbled something to the effect of “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me”, rolled over and tried to fall back to sleep. He used to work as a chef in an Italian restaurant for fuck’s sake.

Apparently, the rules are not yet carved in stone; there are variables. I did feel almost guilty when I finally woke up and ate his leftover spaghetti for breakfast though.

Nathan reads S.E.X. by Heather Corinna

Polly reads the brand new Harry Potter book.

I have been working a lot, which is good; it keeps my mind off of things. I was glad when June called and said that she had some things she wanted done around the house. I have shampooed all of her carpets, weeded and weeded some more, planted so many different flowers I couldn’t name them if someone put a gun to my head and what else? I can’t even remember.

I have worked everyday except for Monday, which is officially my “feel guilty for not going to visit my Dad’s grave” day. Sometimes my Mom asks if I would like to go with her on what would have been his birthday or on Father’s Day, but it’s always a Memorial Day request. I would like to say that it doesn’t bother me, going up there, but I’d be lying. My Dad is buried in the Veteran’s Cemetery (he was in the ARMY during the Korean War) and on Memorial Day they put a little flag on every grave. The cemetery is hundreds of acres and I guess it might be an enjoyable, peaceful place to visit, but I don’t want to go there with my Mother ever again. The last time that we went we took my kids, and Polly wanted to buy some flowers to put on my Dad’s grave. I asked my Mom four times if we could stop somewhere to buy flowers, but she just kept driving, ignoring me. When we got to the cemetery we had a hard time finding his grave because so many new people had been buried that everything looked different to me. When we finally did find it my Mom marched over to a garbage can, pulled some dead, slimy, withered flowers out, marched back over and threw them on the grave. “There”, she said, “now he has flowers on his grave.” I truly understand her issues with the man, hell, I am the queen of holding onto anger for years, but the way that she acted in front of my kids freaked them out. When we got home Polly cried because Grampa’s flowers were “yucky and gross” and it took me forever to calm her down. Plus, our friend, the one who recently died, is buried up there, and I would like to be alone when I go. I was relieved that my Mom called me to say she was too sick to go this year, we’d go later… But I am going to take the bus by myself. Alex has no desire to go; he doesn’t understand visiting people after they’re gone. I look at it as something for those left behind, a type of closure, a place to say goodbye.

That reminds me of the time my sister Maria was flipping through my phonebook and in the front I had written DAD’S GRAVE and the plot letters and numbers so that we would never get lost trying to find it again. My sister gave me a funny look and said, “Uh, Tammy, why do you have Dad’s grave in your phonebook?” I told her that I sent him a Christmas card every year and she totally believed me.

It is so hot today. When I got home I was so happy to see that Alex had cut the grass for me. He never cuts the grass. I was all ready to offer him sexual favors but he was curled up asleep. He hates fooling around when it’s this hot anyway. I had forgotten about that. I wonder if people with central air conditioning have more sex in the summer than those who don’t.

Human sexuality has always been a subject of great interest for me. Growing up I felt very isolated because in my family sex wasn’t ever talked about, except to say that it wasn’t to be done until we were married. At a church rummage sale, of all places, I came across a box sitting on the floor filled with paperbacks; it contained the Holy Grail for a young girl like me, a stack of Nancy Friday books and one book containing Penthouse letters. As my hands shook I tried to figure out how I was going to get these up to the table where the nuns, who were also my teachers, were taking the money. I decided the best course of action was to grab several more paperbacks and hide the books in the middle of the large stack. My idea worked. She just counted the spines quickly while they were still in my hands and told me they were a dime a piece. I managed to not get caught by my parents and when we arrived home I hid them under my bed. Over the years I would read those books until they fell to pieces and in the same way I devoured the copy of Anais Nin’s “Delta of Venus” that I picked up somewhere else.

While I had plenty of reading material to pour over, I was lacking someone to discuss my own personal sexuality with. Once while at a slumber party, during a game of truth or dare, a girl was asked to admit a secret that she was ashamed of, something she had never admitted to anyone. With obviously significant hesitation, she admitted that she had once had a dream that she was having sex with someone famous, and that she had become so excited she had touched herself when she woke up. The girls squealed and laughed in horror, some of them burying their faces in their pillows. To make matters worse, when she was asked who the famous man was , she admitted that it was Henry Winkler aka “The Fonz” ,from Happy Days. The poor girl spent her remaining years at that school having people look at her, make the double thumbs up sign, and say “Aaay!!!!”

What I should have done was hugged her at that slumber party and told her that I too had fantasies and dreams. I could have admitted that Chef Brockett from Mister Rogers turned ME on; he with the gravely voice, always whipping up treats in the kitchen.

As I aged things finally began to turn around for me. I found friends I could talk about sex with. Masturbation changed from something that no one would admit to into something just about everyone admitted doing. I began hearing, from friends and even coworkers I didn’t know very well, fetishes they had, and what they fantasized about. A lot of it was pretty basic, some of it was off the wall, but surprisingly, to me, only a few things really grossed me out. I am not saying that everything I heard was a personal turn on, just that it seemed natural to me that people would be aroused by different objects, or different thoughts. I was also fascinated by where these turn ons came from. I asked some people if they knew why they were turned on by feet, or lingerie (when their boyfriend was wearing it), or by having their hair pulled. No one seemed to know. They just liked what they liked. One woman broke down and cried because she fantasized about being raped and she had felt guilty about it her whole life. She had never been raped; she was certain that she’d be devastated if she was, but she couldn’t seem to stop her mind from those thoughts. That woman I did hug.

I used to imagine studying sexuality in college. When I enrolled for the first time I tried to take the class “The Psychology of Human Sexuality” only to find out that there was a waiting list with hundreds of names on it ahead of mine. I finally just broke down and got a copy of the textbook and read it. I found it interesting in parts, but lacking in many ways.

For several years my Mom owned a house that had been converted into a four plex. In the beginning only family lived there, but over the years as my siblings and I all moved out and then eventually had some sort of life crisis that required us to move back in (my sister Maria used to refer to it as The Hotel California), my Mom often rented out some of the units to other people. Sometimes I got along very well with these people; sometimes I avoided them at all costs. There was one woman in particular my sister Maria and I just loved hanging out with. In the mornings we would take turns making coffee and then sit on the front porch with our mugs. We talked about all sorts of things as we took turns holding Nathan, who was a baby at the time. One day this woman, I’ll call her Dee, mentioned that she had a thing for men in uniform. My sister started talking about how sexy she felt when she wore a tool belt. I wasn’t really interested in the conversation as I was too busy craning my neck, looking for the mailman. They finally started to chide me, “Come on. Cops, firemen, Marines?” I turned to them and replied, “No. Mailmen.” They laughed and laughed, my sister even going so far as to hold her stomach, as she rocked back and forth. “You’re attracted to our mailman?”

I tried to explain, “It’s not the mailman. It could even be a mailwoman. It doesn’t matter who it is. It’s not even the uniform. It’s the bag they carry, a bag filled with possibilities.”

At that point they stopped laughing and started listening to me. I had never verbalized this before, and I knew my “bag filled with possibilities” line was going to come back to haunt me later, so I tried very hard to articulate my thoughts. Everyday, except for Sundays, I looked forward to the mail. There was always that moment right before it hit my box that it could be anything. Of course it was almost always bills, coupons, junk mail, and the occasional magazine. Sometimes, however, the most exciting thing would happen and in my box would be a handwritten letter.

It mattered who the letter was from, of course. Getting a letter is always really cool, especially now that email and the telephone have almost done away with handwritten correspondence, but if someone I am attracted to takes the time to sit down and write me, it is a huge turn on for me. This might come from the one guy I had in my life who seemed to get what I was meaning when after he had written me an eight page letter in cursive, complete with little drawings down each side, I looked at him and said, “You give good ink.” The next day another letter was pressed in my hands, and then the next day and the next…

I also love paper. I have been pulled out of the office supply section by a bored friend or family member at more than one store. I love the clean sheets of paper, so ready and waiting for the flow of someone’s pen. I love that wax you can buy, melt, and drip onto the back of an envelope, pressing a stamp into the middle of it before it hardens.

Doing research on fetishes yesterday I was surprised that the third hit I got off of google was an article categorizing a fetish as a mental disorder. I mean, I can see how it could be. But if an adult is taking part in something that brings them pleasure, whether it is alone or with another consenting adult, why is that classified as an illness? I also came across this, which I found to be an interesting read.

I have come to terms with the fact that oftentimes things that I was curious about as a child will be things I will continue to wonder about as an adult. I used to think that age brought wisdom, which it can, but it can also bring more questions instead of all of the answers that I thought I would find. The only thing I am certain of is what I had an inkling of as a little girl. We are sexual by nature and it can be and should be considered normal and healthy. I hope that I have been open enough with my own kids to encourage them to grow into well adjusted sexually comfortable adults. And for those times when either I or my kids feels uncomfortable discussing a certain topic, fortunately there is the amazing Heather Corinna, who has poured countless hours into creating a book I recently purchased that I expect will end up as worn out as the ones I hid under my bed. She also has a website for teens that I wish I could have had as a resource when I was a teen.