So, for those of you that don’t know, I’m thoroughly a 90’s
kid. Born in 1990 on the dot, I’m starting to feel the fossilisation as I
approach my 26th revolution around the fireball we call the Sun.
Even so, I still have a lot of growing up to do. For one, I’m still sponging
off my parents, but I’m trying very hard not to be a NEET.
Anyway, I have always felt this weird schism within myself
regarding my age. On one hand, I feel so much older than other 20-somethings,
but on the other I feel like I missed out on a lot and I’m still that awkward
kid trying to figure out what to do with her rapidly pubescing body.
When I was a teenager, I was kind of a prude. A lot of that
was to do with the fact that I was scared shitless of other people, and there’s
not much room for experimentation with anything
when you spend 8 hours a day at school and the rest locked in your room
listening to Blondie and Alanis Morissette (or System of a Down when I was
angry). I got drunk for the first time when I was 18, and my friend’s mom made
me drink one of those big bottles of that god-awfully sweet Four Cousins rosé. My experimentation
with sex involved me writing some very unrealistic naughty stories on a site I
wasn’t even close to old enough to be on, legally speaking. So I was pretty
much stuck in some kind of limbo some people would consider very boring until
university.
That’s not to say I went completely wild like some of my
friends did when they hit first year, but for once in my life I started to settle
into my own skin and stopped being such a fucking stick-in-the-mud. By that
time I’d just realised I’m clearly not a heterosexual – something that had been
in the back of my mind since I was about 15 and couldn’t stop thinking about
kissing my one friend, but was made real to me in the months leading up to
Orientation Week (heh) like a very hard slap in the face when I found myself
watching Imagine Me & You (Lena
Headey – woof!). Most of my first year was spent pining over this girl in my
English class who I eventually took on a pseudo-date only to find out she was
completely straight when she kind of freaked out when she realised what I was
up to. I got a few more mixed signals from her, but ultimately I avoided her
after that.
When I was 21, my one friend, who has been openly gay from
the time she was like 14 years old, let me join her at a gay bar she wanted to
go to. It was the first time I’d (properly) set foot in a club, gay or not. I
got very drunk. I was sitting chatting to my friend who messaged to check up on
me as he knew it was my first club experience, when this woman came up to me
and handed me her BBM pin on a scrap of paper, telling me to use it or don’t
use it, before disappearing again into the ether. Long story short, she’s now
my girlfriend and we’ve been together for nearly four years.
Yes, I was already 21 when I had my first kiss, when I first
slept with someone, when I started my first relationship. Some people,
including the wife (well, she will be my wife soon enough) tell me I’m very
lucky that I haven’t ever had my heart broken and that I found my soulmate (if
you believe in that – I do) right off the bat. I wouldn’t trade what I have for
anything, but sometimes I wish I had been more normal when I was younger.
I still wish I was normal today, but hell – if it hasn’t
happened by now it never fucking will so I may as well stop deluding myself.
I feel like I’ve been thrown in the deep end sometimes – the
sex alone is confusing. How the hell am I supposed to know what I’m doing if the
most intimate I’ve ever been with someone before was asking them if I could
borrow their pencil and then accidentally chewing on it because I was
daydreaming?
I still have a long ways to go in both the relating and the
relations departments but luckily I’m a quick learner. And boy, am I learning!
Luckily I have a great teacher, as well as the internet to tell me all about
the myriad of things I didn’t know before. Like how much of a dork I am.
Case in point – I’m very, very curious about a vibrator – a specific vibrator, actually. It’s
called the Vesper.
I nearly squealed when I saw it, because I think it’s really fucking cool.
Like, I need one. It is a vibrator
disguised as a pendant necklace. The wife laughed hard when I first showed her
pictures and didn’t see the cool factor at all. I felt a bit embarrassed, but
I’m still determined to get one just so I can wear it and never show it to
anyone. I probably won’t use it for anything except a subtle-ish statement to
myself, though (“I’m not a mormon”...I
should have that engraved on it!), as I’m still very shy when it comes to sex
and I’ve only seen vibrators before at Sexpo, and not even up close. Apparently
I’m still very out of the loop when it comes to this trend of being “sexually
liberated”, but hey, give me a break. I’m still only a baby lesbian!
I may be behind in a lot of ways, but I’ll say it again –
the only real bummer about the way my life turned out is that I didn’t meet my
girlfriend a lot sooner...
...and that I’m nearly 26 and I giggle at vibrators online
and watch cooking shows obsessively instead of focussing on my academia and
career –
because sometimes my brain just wants me to be a teenager again.
Great piece! I agree with your future wife btw, you are lucky that you met your soul mate right off the bat. As for normal? Who decides what's normal anyway? ;)
ReplyDeleteLoved reading this. Thank you for sharing. I met my wife at the age of 21. We married a few years later. We are very happy. I never had a relationship before her, I think that ROCKS you have less baggage, fewer issues. We are lucky to have found our soulmates.
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