I have Asperger syndrome. It’s a lifelong condition, but I was only diagnosed as an adult. It’s only now that I can look back at the way I learned about sex as a child and as a teenager that I can see how it made things difficult. One particular way this happens is the need to order one’s life with rules, and not to be able to understand when they should not apply, as others might.
I know my parents must have had The Talk with me at some point, but I retain only one memory: my father reading a sentence from a book saying, “the penis becomes hard and filled with blood.” I responded with disgust at the phrasing. I was young enough at the time that no other memories remain: having had the one discussion, there were never any more.
The Talk presumably focused on penis-in-vagina sex. It’s true that everyone needs to learn about that, but it would have no practical relevance to me until my mid-twenties. About the far more topical issue of masturbation, I learned nothing. Nor was much useful information forthcoming from school sex ed; the TV programmes we were shown explained only that “a boy may hold his penis and get a tingling sensation. A girl may get a similar tingling sensation by stroking the front of her vulva.”
But at the age of about ten, I discovered masturbation independently: I had my own name for it and rules about how to do it, and I thought I was the only person in the world who knew how to do it, or I’d surely have heard about it before then. So for a few years, I masturbated happily with no regrets. Meanwhile, my parents took me to church every Sunday, and I was trying to pray and read the Bible. One day I came across the line in the Book of Revelation which describes heaven– “Outside the gates are the murderers, the idolaters, the sexually immoral…” I realised clearly that what I had been doing was something to do with sex. And a terrified voice in my head asked, “Is that *me*?”
For the next six or seven years I had no peace. If lusting after other people was sinful, it had to go: I made myself stop fantasizing. If sex before marriage was sinful, and masturbation was a kind of sex, it had to go. That wasn’t so easy: I put dozens of rules into place and none of them worked. I tried giving it up permanently, and failed every few days, hating myself more each time. I tried throwing dice or coins when I was horny, so that if God didn’t want me to do it, he would have a way to stop me. I tried praying for wet dreams every night, to no avail. I tried only masturbating on Fridays, as a stepping stone to stopping entirely, but I *lived* for those Fridays.
In short, I spent most of my teenage years in the certain knowledge that I was an evil person, and that part of my very self, my sexuality, was inevitably going to send me to hell. And I don’t know how I could have been loosed from the trap. I wanted to talk to someone about what was troubling me, but I had nobody except my long-suffering diary. I would have been mortified to talk with my parents about it, I didn’t have any teachers I could raise the issue with, I had no friends at school to speak of, and though I read everything in the library I could get my hands on, nothing would reassure me as to the morality of masturbating. Maybe if someone had raised the issue at the beginning, or maybe if I’d had someone from the start that I could talk over any problem with, things would have been better. I don’t know.
You know how Cosmo has a different article about sex on the front cover every month? How it’s really the *same* article, over and over again, just with a few different paragraphs here and there? What about those racy “It Happened To Me” stories in the middle of YM magazine? “I had sex with my stepfather,” or “My mom was a prostitute”, etc. Those ridiculous articles were my earliest introduction to a sexual lifestyle.
I devoured them, article after article, issue after issue, in a big, quiet library a few towns over. My mother was part of a quilting group that met at this particular library on Wednesday nights and sometimes Saturdays. She’d bring me along so I could do my favorite thing – read. She was sort of in the dark about exactly what I was reading, of course. I would flip the magazines over to the back and stack them so the least salacious advertisement was on the top of the stack.
Sex was driven out of my parents’ house. I knew they were having it, they knew I knew they were having it, and they put me on the pill before I started having it. Needless to say, no one wanted to talk about it. When I got my period, I waited a day and a half to tell my mother, convinced she was going to explain in detail how tampons were inserted. If something sexual happened to flit across the TV screen, my mother would change the channel after a few agonizing seconds. Sooner or later I figured out that if I simply left the room, I could listen from the dining room and figure out when it was safe to come back in. I can’t even tell you how much television was ruined for me by Viagra commercials.
I know this is supposed to be a story about what my parents told me about sex, but that would be a very short story indeed. The only way to tell my story is to talk about the person who *really* taught me about sex.
When I was fifteen I met the guy who would save me from night after night of awkward television watching with my parents. My first boyfriend was a freak, a loner. He wasn’t exactly who I always thought I was going to lose my virginity to, but it was obvious that there was a story waiting to be told between us. People I barely knew laughed at me, said I could do better than Dave. They didn’t understand him and they certainly didn’t understand me. I knew I would do things for him that I wouldn’t do for anyone else. I lost my virginity to him a year later.
We spent every day together and had sex nearly every day. I realize now how lucky I was to have such a passionate boyfriend who wanted nothing more than to please me. One day my father opened the door to my room to find me lying on the bed with Dave’s head between my legs. He immediately closed the door and stood out in the hallway. “You don’t have to come out, I just want to know what kind of pizza you wanted me to order for dinner,” he yelled through the door. It still makes me cringe thinking about it. My poor father.
The sexual energy that brought us together was the only thing keeping us together after a while. He was a member of my family and I couldn’t imagine losing him, but Dave wasn’t easy to love. He contracted Lyme disease and refused to get treated for it, saying medicine was unnatural and he would heal himself. He started walking with a limp, then started using a cane, before he would admit his ‘treatment’ wasn’t working. He was a person of extremes and his opinion was the only right one. Being his girlfriend was a full time job. I was incapable of leaving him alone. A three week family vacation to Germany, where a phone call to Dave was more expensive than most of the souvenirs I bought, was an unbelievably stressful experience. I didn’t want to be surprised by something that had happened to him in my absence. Not only was Dave a handful on his own, but his father had been known to throw knives at him, among other things. He made me come, but he made me cry too. Years later he told me that he had both a personality disorder and bipolar disorder, and I thought, NOW it all makes sense!
I was single when I went to college and it was the right thing to do. I don’t regret what I did in high school and I am learning to look back on my past with laughter rather than embarrassment. Even when my parents found my stash of condoms and a vibrator in my old bedroom.
My mother and I are slowly growing more comfortable when it comes to discussing sex and sex-related issues. When she found out I had a vibrator her only comment was “You know, those can be a girl’s best friend”. She seems to be coming to terms with the fact that I, her only child, am a sexual being just as I am equally learning to acknowledge the same about her.
Now, my father has been sick as long as I can remember. His illness(es) started long before I was born, but the more severe ones didn’t kick in until around my sixth birthday. Since then we’ve been in and out of doctors, seen about every branch of medicine available, and keep a fold-out list of his medications because no form ever has enough room. He’s getting worse, and my mother and I are very open with his slow, downward spiraling health.
Eventually the two conversations overlap. He’s gone on testosterone therapy because the other medications have all but eradicated the hormone from his system. I don’t give a great deal of thought to their sex life beyond the quiet amusement that the rare nights their door is closed I assume they’re trying. Trying is the key, heartbreaking word.
Driving to the grocery store one day, I asked my mother if it was helping. We don’t discuss their sex life much at all, certainly not in specifics at this point.
She sighed, “No. I mean, it’s helping his mood, and for a while there it was helping.. some.”
I prompted her to continue.
“It’s just, it’s not..working. I mean, things…work, as they do, and the feeling is there, it’s just…not working.”
I gave her a half-frown of sympathy and told her as much was unfortunate, that it must be hard for her. It was then she said to me what has ended up being the most profound statement I’ve ever heard from her.
“You find out how much you love someone.”
It hit me then, and it hit me later all the more. My mother, a sexual person, has been unable to have sex with the man she loves for a very long time now. When I think about that, and I think about it in the context of my own relationship, with my own partner, it’s a lot to take in. Sex is a big part of my life, certainly a big part of our life as a couple. When I think about how much our relationship would be affected by the inability and lack of desire for sex, especially in the context of a couple decades, it nearly takes my breath away.
I gained a lot of perspective on that car ride. Her statement was another weighty piece in the already plenty complicated puzzle of sex, and it’s one I’m not likely to forget any time soon.
“What is HIV?”
We had passed a city bus with an advertisement for free HIV testing on June 27, which is National HIV Testing day. And I know we have had this conversation before. But it doesn’t hurt to have it again. He turns thirteen on Saturday.
As far as we know, he isn’t too interested in the opposite sex, but he’s told us he’s straight. He’s more interested in airsoft guns, shooting black powder, and his bike. We are ok with that. But we know that these conversations are a necessary part of his education.
So I talked about HIV. And AIDS. And how these are transmitted. And how one should not do drugs. And how it’s important to use barriers when one is sexually active. And how those barriers include condoms and dental dams. And how those things protect against most STD’s. And what kinds of other STD’s are out there. And how it’s important to get tested often when one is sexually active with multiple people. And how “often” is every 3-6mos.
And how some STD’s are treatable with antibiotics, but some of them have no cure. And some of them can be passed to babies. He sat quiet, taking it all in. He asked a few questions. And then we moved on to a different subject.
I know this isn’t going to be the last time I have this conversation – with him or any of the other kids. But I am so glad that he feels comfortable asking his questions. That he knows his questions will get answered. That he knows he can come to me with these questions. It proves that I am a damn good parent.
–Submitted by Monkey from They Belong to Us
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