I Overthink My Own Desires

You all know the story: good girl, strict Christian home, virgin...

Secretly desires to have sex in a vintage Chevy Impala.

Yes? No? Okay, let me explain.

Growing up, my parents kept it real about everything. From drugs, to religion, all the way through to how cruel the real world can be, yet they never fully explained to me what sex really was all about.

I mean, I knew the gist of it: stick it in, normally a baby comes out. That’s what I told myself and what I saw on television from the shows my parents let me watch. For the longest time, I thought that that’s what went down. I was never informed of all the other things: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I only ever knew the biological cliff notes.

So you can imagine my dilemma when I turned fourteen and all of the hormones came rushing in. I remember the exact day and the first time. I was fourteen and I was watching a critically acclaimed Marvel movie (The Avengers), and suddenly I discovered how attractive Chris Hemsworth was in a cape. When I felt it, I was suddenly awakened as a woman for the first time. I thought that maybe I was sick. What I thought was nausea was really me being turned on.

Fast forward two months later and I’m in the bathroom stall of the girl's locker room after first-period gym. You can imagine the horror that was plastered on my face when I stood up from the toilet seat and was faced with a stool of blood. I remember what my mother had told me about my period and what it all meant, but that conversation was brief and the underlying message was clear: never have sex and never use tampons.

Months went by and I faced these new changes on my own. I thought they were all things to be ashamed of. When I saw someone online or on television that I liked, I snuck away to my room to ogle in peace and experiment with the feelings that ignited within my body (my womanhood in particular). I read romance novels on my kindle in secret (all of which never went as far as describing the build-up and the metaphorical feelings that accompanied having sex), I watched shows that showed sex briefly (never any nudity), and I listened to music that described what it was like. Yet I never fully understood what it all meant. In my mind, I thought it was this thing that was sacred between two lovers and nothing more. It’s never meant to be spoken of lightly unless someone is attempting to be crude or disgusting. I ascended slowly into young adulthood blind to what was really happening with my body.

I floated into this sexual limbo where I knew that sex felt good, but at the same time I knew it was wrong. I saw the negative effects it had on people in pop culture (the slut-shaming, the scarlet letter A’s being plastered on men and women), and wanted to stay away from it. However, a part of me couldn’t help but allow my curiousity to blossom.

Then I stumbled upon a book that had one new yet strange word amongst its sea of pages:

“Masturbation”

I didn’t understand it at first, the appeal. Why do that when you can just as easily find someone to have sex with? The answer is that finding someone that you're comfortable with to have sex with isn’t simple. There’s this emotional aspect that comes into play, and for some people that takes time. I knew that being the hopeless romantic that I was, I’d want to be comfortable during my first time, so why not experience what that felt like in my imagination?

In the novel, the girl uses the sink in her bathtub. She positioned herself underneath it and let the water run on. She seemed to have enjoyed it, so I thought that I could give it a shot. After all, the bathroom was the only room in the house that I had some sense of privacy.

At first, there was nothing but awkwardness. I felt silly sitting in that way and having the water rush to that area only to have it slide down and disappear down the drain.

Minutes pass, and eventually, I begin to feel this tension in my womanhood. It was as if every fiber of my being was focused on that one sweet spot. Everything built up, and, for the first time, I had experienced an orgasm.

When the aftershock hit, I convulsed repeatedly and suddenly I wanted more. I sat under that faucet for a good thirty minutes experiencing a total of four orgasms. Each one more mind-quaking than the last.

Eventually, it became a pre-shower ritual. My parents just thought I was over-hygienic, which I was, but in secret, I was imagining myself as this confident woman who had mind-blowing sex with any partner of her choosing without any consequences. I used to psych myself out of wanting to do it so often out of fear of getting pregnant. That’s how little I knew about my body. I had to mature on my own and read enough to cast that fear out of my mind. Going to my parents with these embarrassing questions was a no-go.

Months go by, and my bathtub ritual became a thing of the past as I discovered dj-ing (if you don’t understand the reference as to what I was doing here, you probably shouldn’t be reading this). By the time I was sixteen, it became this thing that I did whenever I had a crush on a guy or saw someone attractive in a film. I even did it when I was reading romance novels and a particular chapter just seemed...good.

Years pass and I slowly began to do it less and less. I began to fall for guys and imagined possibly losing my virginity to them in hotel rooms, bathrooms, or the back of their cars. I’d seen too many orchestrated sex scenes on television to not know how low those standards were, yet, still, I allowed my mind to wonder.

I didn’t really become physical with a boy until I was 17, when I received my first kiss.

It was simple, yet really sweet. He kissed me twice, a simple peck on the lips, after I had professed that I was falling for him and he’d admitted that he was doing the same. We continued having encounters of that nature, slowly easing into the concept of making out, hickeys, and pressing up against each other sexually, yet nothing more.

That didn’t stop me from wanting more though.

What made things worse for me was the lack of an actual relationship with this boy. We never officially started dating, only did the physical things that couples did when they were into each other. However, when people asked, he declared me his and I did the same to him.

I spent my entire senior year of high school in this romantic limbo with this boy, hiding the relationship away from my parents. I knew that they wouldn’t approve, especially since they didn’t want me dating in the first place. His name had been brought up on multiple occasions, however, to see if they would budge, but no such luck. According to them, I didn't have time for boys until I had established the political career that I had been dreaming of.

So I hid it away, every text, kiss, hug, love bite. My parents were left in the dark out of fear of disappointing them. When I saw him, he awakened this suppressed portion of me that only bloomed when I was around him. At one point the topic finally came up: sex.

I flat out told him, unashamedly, that I was a virgin and that he was my first kiss. He took it the way I hadn’t expected him to: with understanding and the desire to want me to reserve my virginity for a guy I was helplessly in love with. He agreed with me and I thanked him for that, for not taking advantage of me and helping me stick to my guns, but deep down I wanted him to fight me on it.

I wanted to lose my virginity to him.

I started doing research: how to know when it was the right time, who to do it with, and what happens before, during, and afterward. Then I stumbled upon an article that thoroughly explained what an orgasm was biologically for both guys and girls.

It scared the hell out of me.

Why? Because I’m hemophobic: I’m scared of blood.

Let me explain for those of you who are lost:

During an orgasm, for girls, there are four phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. During the excitement phase, the vagina lubricates, expands, and on some occasions, it begins to swell. Plus, let’s not forget you begin to increase in breathing and so does your heart rate and blood pressure. Plateauing occurs when the lips of the vagina begin to puff, the walls begin to swell with BLOOD, and the opening slims down a bit. Your vagina lips will literally redden from all of the blood rushing there. Your whole body tenses up as your muscles deal with the fact that your blood is rushing to your vagina. When you finally orgasm, your vaginal walls “rhythmically contract” by every eighth of a second along with your muscles and your uterus. Then when you reach your resolution, your uterus and vagina return back to their resting positions, and if you receive additional stimulation from your sex-God of a partner, you can double up on the experience and double orgasm.

That all sounds great, right? Well the double orgasm part. But reading it as someone who's hemophobic was extremely daunting and caused me to live in fear of sexual encounters for the longest. Every time I was with my “friend” and got turned on, it felt great, but when it ended, I felt my skin crawl. On some occasions, I would push him away. I didn’t want to feel that happen to my body because I knew the biology behind it.

Once again, I was living in fear of my own body and the woman I was slowly becoming. It felt good until I realized what it all meant.

Weeks went by, and I began to flat out avoid encounters of any kind with any male. I sunk into his place where I was ashamed of my womanhood and what the world may think of me. I kept telling myself that I was a.) wrong for wanting to have sex and b.) wrong for being afraid of having sex. I was in a constant battle with myself every day for what felt like forever.

Then one day I slipped up and miscalculated and ran into my friend.

He said he missed me, and I didn’t lie when I said that I missed him too. I wanted to kiss him, like I’d done before, but my fear continued to surface every time we got closer. Eventually, I pushed it out of my head and kissed him again. Old feelings resurfaced, and this time I didn’t shove them away.

At that moment, I realized that all of my fear stemmed from the fact that I was worried about my self-image. I lived in constant fear of what others may think of me, especially my parents. Everyone does, after all, but that can’t stop us from living our life. You’re only a young-adult once.

So I fell into his embrace and we reminisced in each other’s presence by kissing each other like we’d never done it before.

Before you ask, no, we did not have sex. I am still a virgin. A virgin by choice, not because of my religion or because of my parents. I’m saving it for me, not because of what others may say about or think of me. My paranoia, my fear, still clouds my judgment on some days, but whose doesn’t. That second voice is useful, after all, and comes in handy on some days. On other days, I live life knowing that my sex, my womanhood, my awakening will come whenever I am ready, not when the world feels like it is convenient.