So he would want to, you know, touch me, like, "down there," and I was nineteen and thought dirty magazines were something I'd found inadvertently in my parents' special under-the-bed hideaway (along with countless Christmas presents and unused clothing; it was a spot that transformed with the seasons) or the grumbly, overweight fathers of my girlfriends and cousins.
I never sought out any type of erotic literature myself and assumed sex would be, when it came, well, some kind of rapturous experience that would take me completely away and leave my mind in that silly little place called "Earth."
The actual fumbling of clothing and groping of hands was terribly, shamefully disappointing; never mind the actual act which, if I must say, was something in between boring and infuriatingly irritating. "And people shave their legs for this?" I thought, and then, "And people kill other people over this?" "Really?" And I suffered this way for, well, years, faking orgasms and talking to my girlfriends about sex as if it were an unripe pear - I know it's SUPPOSED to taste really juicy and fresh and delicious, but, no, it's.... sort of just... blah....
True to the textbooks, I really didn't experience my first deep sexual stirrings until I hit my thirties. By then I was through with sex, I thought. It was dull. It got on my nerves. It was a cheap date and an intellectual all rolled into one; it settled for anything and thought more of itself than it was actually worth.
But in my thirties, things got wildly, frighteningly sexual for me. Like the Great Wall of China suddenly crumbling due to a massive earthquake for which there is no warning system in place, my sexual walls went down, down, with a mighty sound, and, much to my complete and utter shock, I fell into Venus' outstretched arms with a vibrator and a wink and never looked back.
Which is why I know, when I look at photographs of my nineteen-year-old self with no body fat worth mentioning and a head full of hair that laughs at the word "gray," that it's just simply a cosmic joke, the Universe's way of laughing at us, that when our bodies are nubile, loveliest, smoothest, at their most limber, we either aren't allowed to use them sexually, can't find a way to do it, or, like me, simply don't care much for the stuff.
How can it be? How can youth be this magical time of perfection and the time when our brains are wired simply for, "Huh?"
I don't want to be one of those women that struggles into some tiny piece of fabric when I'm at the beach with my grand children just for the sake of wagging my finger at the tan nubile life guard on duty and crowing, "See, sonny, Mama's still got it!" No, no, that's not my style.
But I do want to keep drinking loads of water and shake my money maker whenever it's appropriate and possible. I have twenty years of wasted youth to make up for, after all.
Aimee Boyle is a regular contributor to Muscles and Sexuality on Empowher and writes freelance articles and blogs. Her website is http://www.straightandnarrow.yolasite.com