Glitter. Real Stories About Sexual Desire From Real Women (14 page)

Then and Now

Tizz Wall

Tizz Wall is the irreverent Jane-of-all-trades, taking on the world with leather and lace. She is a California-certified domestic violence counselor and sex educator. She works one million and one jobs (pro-domme, writer, speaker, odd-gig-taker) and lives in Oakland, California. You can read more about her at
about.me/tizzwall.

THEN

We were under the bed, hidden from the light, and Jamie told me she had a new game for us to play. “Pull down your pants,” she told me. Ignoring my refusal, she pulled them down herself. Jamie was always in control. The memory becomes obscure after this, stripped down to the view of the coils under the mattress and the sound of her voice. Her mother called for us, and we scrambled, filled with worry and guilt, caught with our hands in the cookie jar. Her hand, rather. She hastily rolled out from under the bed, and yelled at me to do the same.

At three, my mother found blood in my underwear. Years later, the story was told that my cherry was popped while riding a bike. Somehow, that sounded better than being forcefully fingered by another child.

I had sex for the first time with my first boyfriend. I had been sneaking on to the porch for make-out sessions in the balmy Sacramento heat every other night of the summer. He had been pushing for us to have sex, and each time, the pressure grew in intensity. We had met when I was ten and he was fifteen, but years had passed. There were no particular illusions about my virginity being some sort of flowery treasure to withhold, but I knew that I wanted to be in love with the first person I slept with. He had been telling me how beautiful I was, and how much he was in love with me for months, but I couldn’t bear saying it back. It made me uncomfortable. Being too young to understand how to process such profuse and incessant expressions of affection, I was instead awkward, uncomfortable, uneasy. It wasn’t until the fall, when mornings became full of hot tea and frost-covered grass, that I realized I loved him too.

I ditched class to go to the clinic to get birth control, and sat him down to tell him that I would be getting an abortion if I got pregnant. I told him thirteen was too young to be having a baby. He nodded along and agreed. After all, what hot-blooded seventeen-year-old boy is going to say no based on such stipulations? We had sex at the end of the bed. It was over quickly and I remember thinking, “That’s it? That’s what all the hype was about?” He laid on top of me, breathing heavily, and I said aloud, almost to myself, “Oh, we can do better than that!” He leaned up on his arms, moving frantically, and with a quiver of insecurity asked, “What?” I couldn’t bear to tell him that it wasn’t as good for me as it was for him.

He had gone down on me already, and had even gotten a tongue piercing to improve the experience. He stood at my front door, showing me his swollen tongue and waving at my mother. I wasn’t yet ready to return the favor. I convinced myself that maybe if I tried it, I would get turned on. Already I knew that most fears could be overcome by unabashed boldness, and concluded this would be the case.

Once, in the dark of my room, we started. I sat on his legs and put his penis in my mouth. I sat up, a stone of discomfort in the pit of my stomach, and he begged me not to stop. I told him how much I didn’t want to anymore, but he put his hands on my elbows, begging me to continue. I said to him, “B, I can’t. Please, let’s just stop,” and moved to get off of his legs. His arms, thick with teenage muscle from playing football and getting in street fights, held me in place.

“Please, please don’t stop,” he said.

“Please, B. I just don’t want to anymore.”

“Just a little bit more. Don’t stop.”

He wouldn’t let me move until I continued. After that I didn’t want to have sex anymore. We dated for another eight months, but the memories are blurry at best. Strangers rape people. Crazy people rape people. People who want to hurt women will rape them, but people you love (and who love you) don’t want to hurt you, so they would never do such things. It couldn’t be that.

*****

The following January, it snowed in the valley for the first time in over ten years. I am never entirely sure what constitutes a miracle. I have never been sure of what love is supposed to look like.

“Oh, did your cat do those?” Melissa responded to the question with a sneer, glancing down at the jagged marks across her wrists. The freshest lines were scabs, bright red and swollen around the edges, and beneath them there was another layer of faded scars. She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Uh, yeah. My cat. That’s it.”

She glanced over at me, and when our eyes met, there was a moment of mutual understanding. Everyone who is part of the ‘Fucked Up Kid’ crew knows the subtle exchanges that serve as membership cards. One of the first lessons in a childhood filled with vicious outbursts and misdirected vitriol is in learning to read subtext. You learn how eyes communicated love, or regret, or violence. You learn what it means to fight or flee. You learn how to dissect intellectual armor and brokenhearted poker faces.

The ponytail of the girl who had asked the initial question bobbed as she yammered on about her cat, but we had stopped listening. Melissa still hadn’t taken her eyes off of mine. She knew that I knew that those cuts weren’t from the paw of a fuzzy creature. From that moment, at camp, we became friends. She was fourteen, three years older than me, and absolutely, undeniably the first girl I wanted. The shivers of graceless teenage adoration shot through me. Melissa, with her shaved head and sliced arms and torn jeans, is burned into my brain, leaving my head spinning with memories of tingling pubescent lust and confusion.

NOW

He pushes me against the wall, our mouths pressed and open to each other. My left leg is curling up around his right, starting to wrap around him, and he presses his body against mine. He pulls away as quickly as he pushed against me, grabs my hand, and leads me into the living room. He kisses me again, and sits back on the couch.

“I want you so fucking bad right now,” I tell him, my voice low. I straddle him on the couch, pressing my chest to his.

“Oh, really?” He smirks and put his hands through my short, dark hair, pulling my head back. As I lean back, he looks me in the eyes. Arousal. Amusement. The air is heady, and our game has started. He slaps me across the face; instantly, a tingling sensation rushes through my entire body. We do this power play back and forth all the time, and although the pain is always more intense than I remember it, the pleasure that fills me is equally strong. He softly touches my cheek, running his hands up my face, to my ear, and back down my neck. He takes his time with this part, building anticipation and countering the harsh hits with soft caresses. I flinch and stare at his face. It may be strange to call a man beautiful, but the power and desire in his face make this already good-looking man gorgeous.

He laughs.

“Are you okay?”

I nod, struggling to form words at this point. All I can manage is
 “Don’t stop.”

He slaps me again this time. Harder. My cunt is wet. He loosens his hold on my hair and I rush my mouth toward his. The soft warmth of his kiss is broken by him biting my lip, causing me to cry out. The rush continues throughout my body in waves, unabated, both pleasure and pain and pleasure and pain.

He takes me, with bites and slaps and orders. He takes me in a way that may seem non-consensual, but this is what I want. This is what we talked about. I can barely contain myself as he fucks me with equal parts brutality and affection. He pulls back momentarily, and I beg him to choke me again. Please, don’t stop.

This is what I wanted. This is what I asked for. What was forcibly delivered, the acts that left lasting charred marks around the vulnerable parts of my soul, was now something I begged for. What does that make me?

This isn’t making love; we aren’t in love, but the affection is undeniable. At the end, his semen paints itself across my chest, and we lay together and laugh. He rubs my neck and kisses me on the forehead. We fall asleep, limbs entwined and akimbo.

*****

I took a gulp of wine and I said to Jen, “But I don’t feel queer enough since I haven’t been in a real queer relationship. I have only been in relationships with men. And now that I finally feel ready to call myself ‘queer’, to openly pursue that queerdom, I am getting involved with this guy.”

Jen shook her head at me, and put her wine glass down.

“That is such bullshit. That is totally internalized misogyny. You are queer if you say you are queer, and if you feel queer. We are not defined by the people we are fucking. That is complete bullshit, and you know it. You are not defined by the person you are with.”

Truth from such admirable friends can make a hard heart soften and grow. Blue eyes, wide like windows, welled up with tears.

“You are not defined by the person you are with.”

Are We Doing This Wrong?

Hipster Homemaker

The Hipster Homemaker is a late-twenty-something wife, mother, childbirth educator, birth doula, and lover of life. When she's not busy navigating the world of AP parenting or teaching expectant mothers about the birth process, she enjoys cooking, knitting, yoga, wine, and bad television.

From the outside looking in, I seem every bit the ‘good girl.’ I always got good grades, never got in trouble, and never got caught with my panties down. In high school, I had a good number of boyfriends, all of which I refused to sleep with. I am far from religious, and certainly not put off by sexuality, but as a young girl in high school, sex seemed to have too many negative consequences for me to want to do it. Sure, there were times
I
wante
d
to, but I always held back. Looking back, I also really got off on the power of telling these guys “no” when they wanted to move things along. Nope, I’m not going to fuck you. Too bad, dude, move on.

Freshman year of college, however, I met the man who eventually became my husband (and father of our two-year-old-son). I was nineteen, and ready to rid myself of my virgin status. So was he. Plus, I reall
y
liked him
.
Like, A LOT more than any of the other guys I had dated. So, after a few weeks of dating, we had sex. It wasn’t awesome. We were both first-timers and didn’t have any idea what we were doing, or what we liked. I swear, I honestly thought we just did i
t
wrong
.
Like, maybe we didn’t actually have sex after all. So, we talked about it. We read about it. We tried different things. Pretty soon, we wer
e
really good. 

Now, when I tell people that my list of sexual partners consists of my marriage license, I inevitably get the following questions or comments: “Oh, you were waiting until marriage?” or “You just think it’s good because you don’t have anything else to compare it to.” No, we did not wait until we were married. We waited about three weeks. We didn’t get married for another five-and-a-half years. And no, I don’t just think it’s good because I haven’t slept with anyone else.
I
kno
w
it’s good. And here’s why:

As cliché and dorky as this sounds, we really, really cared about each other and wanted to please each other. We also did a lot of research. We read sex books and magazines together. We talked about what we wanted to try and what we didn’t. Then, afterwards, we would go over our new adventure, move by move, and talk about what felt good, what didn’t, what we wanted more/less of, and how we could do better next time. Many nights, ‘next time’ was about twenty minutes later. We were young, horny, and couldn’t get enough of each other.

Later, I got a job doing sex toy parties to help pay for college. When you can get any toy you want at cost, things definitely spice up in the bedroom. Not only did it make our time together a lot more fun, but the experimentation I was doing on my own also led me to find things I liked that we could do as a couple, as well.

I have found that since we are (and have always been) so comfortable and open with each other, our sex life reflects that. We are never afraid to try new things, talk about what works, what doesn’t and what our limits are.

We occasionally do roleplaying. I do not like to be in a submissive position at all, so even if my role is traditionally the submissive, I always flip it, and end up being the dom. Our favorite scenarios are police officer and naughty girl getting pulled over (who is really, really bad, and will do anything to get out of another ticket!), professor/student, strangers having a one night stand (and don’t know each other’s names), oh, and of course, the cheerleader effect: dress up like a cheerleader and your man is putty in your hands. “Coach, yo
u
can’
t
kick me off the team! Take off your pants and I’ll show you why…”

I also enjoy being very dominant and restraining him in various ways. Tying him up, handcuffing him to the bed (or coffee table, or dresser!), blindfolding him, spanking him, etc. To me, nothing gets me hotter than seeing my husband, who is the size of your average NBA player, being rendered completely helpless by a girl who is 5’3” on a good day.
 We do engage is some light cuckolding, in which I tell my husband that there is no way he is going to be able to get me off and his technique just isn’t up to my standards. He has to prove himself a worthy lover.

Then, there’s the dirty talk. I can’t remember the last time we had sex and dirty tal
k
wasn’
t
involved. I constantly had a filthy monologue running in my head, but was always afraid to say those things out loud. Finally, one day, I let it loose. Roleplaying was a good outlet for me to get started with dirty talk, because it wasn’t ‘me’ saying those things, it was my ‘character’. Eventually, though, I just started blurting out whatever nasty thought was in my head. And I never stopped.

Truth be told, not all of these scenarios always end well. There are times when one (or both) of us will burst out laughing from something the other says or does. Sometimes, things that seem hot in a porno or in a book don’t feel that great in real life. But, we keep trying new things. After nine years together, and a 9lb. baby tumbling out of my vagina, my husband still wants to have wild sex with me. And I with him. Even with a two-year-old banging on the door.

So, although I may not have a lot of notches on my bedpost, I sure as hell can rock it off the frame.