Marie’s little brother would often creep from his bed to spy on the two of us. Our friendship started off innocently enough. When we were twelve, Marie and I were inseparable. We told each other everything—every crush, every dream, every goal. Around this time we discovered what our bodies were about.
We would often lie in Marie’s twin bed together and play the game “guess the body part.” With our eyes closed, one of us would take the other’s index finger and guide it to one of our body parts. Usually it was an eyeball, an inner ear, a tooth, or the inside of a belly button. We would laugh and squirm and feel as if we were doing something taboo. The older we became, the more forbidden the game grew.
One night, Marie took my hand, as usual, and placed it in a warm, wet place. Marie had a death grip on my hand. She held it in between her legs as she began to move her hips, ever so slightly at first. Within seconds, her breathing became faster, and she started to moan. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing, because I wasn’t doing a damn thing. My hand was perfectly still, but her body was rising and thrashing about. Suddenly her body jerked, and she let out a high-pitched groan. Then she lay motionless. After about a minute, I began to wonder whether I had just killed my best friend. She hadn’t moved or spoken. I sat up to see if she was breathing. Her parents always kept the pool illuminated, which cast an eerie glow into Marie’s dark bedroom. I looked at her face. She looked serene.
“Marie? Are you okay?” I whispered.
The beginnings of a smile slowly crept across her face. “Le petit mort,” she said, her voice low.
“What??” I asked.
“Le petit mort,” she repeated.
“Little death?” I had no idea what she was getting at. “Marie, what are you talking about?”
“What just happened to me. It’s what they call it in France!” She giggled.
I threw myself back on the bed totally missing the joke. I didn’t think she and I had any secrets from one another. Why now? And what was it that had to be said in French for crying out loud? I knew she had been reading Anais Nin, but I didn’t know anything about what the books contained. Feeling extremely left out, I began to cry uncontrollably. Huge body-wracking sobs. Like a baby.
Marie sat bolt upright and stared down at me. “Oh my God, Sarah, what’s wrong? What happened?”
I couldn’t answer her as I really didn’t know myself.
Marie did what any loving best friend would do. She wrapped me in her arms, cradling and rocking me gently back and forth, smoothing out the stray hairs that were now stuck to my forehead. Feeling so safe in her arms, I eventually stopped crying. Before too long, the two of us drifted into a blissful sleep.
I woke up the next morning with a strange sensation. Marie was balanced on one elbow. She had found my most vulnerable place between my legs with her free hand. She confidently smiled as she rubbed me over my pajama bottoms. Neither one of us spoke. I was alarmed by what was happening, but I wasn’t brave enough to tell her to stop. The sensations I began to feel were totally new to me. I had heard of people masturbating. I knew that my brother had jerking off contests with his friends. I heard them discussing it one night. I was disgusted by the thought. I wasn’t sure if the hole in my stomach I was experiencing was a result of being weirded out or was I enjoying what was happening? If I thought about it, I might have bolted out of the room, never to return again, but my body, paralyzed by fear and longing, kept me from moving. My hips slowly began rocking to a new beat. I closed my eyes and began to ride on this unexpected journey. I could hear my heart beating in my head. I wondered if I would pass out as I had done so often? At least I was in a prone position this time. Our breath was now in syncopation. I heard myself moan out loud. Taking the cue, Marie’s hand disappeared into my pajamas and found my buried treasure. Even I had never touched myself down there, in that way at least. How did my best friend know how to do these things?
“Just let go, Sarah,” I heard Marie’s voice whisper, her breath hot on my neck now.
“I don’t know . . .”
Marie leaned over and placed her lips on mine. Her tongue plunged deeply into my mouth. The rhythm of her tongue matched the rhythm of her fingertips. Without any sort of warning my body seemed to explode. My toes curled, my back arched into a rigid contortion. A shriek echoed in the tiny, morning lit room.
“Oh my God!” It took several seconds before I realized that it had been my voice. After my body released a final shudder and I found that I was still alive, the oddest thing happened. I began to cry as I had the night before. And then, like a crazy person, I began to laugh. I was crying and laughing, which of course made Marie start to laugh. The two of us must have laughed and cried for an hour. We never spoke about what we began to do with each other during our fifteenth year. Not even to each other. It was our dirty little secret.
Our trysts defined my early sexual life. After the loss of my “virginity” in the back of Jeremy’s car, I had only one other sexual experience with a penis. It involved my high school biology teacher. I was seventeen and he was twenty-five . . . and a half, and was absolutely gorgeous. It all began when I stayed a little late after school to draw diagrams of various fungi. I happened to be a very good artist. It wasn’t long before I was dropping off my fungus sketches at Mr. Runnels’s apartment. We would sit and look at his books on anatomy and talk about the sexual differences between men and women. Within a few months, we began a series of our own experiments involving the human anatomy.
I learned how to be a proficient felator. He told me to treat his appendage as if I were having a yogurt push up. “Don’t let it melt . . .” he would preach as I licked and sucked. Even though he had a wonderful looking penis—ok I had only seen one before—when he thrust himself deep within the core of my womanhood, I was never able to have an orgasm. It drove him nuts, which was actually a lot of fun for me. I became a puzzle to him. A challenge. A mystery he had to solve. So we tried everything. Backwards, forwards, doggie style, missionary, sixty-nine, and handcuffs. I have to say I had a great time. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t satisfied. It all felt amazing. I just couldn’t cum. That only happened when I was with Marie. Go figure. Maybe it just all boiled down to trust.
Once in college, I found it was totally acceptable for girls to find themselves in other girls’ beds. I felt I belonged there, too. It wasn’t as if I felt like a lesbian or anything. I was actually more than attracted to men. Tall men, short men, men with really long hair and jeans, or short-haired preppy guys in suits . . . it didn’t matter, I found them quite desirable. I just didn’t have sex with them. I was petrified that I would feel like a failure if I could not achieve an orgasm with someone of the opposite sex. Being with a woman was obviously very narcissistic. It was like looking in a mirror. I knew all the mechanics of how the machine worked. After all, I had the same machine. By the time I was in college, I had learned that I wouldn’t go to hell, and my eyesight would remain intact if I touched myself. I had become quite proficient in the art of masturbation, so, when I touched a woman, it was like touching myself. Loving myself. Something I had trouble with.
I became a proficient liar as well when I met my future husband, because I was sleeping with my English teacher, Danielle. Brad was a law student, two years ahead of me. We met at a party given by a mutual friend. I almost didn’t go, because I had a date with Danielle that night. She cancelled due to a severe head cold. Understanding that the last place she would want her stuffy nose was between my legs, I opted to be a brave girl and party. I dressed up in my favorite bohemian skirt and a paisley off-the-shoulder top. I laced up my moccasin boots and wore all things patchouli. Every part of me smelled of it. Patchouli oil was without a doubt the best invention for hiding the smell of marijuana. Before long, parents and local authorities figured that one out. But I truly loved the smell of it. The musty, earthy, sexiness of it.
Stephanie’s apartment also smelled of patchouli. Good sign, I thought. The lights were low, and candles burned inside various wine bottles. A lava lamp bubbled in one corner, and a giant bong had center stage in the middle of the living room floor. I knew a couple of the people worshipping the bong God, but as I looked around, I realized I barely knew a soul.
Brad was on a couch in the corner of the room. He was hard to miss. His jet-black curls framed his round baby face. His eyes were whitish blue, and his eyelashes were three layers deep. I instinctively took my hair off its resting place on top of my head and let it fall in its wave of curls down to my waist. My hair was definitely one of my best features. I felt more than womanly when it was down. It worked, as I knew it would. I got Brad’s attention. I felt the blood rush to my face, and I feared I looked like a cat in heat. He flashed a huge grin my way.
We spent several hours in our own little bubble. People occasionally spoke to us, but the only voices we seemed to hear were our own. He was smart and funny and he told me he wanted to be a lawyer. I would learn in the latter stages of our marriage how talented a lawyer he was. I could never win an argument no matter how absolutely right I was. Even if I had proof of something, Brad could turn the whole thing around somehow and convince me that I had been wrong or had misinterpreted the facts. Inevitably I would feel guilty and not know why. The very decent living he made as a lawman only confirmed my suspicions that he was brilliant.
That first night, Brad made me laugh till my sides hurt. When he asked me back to his apartment, I went. We walked about two blocks from the school with our arms hooked together. We turned down a tree-lined street that was known as the better part of town and slipped into a quaint two story building. His apartment was not at all typical of a twenty-one-year-old student. It was immaculate with very beautiful furniture for a fellow student to have. I was used to bean bags and pillows on the floor. This guy actually had a dining table with chairs which I later learned had been imported from France. He offered me a drink from his well-stocked bar.
“Scotch?” he asked.
“Sure, why not?” I hated scotch, but I was liking the guy.
Once we made it to the bedroom, it was a tornado of clothing. Things flew around the room and ended up behind things, under things, hanging from things. We had a very difficult time finding a sock the next day.
Then and there, sitting on top of that man’s cock, I had the orgasm of a lifetime. Maybe that was all my problem was . . . I needed to be on top for more than a few seconds. Years later, we girls would hear about the “G” spot. Obviously, I had found it! Gee!
I became a research scientist and a juggler at the same time. I had to juggle Danielle and Brad, but even more importantly, I had to make sure that my newfound orgasmic ability wasn’t a fluke. I decided I should try to fuck as many guys as I could to make up for lost time. My ultimate goals were to stop falling in love with Brad and to put an end to my love affair with my teacher. I did want to have babies one day. Our age difference was a factor. I was eighteen, and she was thirty-five, a definite strike against us. She was so deep in the closet, our relationship had no future.
I went about fucking and sucking my way through junior year, all the while excusing my behavior as an experiment. I had to find out the truth about the big O. The holy grail. Okay, just my hole-e-grail. I could justify my behavior. I wasn’t the only person conducting these sorts of experiments. It was college, after all! As long as the sex was safe we felt we could justify our behavior. Bottom line was I wanted to know exactly how my body worked and how I could be sufficiently satisfied. What’s wrong with that? The question became, did I need to be filled with a penis? Or could I live with the occasional tongue or hand job on my privates without penetration? It was becoming clearer to me that I could not. Danielle began to notice I wasn’t spending as much time with her. She realized I must be seeing someone else. I’m sure it didn’t occur to her that I was seeing the entire local Air Force base.
Sex with Danielle had become calculated and aggressive, on my part anyway. My sexual escapades resembled being thrown around a room like a football waiting for the proverbial “touchdown” at the end. And sex with women didn’t offer that. I slowly pulled back and felt badly about it. She had been a huge influence on me. I discovered that all the things I loved about her, at the beginning, the way her hair smelled of Herbal Essence shampoo, the way she didn’t wear make-up, the way she breathed while she slept, started to bother me. I wanted her to remain my mirror. Instead the person looking back at me now was me.
I began seeing Brad more often. Since I thought about him all the time, it made sense. He made me laugh when we talked and cry when we made love. No one else had been able to do that. So I fell in love. I also recorded data from my “experiments.” I documented so much of my life, then unaware that within three years out of college, I would publish my first novel titled Love and Lust at Midnight.
Eighteen-year-old Gwendolyn, a beautiful equestrian, has a summer fling with a twenty-five-year-old polo player, who likes to fuck standing up with his riding boots on.
The sun caused tiny beads of sweat to form across his collarbone. All I wanted to do was taste the saltiness of it on my tongue. Being the good girl everyone thought I was, I concentrated on cleaning the horse’s hooves. The pick in my hand dug out the dirt that had accumulated that day from rain-drenched Charleston soil. I had difficulty concentrating as I couldn’t help looking at Christopher’s shoulders flexing as he brushed the bay mare’s coat.
“How’s it coming, Bridgit?” he called over to me.
“It’s fine except the mud is really caked in this hoof,” I answered.
“Here, let me take a look.” Christopher gently took the horse’s hoof and set it on top of his own thigh. He touched my hand and took the pick from it. I felt an electric charge between us. “See, it’s not that hard,” he said, looking up at me while peeling the mud from the horseshoe.
“No, I guess it isn’t,” I agreed.
Chris stood, in his white polo pants and boots, shirtless and sweating. He took my seventeen-year-old hand and placed it firmly on his crotch.
“But this is hard,” he said, grinning.
I could feel the strength and the hardness of his manliness ready to burst free from the constraints of those riding pants.
Without another word, I slowly unzipped him and allowed his cock to spring free. He hoisted me up onto his hips and bent me down onto the haystack. He threw back my skirt and ripped my panties off in one sweeping motion. Placing himself above me, he positioned the tip of his cock at my awaiting, hungry orifice.
“This is my first time,” I said, looking in his steely blue eyes.
“I’ll be gentle,” he said slowly gliding himself into my womanhood.
Marie got married, in the fall, just a year after graduating. Of course, I was her maid of honor. It was mind-blowing to me that my best friend would even consider marriage. David, her groom, was a billionaire’s son, and he wasn’t half bad looking. I guess I couldn’t blame her.
The night before the wedding, it became apparent to the two of us that we would be locked forever in a secret world that only she and I knew about. To everyone on the outside looking in, there was nothing abnormal about two best friends spending the night together in the bride’s hotel room. They would never know that we slept in the same bed, made love as if there was no tomorrow, and wept in each other’s arms afterward. Little did I know that not only would this “big day” be life altering for Marie, but that my life would also change in an instant.
The morning of the wedding I awoke in the crook of Marie’s arm with a horrible, nagging nausea in the pit of my stomach. I was sure it was all in my head. I mean I was really emotional. I launched myself toward the toilet bowl and began retching. Marie stood in the doorway and asked, “Are you pregnant?”
My whole world spun out of control.