breaking the dam

at what point do you realize you need therapy? now.. i'm all kinds of in need of therapy, for a variety of reasons not related to my gender identity extravaganza. i grew up in therapy when i was a kid.. preventative therapy, i called it. my mom had a therapist, as did my sister, so it was only natural for them to enroll me as well. i don't remember it being enlightening.. i just remember playing lots of "uno" and walking along the railroad tracks with my therapist, talking about my typical 7th grade day. i suppose a lot of what i need to talk about now i should have talked about then. apparently i just didn't know how important those feelings were.. or, rather, how incredibly different they were from every other 7th grader. while every kid was thinking they were so different from everyone else, misunderstood by their parents and teachers, i just assumed i was living a normal kids life, doing normal things, thinking normal thoughts. sure, i didn't think i was the seavers or any other sitcom family, though it didn't stop me from wanting to be. internally, i assumed no one's family was like that. it wasn't until i was in college that i realized that those families did exist... that other kids had bedtimes.. that families got up in the morning together and had breakfast. i was certain that i was normal, and it took me years to come to terms with how different everything i thought was normal was. of course, it also wasn't until my senior year of high school that i realized what my vagina was, really, and how doing things to those private parts could feel good.. that it wasn't just for getting pregnant or catching std's.

i'm convinced that, until i fell in love with a woman when i was 17, that i must have been asexual. sure, i had crushes. but for 17 years, my crushes involved wanting to hold hands with someone, and *gasp* maybe kiss. it wasn't until my first real boyfriend tried to shove his tongue in my mouth (age 16) that i realized what a french kiss was. i might have been obviously disgusted. he dumped me the next day.

i remember touching myself a few times the summer before my senior year of high school. i completely bypassed my clit and went right for my vagina.. awkwardly sticking fingers inside, moving around, sometimes getting wet, never really getting off. i was so unsuccessful that i remember stopping, trying to figure out what the big deal was. nothing turned me on, as i know it now.

i was 17 when i had my first somewhat animal instinct to pin a woman against a wall and press myself against her. we were in a theater, backstage during a performance. she was whispering italian in my ear, and i wanted to grab her, shove her against the dark curtains, and, in a very movie star sort of way, kiss her hard and, for the lack of a better term, have my way with her. and there was my epiphany. my sexual rebirth if you will. after that, i couldn't stop thinking about sex... like a sexual dam had broken.

my overwhelming sexual thoughts were fixated on my being the man (literally) having sex with a woman. me on top.. or me behind her bending her over.. or me pressing her up against a wall.. or her wrapping her legs around my waist. i never thought lesbian sex thoughts.. oral sex, or using my hands/fingers, etc. i remember being so confused and disappointed two weeks shy of my 18th birthday when i had sex for the first time.. when i had successfully kissed someone, but had no. idea. what happened next. and quickly realized that she could straddle me all she wanted.. but neither of us were getting off. what did i think would happen? i remember laying on top of her, kissing her, and her expressing confusion as to why i was laying on top of her... and my fear of squashing her little tiny-framed self with my big, heavy, broad self. (for the record, laying on top of my wife is still one of my favorite things ever.)

so where in the sexual developmental stage of my life did things go horribly wrong? i can blame my ocd, self-esteem issues on a variety of other upbringing flaws (a whole other entry).. but in this specific case, what part of my mental and emotional upbringing did i just start making up how to have sex, what body parts i would use, how i would use them, who i would use them on? why was i so certain that, without any male parts, i could have sex like a man? why do i never fantasize about being laid out and fucked? why am i always doing the fucking? why am i always hoping and wishing i could use my non-existent manpart? i'm certain therapists would have a field day helping me sort myself out in gender identity land, and perhaps it's coming up on the time for me to ask for help. i often get the feeling that, based on my self-help experience, i'm probably not the best judge of things.