Baby, Can I Hold You

What I Like

July 17, 2025

dating, sex

I was lying in bed about to drift off to sleep when I thought of one of my favourite things about you. And suddenly I was wide awake thinking about you.

I think when you know you’re going to have sex with someone (at least it has been with us) it can be a bit of chaos beforehand, there’s a frenzy in the shedding of clothes, of rushing towards the nakedness. So I’ve never really stopped to watch you get undressed, I don’t think you’ve ever had the chance to watch me get undressed.

But I think what we’ve had has been better. You do this thing and I love it. Where after the long, naked cuddle after I’ll get up and hunt around for my underwear, my bra, my dress. And every time it’s happened, I’ve noticed that you watch me do it. I’m usually talking at the same time but even so, the attention you give to me getting back into my clothes makes me happy. Like there’s something sexy about it. Like there’s something sexy about me, clothes or not.

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My Worst Date

July 16, 2025

dating

I’ve written some about my best dates, my really promising dates, first dates. But I thought today I’d share with you my actual worst date (those dates that involved me feeling unsafe don’t count!).

I started messaging this man and straight away we had a million things to talk about. I really love people who are passionate about things even if they are things I’m not hugely familiar with. And this man had a real passion for animals, for insects, for plants and trees, for dinosaurs. I ended up following him on Instagram fairly early on to see some of his animal photography.

And it was fairly one-sided with some of the scientific facts but I enjoyed it. He would be telling me fairly specific things about different wild grasses (that I had asked him about and wanted to know more about!) and in turn I’d tell him I had a lenticular ruler when I was little that had T-Rex and stegosaurus fighting each other and I felt really sorry for stegosaurus because all my friends were rooting for T-Rex to win that fight.

He was working near to a river that had some great areas of natural beauty with loads of wildlife. I said to him, maybe one of these days we should go for a walk, see these pretty sights and he can point out any cool animals. He agreed. I let him know when I’d be available and told him that I’d meet him anywhere as long as I got to see and hear some interesting things.

In the end, I met him in the car park at the entrance for a local park. I was really excited to meet him and I’d even bought him a book that we’d talked about and said that he was hoping to read soon. So certain was I that we’d be friends that when I saw it, I bought it and hoped it wouldn’t be too weird of a thing to give someone on our first date.

When I got there, I sent him a text message to say I’d arrived. And he got out of his van where he was parked. I’d seen pictures of him and he looked just as I thought he would… the only difference is that being close to him, I could smell him too. And he was letting off a rather strong smell. Like what I imagine patchouli smells like.

He had a big smile on his face when I met him and he kissed me on the cheek as a hello and I thought I would reserve judgement. Then we started to walk. I was maybe expecting more than I got. We were near a river, but we just couldn’t see the river through a massive amount of hedges in the way. I could catch glimpses of it at times but I figured maybe we were walking towards something that would bring us closer to it? Only we didn’t.

We ended up walking through a muddy field for 30 minutes. And then it started to rain. Not heavily at first but then quite heavily. So we turned back and walked back to our cars. He offered to let me wear his jacket but I cringed at the idea of being enveloped in his scent and declined. My hair ended up clumping together around my face from the rain and I was cold and feeling fairly miserable.

And I think if we were talking about interesting things I might not have minded so much that the wet had seeped into my shoes and my feet were icy cold. Or that I never once saw the river. But conversation was also not good. He had told a story about his parents celebrating a big wedding anniversary in the next week and asked me what my parents’ relationship was like. I laughed awkwardly and said that wasn’t really first date conversation. But he insisted. Was absolutely adamant to know so I told him the story in the most blunt, gruesome way possible. Like I was trying to teach him a lesson for organising such a poor date? Serves him right to force such a conversation? I started to hate who I was becoming with this man, truly.

The rain didn’t last long and by the time we’d gotten back to the car park it had stopped so he asked if I wanted to sit on a bench with him and continue talking. I really didn’t. But I thought I’d give it 5-10 minutes before I made my excuses and left.

He started telling me stories about dates with other women. It might have been tacky but it quickly became relevant. The story he was telling was about eating at an outdoor sushi restaurant when a homeless person started asking for money. This man didn’t know how to draw a boundary and say ‘no’ so, as the story unfolded, this meant that my date eventually took the homeless man to a Robert Dyas and bought him a phone charger and some other things. Not because my date was particularly civic-minded and compassionate. No. It was because he didn’t know how to say ‘no’ to him.

And I was able to witness that in person when just as this story was ending and I was about to start saying goodbye, my date says to me, sorry that’s my colleague over there walking towards us, he’s going to ask questions about you, what would I like him to say about me? I was so caught out by surprise by this that I didn’t have time to say more than ‘just tell him it’s none of his business’ before the colleague stood in front of us saying ‘hello’ to my date.

‘And who might this be?’ he says to me. And my date says my name, says we’re friends, that we’ve been on a walk. And that he’d see him tomorrow. But his friend doesn’t pick up on this subtle dismissal and starts asking me things. Where I live, what I do for work, how I met my date. I answered some things but ignored most of it. I wasn’t on a date with him, I wasn’t putting any effort into this strange man. My date ended up answering all the questions though and they talked about work for ages. It seemed likely that they would continue talking until this other man got bored or had to be somewhere else. When he said ‘do you mind shifting over?’ to me like he was going to join our date is when I ran out of patience.

Yes, I did mind. We were on a date and I wasn’t here to get to know him, did he mind catching up another time? Or, I said, and I looked at my date to include him in this nonsense, I can just leave you two to it if you’d prefer? And something in that spurred both of them to remember their manners and the colleague left.

I got up and walked back to my car. He followed me, looking a bit embarrassed. He apologised for his colleague but his colleague didn’t concern me. He did. The terrible walk. The lack of any kind of beauty. The rain. The pushing of topics I didn’t want to talk about. The intrusion of his colleague into our date. It was all bad. And I couldn’t wait to get in my car and drive away from this mess.

He does take really nice pictures of animals though.

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Thinking About You

July 15, 2025

sex

There are a lot of things about our encounters together that I end up thinking about after.

The messaging beforehand. The spike of adrenaline and need and want that coursed through me when you said you were on your way over. The anticipation of knowing that in 15 minutes you’d be here and kissing me, touching me, licking me, fucking me.

I touched myself afterwards thinking about the implied command in your request for me to open the door to you in lingerie. The sexiness I felt both in wearing lingerie in the middle of the day, but wearing it knowing that you’d like it, that you asked for it. When I opened the door and you saw me in my scraps of fabric, the appraising way you looked at me.

The way I kissed you the second you were in the door and the way you pressed me against the wall in my hallway, the way you pulled the fabric over my nipples to one side. That you grabbed my wrists in one of your hands and raised them over my head as you kissed me, my neck. That your other hand went towards my clit, to feel how wet I was for you. When you loosened your grip on my wrists, I loved being able to touch you, to hold you closer to me, to be able to move aside the fabric separating your fingers from my clit so that I could moan into your shoulder as I fell apart.

The way you look at me, the way you look at my body. You always look hungry for me and my body responds to that. It is ready to be devoured by you.

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Stupid Respectful Brain

July 14, 2025

sex

I do this crazy thing. I don’t know if it’s because of my reciprosexuality or if it’s something else entirely. But when I meet someone new, even if I’ve known that person for ages, I can’t fantasise about doing things with that person unless I know they’d be into it. We’d have to have talked about and they would have to express enthusiasm for it.

My stupid, respectful brain means that I need consent for everything, even in the comfort of my own brain. In my private thoughts.

I feel like I really just can’t be any more ridiculous than I am. It can be exhausting.

It’s like I can’t be taking a shower and have an idle thought ‘oh, I’d like this person to be here with me, pressing me against the shower door, kissing me while water pouring down us both’ No. I can’t have these nice things.

What is nice is that because I have leaned into this quirk of my brain and (mostly) accepted it, if I am into a person I generally do have a conversation early on about what sex things they might be thinking about. With me specifically. I’m not trying to create a script to work towards, more that I’m trying to paint potential pictures in my head.

I’ve been meeting with someone for a year and the last time we were together he said ‘shame I threw the condom away already, it would have been great if you rode me for a bit’ and I swear to you, in that moment my brain zinged off into all different directions and for days after that throwaway comment, I’d think about it.

What it would look like with me straddling him, would I be leaning back, my eyes closed lost in that pleasure? Would I be leaning forward, my hand on his chest for balance as I’m doing some back and forth? Am I touching myself as I’m on top? Is he touching me? Holding one of my hips perhaps?

I need this. I find some people can be a bit awkward about sharing this type of stuff with me but I actually love it.

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Dating Risks

July 11, 2025

dating

I had a date with this man recently that was fairly weird. He was very good looking, and he made me laugh. We met up at a local pub halfway between where we both lived. I knew he was married and in an ENM relationship where both him and her were taking steps towards meeting and dating other people. He told me as we sat down with our drinks that his wife was on a date at the same time we were. Except she was on a date with another woman. But when he said ‘woman’ he whispered it and looked around as though someone might have heard him say the word woman.

I didn’t know what to make of him. I felt comfortable with him, and he’d been open about his interest in me before we met but I told him that I needed him to be open about his interest in me sexually in person otherwise it didn’t pass my reciprosexual test. When I reminded him of that on our date, as I was trying to figure out where I stood with him, wondering if I was going to have a kiss at the end of the night, trying to work out how I felt about it… and he swerved my comment.

Eventually, after our drinks were finished, we got up to leave and he gave me a bit of an awkward hug. I managed to drive all the way home before I messaged him. Thanking him for the evening, it was nice to meet up. And what did he think of me? Did he see things going anywhere?

And that’s when he said it. He wrote that he was into me – and him saying that after we’d met was literally all I needed in order for me to realise I was incredibly sexually attracted to him and a tidal wave of disappointment hit me when I realised that we’d missed out on kissing. But wait. He’d sent another message. That basically said he was into me BUT BUT BUT BUT the reciprosexual thing put him off. He wouldn’t have wanted to lean in for a kiss and for me to realise in that second that I wasn’t into him. He couldn’t take that risk.

I dithered about writing back to tell him that all I needed was to know that he was attracted to me sexually for me to know how I felt about him and that it was reciprocated. Should I have told him that? I decided against it. Mostly because he had followed up to wish me all the best of luck with what I was looking for etc.

He’d already given up on me and who was I to try to convince him that I was worth it.

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First Date

July 10, 2025

dating, relationships, sex

I hadn’t intended to write a series of posts walking down memory lane but now that I’ve started, I’ll continue with at least my first date story. It’s a bit unusual maybe in terms of how fast everything happened but it was by design and I knew what I was doing with it. Plus, all these years later it still makes me smile to think of it.

To set the scene, I was both raised in a strict home environment and also in a house where I had all the freedom I could ever want. I don’t know how much that makes sense? But my dad and older brother were protective and even when I might have a crush or had any attention from my brother’s friends, it would quickly be shut down by my dad or my brother.

Fast forward to me being a teenager with access to public transport, the Internet had meant that spaces online had been created where I could connect with others without the presence of my family and didn’t have to rely on school or hobbies to connect me with other people. So at 16, I went on my first date.

He was someone I met online in a chatroom for my local area. We must have messaged back and forth quite a bit before we agreed to meet up but I don’t remember what we talked about. He was 18 and I don’t remember too much about him all these years later. He had a proper adult job, he lived in his own studio flat. He had a car. He seemed to be interested in me, which was key for me. Eventually he asked if I wanted to go on a date and if I would like to be picked up?

I hadn’t wanted him to know where I lived right away, so I agreed and met him at the park at the end of my road. I remember what I wore. Wide legged jeans and my favourite vest top, no bra. My hair down and wild around my face. I hadn’t thought to change my clothes or brush my hair. And as I leaned over to say hi to him through his car window I remember that when he saw me, he did this big gulp before he said ‘oh god, you’re really pretty’ and I smiled. It was the first time I remember anyone ever telling me that I was pretty.

I think he had hoped that I would be impressed by his car. It was red and possibly a model of car that is impressive to other people. I liked that he had his freedom with it. He drove me to a place that sells burgers just a bit nicer than fast food and again, I don’t remember what we talked about all evening. I mostly remember that I didn’t particularly like how tall he was (probably 6’2) but I liked his big blue eyes and when he smiled, which wasn’t often, he looked younger than he was. I think he thought I was more serious than I came across online so it was a surprise to him when I said something funny.

After we’d finished eating, he asked if I needed to get back home or if I had some time to drive around. I was intrigued enough to say I’d stick around and we drove around listening to the music playing from the radio. He didn’t like my taste in music, if I recall, but we argued about it in a way that made me laugh.

Eventually he parked his car in this area that sort of overlooked the town we lived in. When he turned the engine off he blushed a little bit before he said surely I’ve been here before, sorry for him not being more original. And I said I hadn’t been there before. He was surprised, he said it was a place that a lot of people go to … and he got embarrassed again and almost didn’t want to finish the sentence. Make out? I suggested and he seemed relieved that I wasn’t offended.

Where do you normally go on your dates? he asked. This is my first date, I said. More surprise. And he said does that mean I’d had boyfriends and stuff and just hadn’t been out on a date? Nope, I said. And that’s when he got a little quiet. Processing that, I guess.

I loved that he was surprised. I loved that he thought I was the type of pretty girl that got invited out to dates so often, that I’d breezed through all the hot date spots, that I had experience with boys. But I wasn’t that girl. But I loved pretending to be that girl with him. So when he started playing a game, I went along with it.

So …that means you’ve never been kissed before? And I smiled. No, I’ve never been kissed. Do you want to? he asked. And silently, I leaned over to him, trying to lick my lips first before I had my first kiss. That was soft and gentle and exceedingly sweet.

So …that means you’ve never had a second kiss? No, I’ve not. Or a third kiss… and there we were kissing again around my smile. I don’t remember all the things he said to me that night. The different suggestions he gave.

But they kept coming so …you’ve never been touched by a boy? on your neck? or kissed on your neck? No. I think he liked being all my firsts. That I’d never been to a make out spot and made out for hours. His hand started easing up my vest top at one point but he’d stop and he’d say so …that means nobody has ever touched you here, as his hand slowly went higher up to the side of my breast. No, I’d say, breathless from pleasure, nobody has ever touched me there. Or here? he said, as his fingers grazed across my nipple.

It was agonising in its slowness, as he stopped each time to ask, to get my confirmation that that had never happened. The unspoken consent I gave as I leaned into his kisses, into his touch. Into every suggestion he gave. Even when he knew he was crossing a line. But I was young and impatient and I wanted it all. I knew where my boundaries were and he didn’t cross any of them. He was chancing it but I wanted to go to these places with him, I was ready, I’d just never had this opportunity before.

So …does that mean you’ve never seen a penis in real life? No, I haven’t. Do you want to?

Does that mean you’ve never touched a penis before? No. Do you want to?

Does that mean you’ve never had a penis in your mouth before? Do you want to?

I was acting and making decisions on pure instinct but I didn’t feel like I was doing anything wrong, I didn’t feel pressured. I knew that I was in control, he put me in charge of what I wanted to do and what I didn’t. And I knew all along that if I’d said ‘no’ that things would end. But even in the moment I remember wanting to know how far things would go, where would they end?

But I swirled my tongue over his dick for a few minutes at the most before it all ended and I think with his release some of the lust haze had cleared and he suddenly felt bad that we’d done what we had. It all ended fairly rapidly after that and he dropped me home.

But he called me the next day. And the next day. And once, a few weeks later, as we were walking about the High Street, holding hands he abruptly stopped and said ‘I really like you, will you be my girlfriend?’ And so he became my first boyfriend as well as all my other firsts.

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Fascinating But Mental

July 9, 2025

dating

I was on a date recently. I was going to take my dog with me but he was feeling particularly lazy and didn’t seem that excited to go for a longer walk so I didn’t. But I met this man in a nearby park before an event he was going to later.

We had only just started talking a couple of days before we’d met up and I probably wouldn’t have met him so early except he was in my neighbourhood by coincidence so I thought why not? He was an interesting person to talk to online and that translated well when we met up. And unlike a lot of men, he did seem genuinely interested in me and asked me lots of questions. We talked about me being demisexual and reciprosexual and how that changed things for me. How complicated attraction can be. We talked a bit about sex and dating and how that’s gone for us both. We also talked about ourselves and our lives.

When we agreed to meet, I had given him my number and told him my real name and that I preferred that he call me by the name I’d had on my profile online. He accepted this without question but towards the end of the date when he walking me back to my car I was telling a story about learning to drive and how my driving instructor would just say my name very gently before she said things like perhaps you should slow down or whatever it was. It was at this point that he asked ‘how come she can say your name?’

And … I don’t think I’m always open about my name thing straightaway. Obviously I’ve told people before but usually I will gradually let people into some of my more interesting quirks. It just so happened that everything was concentrated to all of my quirks in a short period of time with this person.

I’ve lived my life online. And I’ve always created a different persona for myself when I could. If it’s possible to use a different name than my own, I have. Because I prefer it. I did grow up not particularly enjoying my own name but also, I like the person I can be by choosing something else. And then somehow it evolved into something more.

I can’t explain how or why it ended up like this but in a sexual or a romantic context, I don’t like others using my name. Because when they do use it? And this is only the people I know in a sexual or romantic way? Saying my name sounds like ‘I love you’ to me. So I actually love hearing my name, I just only want to hear it from those who do actually love me. Which is why I typically ask other people to use the name I’m going by instead of my actual name. And that’s what I said to this man I was on a date with.

His response? He said ‘You’re the most fascinating person I’ve ever met. Fascinating but mental. You know that, right? That you’re mental?’ And then he asked when we could see each other again. Funnily enough, I’m not rushing to make that happen.

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When It Should Have Happened

July 8, 2025

relationships

It’s funny how I start to unravel certain things in my head. The layers upon layers within relationships. The cracks that start out small and turn into canyons. That break up a marriage.

My ex and I are still in the process of finalising our divorce. And it’s been a rollercoaster, if I’m honest. Everything fell apart for the last time 4 and a half years ago and we’re still walking through the steps of splitting our lives from each other. It’s been complicated and I won’t get into the details. But I was thinking the other day how it all should have happened 15 years ago.

I’m coming up to a very personal anniversary. It has nothing to do with my marriage or any relationship I’ve had. It’s an anniversary about me only. And it was in the thinking of how I will celebrate this anniversary that I remembered that this thing happened.

I met my ex husband online many years ago. And at the same time in the space online, I met a friend of mine. Perhaps I should put friend in quotes there but no. He was a friend. And he was a good friend for a long time. What happened wasn’t about him and all about me. I met my ex husband and this person at the same time. And for awhile when things got serious between me and my ex husband, my friendship with this other person obviously took a step back.

I got married, my life as a partnership started. And there were always cracks. Always. I’ve talked about this at length in therapy but there were always things that I’d consider red flags that I didn’t see, didn’t consider, didn’t concern me at the time. And yet I persisted. Because there was a lot of good in my relationship, in my marriage.

But when things started becoming not so great, my friendship with this man reignited. We’d email every now and again, mostly to update each other on the overlap of the people we used to know. He had kept in touch with some of them and I had kept in touch with others. We were never particularly close, never deep friends. Until we were. I remember it happened gradually in the year or 18 months before The Thing happened. I’d slowly change our once monthly emails into more frequent messaging. I’d ask him more questions, I’d bring up subjects that would dig deeper into who he was as a person.

I look back on it now and can see with clarity what I was doing. I was blind to my own loneliness and I was seeking out meaningful emotional connection with whoever was available, whoever was amenable to me chipping away at their walls. To get closer, to burrow into someone else. And this friend of mine wasn’t innocent. I definitely developed some feelings for him and objectively speaking, even though I didn’t say anything nor did he, I feel like it’s safe to say that so did he. We crossed a line, him and I. And it all came to a head shortly before my anniversary 15 years ago.

We had been talking online for hours that night. The only thing I remember specifically is that I brought up this anniversary. He thought it was really cool and asked how I’d celebrate, what I would do to commemorate this day. And I said probably nothing? and he objected to that very strongly. He said he refused to let such an important day go unnoticed and uncelebrated. He was going to buy me flowers and have them delivered on the day. I remember feeling pleased and like an actual spark had been lit inside me. He asked for my number so we could arrange the details another time. I gave him my number but then told him that I’d need to go, I was feeling pretty sleepy.

I turned off my computer, went into the bedroom I shared with my ex husband, plugged my phone into my charger and went to the toilet to brush my teeth. In the few minutes I was in the bathroom, it happened. My friend had sent me a text message because he’d had my number for all of 10 minutes. The text had read ‘Going so soon?’ with a winky face. And possibly a kiss. And the thing was, it was 2am and I’d left the ringer on so it made a noise to let me know that someone had texted me. But they’d done it when I was out of the room.

And things weren’t right between me and my ex husband. I don’t blame him for looking at my phone. To see who had texted me so early in the morning. But seeing that text it laid things fairly open as to what I’d been doing the last couple of hours. Talking to someone else. In a manner that warranted a flirtatious emoji, a kiss.

I look back on it now and wonder how things didn’t just end then. It would have been better, probably. Saving ourselves the slow death of our relationship for the next ten years. We stayed up very late that night not talking. Mostly lying next to each other in bed being inches away from each other but feeling like an entire ocean separated us. And there was distance between us. I hadn’t broken what was between us but I’d brought our broken parts into the light. But that night and the difficult nights after it we chose to resuscitate the dying embers of who we were.

Years later, and years after we should have, we decided to finally end things. And he said something to me that felt quite cold and awful but it makes sense in the context of everything happened. But he said he was always waiting for me to tell him that I’d cheated on him. That he always just lived with that feeling, knowing that it was possible. That it had happened. And that he was waiting for confirmation that it had happened again.

And I’ve carried that comment around with me for years. It’s been a heavy burden. I’ve always felt like I deserved the pain of that comment. That I deserved the guilt I carried, at hurting him. At the betrayal of what I had done. But it’s taken me actual years to also get to a point where I realise that there was hurt and betrayal on both sides. Am I excusing my behaviour? Am I excusing that I stepped out of my marriage? Am I excusing that I hurt my ex? No.

I’m just allowing myself a little bit of grace. That for every story like mine there’s also the story of my marriage. The one where I stopped feeling safe, where I stopped feeling supported, where I stopped feeling important. I give myself grace because I know the ways in which I told him that I was unhappy, that my emotional needs weren’t met, that I needed something from him. And I know that in hundreds of ways he did nothing, didn’t see my pain, didn’t see my hurt.

We did a pretty great job of hurting each other.

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Unsticky

July 7, 2025

dating, relationships, sex

I first read Unsticky by Sarra Manning the same week it was published 16 years ago. I had been a fan of her YA books and I was excited to read her first foray into the adult market. It’s a book about a young woman who accepts an older man’s proposition to be his girlfriend in exchange for thousands of pounds per month. On a whim, I decided to pick it up again to see if I’d love it as much this time as I did when I first read it.

One of the first things that surprised me was that I was in my mid to late twenties when the book first came out. I remember being drawn into the story and loving it completely – but I didn’t have memories attached to my own age. I’d been married for nearly a decade when Unsticky was published and despite only being a few years older than the main character, Grace, I found that I had nothing in common with her. I didn’t understand her. Not just that she was in fashion working at a magazine. But all of it. Being single at 23. Living in London, going out and meeting people, having young people experiences. Part of the appeal about reading Unsticky was living vicariously through her experiences.

One of the most interesting things that I noticed about my initial reaction and how that opinion has changed is my reaction to the age gap between Grace and Vaughn. When I first read it, I was pretty shocked at him being 18 years older than her, and gasp, in his early 40s. I remember when I first read it I didn’t think people in their 40s were appealing to me sexually and when I read it I actually pretended like he wasn’t in his 40s but that his age hovered around the more acceptable 35 (god, I was awful!). Now that I’m in my 40s, shockingly my perspective has changed.

I think this time around I viewed some of Grace’s realisations about her own sexual pleasure to be a lot more interesting but also her views on relationships and dating. Obviously this is because I’ve been on my own quest towards figuring out my own sexual wants and needs and dipping my own toes into relationships and dating. Her cynical view of love made me sad then and it still makes me sad now. But there are things that are said in the book that still make me feel deep inside because of the truth of it.

I’m pretty sure the ‘whim’ I had was more to explore a story where the relationship the two main characters have seems cold and like a business transaction but not so deep down there’s real love and affection there. I think I wanted to read it because I want to pretend that the situationship I’m in goes deeper than it does. I want to pretend that at the end of our story will come declarations of love too.

And it was nice to slide back into familiar story for a bit. With the crazy highs and lows of fashion and high art, with bickering best friends and prickly men. It’s definitely a favourite for a reason.

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First Sexual Experience

July 4, 2025

sex

I was fairly young when I had my first sexual experience. I was maybe 13 or 14. My older brother was quite involved in sports and this meant a lot of time and scheduling that existed around getting him to places to play this sport. And I was pretty much dragged from place to place because of it.

Which was fine for the most part. I was a bookish, socially awkward child and young person. I always had a book with me to lose myself in and I was able to blend in (or disappear) around other people. But sometimes in order for the coordination of thing to work, my dad would join forces with another family to split the travel costs and driving etc. And when I was 13 or 14 we had paired ourselves with this great family filled with loud characters and laughter. They had a son the same age as my brother and two daughters, one of whom was a year older than me and one a year younger than me. I loved the whole family. I wanted the parents to be my parents, I wanted to live in their crazy household. I had a teeny crush on the older brother based on nothing much as he and I almost never spent any time together.

And the two girls? For sure both of them ended up being who I wanted to be. The older girl was effortlessly cool and sophisticated and the younger girl was ridiculously funny and the life of everywhere she went. I loved spending time with them. I remember I spent more time with the younger sister (cementing the older sister as being mysterious and brooding and interesting!) but when it was the three of us it all felt really easy and natural. I’d sleep over quite often as our brothers were out doing sport things and we got into such ridiculous scrapes. I remember we got really sick eating too much melted cheese once and I cried thinking we’d get into trouble when we accidentally broke something another time but their mother would bustle in and give me these quick comforting cuddles, just one squeeze that would let me know everything was okay. Their house was not like my house.

It was one of those nights where I stayed over that it happened. I was in a sleeping bag on the floor between their two beds when the younger sister said something in a frustrated sort of way. I was already half asleep so I didn’t quite catch what she’d said and the older sister told her to shut up. But they bickered enough and loudly enough that I lost that sleepy feeling and eventually asked what they were arguing about.

And it turned out to be that the younger one was annoyed that the older sister was masturbating before she went to sleep. I shared that I’d never masturbated before, that I didn’t really even know how to start. And I remember the younger sister throwing her head back in this UGH why did you say that sort of way.

Because then the older sister invited me into her bed, told me that I was missing out by not giving myself pleasure, and she asked if I wanted to give it a try. So then we were lying shoulder to shoulder and at first she was giving me instructions, where to put my hand, how much pressure to use, the movement I should be making. But at some point she had gotten impatient waiting for me to do it right and I remember it so clearly. She had turned so that she was on her side facing me still on my back and I turned my head to look at her and our faces were so close together and she whispered to me, shall I do it for you? and I nodded my head and then it was her fingers and my gasps as the feeling grew until it exploded between us.

Afterwards, I felt a bit awkward. Things was a bit strained with me and the younger sister. I think (probably accurately) that something had happened between me and the older sister and she felt left out. But I was also quite awkward around the older sister. I didn’t know what to say to her, I didn’t know what to do. I don’t think I’d fully grasped what had happened, just that it was big. It meant something. But I didn’t know how to articulate that, I didn’t know how to process that. So I didn’t. I avoided.

I remember the next few times we came to visit this family I stayed in the living room with my book or my homework. I stayed with the adults instead of wandering into the spaces I normally would have. And not long after that my dad had an argument with the other family’s dad. Things were said that couldn’t be taken back and we almost always ever saw them again except from a distance at the same sporting events.

I’d heard a terrible thing happened afterwards. The older sister had come out and been open about her sexuality, about her interest in girls. And the neighbourhood she lived in, the school she went to didn’t take kindly to her being different. A few months after she and I laid in bed together whispering and touching, just before school let out for the summer she was walking home and two boys followed her. She was sexually assaulted in a field, on a sunny afternoon, and when she reported the rape to the police she told them that both her attackers had done it to ‘show her what she’d been missing out with men.’

Our families weren’t close but people we knew told us the news. And I overhead the adults talking about it. I remember being shocked to my very core. I definitely didn’t understand then the scope of evil in the world, that boys like this could exist. I thought of this girl, how utterly cool she was, how pretty, how smart and capable and I couldn’t stand the idea of anyone trying to take anything away from her. It broke my heart what had happened to her.

And I think it also had a massive impact on me. I think there was a reason that I was in my 30s before I realised and accepted my own interest in women. Looking back on it, it doesn’t seem so surprising that I’d squash those feelings, that I minimised this experience so much that I had almost forgotten it. It felt safer to pretend like it hadn’t happened, to pretend my own part in the experience. I feel like I didn’t allow myself to be honest even with myself for fear of facing the same hatred and violence.

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