I see stories all around me of sex bloggers who got their start with an electric toothbrush, the water in the bathtub faucet, a Sharpie over their underwear, when they were teenagers, and I feel like a sore thumb, sticking out from sheer inexperience and naivete.
I didn’t even have a sex drive until I was nineteen.
As a teen, sex felt vaguely gross and repulsive, and I identified as asexual for years. I avoided looking at porn, and for a while at Homestuck’s peak, I had every conceivable variant on “tentabulge” blacklisted. I didn’t even like regular dicks, let alone squirmy tentacles. I got through high school just fine not caring about sex, and with the vague idea that if I dated someone, their gender wouldn’t particularly matter to me, as long as they didn’t want to fuck me.
Fast forward to summer session of freshman year of college. Nineteen years old, taking two accelerated courses, constantly tired and surviving on granola bars. I’d fallen in love with a fanfiction series with easily-skippable smut, and was re-reading it on my phone. Inevitably, of course, I caught the end of some of the scenes, and found myself fascinated by them in a way I hadn’t been before. The rest is history. I realized I was bisexual, and for lack of education, went to Spencer’s and bought a crappy, ugly-purple vibrator that was AT LEAST body-safe. It gave me my first several orgasms, but I’ve since lost it and happily upgraded.
I just tried to write an April Fool’s Day blog post about that first vibrator, and realized I couldn’t. I’ve never been the awkwardly hormonal teenager, or the poorly-educated woman buying a jelly dildo. I don’t have that experience to pull from, and everything I write sounds derivative at best.
Two years later, and I’m still learning things about myself. I can’t orgasm easily (sometimes at all) during partnered sex– I get nervous about performing and weirdly shy. I enjoy a lot of pressure on my clit when masturbating. I will stick a blue plant tentacle in my vagina before I go for a realistic dildo. And, as I learned a week ago– I can squirt, as long as I make sure to have at least one clitoral orgasm first.
Two years! And now here I am, reviewing toys, starting a blog, and even though I feel a bit out of place, I don’t think I could have picked a more welcoming community to join. I’m going to fight through this feeling, because it’s worth it. Impostor syndrome won’t get me this time. I’m going on an adventure to fuck the weirdest things I can possibly manage, and my anxiety can just deal with it.