Where in the world she got the story, I will never know. Commanding my attention like she was telling a ghost story at summer camp, I hung on every word about a serial killer who went around cutting off cheating men’s penises. Dingy Dong,” one day at daycare after school. Her confidence in everything from singing Spice Girls out loud to stealing snacks from the teacher’s cabinet made it so I never questioned her. Julia’s parents had gotten divorced when she was a baby, and she liked to act out, not that the two were explicitly related. I had one of those bad-influence friends who was a couple of years older than me. She Just Knew Porn Was the Life She Wanted" More from Narratively: "Marta Wasn't Desperate for Money. And I still didn’t even have a word for it. As I grew older and started to get tidbits of very wrong information from other children about what your genitals might be for, where babies come from, etc…, like we all did, I still never thought any of that had anything to do with my playing alone. In fact I didn’t even connect what I was doing with sex. No one had molested me or been inappropriate with me. I was not exposed to any explicit forms of sexuality early in life. I expected it would get around our condo complex, and the neighbors would stop inviting me over to pet the new kitten or have a piece of cake. I envisioned my future ballet and piano recitals ruined, my parents watching through cracked fingers in horror as their little weirdo gave “Ode To Joy” her best shot. I knew I shouldn’t whisper to my childhood best friend, “hey try this,” and I knew even better that to be caught by my parents would be an embarrassment I would not come back from, tarnishing the rest of my life with my perversion. My best guess is that since I was taught to keep my petunia covered, I probably knew I wasn’t supposed to be fiddling with it. I don’t really know how I knew that, but it consumed me nonetheless. Rather than being blissfully unaware of what I was doing, I was acutely in tune with the fact that it should be a secret. More from Narratively: "I'm a Straight Man, and He's My New Sugar Daddy" Much like how if you give a kid sugar, I didn’t care if I wasn’t supposed to - I was going to sneak a goddamn cookie. I just liked the way it felt when I came in to contact with other things. Whenever I was “playing alone” - which was the best I could think to call it, having no idea that the world had gone above and beyond with creative monikers for this activity - I wasn’t really thinking about anything in particular. I eventually discovered my mother’s neck massager, which became both my favorite, and most dangerous tool, as there was no hiding what I was up to with that one. I would slip my legs through the slats in my parents’ footboard, and casually hump a panel while I watched cartoons. Occasionally, if I knew my mother was definitely preoccupied, I’d drain the whole thing and start over. I would sit with what my parents had named my “petunia” underneath the faucet until the water was too deep for it to have an effect anymore. I was constantly on the hunt for new techniques, new tools. I don’t remember how it began, just that it became a habit around preschool. More from Narratively: "The Day My Therapist Dared Me to Have Sex With Her" I started masturbating abnormally early, around the age of four. While the counselor went on rambling about chastity, purity, God and abstinence, I was gleefully reading the word “masturbation” over and over in my head thinking, “That’s what I’ve been doing!” Herpes: “hmm, okay definitely want to avoid that one.” Condom: “yeah, I think I’ve heard of those.” Vagina: “got it.” And then I got to “Masturbation: The act of pleasuring oneself.” I read it three, four times. I started examining the list, which thus far was the most interesting part of the presentation. A school counselor handed out a piece of paper with a list of terms related to sex, and their most basic, textbook definitions - the best version of sex education they could muster at the Christian school I’d ended up attending due to a grand miscommunication with my parents. I was watching a squirrel eating trash through a window one day in middle school when I learned what masturbation was. This article originally appeared on Narratively.
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