The Introduction from the book.... |
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"I'm sitting in one of those awful paper gowns on a hard metal table in my doctor's office. I'm forty-two and trying to be a responsible sexually-active adult. I'm not active quite yet, but I plan to be in a few days, with what will be only my second partner ever. I know nothing about safe sex practices in this day and age. I've never used birth control before, or a condom, because up until just a few months ago I had held strongly to the belief that sex was only sanctioned within the confines of a marriage. I didn't have one of those anymore, yet I did have a British man I had no intention of marrying, but who knew just how to make me incredibly horny for him.
Even experiencing horniness outside of marriage was new for me. It required me to educate myself about how my body works, since my sheltered religious upbringing would never prepare anyone for that sort of thing. But that British man had me ready to explore all the things I had been sheltered from, even if I had to get educated about safe sex by my doctor first.
Enter Lindsay. Yep, I'm now old enough to have a doctor named Lindsay. I'm guessing she's about twenty-eight, but definitely not older than thirty. I feel a little embarrassed that she is going to be the one to teach me about safe sex at this age. But my embarrassment is overtaken by amusement the moment she bounces in the room, giggling with glee that I am going to get to have sex with someone new. She must live for appointments like this one, because I certainly hadn’t seen this side of her at my last checkup.
I pause to wonder where the camera is; I'm either about to meet Ashton Kutcher because I’m being Punk’d—or about to be the breakout star on a new sitcom about middle-aged women haphazardly returning to the modern dating scene after a twenty-year hiatus. It's a toss-up. She cracks some joke about the results of my divorce being "you lost 200 pounds of dead weight, eh?" and asks me to tell her all about my future sex partner. She hangs on every word and gushes like we are school girls.
Lindsay tells me my options for birth control while we ponder whether I actually need it. I remind her that I had never used it before and that my four {adopted} children resulted from zero pregnancies, so…? But then I fast forward to an image in my head of a forty-five-year-old me raising teenagers and a toddler with a man I barely know at this point and, yeah, I'm asking her again about those options. She does a gynecological exam, draws blood for an STD panel, makes sure I know I still need to use a condom, and declares my vagina officially open for business! She says she expects a full report next time I see her. Okay, maybe it’s a medical sitcom about funny patient interactions I'm on, instead.
I leave the office waiting for the guilt police to show up, or lightning to strike me for the sins I'm about to commit, and nothing happens. I even try to impose some guilt on myself about having sex outside of marriage, and still nothing. Instead, I pick up my phone and text said Englishman that I am now officially approved to have sex with him.
After a lot of R-rated versions of "can't wait to see you" I am on WebMD for something completely unrelated when I see an article link on the right side of the page that says, "Only 25% of UK males are circumcised."
Uh-Oh! What do I do with those? I had never seen porn; I had mostly only seen one man's penis in my whole life. I start going through my mental Rolodex for women I know who might’ve been with an uncircumcised man, as if we ever really talked about such things. I think my friend Claire can help, but she is in Italy on vacation and I have exactly nine hours to figure this out before I am in bed with that likely-uncircumcised Englishman.
So, what do I do? Like all of us, I google. You can imagine the vast differences in the links that came up, but there was one that caught my eye: "The Bad Girl's Bible," a site I would find quite educational for years to come. Besides, you have to laugh at the irony of the title anyway. I absorbed some education that still felt rather more conceptual than tangible, but I knew I would figure it out.
And, I'm happy to report, as you will read in the chapter Curry, God and Orgasms, Oh MY!, that I had a very good time with that Brit—the birth control and condom worked like a charm! And most importantly, while starting a process of testing whether the things I had been taught about sins and sex in the church were actually truths, I never got struck by lightning either.
I've had a great life, so far. I have no regrets for the things that transpired during the journey I had to take to become more me. I have no bitterness against the teachers who told me who I should have become and, if they had the chance, might even try to tell me who I should be now.
These pages are mostly memoir, with a little bit of self-help thrown in here and there, but always a bird’s eye view of my journey to freedom and love. My journey may not be the route others decide to take, but it's the path I took to actually become ME. Your journey may take a different path completely, but is exactly that...yours. The only wrong path is the journey not taken."
Even experiencing horniness outside of marriage was new for me. It required me to educate myself about how my body works, since my sheltered religious upbringing would never prepare anyone for that sort of thing. But that British man had me ready to explore all the things I had been sheltered from, even if I had to get educated about safe sex by my doctor first.
Enter Lindsay. Yep, I'm now old enough to have a doctor named Lindsay. I'm guessing she's about twenty-eight, but definitely not older than thirty. I feel a little embarrassed that she is going to be the one to teach me about safe sex at this age. But my embarrassment is overtaken by amusement the moment she bounces in the room, giggling with glee that I am going to get to have sex with someone new. She must live for appointments like this one, because I certainly hadn’t seen this side of her at my last checkup.
I pause to wonder where the camera is; I'm either about to meet Ashton Kutcher because I’m being Punk’d—or about to be the breakout star on a new sitcom about middle-aged women haphazardly returning to the modern dating scene after a twenty-year hiatus. It's a toss-up. She cracks some joke about the results of my divorce being "you lost 200 pounds of dead weight, eh?" and asks me to tell her all about my future sex partner. She hangs on every word and gushes like we are school girls.
Lindsay tells me my options for birth control while we ponder whether I actually need it. I remind her that I had never used it before and that my four {adopted} children resulted from zero pregnancies, so…? But then I fast forward to an image in my head of a forty-five-year-old me raising teenagers and a toddler with a man I barely know at this point and, yeah, I'm asking her again about those options. She does a gynecological exam, draws blood for an STD panel, makes sure I know I still need to use a condom, and declares my vagina officially open for business! She says she expects a full report next time I see her. Okay, maybe it’s a medical sitcom about funny patient interactions I'm on, instead.
I leave the office waiting for the guilt police to show up, or lightning to strike me for the sins I'm about to commit, and nothing happens. I even try to impose some guilt on myself about having sex outside of marriage, and still nothing. Instead, I pick up my phone and text said Englishman that I am now officially approved to have sex with him.
After a lot of R-rated versions of "can't wait to see you" I am on WebMD for something completely unrelated when I see an article link on the right side of the page that says, "Only 25% of UK males are circumcised."
Uh-Oh! What do I do with those? I had never seen porn; I had mostly only seen one man's penis in my whole life. I start going through my mental Rolodex for women I know who might’ve been with an uncircumcised man, as if we ever really talked about such things. I think my friend Claire can help, but she is in Italy on vacation and I have exactly nine hours to figure this out before I am in bed with that likely-uncircumcised Englishman.
So, what do I do? Like all of us, I google. You can imagine the vast differences in the links that came up, but there was one that caught my eye: "The Bad Girl's Bible," a site I would find quite educational for years to come. Besides, you have to laugh at the irony of the title anyway. I absorbed some education that still felt rather more conceptual than tangible, but I knew I would figure it out.
And, I'm happy to report, as you will read in the chapter Curry, God and Orgasms, Oh MY!, that I had a very good time with that Brit—the birth control and condom worked like a charm! And most importantly, while starting a process of testing whether the things I had been taught about sins and sex in the church were actually truths, I never got struck by lightning either.
I've had a great life, so far. I have no regrets for the things that transpired during the journey I had to take to become more me. I have no bitterness against the teachers who told me who I should have become and, if they had the chance, might even try to tell me who I should be now.
These pages are mostly memoir, with a little bit of self-help thrown in here and there, but always a bird’s eye view of my journey to freedom and love. My journey may not be the route others decide to take, but it's the path I took to actually become ME. Your journey may take a different path completely, but is exactly that...yours. The only wrong path is the journey not taken."
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expressed written permission. Thank you
