Writers on the Edge by Diana M. Raab

Author:Diana M. Raab
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Loving Healing Press Inc.

SUNSET BOULEVARD

Stephen Jay Schwartz

When I was ten years old my father, a respected pediatrician, pulled me aside and nervously announced that he had some things to discuss with me. I stared up at him, waiting. Finally, he handed me a black-and-white pamphlet titled Doctors Talk to Nine to Twelve Year Olds. “Read this,” he said, and quickly left my side.

Two weeks later he stopped by my room and asked, “Did you read that thing I gave you?” I had to search my memory, and then I glanced at the pamphlet buried under my desk. I remembered opening the pages, seeing line drawings of a penis and vagina. The images embarrassed me and I quickly tossed the book aside.

“Oh, yeah, I read it,” I lied.

“Good,” he said, and walked away.

That was the extent of my sex education. Sex was never again discussed in our household. It was treated as a great, shameful mystery. And yet, as a young pubescent, I was aware that something strange and different was happening around me. I saw images of near-naked women on billboards and in television and print ads. I remember once I was taking out the garbage and I found a bloody bundle of toilet paper. I was concerned that someone might have been hurt and I rushed to my mother to ask her what happened. I received a curt, angry response and was told to mind my own business. Somehow I felt ashamed for having asked the question, and I was vaguely aware that it had something to do with this thing we never discussed, this thing called sex.

As a child, I experienced no terrible, traumatic event. I simply lived a cloistered life regarding sexuality, and I had the vague idea that sex was naughty, dirty and wrong. As I entered puberty I became naturally more intrigued about it, but, at the same time, I came to feel there was something naughty, dirty and wrong about me for thinking about it.

When I was fourteen, my father left my mother to marry a woman ten years his junior. The crisis this caused in my life was quiet and hidden. I was a healthy, outgoing teenager with plenty of friends. But my father’s departure left a hole in my life, and an insecurity, and a deep desire to be needed and loved. My brain translated this emotional need into a physical one. I became sexually active immediately, awk-wardly experimenting with the girls I knew, touching, exploring. I lost my virginity at age fifteen with a girl the same age. I remember apologizing to her afterward.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to do that, I hope it was okay with you…”

She looked at me and smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s what I wanted, too.”

We lay together on the couch, her parents asleep upstairs. I was excited that we lost our virginities together, as boyfriend and girlfriend. It seemed so perfect.

“Was that your first time?” she asked, coyly.

I felt my stomach sink. “Of course,” I said.

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