Masturbation: The excitation of one's own or another's genital organs, usually to orgasm, by manual contact or means other than sexual intercourse.

It was in second grade when I got my first introduction to sex. I was seven years old. My parents weren’t home and a babysitter was watching me and my younger brother. I remember the babysitter seemed mature to me at the time, but thinking back she couldn’t have been any older then thirteen. The picture I was creating sat in front of me as I created my masterpiece of cliché suns and mermaids when the babysitter came down the stairs and asked the question. “Do you know what sex is?” I had heard the word somewhere but didn’t have much of an idea about what it meant, but seeing she felt it was important I replied with “yes.” She asked me a couple more times to make sure before running back up the stairs towards my parents room expecting me to follow. I couldn’t understand what her hurry was but followed her curiously.

We weren’t supposed to play in this room and I knew it was off limits so I asked her why she was there. She replied with authority that my parents had told her about a game in the room and had directed her to find it there. At the time her silly excuse convinced me as she started to rummage through my fathers dresser drawer. After finding what she sought, she turned to look at me asking again whether I was sure I knew about sex. I nodded my head vigorously hoping that she would be convinced and reveal the secret which seemed so important. It was then that she revealed what she had found. I couldn’t understand what a magazine had to do with sex, but as she flipped though it I knew that it was important somehow.

Later I revealed the secret to my mother, who first questioned how I had come upon it before replying that it wasn’t of any importance. I wasn’t as naive as she thought because I noticed that we never had that babysitter again. Afterwards I kept my secret to myself only telling my best friend in the secrecy of an oath during a sleep over. We crept into my parent’s room and I sneaked a magazine from his stash under his long pajamas in the second drawer of the dresser. My friend and I would sneak a peek and giggle at the nude pictures before I snuck it back into place carefully arranging it in the angle it had been found in. I only showed it to her once, although I would occasionally peek every so often to check if they were still there.

When I was twelve I found my mothers vibrator. I can’t remember how I learned of its use, but by that time I had already discovered what it felt like to touch myself. It started at the pool a year earlier. I had been playing with the water jets feeling the pressure against my hands and back. When I started to climb out of the pool to try the waterslides I felt a new sort of sensation. The slides were quickly forgotten as pressed myself against the water jet supporting myself on the edge with my arms. I doubt anyone noticed me, but I sat there for over half an hour fascinated by my new discovery. The next summer I wanted to ask my best friend if she touched herself too, but I couldn’t figure out how to describe it.

Most people consider twelve year old girls asexual children. Would I have shocked them if they knew about me hiding in the bathroom while my parents were out peeking at my father’s magazines? I was visualizing the women on the glossy pages touching me with their soft bodies, while I sat on the floor reading the captions by the models.

It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I learned about the word “masturbation”. It was in a book I had been reading about a girl who had to live in a body cast to fix the alignment of her back. The character in the book would touch herself so that she could calm down before going to sleep. Later she asked her health instructor anonymously about this touching and the teachers’ response was that it was a natural thing called masturbation. It wasn’t until the second time I read the book that I associated what I was doing to what the character in the book was doing. I would sit in my room wondering what it would be like kissing. At that time I didn’t have much of a vivid imagination, so I kept to my simple fantasies.

In ninth grade I got my first kiss. I felt like it would never happen; I would go through life with friends but be dateless forever. Most of my friends had paired off or had at least been kissed. They would describe their first kiss, which had happened in grade school with some guy they had a crush on because he had the coolest bike. As each year past I felt increasingly self conscious that I was missing out on something. Sure the chance had come up. There had been a boy who asked me out in fourth grade who would have kissed me, but I hadn’t been interested in it at the time. By the time I was fifteen I felt my youth was being stunted by my inaction, so during my end of school party we decided to play spin the bottle.

We all sat on lawn chairs in the back yard looking at the soda can that would decide our fate. My first kiss went to the boy who wasn’t interested in girls. It wasn’t as impressive as the hype had made it, but I felt like I had passed an initiation. To this day I’m a bit disappointed at how unromantic my first kiss was, but gay boy or not I had been kissed. This was the first of many kissing parties that I hosted. My parties grew in popularity so my parents would rent our local church for my gatherings. My friends and I would sit in a circle taking turns spinning the bottle or whatever else we had on hand. Whomever the bottle faced you had to kiss whether it be boy or girl, and if you got that same person a second time in the game you added tongue. For the third time you would sneak into the bathroom and make-out until you were freed by the next couple. Our simple game became complicated with rules and by the next year there wasn’t a person in my group that I hadn’t kissed. We thought we were sneaky, but I’m sure my parents were aware of our activities.