A couple days ago, J.P. mentioned naughty postcards. Right away, I knew what I needed to write about. I had a similar experience, as a child. Not with postcards. With bits of a torn-up Playboy fluttering around the playground.
And then I realized... hey, wait a minute... I've written about this before. Not in a blog post, though. In a story called Defining Moments, which I will excerpt here:
***
There were certain conversations that never took place in the summertime. The sun might pride herself as the great elucidator, but winter was the season of humble introspection. When outside it was bitterly cold, what else was there to do but curl up in bed together? To kiss and touch and writhe in unison, then bask in the warmth of each other’s bodies?
When snowflakes like cotton balls fell from the sky, Devra wrapped her arms and a fleecy blanket around Priti’s shoulders and kissed her hair. Sighing, Priti rolled onto her back and gazed out the window. The streetlights made the falling snow glow bright white against a backdrop of blue.
“How did you know you liked girls?” Priti asked.
Devra was somewhat amazed the topic had never come up before. “You mean when did I first know?”
“Yeah. Did you have a Eureka moment where you were like, ‘Aha! I’m a lesbian?’”
She recognized it was meant to be a joke, but Devra ruminated nonetheless. “Not exactly. I mean, yes, sort of, but I wouldn’t have used those words at the time.”
“Why not?” Priti asked without waiting for an answer. “Because you didn’t want to be pigeonholed or grouped into somebody else’s narrow definition of sexual identity?”
Devra propped up her head with the palm of her hand. “No. Because I was five.”
“Five, as in years old?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow,” Priti replied. “You started early.”
“It wasn’t a matter of starting, and at the time it didn’t mean anything to me. It’s only in looking back that my selective memory has chosen that event as significant.”
“What event?”
“Nothing big. I’m surprised I even remember,” Devra began. “When I was in kindergarten, I had this useless blob of a teacher, Mrs…oh, I don’t know…Mrs Blob.”
“Are you telling me this is a significant figure in your life and you can’t even remember her name?”
“Give me a break!” Devra said. “I was five.”
“Okay, so you had a crush on Mrs Blob...”
“God, no. No, it was Mrs Blob who made me wish I wasn’t a girl. I had this growing awareness that when I grew up, I would be a woman. Mrs Blob was a woman, and damned if I wanted to look like that when I got older.”
“That is so mean!” Priti gave Devra a playful kiss on the arm.
“No, it created some genuine anxiety for me. I didn’t want to grow up and be a woman if that meant looking like Mrs Blob.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. What about your mom? She wasn’t a blob, and you knew her before your kindergarten teacher.”
Devra agreed. “And I had seven skinny aunties too, but at that age I didn’t recognize that they were women; mom was mom. I mean, some people think that way their whole lives: my mom isn’t a woman, she’s just my mom.”
“Yeah, seriously. So, you were five, your mom wasn’t a woman, and your blob of a teacher freaked you out?”
“Right, and then one day I found something that completely alleviated my little panic attacks,” Devra went on. “Some perv had torn pages out of a girlie magazine and left all these pictures of naked women blowing around the playground.”
“Oh my god!” Priti gasped, clenching her fist to her chest.
“Yeah, well, I picked one up and…” For a moment, Devra was lost. “I still remember her feathered blonde hair and her skinny frame, her perky tits…”
“And you wanted to look like her?”
Again, Devra reflected. “No, that wasn’t the thought process. I saw that naked playgirl and I realized for the first time that not all women looked like Mrs Blob. It’s not that I looked at this picture and I wanted to fuck the girl—I was five; I didn’t know what sex was—but it wasn’t a feeling of aspiration either. How can I explain it? I guess it excited me that there were women like that in the world. She was an image that represented something larger, something of myself.”
***
My favourite part of that excerpt is how it's winter.
Two years ago, my girlfriend convinced me to buy an air conditioner. I did it more for her comfort than mine, but every day this week she's asked me, "Aren't you glad you bought that air conditioner?"
Yes, ma'am...
Honestly, though, I would have melted if not for the A/C. Sometimes girlfriend knows best.Anyway, now that you've come face to face with my experience of The Naughty, you probably want more. So I'll tell you that Defining Moments (the story excerpted above) appears in a FREE ebook called 6 Erotic Shorts, which has been around for a few years. But it's FREE. And, also, it's FREE.
Here are some places you can get it. For FREE:
All Romance: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-6eroticshorts-761731-166.html
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/143624
BookStrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/6-erotic-shorts
What you say about the sensations a youngster feels as an early substitute for sex is something I remember from the youngest years. In our last topic, I mentioned a little girl I was attracted to in kindergarten. But there was also a boy who I had strong feeling for too. I remember trying to be partners with him whenever the class walked two-by-two. I remember his name (Scott H.) and that he had a prominent backside. I guess we work it out.
ReplyDeleteAwww cute.
DeleteWhen I was five, or maybe four, - I bet there's a lot of stories that start that way - I remember sitting on our back lawn watching construction workers on the house next door. It was a rare sunny day in Aberdeen and the men were shirtless and I was totally fascinated by their sleek physiques and sinewy muscles. Of course I didn't have those words in my head at the time, but the visual was something I never forgot. They would turn and smile and wave at the little boy with big eyes. I couldn't wait for the next day to come when I could sit outside and watch them again - alas it rained that day and for several more and then my days were taken up with school or kindergarten, I can't remember which. I never saw those men again, but I never forgot them.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall any particular leanings at the age of five, but by my early teens I figured that it was natural for both men and women to be attracted to women, since so much advertising (and so many books--I had the run of my small town library) presented women as objects of desire. Of course there are plenty of books these days objectifying impossibly buff imaginary males, but back then the sexiest books I could find were historical novels, and they were pretty much aimed at men.
ReplyDeleteI definitely had sexual feelings when I was five. I remember masturbating, though of course I didn't know what I was doing.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Giselle. I'm off to get a copy of your book!
Yes, Lisabet. I remember discovering that if I fooled around with 'it' it got stiff and bigger. I remember a sense of *something* but not knowing what. As I got older, it seemed to get stiff sometimes by itself. Like in church.
DeleteAhhhh memories...
ReplyDeleteThis is a charming post, Giselle, with a gift attached! I'm sorry I didn;t get here sooner. :)
ReplyDeleteBy five I was already feeling guilty for "doing it", since I'd been caught by my mom so many times, and she was worried I was getting a bit too much pleasure from what I was doing. In later years she told me that, though she'd been taught by the church that masturbation was a nasty sin, she didn't want to put those fears into my head. But she did, all the same. My brother still teases me about the time I was on the top bunk and rattling the beds a bit too much, so that he got a metal filing in his eye from the springs above him, requiring expensive doctor visits and an eye-patch. I was scared shitless my mom would figure out how it happened. I told her I must have been having an exciting nightmare. Heh, heh.
ReplyDeleteMy masturbation was, of course, all clit-oriented. It never would have occurred to me to explore myself any further. And the idea of inserting something into a place I didn't know existed would have shocked and horrified me. I was convinced that what I was doing had to remain secret, because obviously no one else knew about it, or it wouldn't be so secret, right?
Interesting post. I guess we all have to learn somehow, and most of us don't have anyone older to ask. Off to find that free book.