The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Love Muscle and other terms

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The first form of erotic ‘literature’ I ever remember seeing was a book entitled ‘She’, written by Anonymous. My cousin introduced me to it while the two of us were sitting in her room, listening to records. She was a year older, and considered herself to be more edgy than myself, a chubby, awkward twelve-year-old with the beginnings of bumpy skin and a bad perm. I think I might have looked up to her back then, with her deep auburn hair, sparkling blue eyes and Amazonian height. My own copper hair had begun to lighten, leaving me with an non-committal shade of cornflake, or what some call strawberry blonde. Whereas she was bright and present, I was a little watered down. She was the one who performed, and I was the observer. It worked fine for ages like that.

“Wanna see something?” she asked slyly as Mike Oldfield’s ’Family Man’ droned over her voice so that our parents could not hear our words beyond the door.

“Okay!” I said, probably a little too eagerly.

From between her mattress and box spring, she extricated a book. It was a paperback with creases in the cover, and it was swollen from the abuse of many fingers which had feverishly pulled at its pages. She stole a look at the bedroom door to make sure it was still closed, and then she began to thumb through the book, looking for the pages with the folded corners. Her expression brightened when she came to what I assumed to be her favourite part, and she handed the book over to me.

“Read that,” she smiled. And I took the book from her.

I read the page in record time and as I did, I felt my face growing hot. I knew she was delighted by this reaction, as she giggled from where she sat on her bed, watching me as I sat cross legged on the floor, growing feverish and confused.

“Doesn’t it make you feel funny down there?” she asked devilishly.

I suppose that it did, but I didn’t really understand everything. Of course, I knew the words I was reading, but without benefit of personal experience I could only imagine what a penis actually looked like. Words like ‘throbbing’ and ‘erect’ engaged me and frightened me. I could not imagine what the hell a penis was all about. Obviously, it had some sort of widespread appeal given that people were reading about it and how it felt, tasted, smelled and looked, but I was having trouble not finding the description to be a bit terrifying. The page made it seem like a gorgeous and menacing weapon. I was intrigued.

For some reason, once I got home, I told my parents about the book. Call it stupid, call it vindictive, call it exuberance, I spilled the secret. I don’t think I did it to get my cousin into trouble. I think it was my way of confessing, of cleansing myself of the film left on me from reading about dirty sex. My aunt went directly to the bed and pulled the book from between the mattress and box spring and my cousin was punished. My parents gave me five dollars for being truthful, and I felt like a traitor. I had not mentioned how the book had excited me, how it had made blood pump in areas of my body that had only been an incidental part of the anatomy before that. I don’t think I’d have ever included that in the conversation. What came out of it, other than the feeling of disgrace at having exposed my cousin and making money off of it, was an awareness. I was a sexual being, and I was ridiculously curious about what boys had behind their zippers.

The movies were no help. Most of them showed women and their bare breasts, but men were always carefully shielded with crafty angles or well-placed arms and legs. What was down there? What colour was it? Did it hurt them? Did it really look like Snuffleupagus?

Perhaps it was a merciful thing that my awkward phase went on for what felt like centuries. Boys didn’t really look my way at all, and though I nursed some intense crushes over that period, I never did anything about them. The rush of sexual awakening was almost painful at times, taking over my thoughts and stealing my focus from the things I was supposed to be concerned about, like math equations. I blame puberty for my inability to grasp the fundamentals of math from Grade 7 onward. All those angles and widths and circumferences…the mind travelled. My feelings of physical inadequacies left me sitting rigidly on the couches of various basements when the boy/girl parties started happening. I danced with the boys who were ‘friends’, but it never amounted to much on my end. I watched the ‘cool’ kids kissing in the corner, or stealing touches when they thought no one was watching, but watching was all I seemed to do during those long evenings. I watched, and I learned.

Eventually, I blossomed, sort of. When ‘guys’ started to notice me, I was totally unaware of it. More often than not, I turned up my nose when they looked in my direction, believing that they were mocking me with their eyes, rather than lusting. When one would work up the courage to tell a friend of mine that they were interested, I became a dithering idiot, giggling and fumbling whenever I tried to speak. My awkwardness had gone viral, invading my good sense when it had finished with my hair and body. Penises were everywhere suddenly, popping up from under denim and sweat pants (teenage boys should never wear sweats, it leaves nothing to the imagination), and rather than looking them in the eye, I was drawn to their southern regions, waiting for the beasts to stand up and sing. I was a mess.

But then, I gave up on it. I started to fear it. I made it past fifteen without seeing one, and then at sixteen I had a boy try to show me, but I told him to put it away. He then dumped me for one of my best friends who was not so squeamish. At seventeen I felt one on my leg, and had my hand forcibly placed on a mountainous zipper, only to pull away in a fit of giggles. He too gave up and moved on to a girl who could handle the trek to the peak. Then, I hit eighteen, and a very experienced boy took a fancy to me, delighted at my lack of action. He knew I was timid, but he viewed me as the ultimate conquest, and even when I made it clear that I was not ‘like those other girls’, he hung on, hoping to convert me. One night, while the two of us lay on the couch watching a movie, I felt something against my back. Was it his arm? The remote? Nope. Still fully dressed, he began to push it against my back, pulsing up and down, and I lay on my side wondering what the hell was happening. He rocked and he rolled, until he burst into a fit of gasps and shudders, and I continued to lie still, wondering if laughing would be rude. We broke up a while later, mostly because he was a little bit crazy, and I left that ‘relationship’ wondering why I still hadn’t seen a penis.

Then, the big relationship happened. I was almost nineteen, which by today’s standards is ancient in terms of sexual activity, but this was when I felt ready to see it. He had never shown it to anyone before either, which made it even more exciting. I looked at it, touched it, studied it, and then we engaged in certain activities which culminated with him saying breathlessly ‘Make it sneeze’.

Ummm, what?

Can I just say that I hadn’t really considered what that meant until then? So, there was something of an allergy attack, and I was fascinated as well as disgusted by it. He later told me he did not remember saying this, and he apologized.

I don’t find them to be aesthetically pleasing in the least. I would not pay money to watch one flop and wiggle on an unclothed dancing beefcake who struts and twists in front of a bunch of hot, flustered women. It doesn’t do it for me. I would not paint it in oils if I had the talent. I think they’re fine, but what I’m about is what is attached to it. For me, the one I see now with regularity is the one I regard with the highest appreciation. It is beautiful in its own way, because of the person who wears it. He knows what to do with it, and he keeps a sense of poetry about it. There are no unsavoury colloquialisms, no frat boy overtures with it coming up from the bottom of a popcorn container at the movies (that happened to me once). For me, it’s a thing of great design, in that it is sleek and smooth, and it somehow manages to hit the right buttons without me barking out directions.

Purple-headed custard chucker? Really?

That made me laugh.