The Shattered Prayer

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I changed the name of yesterdays post to Whats in My Vagina, in honour of the long and tangential comment-thread that ensued. Warnings be damned.

And I thought since yesterday’s post (and comments) pretty much destroyed my pristine reputation as a family-friendly blogger, I would continue the the general Vagina and whats in it theme, and talk about how I learned about sex.

I guess you’re expecting something kind of racy, and you might be disappointed to learn that I discovered sex through reading. But then again this post might take a turn for the spicy when you learned that what I was reading was my grandmother’s porn.

Yes, my grandmother had porn. She also drank heavily, did drugs, gambled, swore like a sailor and loved to sex it up.

I suppose in an ideal world parents would sit down with their kids and talk in an honest, open manner about their burgeoning sexuality. This is not an ideal world, and my mother - daughter of my wild and wicked grandmother though she was - was incredibly naive and shy about such subjects. My grandma once told me, “I raised your mother to be a liberal, open-minded woman. I don’t know what the hell happened to her!”

I don’t either. I suspect my mother rebelled against her mother by becoming a hard-line, bible-thumping southern baptist. But I digress.

When the time came for my mother to talk to me about menstruation, she walked into my room with a pink book in her hand, blushed, handed me the book and walked out. Luckily for me I was an avid reader who would read anything put in my hand, so I did manage to learn something about it.

And being an avid reader is what led me to learn about sex. By the time I was in my pre-teens I was reading on a level far above my years. The books my parents bought me were proving unchallenging, and I would finish them quickly. We were also poor and they couldn’t afford to keep me supplied with enough books to satisfy my voracious reading habits, so I pretty much read everything I came across.

I read the bible (which led me to stop believing it), pretty much cover to cover, with the exception of those begats. I also read a lot of biblical commentaries, which were pretty plentiful in my home. I read encyclopedias, medical text-books and my mother’s stash of Reader’s Digest. (eek!).

When at my grandmother’s house, I would read old grammar text-books, Watchtower magazines and other religious periodicals (my great-grandmother, who lived with my grandmother, subscribed to a wide array of religious texts and believed all religions reflected the truth in their own way), history and anthropology textbooks, historical novels (also my great-grandmother’s) and of course, my grandmother’s pornographic novels.

I didn’t lasciviously go seeking out porn. They were simply another form of reading material among many. Some of what I was reading I found perplexing and I kept a dictionary handy so I could look up words I didn’t understand. Hell, a lot of those words weren’t IN the dictionary.

As I kept reading, I began to develop a better understanding of the mysterious world of what goes on between men and women behind closed doors. It gave me oodles of conversation-material to discuss in the school-yard, and I became a very popular school-mate for a while, regaling and horrifying friends with lurid and detailed descriptions of sexual activity.

I even started writing my own porn, and there was a network of school-girls who would make faithful hand-written copies of my stories to pass around.

So I wasn’t the only one to learn something from my granny’s porn.

One word that fascinated me was ‘orgasm’, and it took a great deal of research to figure out precisely what this was. But once I had an adequate idea of how it worked, I became determined to have one.

Go ahead, be shocked, but Jocelyn Elders was right. Masturbation is safe and fun, and for a young teen girl discovering her sexuality, its also private. There’s no embarassment or worry involved and I was able to explore my desires safely, thoroughly and in solitude.

And by the time I did decide to involve another person in my sexual explorations, I had a good idea of what I enjoyed and didn’t enjoy. I was able to guide my partner with gentle and encouraging words like, ‘Not THERE, stupid, its HERE… RIGHT HERE!”.

And I don’t think that being exposed to my grandmother’s porn made me sexually active any earlier than any other girl in the 70’s. After all, it was the 70’s. We were all doing it. I just knew more about it.

I think because my early sexual education involved the written word, I grew up more open about it, and willing and able to communicate my sexual needs. I still prefer clear communication with regards to bedroom matters.

And though I can’t recommend my brand of sex-ed to everyone (Grannies, buy some porn!), it worked out okay for me.

Oh and yeah, I still masturabate. But anyone who reads this blog knows that.

Buy me a beer!

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