Warning: adult language and situations ahead! 

 

I was that little girl who was put on time-out for bringing in the story book with nudey pictures and telling people how sperms and eggs made babies.

I was that little girl who hovered around the jacuzzi jets a little too long.

I was that adolescent kid who locked herself away reading sexy, trashy, romance novels our aunt handed down to my older sister.

I was that adolescent kid forced to put away her tits ages before the rest of the girls in my class hit puberty.

I was that tween who looked older than she was and was accused of behaviours I didn’t understand yet.

I was that awkward teenager whose obsession with sex stopped at books and pictures, porn and after-hours programming, eavesdropping, and a very active imagination.

I was the tease whose first date took me to dinner, danced with me under the stars, parked in his dad’s driveway, and then finally took me home despondent when I refused to make out after he begged for hours.

I was that teenage girl whose secret parlay with anorexia was ignored by her parents—whose mom convinced her gynaecologist, without much persuasion, to put me on the pill because I hadn’t menstruated in almost a year.

I was that ordinary college kid who spiralled into depression, dropped out of college, and started seeing my mother’s hunky therapist.

That was the summer I found my inner goddess, lost it, then went looking all over for her.

A. was the guy I thought was just right. I found him when I hit bottom. He liked me. He liked how I looked.

We laughed. We made out. We made out a lot. He was nice to me. He listened to me. He was patient. I cringed when he introduced me as his girlfriend. I wasn’t used to so much attention. I flirted with other boys. I felt guilty. We cuddled and fondled each other. We went to concerts and he took me ice skating. I fell for him. He asked me to move to be close to him. I declined the sweet invitation. He refused to have sex with me.

I internalized his rejection. I moved to California.

Z. was my roommate’s friend. They were on-again, off-again. They met at the needle exchange. He was the perfect antithesis of the good guy I had left behind in the Midwest. He wore sarongs and burned sage in the bath. His back was inked.

He was five years older than me and surfed every morning at sunrise. He was a chemistry major and slept with my best friend.

I needed him. I had to feel destruction.

I lost my virginity one week before my twentieth birthday in the sauna of a co-ed surreptitiously named tea house. We were high. I let him do everything. For the next several months I worried I might have AIDS. I didn’t have sex for years after. Instead, I perfected my make-out skills. I teased the boys among our group of friends. I gladly locked lips with ladies and strangers and welcomed heavy petting.

I stopped wearing a bra, learned yoga, and found power in my body and femininity. I raved in the nude. I stayed on the periphery of the bacchanal parties we frequented. I maintained my boundaries. I achieved a lonely, though relieving status of too-hard-to-get. I was tiptoeing on a tightrope of fear.

At 24, I moved to London, an attempt to create even more distance between myself and my high-achieving parents. My sisters were all paired up and I was roaming Europe trying to (re)establish my identity.

I wasn’t ready.

I was introduced to C., who was attractive, passionate and significantly damaged. Perfect: no reason to commit. We agreed to keep it casual. I wanted to explore. He was a mess of baggage. We had amazing sex. And then I fell for him.

And I thought I was ready, but he wasn’t.

So (eventually) I let go.

And then I met D., a tall doctor with blue eyes and nice parents. He even owned a home.

He was in love with me. I was exotic to him. He put me on a pedestal. I knew I wasn’t attracted to him, but for nearly a year I played with the idea of him. I closed my eyes when we had sex. He complained about wearing a condom. He wanted me to wear stilettos and shave my bush—the whole thing.

He peed on me. He spat on me. He thought it was kinky, to do these things, but it made me feel like a whore. We talked about marriage. We went to couples counselling.

I was bored.

I flirted with other men. I broke-up with him when he cancelled our dinner plans to see another woman.

I felt free. I figured that if commitment meant being so unhappy, it wasn’t for me.

I moved to Brooklyn to be close to my family, to connect with my old me. When my mom died I was suddenly liberated. There was no sense of obligation anymore.

Parts of my identity were lost. Parts of who I am were reinforced.

I started to question the lure of open relationships and alternative partnerships. I had anonymous sex. I had Tinder sex. I dated lawyers and doctors and was bored bored bored. I dated artists and actors and got caught up in their creative spirituality. I was fucked on the hood of a car and in an office after-hours and in a bar bathroom.

I was date raped.

I was the other woman. I consented when I was too tired to protest. I consented when I was too lonely to say No.

I consented when I was sad because having someone in my bed sometimes feels good.

I purged the sexual energy I needed to explore. And I still want more.

Only now I understand that even more than being penetrated in a steamy and contrived situation, I want stability. I want to have sex with the same person a lot a lot a lot. I want to know someone’s wrinkles and crinkles and freckles and the spot that I kiss, the spot that I touch, that makes him moan. I want to share my shit and unload my baggage. I want to fight and make-up and hug and hold hands.

I want to have babies.

I want monogamy to not feel like an imposition.

I want to break rules and push boundaries, with a partner. I want infidelity to be perhaps expected and maybe okay. But we’ll have to talk about it a lot a lot a lot. I don’t want to compete because I am an amazing person who does amazing things and has so much to give I get lost in it sometimes.

And also, I was raised by a couple who could have given up way back but stuck it out through four fierce girls, not-so-covert affairs and a death sentence that informs my everyday decisions.

They’ve become my role models. I am ready for (something like) that.

 

 

 

 

Author: Ezat Luba

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Thành Alex/Unsplash