What I wish I had known about sex (before I started doing it)

Part 2

Is sex really as simple as something that you get better at, more used to, with time? With practice? Are our bodies really as simple as objects that can be turned on and off — our minds the same? I’ve written a lot about love, about relationships, about sex and the way that it feels, the way that it impacts me emotionally, the way it connects the mind and the body, the way it lingers when the person upon which the memories are attached has disappeared. Sometimes I feel that I have both grazed only the surface and skimmed the entire depths at the same time.

As an eighteen year old, I knew only what hurt, what didn’t last, though it felt like it should have. I knew only what wasn’t meant to happen but what did anyway, knew how to say no in order to preserve myself, but not how to say yes as a motion of empowerment, as a method of taking what I wanted and using it to make myself stronger, more whole.

When I turned twenty, I had been in a relationship long enough to feel comfortable lounging naked in front of another person. I had experienced the thrilling shame of having sex in a public place, felt confident enough to participate in conversations circling around sexual experience. I had certainly orgasmed by then, but was not comfortable enough to admit my need for one, my desire…