Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

coffee.
But that seemed like a very good question. Honestly, I had no idea.
I LIKED THE idea of being “experienced.” I was 16 when Miles and I had sex. I saw no explosion of
glitter, no doves released into the air. Actually, it felt more like a bowling ball being shoved up my
vagina (but a very sweet and loving bowling ball). I adored Miles. But our sex drives were set at
different volumes. Mine was the medium hum of a transistor radio. His went to 11.
This is how teenage boys are, right? They’ll hump anything. Hump the furniture. Hump the
floorboards. Their dicks are like divining rods forever finding gold inside someone else’s pants. And
me? I was a cuddle bunny. I liked soft stroking and delicate kisses, and those nights could be a little
heavy on the saliva and the grabbing for me.
I wasn’t a prude or anything. That was a slur in high school. Don’t be a prude. Guys would joke
about girls so frigid their knees were sewn together and their tongues sat in their mouths like lazy
slugs when you kissed them. I wasn’t going to be that way. My tongue had a graceful twirl. My knees
opened without a creak. My bra fell to the floor with a swoosh. I would pull a man in close, let him
glide all over me, and my body parts went electric in his mouth. But then.
Then what?
I’m not going to say I faked orgasms. That sounds intentional. As if I knew what an orgasm felt
like, and I purposefully pretended to be having one. It was more like: Orgasms happen when you’re
with men. You’re with a man now. Are you having an orgasm? Probably so! I leaned in to those
swells of pleasure with loud gasps and moans as if, by moving my arms and legs frantically enough, I
might somehow learn to surf.
“Did you come?” Miles would ask, looking at me with those eager blue eyes.
And I would smile. “Yes.” It was wish fulfillment, performance anxiety, and sexual ignorance
wrapped up into one.
I wanted to be good in bed. Who doesn’t want this? Are there women out there, hoping to be bad
in bed? And I understood from NC-17 movies starring Mickey Rourke that being good in bed was a
matter of arched backs and open mouths and frantic, animal fucking that ended in a double-orgasm
thunderclap. It wasn’t the hardest posture to imitate. Suck in your stomach, find the proper lighting, go
nuts.
Being actually good in bed requires an openness, a comfort in your own body I simply did not
have. The girl who once shaved off her pubic hair before sleepovers was not going to surrender to a
man’s touch so easily. I was wrapped up in “Do Not Cross” tape. I had moles on my back I never
wanted Miles to see. I had bumpy skin on my upper arms (the name for this condition is folliculitis, an
erotic term if ever there was one), and I would brush away Miles’s hands while we were making out.
The problem—one of the many problems—is that I had very little knowledge of my own body and
what might be pleasing to me, which made it impossible to give instructions to anyone else. It’s like
my vagina was someone else’s playground. I’d never masturbated, and I don’t know if that’s because
I was afraid, or ashamed, or simply uninterested. I guess I thought masturbation was for sad old
divorcees who couldn’t find anyone to finger-bang them. I was 25 when I finally bought a vibrator.
The first time I came, the sensation was unmistakable. Like a long, ecstatic sneeze. And afterward, I
felt so stupid. Wait a minute, this is an orgasm? Jesus Christ, no wonder everyone makes such a fuss