Fertility Awareness Method, Part 1

As far as orgasms go, I was a pretty late bloomer. When my first one hit, I'd been having sex of various sorts for years, thinking I was having orgasms. I mean, I was having fun, right? My body felt good, right? During sex, I'd go pretty deep into myself, getting lost in the sensations, kind of trancing out. So when my high-school friends asked "Does he make you come, like, every time?" I said, "Well, not *every* time."

I had no idea what I was talking about.

See, I am a hard-wired girl. So it's not that I hadn't had an orgasm with a partner. It's that I hadn't had an orgasm. Not for lack of exploration, either. My earliest masturbation memory is from about 3 years old. There's a bit of a gap in terms of memory, but then I remember it being a pretty regular part of my life from about 10 on. It felt really good. Having sex as a teenager felt that good too. Different good, but good good.

When I realized I hadn't had an orgasm, I was 20. My ex-nasty had a waterbed, which for sleeping was far more comfortable than I'd expected and for sex was pretty interesting. Changing positions is much more fluid on a wobbly mattress. Took me a while to get used to regular ones again.

But anyway. We were on the waterbed and doing stuff we normally did. It was feeling good and fun, like normal good and fun. And then I got this other feeling, like a pretty far-away sound and maybe that's the 6 o'clock train. But maybe not, because it's never sounded quite like that before, but oh, who knows, maybe with the fog and the wind. You won't be surprised to find out that it got louder and closer and louder and certainly, without doubt or hesitation, I can tell you it was the 6 o'clock train rushing through my clit and up my spine.

Holy fuck, I thought, and probably yelled. Right, this is what people have been talking about. A boy managed what I hadn't been able to in all those hours with my hands down my pants.

I would love to be able to say that everything was easy from there, and that I started coming all the time and developed a whole new and loving relationship with my body.

I did not. And I did not.

Over the next few years I had a few random orgasms. They always snuck up on me. And the x-n grew resentful of me trying. So I gave up.

It is probably not a coincidence that I got the fucker out of my life not long after I bought myself a vibrator.

My first vibrator was an expensive, battery-operated piece of crap. But I managed to figure out how to get myself off with it a few times in the month before it broke. When it gave up the ghost, I was living in Toronto where a feminist sex-store called Good For Her had just openend up. I went there instead of the swooshy Yorkville place I'd gotten the other model. GFH had posted a sign, one I can still picture, about the differences between battery operated and electric vibrators. I spent about $10 more than I had on the shitty battery operated one and came home with an electric one: the Wahl Warm'n'Gentle. I still have it today, 9 years later.

To say that it changed my life is an understatement. From the first time I used it, I was able to consistently give myself strong orgasms. That is a kind of power I do not take lightly and I do not take for granted. Being able to have an orgasm whenever you want? Not having to depend on a fuckwit for your own pleasure?

I was 23 years old, and it felt like someone had just taken me to the best grown-up candy store ever.

Again, I'd love to say that it was all orgasms all the time after that. That every time I had sex, I came with the same kind of force provided by the Wahl. But that wasn't the case. It has been an uphill battle. My body has been a confusing and fraught territory for me, with a lot of emotional wreckage piling up on various shores. Its needs have seemed tempestuous and strange, even to me. I was too afraid to let myself go in front of people, for fear of another evisceration.

It's only in the past year that I've dealt with enough of the wreckage, learned enough about my body and gotten up enough confidence to vocalize what I need in order to come. This has happened partially through masturbation, and partially through talking a lot about sex to a lot of people. And partially through finding people who genuinely want me to feel good while we’re fooling around.

Another turning point was a conversation with a lover I had for a couple years in between my x-n and Mike. Nile and I hooked up in Toronto about a month before I left for Halifax. It was a stellar end to My Year of No Action. After I left, we talked a lot on the phone and through email. I’d see him when I went back to TO, and he came to visit me once in Halifax. With the passion of lovers who had been separated for 5 months, he walked into my apartment, pushed me onto the couch and we were off. Later, he mentioned one part in particular being hot.

"Really?" I said. "I was actually feeling a little embarrassed about that. I kind of lost it."

"Uh, yeah," he replied. "You did. That was the part that was hot."

"Funny. B always felt like I was using him when I got like that."

"Yeah. You were. That was the part that was hot."

"Really?"

"Yeah. What kind of a jackass doesn't like it when the girl he's fucking loses her mind fucking him? That's just bullshit."

"Really."

For years, when I was with someone and started to feel weird about starting to lose myself, I would remember that. Bullshit, I'd think, and go under. It took a while, but it became habit, and now, oh wow. I don’t have to think it, it just comes natural. Like it’s my right to get lost and like I am strong enough to haul myself back.

*

Okay, that’s it for now. I have a Special Project to work on and it’s getting late. There’s a whole other part to this that I’ll post tomorrow or Monday.