Glitter. Real Stories About Sexual Desire From Real Women (4 page)

Games Children Play

Clara’s BFF

Accountant living in the midwest with my husband, furbabies and son.

My family came to America when I was about six years old. I was immediately put into day care so my parents could work two jobs each to make a life for their family in the new county. I remember my first friend, Clara. She was also a child of newly arrived immigrants. We became instant friends, hanging out almost daily.

My new friend Clara’s family had a nice family room in the basement where we could sit around and watch movies undisturbed.
 She preferred romantic chick flicks. I didn’t. But she was the type of person who always got what she wanted.

By the time we were about eight, our games evolved from playing romantic games with dolls, to acting out romantic situations or movies with revised plots. As I said before, her favorite movies were romances.
 We’d play knights and princesses or some adaptation of that, always with a damsel in distress, taking turns being the boy and being the girl. The knight would save the princess, woo her, and then they would fall into bed together. And the game would continue. We would always end up semi naked, touching each other in very inappropriate places. I guess I can consider that the first time I was fingered.

We never kissed. I guess she considered that outside the scope of the game. I never even really thought about any of it. I just did what she wanted, never thinking of how culturally ‘wrong’ it was.
 Let me clarify something, I have always been a sexual person, even before sex was a word that meant anything to me. Some people say they’ve never masturbated. I can remember masturbating even as a small child, in some of my earliest memories. It was always in bed at night, and even then I knew it was ‘wrong’ and I tried not to let my parents catch me. Back then it wasn’t to orgasm (I didn’t even know what an orgasm was), it just felt good. So I guess it would make sense that in my child’s mind these games never seemed strange.

It got to the point that every time we hung out, which would be every weekend (as we got older our parents moved further apart from each other so soon weekends were the only times we could hang out), these were the only games we played. It was all we did. After a couple years I got tired of these games. I wanted to do something else.
 And as I got older I began to realize how ‘wrong’ these games were. Because Clara was used to getting her way, me telling her no didn’t go over well. After a point we started to drift apart in our friendship until we stopped hanging out altogether.

Sex has never been a huge deal to me.
 I know that there are women who mistake sex and love. I was never one of those people. I lost my virginity on my sixteenth birthday, much earlier than most people I know. Granted it was with someone I was dating at the time, but it was more because he wanted to and I just didn’t care enough to argue with him. It wasn’t at all that I was madly in love with him and it meant something special thing to me. There were no flowers and dim lighting. It was more like ‘this hurts like a bitch so let’s just get it over with.’

In college I had many friends with benefits. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t super promiscuous.
 I kept the same ‘friends’ for long stretches of time. I still preferred to play it safe and not screw too many people for fear of contracting diseases, but I never had issues with keeping just the friends with benefits status. I never wanted a relationship from someone just because we’d drunk dial each other in the middle of the night.

I often wonder if my casual stance on sex had to do with those early childhood games.
 To be honest I have thought of those early years a lot, especially during my more promiscuous times. They say that a person’s childhood shapes their adult years. I wonder sometimes what kind of impact it had on me. Sometimes I’m grateful for it since it made anything sexual a non-traumatic experience for me, something I was prepared for. I don’t feel mentally broken. I’m pretty happy with the person I’ve become. Would I want the same experience for my children? No. It still feels, for lack of a better word, ‘icky’. But for me it seemed to work.

Dearest Bob

Meg

I live in an extremely small, conservative town where everyone knows your name. I live here with my dog where I make my living as a writer/photographer/office worker. I first discovered the wonderful world of boys (and girls) in the early 1990s where Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain infiltrated my dreams.

I was twenty-two when we met.

I was introduced to Bob at a party by my friend B. She had been acquainted with him for years and thought it was time she introduced the two of us.

I was nervous.

I didn't have much experience with dating and when it came to sex, I had absolutely no experience. I spent my teenage and college years watching friends date and swap boyfriends/girlfriends like baseball cards. I grew up in a small town where everyone knows everyone and spent kindergarten through senior year of high school with the same group of kids. I grew up being told by my grandmother that if I was just a little prettier, because I'll never be beautiful, and lost some weight, then maybe a boy would ask me out on a date. I was taught that even though some of my friends were having sex, good girls didn't have sex. That was something you only did with your husband. On top of that, I was a fat girl and no one wanted to date, let along fuck fat girls. Sure there had been boyfriends. There were a lot of make-out sessions, but nothing beyond that and nothing they wanted to talk about.

B assured me that he wouldn't care. He didn't have a type. He loved all women: big, small, fat, skinny, tall, short, it didn't matter, he loved them all, knew what they needed and knew how to treat them right.

I trusted B and knew she wouldn't steer me wrong. So I took him home after the party. I had butterflies in my stomach the entire ride to my apartment. I didn't know what to expect but was assured he would take care of me. I would be fine. That I would like it.

Once at my apartment we went straight to the bedroom. No idle chit chat. No unnecessary pleasantries. It was just right down to business. I don't think I've ever stripped out of my clothes as fast as I did that night.

We quickly settled into an easy rhythm. He took some getting used to but once I relaxed I was toast, totally giving in to his moves.

We started slow, with long easy strokes before gradually increasing pressure, speed, changing positions. First on my back until I relaxed, then to my knees to even deeper penetration. And what he did with my clit, I never wanted him to stop.

I had no idea it could feel this way. I had tried bringing myself to orgasm plenty of times before but had never quite gotten there. I'd always been close, but never managed to tip myself over the edge.

But with Bob – sweet, sweet Bob – it didn't take long. The first orgasm came too quickly. So quickly I didn't know what was happening. I tried to hold it off, but couldn't stop it no matter how hard I tried. It left me shaking and breathless but I wanted more.

The second came on slower. It was less frantic, more controlled. Starting at my toes, engulfing me like a warm blanket before a wave of pleasure washed over me. It was one of the most satisfying feelings I had ever had. Afterwards I sank contentedly back into my bed.

The first night with Bob was the first of many. Together he and I discovered what I liked and what I didn't like. How much pressure I liked and where. He's been there when I've needed a stress reliever after work when boyfriends haven't quite been able to get me to where I needed to be.

On the few occasions boyfriends have been open to using toys, he was able to join in on the fun.

If someone would have told me I would have lost my virginity to a vibrator, I would have been mortified. I would have told them they were crazy. There was no way I would ever use a toy especially for something as important as that! But I did, loved everything about it and wouldn't trade that in for anything.

Invisible Bisexual

Delilah Night

Delilah Night is an American living in Singapore with her husband and young children. With unlimited time and money, she would become either a sexologist or a pastry chef. She invites you to visit her website, DelilahNight.com.

To the casual observer, I would appear straight.

I’m married to a person of the opposite sex, and we have two daughters.

I’m not straight. I’m an invisible bisexual.

Growing up in a small rural town, I was taught to treat everyone the same. Yet my family expressed disgust at the idea of two men kissing in public. I would hear things like “why can’t they just keep it in the bedroom?” It’s better than “they’re evil and going to hell,” I suppose, but not by much.

I learned that a relationship with another person of my sex was wrong, dirty, and something I should keep secret. I thought that there were only two possibilities: that I would be attracted to males or to females. The idea that you could be sexually attracted to both sexes was completely foreign.

As I approached middle school, my sexuality began to blossom.

When I stole my mom’s bodice rippers, I was a bit grossed out by the descriptions of the hero’s turgid manhood (and had never seen a penis), so I skipped those parts and focused instead on the heaving breasts of the heroine.

I found a discarded men’s magazine at the campground across the street from our trailer and became fascinated with one of the photos: a naked woman, legs spread, fingers holding her labia open, displaying her clit (although I didn’t have any of those words, either. I knew ‘vagina’, but we mostly called it “down there”). I knew I couldn’t take the magazine home, so I hid it in some bushes and went back to visit it daily until a night of rain destroyed it.

Confusing the issue was the fact that I was supposed to like boys. The boys in my fifth grade class were immature morons. Who would want to kiss them?

Relief, along with attraction, flooded my body whe
n
Star Trek: The Next Generatio
n
spawned my first real crush in 1990: Wil Wheaton. Case closed: I was straight, and I was grateful.

In high school, I began experimenting with boys. I liked kissing boys. I liked the tangible proof of their arousal when ‘hanging out’ turned into making out. I liked it when they slid their hands under my shirt. Those ‘turgid manhoods’ of the bodice rippers were no longer repulsive.

I would think about girls, but when those thoughts turned sexual I told myself that what I felt was envy or aspiration. That I wanted to be like them, not be with them. It’s not like I was a lesbian – I liked making out with boys – so I was straight.

A lesbian wouldn’t enjoy making out with boys. I couldn’t picture any other explanation.

When I became sexually active, I chose male partners.

In college, I constructed a new explanation for my confusion without modifying my identity as a straight woman
:
Society teaches us that women are sexually desirable. It’s only normal that I should find women attractive. It’s society’s fault, not mine.

I told myself that when I would wake up from a dream involving a woman. When I’d masturbate and the person I was thinking about suddenly became a woman. Even finding my panties and cunt wet with arousal after hanging out with a woman I liked (as a friend) didn’t change my identity as a straight woman.

I shared my theory about society and female attraction with my best friend. She agreed with me (which meant I was right). I was straight and it was society’s fault I was attracted to other women. It wasn’t a real thing, just the by-product of social conditioning.

My best friend and I continued to blame society for every girl we thought of as sexy.

We even used my theory to justify experimenting. Just to see what it would be like. Because society had taught us that we should want to experience the difference between men and women’s lips. We ended up on my dorm bed. Lipstick smeared, bras abandoned, fingers sliding into panties. Afterward we went out to a night club and made a point of dirty dancing with men because, dammit, we were STRAIGHT.

It was awkward when she decided that our make-out session had satisfied her curiosity. That maybe at some later time she might do it again, but for now it was all penis all the time. I didn’t feel the same.

Even though by that point I had gay friends and had divorced myself of the prejudices of my upbringing, I just couldn’t wrap my head around my own sexuality. Had I been attracted solely to women, I could have understood that. Wanting both men and women made me feel guilty. Why couldn’t I just pick?

This is the heart of one of the most harmful and common tropes of bisexuality: that we are greedy, slutty fence sitters who are unwilling to limit ourselves to partners of one sex. I should know how harmful it is, it’s the argument with which I berated myself.

Admitting that I sought counseling from my college’s therapists is somewhat embarrassing, but I needed to talk to someone, to say things aloud that I’d kept quiet for a long time, and they provided a safe environment. Within a few months of that make out session, I came out to someone for the first time. My friends accepted me. My mom decided it was a phase I’d soon be over, just as I’d gotten over my goth phase, and rolled her eyes.

While reaching the conclusion that I was bi was a challenge, once I made peace with it, I was quite happy to define myself as bisexual.

I spent the rest of my early and mid-twenties dating and fucking my way through a swath of partners. I hooked up at bars with men and women. I did online dating (although only with guys, since there was no bisexual box to check). I spent hours chat-fucking men and women on instant messenger. I was young enough to enjoy wallowing in the drama of my various relationships. I wasn’t terribly preoccupied with activism or what labels people wanted to apply to me. I just liked sex.

The one exception to this easy dismissal of labels happened when I was living in New York City. I was really horny and wanted to hook up with a girl that night, so I went to a lesbian bar I’d found in the LGBT section o
f
Time Ou
t
magazine. Butterflies flitted nervously in my stomach as I entered. What if they could tell I liked fucking guys, too? Would they think I was just one of those ‘lesbian until graduation’ types? Was I a total phony? I ended up sitting at the bar, only making eye contact with my amaretto sour. I never went back.

When I was twenty-seven I fell in love with a man, and we married. It was around this age that I started to care about activism (spurred by the gay marriage battle in my home state). I’d long considered myself part of the gay community as an ally but now I began to define myself as a member of the community. I wanted to speak out, to be a visible member of the community.

It’s ironic, really, that just as I decided to become visible as a member of the queer community, everyone else had officially declared me to be straight. After all, I had ‘picked’. I was a woman who had married a man. Woman + man = straight. I’m sure that people had assumed I was straight every time I’d had a boyfriend, but I’d never cared about it before.

I’m not straight.

When I tried to be out as bisexual, but married to a man, it often led to intrusive questions like…

“So if your husband’s a guy, how do you handle being attracted to women?”

“Do you cheat on him with women?”

“But you reall
y
prefe
r
men, right? I mean, you married one…”

Married bisexuals (or bisexuals in committed relationships) occupy a barren territory. We are seen to have picked our team (straight or gay), and should just shut up. When we show up with our families at Pride events, we are welcomed as allies, not as members of the community.

While we’ve come a long way in recognizing gays and lesbians, bisexuals have long been ostracized by the gay community. We are a fringe group, and we don’t fit neatly into a box. The default assumption is that our sexuality reflects the sex of our partner, and we are treated accordingly: straight or gay.

We end up invisible.

What does bisexual pride look like? What does bisexual equality mean? That there isn’t an easy answer, or perhaps even an answer at all beyond “accept that sexuality is a fluid continuum and not a binary,” makes our place in the fight for acceptance messy at best.

I will absolutely grant that in many ways, we bisexuals in opposite sex relationships have the easiest road when compared to the rest of the LGBT community. We can get married in all fifty states. We don’t have to worry about our children’s schools accepting our families as families. No one is arguing that we are not the gender we know ourselves to be.

That doesn’t mean that it’s easy to be an invisible bisexual.

I can stand right in front of you and you’ll never see me. Or believe I exist. You’ll think I went through a phase that I’m now over. Or you’ll want sordid details of my sex life to justify my assertion that I am, in fact, bisexual.

There’s no secret bisexual society that I’m required to report to. There is not a quota of women I have to fuck each year to qualify as bisexual. No one is going to knock on my door and order me to turn in a membership card if I don’t masturbate equally to men and women.

You see me with my husband and my kids, but you don’t really see me.