Adrina

How old would I have been before I touched a penis?

Steve, who was a year younger, was my favorite cousin. I think I was six when I had a play-doctor episode with him. He wanted to see what little girls were made of. His parents were visiting, so we went out to the back seat of their car and I lay down and he took my panties off and examined me or played with me, touched me, and so forth. His touch, just with his fingers, was gentle. I didn’t do anything with him. It was just, like, he wanted it, okay. Possibly because I’d seen my dad use the chamber pot and seen my brothers, I wasn’t particularly curious about boys.

So I was more or less passive. I didn’t really have sexual feelings about it, I guess. I don’t remember being turned on by it. It was just touch. But it was okay. I remember it as pleasant. There wasn’t anything negative about it, except I knew we shouldn’t tell our parents, probably because of when my mother didn’t want to hear about my boyfriends. But Steve wasn’t like a boyfriend. We were just friends. But we didn’t do it for very long. We knew somebody might discover us.

I used to stay at my uncle’s farm for a week every summer. And my cousin, Dieter, was a year older than me. Dieter was not my favorite cousin like Steve was. He seemed dumb to me. Too focused on farm issues and too much physical that I wasn’t interested in at that time. For some reason, the chamber pot was, I think, in Dieter’s room. And he was very curious about my using it. He was always trying to touch me and get to me. But it wasn’t anything that disturbed me that much. Being a farm boy, I guess he had too much sex and animals around him.

I think I was probably seven when he wanted to do it like the bull. He had seen the bulls and cows do it. We were out in the field and he wanted me on my hands and knees so he could insert. But it didn’t really work. He couldn’t get it in, or we didn’t know how to do it, or something like that.

Then, another time, we were in the outhouse, looking at each other, playing with each other. But actually, I don’t really remember touching him. I think it was mostly him touching me. His little sister looked in a knot hole and saw us, so she told his mother. So, they wouldn’t let us be together like that anymore, or “Get out of the outhouse.”

Dieter’s touch was too aggressive, or not sensitive, like Steve’s was. And again, it seems like I was passive. It was okay, to make him happy but I wasn’t interested on my own.

After that, he still seemed to be pursuing me but I think I kind-of stayed away from him.

When it comes to sex in my childhood, the episode I really remember was with my uncle Chip.

He was my favorite uncle and I really loved him. He was always a lot of fun, his whole life. He was really happy and fun and a good person to be around. He was known as the fun person in the family and was the youngest brother of my mother and all her sisters and the only boy in the family. So he was loved by everyone. I didn’t see him that often because he lived in Tennessee. But when he was 16, he came to stay with us for a year or two to go to high school in my town. I was about ten.

We felt more like equals in spite of the difference in age. Of course, he was much younger than any other of my uncles, who had married his sisters. He was such a young person and a fun person that he was just more like a cousin, and a loving cousin.

My girlfriend, Aggi, who had been my friend since second grade, also had a favorite uncle who was staying with her, so we were bragging about our uncles. Hers was a little older than Chip.

With two bedrooms and that big family, we were a bit crowded. I don’t know if anyone else was staying with us, but we were trying to find beds for everybody. There was a couch that made out into a bed in the living room, and it ended up with my mother putting my uncle and me to bed together. So he and I were sleeping in that bed.

In the middle of the night, I woke up and suddenly felt my hand holding his cock! I thought, “How did that happen?” I let go and rolled over, pretending I was asleep. Pretty soon, he reached over and got my hand and put it back on his cock again. And I let him. It was okay with me. I liked it. Then he started playing with me, fingering my genitals. It felt good. I guess it was really arousing to me because I really enjoyed it.

We were doing all this under the covers and it went on for quite some time. We did not have intercourse, but we were just touching each other. His touch was gentle. I don’t remember if there was any kissing. We were having so much fun that we didn’t want to get up in the morning.

My mother saw that we didn’t want to get up. I don’t know what else she saw, but she never let us sleep together again because she got a little suspicious.

I think this was the first time I touched a penis. I think it was also the first time I felt sexual arousal. (I didn’t masturbate. A lot of girls say that they did it at their young age, but I didn’t really think about it.) It was enjoyable. I would not have initiated it, but I went along with it and I enjoyed it. I was very innocent.

After that night and that morning, I don’t recall any difference in our relationship. We didn’t talk about it and we didn’t do anything sexual again. Not that I recall, anyway. He remained my favorite uncle and I always felt close to him. We loved each other. I loved him so much.

Chip got to be friends with the boy next door, who was about his age, or maybe he was just 14. That was Herman and he used to come over and see me all the time. I had some books called Big Little Books that we got at the dime store. They were just little, square, but big, fat books. I was reading Little Orphan Annie, or something. And I don’t know why, maybe there weren’t any chairs available, but I remember kneeling on the floor and reading this book on my bed and him being behind me and hugging me. He was supposedly reading the book with me. But, he loved to do that, to be close to me.

It didn’t exactly turn me on but I think it was something pleasant, that I enjoyed the touch. Which I always have. I’ve always enjoyed kissing and touching. On the other hand, it might have been a sexual turn-on to him. I don’t know. But he wasn’t touching me like Chip had that night. He was just hugging me. And he wanted to come over and see me a lot.

On sexual education, there was not a word. Not a word.

My brother and I would see ads for Kotex in the magazines and we’d ask my mother, “What’s that for?” And she would just button up her lips and not tell anything. And one night, when they were out, I found a box of Kotex on their dresser with a book, Marjorie May’s Twelfth Birthday.¹ So I read the book and it was a story, supposedly for twelve-year-old girls to know what menstruation was. But it was so bland, it didn’t even say where the blood came from. I thought maybe it came out of the breasts. The next day, I said to Mom, “I found this box of Kotex and the book. Was I supposed to read that?” And she said, “Yes.” So that’s all she ever told me about menstruation.

I was almost 15 before I started menstruating. I thought I was never going to grow up. I went to Methodist camp for a week once every summer and fortunately my cousin, Sally, was there with me, because I told her, “I’ve got some blood on my pants.” And she was a year younger than me, but I think she had already started. So she said, “Oh, well, that’s the curse!” I was so proud. I was sitting on the shore of the lake, but I didn’t go swimming because I couldn’t go swimming!

So that Marjorie May book, which was not very helpful, was my entire sex education. And they wouldn’t dream of teaching it in school. As for learning anything from television, that wasn’t invented yet!

I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was a junior or senior. And then, because I had the reputation with the local boys of being the brain, it wasn’t until a couple of boys moved in from different schools that they noticed me as a person, as a cute girl, instead of what the other guys thought of me as. There were two guys. I didn’t have any kind of sex with the first one. The other one, Norm, we had dated a lot and he started feeling me but we didn’t really have sex either.

In high school, I also fell in love with a girl. But I had no idea about sexual orientation. I just wanted to be around her and I liked her. I didn’t think of sex at all with her. And I didn’t know that it was unacceptable. I also had other girlfriends in high school that we were close but I never thought of it as being sexual. Never thought of kissing them.

I graduated at 17, and then I had a boyfriend and we really had sex. And again, that didn’t seem to turn me on much. His brother had a business driving taxis and in his office there was a little room with a bed. So we were in there one time having sex and his brother came in and I was so embarrassed. He was driving taxi for his brother and we would stay out most of the night playing around in his car. My parents slept so soundly, they didn’t hear what time I came in, almost morning.

I was married at 18, almost 19, and my husband was about a year older. The night before my wedding, my mother slept with me and I said, “Aren’t you supposed to tell me about sex?” She said she didn’t know anything to tell me except never to use any of these pills or something to prevent pregnancy. She thought they were dangerous and she said, “Just get pregnant.” That’s all she knew.

I didn’t even know there was such a thing as orgasm. On our wedding night, I got on top of my husband and I said, “Oh, Honey! I just got hot. Really hot.” That was really my first experience of orgasm but I didn’t know what it was. “I just got really hot.” That was all I knew.

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I think my childhood experiences were wonderful. They were all positive experiences. It didn’t traumatize me at all. It was not abusive and I was not a victim. I was a willing participant. I think it’s our society that has made people into victims and made people into abusers. Why should it be such a horrible experience? It wasn’t for me. It was not anything I wished hadn’t happened.

Chip was six years older than me and Dieter was a year older, on the farm. I guess age was always important as a child. I certainly knew that even Dieter was an older kid. But as to the significance of them being older, I don’t know. Maybe they thought they could dominate me or take advantage of me because I was younger, but I hadn’t really thought of it that way. And I don’t think they were interested, attracted to me, because of my younger age. I think it was just because I was available. Because it happened that way.

I considered Chip my friend. I didn’t think of him as being powerful. With Dieter, I don’t think it was so much age as experience. Living on a farm, he knew a lot more than I did. I don’t know if that was some kind of power because of my inexperience. It’s hard to say because he certainly wasn’t abusive. He wasn’t forcing me. I didn’t feel like a victim at all.

I have been on a life-long search for knowledge, for being stimulated, to look into myself, to experience things I never thought of. I had the alternative available – to say no. I think I would have felt I missed something if I had said no. How old would I have been before I touched a penis?

Now, if it had been my father, it would have been a different situation. Then I would feel the power exchange. My dad whipping me, that was power! But Chip was my friend. I mean, I don’t think it would have been different if he’d have been ten years old, the same age as me. I didn’t feel he had power over me. I think it would have been the same if it had been Steve, who was a year younger. That, I think, would have been a pleasant experience also.

I didn’t have any innocence stolen from me. I stayed innocent until I was married, I guess. The lack of education about sex is something that I deplore.

To me, the incident with Chip was certainly a comfort and, I would say, an expression of love between the two of us. We enjoyed each other’s company. We had fun during the day. And I suppose it was an education in a way. It was an education in touching. I never touched another cock until I was 17 years old. So I don’t think it hurt me at all. It didn’t traumatize me whatsoever. It was just an experience.

Years ago, a man in church asked me why I was so happy, and other people have said I have an aura of love about me. I think my childhood sexual experience is part of that. It’s part of my life. There’s just a naturalness of a complete body acceptance.

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I’ve had a very good life. I was married for 37 years and have four children. We hug each other. Every time they call, they tell me they love me. My husband died but thank goodness he gave me these wonderful children and now the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren to carry on our loving family.

I’m still pretty much a loner. I go a lot. I do a lot. And yet, I’ve been thinking lately, I have a lot of friends, but not close friends. But I love to read, as anyone could see looking at my bookshelves. So I spend a lot of time at home reading. But I also go out almost every night to someplace. So most of the time, I’m happy. I keep hearing from people in my life that I’m their role model.

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