When I was younger, it was all over the news that a local woman had been tied to a tree, raped, and murdered. I asked my mother what rape was, and I don’t remember what her answer was – just that I wasn’t satisfied with it, and went and looked it up in the dictionary, like they had trained me to do with every other word I didn’t know the meaning of. It wasn’t in my children’s dictionary, but it was in the big red regular one. As were words like sodomy and masturbation. The definitions of which intrigued and excited me – they didn’t sound bad or scary at all, so what was the big deal?
I couldn’t have been even ten, and for a long time, I had known that rubbing parts of my body felt very, very good. Masturbating has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Then, when I was twelve, a girl I knew asked me if I fingered myself. What? No…why would I do that? Wait…guys? YOUR DAD??? She had explained that her dad taught her how to do it, and it was how men could tell if a girl was ready to have sex. I knew I wasn’t, so I didn’t pay her much mind. That year, I’d been molested, and it proved to be the match that set many other issues on fire.
After that, everything came from the internet. Freshman year of high school, I had lots of internet access. Netscape was awful, but it helped me find much more about sodomy than the dictionary ever did. And I learned that all my rape fantasies were okay, and not a sign of something wrong with me – even if my teenage self, with the complete lack of self-esteem, had rationalized them by thinking “Well, that’s the only way someone will ever want to have sex with ME.”
I never got the birds and the bees talk. All my knowledge came in the form of books, abuse, and zeros and ones through the tubes. I have no idea how I’ll educate my kids…but educate them, I will. I’ve always been good at doing well, with or without a plan.
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