The V-Word (9 page)

Things were different that summer. I'd been dating Sam for nine months. He was a year behind me in school and, while we both cared deeply for each other, we knew that our relationship might very well end when I went to college in the fall. So it took on a fierce intimacy, as if we could somehow forestall the changes to come.

We always stopped just short of making love, frustrating as it was. We may have been young but we weren't foolish. We weren't taking any chances on an unintended pregnancy—not an unusual occurrence in our small town—but getting birth control was a dicey prospect. We knew the owner of the drugstore and he knew our parents. You couldn't just waltz in and buy a package of condoms.

One night, we were doing a lot of enthusiastic fooling around behind the barn. We were both highly aroused and one of us said, for probably the millionth time, “I wish we could do it.”

And then it occurred to me—maybe we could. I was on the second day of my period, and I thought this was probably the one totally safe time of the month to have sex. (I was wrong, of course. It's rare, but women can in fact become pregnant during menstruation.)

I was game, but what if Sam was totally turned off by the idea? My body told my brain to stop worrying and go for it.

“Um, I'm having my period now,” I whispered.

“That's okay,” he said, his mouth on my nipple. “I don't mind.”

“I mean, it's a safe time for us to do it. If it doesn't gross you out.” I waited for any sign of disgust.

Sam didn't hesitate. “Gross me out? Hell no!”

“It might be kind of messy,” I said. “You'll get all bloody.”

He grinned. “I don't mind. I've been bloody before.”

“Not there, I bet,” I teased.

We took off the rest of our clothes in about five seconds. The sight of Sam's slim, athletic nakedness made me gasp. I removed my tampon and threw it into the bushes. I wondered briefly if some wild animal would bring that deliciously bloody thing back to its den. Better than Sam's father finding it the next day.

Between my arousal and the blood, I was plenty wet, and he entered me easily. The sex was great—amazing—blood and all. Afterward, we cleaned up with some tissues I found in my purse, giggling in sudden self-conscious embarrassment at what we'd just done. We'd lost our virginities in a sea of menstrual blood.

I drove home that night thinking about what a great guy Sam was. I was pretty sure that most guys would have recoiled at the very thought of having sex with a girl who was having her period. It probably helped that both of us lived on farms. We saw and experienced life in all of its beautiful and ugly messiness, from birth to death. Hell, what's a little blood? And who am I kidding? It probably helped that we were two horny teenagers.

Even so, menstruation was seen as dirty and shameful. We lived in monthly dread that a tampon would fall out of our lockers, or that we'd bleed through onto our stonewashed blue jeans. Remember that scene in Stephen King's
Carrie
, in which the main character gets her first period in the locker room? Her crazy mother hasn't given her a heads-up and Carrie naturally thinks she is dying. And how do the other girls react? They throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. It's the ultimate public humiliation, reinforced by the pig's blood at the prom.

Menstrual etiquette dictated that, while you might complain about
that time of the month
to your girlfriends, it was otherwise a closely held secret. Ridiculous tampon commercials assured us that if we used their products we'd spend our periods in delirious happiness, frolicking on the beach in white bikinis and going horseback riding. No one would know about our “little secret.”

This idea that menstrual blood is somehow dirty isn't new, of course; it's part of our cultural DNA. Menstruating women were, and often still are, considered unclean in many religious traditions. Contact with a menstruating woman—not to mention sex!—was bad juju.

I'm no longer a Baptist or very religious in any way but I can't help but think of the old Baptist hymn
There Is Power in the Blood
. It begins, “Would you be free from the burden of sin? There's pow'r in the blood, pow'r in the blood.” Although the hymn refers to the blood that the crucified Jesus shed for our sins, it makes me think of the power of my own blood. It gave me the power to make my own choice about sex that night. My blood made me free from the burden, not of sin, but of worry. Sam and I managed to score some condoms that summer, and it was a good thing too. Having made love once, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have had the self-control to stop doing it.

I went off to college that fall and, predictably, we broke up soon after the homecoming dance. We were going different places: Sam wanted to be a farmer and I dreamed of the big city. But I still give him a lot of credit for his enthusiastic embrace of me and my body—especially at that time of the month.

Thank you, Sam.

Pink, blue. Girl, boy. Gay, straight. Virgin, not.

It's tempting to line up the little boxes and get everyone to jump into one. But forget the tidy categories. Reality can be much more complicated, especially when it comes to sexual attraction. Why does that woman with the dreadlocks make my heart race? Why do I flush every time I see that guy with the fish tattoo?

Arousal is unpredictable. Sometimes it grows slowly out of a deep emotional connection. Sometimes it bursts out of nowhere, a powerful physical reaction that surprises us with its ferocity.

Just as we go through phases where we feel more or less sexual, we can also experience fluid patterns of attraction that change throughout our lives. In the next story, Sara shares how a growing understanding of her sexual identity influences how she views the world and her place in it.

T
he last time I had to explain about my sexual identity,
^I
I was in a speeding car along I-35 on an unseasonably cold day in Texas.

Okay, I didn't
have
to, per se. But the friend who was driving was curious. We'd met through the young adult author community, so he knew my work and he knew that I identified as queer. But I'd, in quick succession, mentioned a workshop for emerging LGBTQ voices I was excited to be teaching and then said something about my husband. And although he didn't come right out (as it were) and ask, I had the impression that the juxtaposition of these two pieces of information was somehow surprising.

So I told him the latest version of what I say when people want to know how it works for me. Yes, I've had significant relationships with people of different genders (and by that I mean both with cis
^II
men and cis women, and with people whose sense of gender is more fluid and shifting). No, it doesn't mean I'm automatically looking to hook up with everybody all the time. No, it's not a phase. No, I'm not experimenting.

“I think of it as a lens that informs how I understand and navigate the world,” I said finally.

“Maybe this is off base, but it kind of reminds me of being biracial,” he said. “Like, you don't feel like you really fit in on either side.”

I'd have been hesitant to make that analogy myself because I can't know how being biracial feels. But I appreciated his willingness to use an aspect of his own identity as a way to better understand mine.

Let me assure you that I did not always have the ability to explain my sexual identity to others, or even to myself. I had to analyze, interrogate, worry,
^III
discuss, research—and write about it in journals.

I called the journal I kept when I was fifteen
L.B.B.
, short for Little Black Book. I think I knew that the phrase
little black book
was typically used to describe a collection of women's phone numbers kept by a man, but since the journal literally was a little black book, it seemed appropriate.

1.

My second summer in the theater group, the summer I was fifteen, Ursula knew I was going to have sex with Robert before I did. Ursula was older, in her twenties: funny, mechanically adept, a martial artist into puns, comics, gaming, science fiction, and fantasy. She knew a lot of things I didn't but she was never condescending and always treated me as a friend and a peer. She'd observed Robert and me as we were getting together. The joke was that we were “the lame leading the blind,” since I was on crutches that summer and he was, in fact, blind. Before him, I'd barely even been on any dates. Though I'd had multiple crushes, not all of which I initially recognized as such, despite my tendency to analyze everything in my life in minute detail (usually, as stated above, in my journal).

We moved fast. After two dates, we had this conversation, which I recorded in L.B.B:

Dear L.B.B.—

Robert asked me what I was afraid of. I said:

“Is this an all-embracing question or—”

“Context, dear, context.”

“I thought so—I don't know—going too fast, I suppose—all the classic things one is supposed to be afraid of.”
^IV

Now I see that what I am really afraid of is the next logical step in this process
^V
—or at least I am at this point. I want to stay where we are now for a while at least. Of course, looming off in the distance is the perennial concern
^VI
which I'm not even going to think about until this has lasted much longer than it has and “things” have gone much further. Robert says “I'm not in this for a ‘quick one'—I do care about you and
I am patient
.” Homemade italics are mine.

Two entries after that one:

Dear L.B.B.—

I do love Robert and I decided that if I was protected, I would make love
^VII
with him. But I want a second opinion, really. Help me, L.B.B: what's a convenient and conversational way to say “Excuse me, Reverend, but is premarital sex a sin in God's eyes? And as long as we're on the subject, how about in yours?”

And the next one after that:

Dear L.B.B.—

The more I consider it, the more certain I become: I want to share all
^VIII
with Robert. Does this make me immoral? Define morality. I am biologically, mentally, and emotionally mature. Age is irrelevant. Sex is not sin. And this is anything but a sin. I love Robert and he loves me. We are both responsible. I can see no danger. Certainly I am nervous, but eager. And I know he is. I will not be a tease saying, “This much and no more.” There is no reason to be. I dislike the fact that I must be practical—I don't like the idea of “coupling without touching”
^IX
—but that is the way that it must be if it is to be.

I don't think my reasons are the classic teenage ones—I'll list those I think of offhand and shoot them down.

• Everybody's doing it. I don't know if they are, I don't have the data, and in any case it is irrelevant.

• I'll lose him if I don't. No. The conviction I have against that is so deep I won't even dignify it with further answer. That is a main reason in my decision to anyway.

I have found out an interesting thing: not only, when it happens, will it be my first time, and collectively our first time, it will also be his first time. This surprised me somewhat. Don't laugh (hypothetical future reader to whom I am speaking)
^X
but I'm thinking seriously about finding a copy of the Kama Sutra or other similar work and studying it.

It was about this time that Ursula invited me to dinner. Ursula had her own apartment and a commitment to sharing useful information with younger friends. I don't remember what we ate but I remember what we talked about: birth control, in more detail than my health classes had ever covered, with a copy of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
^XI
accompanied by her commentary on the pros and cons of various methods.
^XII
We didn't talk at all about sex itself; the entire focus was on what to expect if I didn't want to be expecting.
^XIII

We'd had previous discussions about sexuality; she was bisexual, she'd told me, and I filed the information away. The term illuminated possibilities, although I didn't immediately connect it with, for instance, the girl in my junior high choir whose solos and dark eyes I'd found equally riveting. I was a shy and frequently embarrassed person, and as such it was sometimes difficult for me to pinpoint the reason why I might at any given time be blushing. Besides, that junior high choir soloist was more popular than I was; if I allowed myself to think at all about why her lovely voice and face made me flush and shiver, no doubt I concluded it was due to a desire to be more like her, rather than more near her.

After that dinner with Ursula, my nervous, giddy anticipation of the impending event with Robert coexisted with a sense of responsibility. I was embarking on something serious, something that required equipment. Also, I was preoccupied with my weight and apt to be overtaken by paralyzing self-consciousness. What, aside from my desire for Robert and my confidence in his for me, made me able to seriously consider being sexually intimate so quickly?

I never wrote about this then, but I think his blindness helped. Of course, I knew intellectually that he'd learn the contours of my body via touch, and, less intellectually, I knew that I wanted him to—but there was also something comforting about knowing that whatever we were doing, he wouldn't be able to see me.

My paralyzing self-consciousness meant that even though I was able to make a mature decision about the need to acquire birth control, I initially didn't go to a pharmacy. I went to a gift and novelty shop.

Dear L.B.B.—

I made a purchase today. One of the items will be a hostess gift for Marie who is, in theory, having a “hellacious bash” when her parents go out of town later this month. The other is for personal use. They are identical. Okay, slavering scandal-seekers, this is the product: “Condomints
^TM
, Sex that's truly tasteful! Practice safe sex
and
fresh breath—Now
that's
sex in good taste! The product that says ‘Don't give me something to remember you by.'
^*
In our opinion, truly safe sex can only be achieved by locking yourself in a room with yourself.
” This resembles a large matchbook; when opened, contains a package of two breath mints and a prophylactic.