Good Girl, Bad Girl: My Life Shaped by Sex

Chapter One

I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.

- Woody Allen

Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.

- Oscar Wilde

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

- George Carlin

I am definitely one of those people that has been shaped by the events that have unfolded around them, or engulfed them, or molded them. Only, I am unsure whether or not that is a good or bad thing.

I have come to discover a lot about myself - my sexuality, mostly - by examining what I have experienced throughout my life. I place so much attention on this - internally, anyway - because I really believe that my sexuality defines me in many ways.

Let’s put some classifications down, shall we? I am, I suppose, classified as being bisexual. But I do not think I always was.

Well, maybe.

Maybe it is something that was hidden in me all along and just needed to be brought out. Maybe I was born this way like they say. But that certainly is not how it felt.

As a pre-teen, physically I developed early. While being on the lower tip of the height percentile all my life, I think changes in my body were noticeably more drastic from an early age. Yet, I think, my mind was still that of a kid.

I remember being a ten year old and my body changing literally overnight. One morning I woke up and my pajama top was snugger than it was the night before.

I think I silently blamed my mother for shrinking it in the wash.

Fast forward a few weeks and I am bra shopping with my mom - which turned out to be an endeavor in itself because stores did not typically stock B-cups for girls who are just over 4 feet tall and whose torsos didn’t even register on the size chart.

We used a lot of safety pins.

That young, I think I was mostly unaware of the attention - from older boys, from older men, from scrutinizing mothers who would glare at my mom for brief seconds before she made me cover my neckline or button my jacket or whatever else made me look more my age. I never felt as pretty as some of the more normal girls; the taller, classically beautiful ones. In many ways I still don’t - although I have learned to love my height (4’ 10’’) I cannot pretend to often wish I looked more normal.

I took on quite a bit of ridicule for my chest/curves - being 5th graders, most were not yet aware of the attractiveness or benefits of a girl with big boobs. Most of my friends or classmates hadn’t even begun to develop in any way whatsoever. Only two of us out of 20 or so girls had even gotten out periods (and yes, I was one of them).

And henceforth started the insecurities. As if entering into the teen years wasn’t hard and awkward enough - bad hair, skin, fashion, etc. - I was one of the few that stood out in a largely negative way. I was short. I was curvy. My chest was bigger than anyone else’s. And those two together got me labeled as dumpy or fat - even though I was actually quite thin. And I think, as time went on I subliminally set out to prove it.

Over the next two years, I started to notice boys. I developed crushes in place of the heebie-jeebies. He’s cute replaced he’s got cooties. My friends were catching up to me physically, though I had surpassed them even further. Fashions changed, and I was in charge of prettying myself up for my own purposes, by my own means. By 12, I didn’t feel like such an odd ball (but still awkward and self conscious). I had my first kiss. It lasted approximately 3.5 seconds, but it was still a kiss. Jacob Mueller. He was sweet and dorky and was the first boy to hold my hand in public (well, the hallway and the mall).

The relationship lasted 3 weeks, which was like a 20 year marriage to most 7th graders. I think we broke up because someone saw him talking to one of his older sister’s friends and someone else convinced me that I should have been jealous about it and so I broke it off with him right in front of the Sbarro pizza place from which he had just bought me a Mountain Dew.

I felt bad - I handed it back to him as if that made it right.

I remember crying that night. Not because I missed him or was a lover scorned or anything. I wasn’t jealous and really had no reason to break up with him. I really didn’t care. But I cried in my room because I felt like I had had control over something and chose to let it go forever.

But, in the aftermath of the great breakup, I forced myself to flourish. I talked/dated other boys in school. Passed notes in class with hearts and kiss-doodles. Meanwhile, both emotionally and physically I was growing. I no longer looked like a short boy with big boobs. I looked like, well, a real girl - with hips and everything. I was still the shortest in my grade - probably the shortest in the two grades below me. I had figured out masturbation. It wasn’t a regular thing for me, honestly, but it did happen on the rare occasion. I think it was more out of boredom than sexual gratification, and even the gratification part was less frequent than that.

My mom gave me the talk and insisted that being a beautiful young lady brought about wonderful things as well as challenges, opportunities as well as dangers.

By the time I was 14 - midway thru my freshman year in high school - I had my first *real* boyfriend. Brian Calligan. He was a year older - tall, athletic, blonde hair and dark hazel eyes. I had a crush on him for nearly two months before we started going out. It was something I sort of fell into, really - a close friend (John, a boy) who was for all intents and purposes my best friend ever (we grew up next door to each other) had confessed he had feelings for me but to avoid the weirdness I sort of lunged myself in Brian’s direction. I’m sorry, I like you too, John, but I’m with Brian now. But we are still friends, right...? Such a bitch.

Brian was the first person I let start rounding the bases so to speak. To be honest, I don’t even know what the bases are (except for Home Run, of course) but I figure that is the best way to put it. We were together a few weeks and were alone somewhere (his parents had a den with a TV and a couch that they let him hang out in with friends as their living room was situated like a fucking museum) and we started making out. I remember specifically what I was wearing - these snug faded jeans and a plaid top that had one of those built-in, navy blue t-shirts underneath. I didn’t have shoes on (his mom didn’t allow them in the house) but did have these cute little white ankle socks that had little light blue hearts on the bottom for traction.

My back/neck was against the arm of the couch, with him over me, with my thighs kind of around him. We were kissing deeply for a while, and every now and then his mouth would wander to my chin or my jaw (which to this day I LOVE - jaw lines are highly underrated erogenous zones) and then back to my mouth and then back to my jaw and then my ear and then my neck. He did this over and over, when I suddenly became aware that his hands - which had been at my sides - were now on my chest. He wasn’t squeezing - yet - but instead just kind of touching me over my shirt(s). His mouth - which had been lingering above my collarbone - finally came downward and he started kissing the top of my chest and when I didn’t stop him his hands got more firm - a gentle squeeze, a stroke, another squeeze.

We were like this for a while, during which time I think he was building up his nerve because eventually his mouth and fingers met just over my shirt line. My plaid shirt was open but the attached t-shirt was still on, which he then tugged downward and started to suck on my skin first above my bra, then thru my bra, then tugging that down too to the point that - for the first time ever - I was showing my nipples to a boy.

I remember distinctly his body’s reactions to me - the sounds in his throat, the way his breathing was slow and hard through his nose while his lips pursed around my skin and sucked, licked, kissed. And I remember thinking: Does he like this? Am I doing this right? Why is he moaning like that? Does this feel good to him? It feels ok for me, I guess, but what do I do? Just lay here?

I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I put them on my hips. He was moaning like someone having sex - or what I thought it sounded like, anyway, yet all that was happening was he was sucking on my breasts. And honestly - while it felt good - I don’t think I would have distinguished it from sucking on, say, my neck or my arm or my leg or my hip. And I thought, should I be liking this more?

That was as far as we went that particular afternoon. I left his house shortly before dinner having to button the plaid shirt nearly to my neck to hide the stretched, saliva-soaked t-shirt underneath.

But later on that evening I got undressed in front of the mirror and looked at myself. Really, really looked. And I tried to understand the fascination. I tried to understand what - if anything - about me and my body were appealing to him, or really to anyone. I had until the point been reserved and self-conscious - what about me would turn him on?

I stared and stared and stared. Fully nude. I was 14 years old and don’t think I ever really, really looked at myself. Ever.

After showering and going to bed I laid under the covers in my pajamas and thought about what happened that afternoon. Replayed it in my mind over and over. I felt like I wasn’t getting something. I knew I liked him, sure. He was more than cute. He was handsome, sexy, funny. His kisses were amazing and his tongue was soft. He smelled like vanilla. I knew I wanted him. But I felt like I couldn’t understand his fascination with me.

Under the covers, I pulled my pajama top to my neck and let my breasts lay bare beneath the sheets. I closed my eyes and re-imagined everything from all angles.

And alone, with my palms over them, I felt a surge of wantonness that I had been missing. Suddenly I wanted him with me again, in my bed, with his mouth on me. I wanted to do the afternoon over - to explain with my body that I knew what to do and knew why he liked doing it to me and would willingly let him do more.

My skin was on fire and my stomach was fluttering and when I squeezed my breasts - which were between a C and D cup by this point - I felt a stirring of realization that this was sex and it was good.

I had no real measure of what that exactly meant, or if it was even true. It would be years before I figured that out, and not all of it was as pretty or enjoyable as that first, innocent afternoon.

Chapter Two

The following days were less eventful between Brian and I. We kissed, we made out, but the opportunity for more wasn’t as apparent. We were hardly ever alone enough to go any further, or at least as far as we did that one afternoon.

Meanwhile, my eyes were open. In school, in social settings, etc., I feel like I was starting to take people in.To notice and realize their sexuality - boys of course, but girls too - if not only to at least initially compare to myself and wonder if they too have experienced anything similar.

I remember one girl in particular (though not her name) who sat across from me in an Earth Science class who I could not take my eyes off of. She was pretty and wore these 3-button shirts that covered her smallish chest like cling wrap, and I found myself obsessing over her body as well as others. At first I think it was more of a comparative obsession - are her legs like mine, what do her nipples look like, I wish I had her eyes - but then it became more sexual.

But at the time, I was far from admitting to myself my own gender curiosities and instead focused my more immediate actions on boys.

One morning a few weeks after our session in his parents’ den, I met Brian at his house (school was delayed for some administrative reason and we didn’t have to be in the building until well into 3rd or 4th period). For some reason we were in the den again, same spot on the couch as a few days before. We were kissing. I don’t remember exactly what either of us were wearing except for the fact that he had a dark blue t-shirt with large, white GAP letters across the front and I was wearing some sort of loose t shirt as well and some sort of jeans.

His lips and tongue tasted like blueberries and I told him so in between kisses, and he took that brief pause in lip-locking to drop his mouth to my neck. At first I was going to let him do it again; what he did a few days before. But something inside told me to change it, to make it different - maybe that would make it better. Realer. I had thoughts in my head that I don’t think I can put into words - I just wanted something more intense yet was frightened to go too far. I managed to snake myself on top of him before his mouth got to my chest and was suddenly - brazenly - straddling him. I remember him looking up at me for a second before i leaned down and started kissing him again, this time with me on top. In the weeks that we were dating, I had never been in that position before.

We kissed like this for a while, and his hands eventually slid to my chest over my shirt, then down around my back, then back up again, over and over. We were kissing, sucking, groping, when I began to feel his fingers trying to peel down my bra thru my shirt. I was over him, and my breast were obviously between us, and their weight was making it difficult for him to pull the fabric away from my skin. I sat up for a brief moment and reached up my shirt and was about to unclasp my bra for him and then let him do the rest. But then - and I don’t know exactly why - I instead pulled the front of my t-shirt downward (as he had done to me the time before) as well as my bra with it. Before his hands could reach them, I lowered myself down and brought my bare breast - my nipple - to his mouth and he immediately groaned and sucked on them as though his tongue was capable of orgasm itself.

At first, I got scared that it was going to be like before - that I just wasn’t going to get it. But almost immediately it was different - with the first lap of his wet tongue around my nipples it felt like he had vibrating fire in his mouth and the sensation shot up and down my spine.

I remember keeping my eyes open - watching his mouth cover me - and thinking Oh my God is this what it’s like? I imagined myself having sex with him, right there on the couch. I imagined my breasts in his hands as I took him in and out, of what it must feel like to have him open me in the same rhythm with which he was sucking on my chest or feel him pushing and pulling in and out of me.

I also envisioned - as I watched my now wet skin get sucked in and out of his mouth - other girls doing the same; what their bodies would look like, feel like, taste like, in this very situation. I pictured girls from school, girls from TV shows, movies, etc., all there feeding themselves to his open mouth in my place.

I remembered what my mother had said - about the dangers of sex - but at this moment I