Celebrities: They're Just Like Us

How much better things might have been for me if there had been someone like Billie Eilish when I was growing up. In her Rolling Stone interview, Billie spoke openly about self-pleasure and how it helped her develop body positivity and self-confidence. She said it helped her overcome body image issues and build a deeper connection with herself. Hearing something like that as a pre-teen might have completely changed the way I viewed my own body and sexuality.

Creative Writing 

In high school, we called our teachers by their first names. I've always described them as hippies because that's exactly what they were. Most looked like Mike Stivic from All in the Family or Carly Simon with their long, center-parted hair and earth-toned clothes. Claire was definitely hippie-ish, a woman with graying curls who wore flowing skirts and had ink stains on her fingers from grading late into the night. She was both my English and homeroom teacher.

The assignment itself has dissolved from memory, but I can still see Claire's face as she finished reading my presentation. She summoned me to a quiet area, her usual warm expression replaced by deep concern. Claire was so cool she wasn't even fazed by the vial of dish soap labeled "sperm" that accompanied my story. Not clear on why I felt the need to add props-perhaps for extra credit?

The story I'd written was about a night I spent at an older boy's house in Mount Airy, PA. He was a fellow student, someone I knew from campus. It was dark out, and the ride on two buses was long-over an hour in total. Mount Airy is a suburb of Philadelphia where the houses are large and spaced far apart, unlike what I was used to growing up in a Philly rowhouse. My brother had encouraged the trip, his crush on this boy so intense he was willing to push me into situations he couldn't navigate himself, living vicariously through his ability to coerce me into almost anything.

The house seemed large with an even bigger garden, with rooms so far apart that no one would have known I was in the house if he'd killed me. The boy was known around campus for dealing drugs, and there's a hazy quality to everything that happened next. I remember him offering me something, but I have no memory of how it was administered. The evening blurs after that-fragments without clear narrative: nothingness. I have no specific memory of feeling emotion of any kind, just disappointment, but without a specific expectation.

I remember looking over a balcony from his bedroom, looking down at a large courtyard. Perhaps my mind was trying to romanticize or lessen the pain of what I experienced.

Back in that classroom, Claire wasn't marking my paper for grammatical errors or run-on sentences. She was studying my face, her teacher's instinct recognizing something deeper than a creative writing exercise. When she finally spoke, her voice carried careful concern. The specific words she offered have faded, but the feeling remains. She was deeply concerned.

Early Exposure 

My experience with sexuality began early. I started self-exploration as a child, acting out scenes like one would read in X-rated romance novels using my dolls. I would lie beside my dollhouse and drift into a world of fantasy, pleasuring myself.

I felt comfort when I learned that actress Molly Shannon also began self-exploration young, sometimes using Barbies as part of her imaginative world. I do not think you will see that in the pages of US Weekly's "They're Just Like Us."

Like many girls, I had crushes. Robbie Benson was going to be my husband. I practiced kissing on his poster. What may have been different for me was how early I was exposed to sex. My parents left their bedroom door open during intercourse. Nothing sexy about that for sure-being a young girl hearing your parents in the throes of passion.

I remember finding nude playing cards tucked away in the drawer of our dining room sideboard and feeling fascinated by them.

I longed for physical signs of growing up, wanting pubic hair. I had put a washcloth down there during bath time, stepping out to stare in the mirror at myself before starting self-exploration.

Being the daughter of an exotic dancer meant nudity was never treated as shameful. Morganna, "baseball's kissing bandit," had worked with my mother. She became my pen pal and one of my best friends when I was around eleven. I was enamored with her.

How would nudity and promiscuity collide?

My parents never sat me down to have "the talk"...birds and bees. We did not have conversations about consent, boundaries, or self-respect. I just remember my father warning me not to "lead boys on." The irony is, I have never known how to flirt. The idea of being seductive is almost laughable.

In sixth grade, I had a close friend who lived a mile away. Her house was cozy and beautifully styled. Her mother had elegant taste; they were professional corporate types, sophisticated. I loved being at her house. We would cook her parents' mac and cheese casserole for dinner and wait for them to come home. For hours we played on the garage swing, which faced the driveway. Each day around 4:30, my crush would walk by with his German Shepherd. He was a few grades ahead, and I fell hard. I stole money from my mom's purse and bought him an engraved ID bracelet at Sears. I was constantly leaving gifts in his mailbox. Funny thing, he was the student body president who would count the votes for my own student body president "landslide" win, which didn't help my cause any. I don't think he ever even looked at me. In hindsight, I must have terrified him.

When we were not stalking the neighborhood hottie, my friend and I found copies of Penthouse Forum adult magazines in her parents' drawer. I read the stories aloud. She thought they were hilarious.

Heavy Petting 

My puberty brought on body odor that must have been like dogs in heat, because eventually two Catholic school boys in her neighborhood- one I liked and one who liked me-started hanging around. They would play basketball at the park, and we joined their games, which led to one of them groping me and us making out in the woods. The phrase back then was "heavy petting." I recognize now how much I was hijacking our after-school play dates for my longing to have a boyfriend. I owe my friend an apology for that.

I wish I had some insight, some deep intellectual understanding of why I allowed this and went along with being sexually exploited. When I think about it now, although there were some moments of physical pleasure-and let's face it, what does one know about physical pleasure at twelve years old?-I got nothing from it. I liked his friend, the quiet one. What I remember most vividly was hating how it felt to be touched without asking while pretending to play basketball. Eventually, I grew out of it. When they came around, I would just blow them off...okay, maybe that was a poor choice of words.