“How are babies made?”
I asked my mother that version of a timeless question as she drove me home from kindergarten one sunny afternoon. I was five.
I don’t remember any hesitation on her part, which was admirable.
“A man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina,” she began.
I immediately recoiled in horror, exclaiming something to the effect of “Ew! Gross! No!”
She quickly assured me that it felt “really good” and that it was perfectly natural, going on to explain a little about the man’s sperm fertilizing the woman’s egg and thus creating life.
This calmed me somewhat, but for a very long time after that, the visual of baby-making that my imagination created from my mom’s description was slightly inaccurate. She had failed to mention anything about an in-out-in-out motion, so I literally pictured a penis sluggishly entering a vagina and then stopping once it was all the way in…and ceasing movement altogether. From there, it farted out a few tadpoles and then backed out from whence it came.
The next day, I went to school and triumphantly informed all of my friends that their stork theories were a load of crap. (Yes, I was THAT kid.) I’m sure their parents thought I was just charming.
Less than a year later, my brother and I were watching The Cosby Show in our parents’ bed as they hung out in the kitchen. I grabbed the remote and attempted to turn up the volume. Failing that task, I had accidentally pushed the “satellite” button. The Cosby Show vanished and in its place was a scene that was unfamiliar, to say the least. A moaning woman with big hair (this WAS the Eighties, after all) appeared to be struggling to keep her underwear on as a naked, grunting man fought to tear them off. He succeeded and then they were both naked, his mouth hungrily ravishing her between her legs.
Panicked, I desperately pushed all of the buttons on the remote in an effort to return to the safety of The Cosby Show.
“No, leave it,” protested my transfixed brother, who couldn’t have been older than three at the time. Once a guy, always a guy.
“We’re going to get in trouble!” I whispered frantically. Finally, I found the right button and was greeted by the warm familiar faces of network television.
Interestingly enough, my new little brain didn’t comprehend that making a baby and my dad’s porno were connected in any way. The word “sex” didn’t even reach my awareness until a slightly older, more precocious friend used it to describe Madonna’s image and performance style. I became obsessed with this three-letter word. Uttering it aloud when no one else was around felt like an act of naughtiness in and of itself. I was fascinated to learn that it encompassed not only nature’s method of procreation, but also the unspeakably disturbing images I had stumbled upon via satellite. Due to the latter or, perhaps, to my Scorpio nature, I became consumed by S-E-X far earlier than was considered “normal”.
For as long as I can remember, I have turned to writing as a catalyst for self-awareness. In a Hello Kitty diary, I spilled my eight-year-old heart’s desires onto pink pages and then hooked its tiny padlock through the two corresponding plastic flaps, securely clicking it shut. The tiny key was hidden well, which meant my deepest thoughts and secrets were safeguarded…or so I thought.
I had two brothers at that point…two brothers who loved to sneak into my room while I was away at horse shows and rifle through my possessions. At the end of a long weekend competition, my mom and I were pulling into the driveway when she received a call on her gigantic car phone. The various gasps she emitted alerted me to some type of family distress.
“What’s wrong?” I asked when she finally hung up.
“Your brothers found your diary,” she said solemnly.
“But it’s locked!”
“They cut it open.”
My heart boiled as she told me what I already knew. I had written things about the various boys I had crushes on…things like, “I love Mark. I want to have SEX with him and MAKE BABIES.” Et cetera. Et cetera. Et fucking cetera.
That wasn’t the worst part. After invading my personal thoughts, my brothers galloped off to find our father and proceeded to demonstrate their advanced reading skills, gleeful as they happily ruined my life.
Both of my parents were horrified.
“You’re just a little girl! You have no idea what sex is!” my father insisted. “You think it means getting married, right?”
“Yes,” I lied emphatically, desperately wishing we weren’t having that conversation while simultaneously dismayed that my father didn’t feel comfortable talking to his daughter about sex. “That’s what I thought it meant.”
My mother knew me better than that, though. Maybe she blamed herself for having been so forthcoming with me. More likely, she blamed my dad, as my siblings and I all became sequentially sexualized at early ages as a result of stumbling upon his films of choice.
The incident left me traumatized for a bit, but it did little to quell my fascination with this hidden, animalistic aspect of humanity. I read every graphic, sexually-explicit novel I could find, absorbing the language in an exciting-yet-educational manner. The irony is that I didn’t actually HAVE sex until I was almost eighteen and pretty much considered an adult by society’s standards. Even then, I never behaved promiscuously. My obsession with sex had resulted in a deep respect for what it meant to share one’s body with another person.
In a culture that alternately tries to exploit and repress sexuality, I feel credit is owed to my mother. She was honest with me from the start, sharing stories of her own sexual history to the point of making me squirm. I was determined to learn from her mistakes…and so I did. The importance of condoms, masturbation, and self-respect were never lost on me. As a result, I grew up to have a healthier attitude about sex than the majority of people I knew.
It’s with this outlook that I detest the advent of abstinence-only programs in schools. (Just look at how well it worked out for Sarah Palin.) Kids are going to become sexually-active because…well…it’s natural. Hormones rage and they’re hardwired to want to hump. Better to equip them with the knowledge to protect themselves sufficiently rather than allow them to end up with STDs and/or unplanned pregnancies. By my own testimony, bringing everything out into the open does NOT encourage teens to have sex earlier. Quite the opposite. They know what to expect and tend to make better, more mature decisions pertaining to who touches their body when and where. The more they’re kept in the dark and told to abstain, the more likely they are to partake in risky sexual behavior.
Regardless, sex ed in schools should be secondary learning. Most of us are by-products of our parents’ sex lives (artificial insemination aside). Therefore, it is their responsibility to tell us how we came to be, just as it is our responsibility to candidly tell our own children…whether they ask or not.
(Not sure whether my dad’s porn contributed positively to my education, though. Just to be safe, KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. It’s likely enough that they’ll seek it out of their own volition when and if curiosity strikes.)
In honor of Mother’s Day, feel free to leave a comment revealing how YOUR mother (or father) explained the birds and the bees to YOU…or if you were left no choice but to learn by way of your own means. In either case, are you happy with the result, or has your sexual education left something to be desired…so to speak?
Remember: without sex, most of us would not exist. Celebrate your body, mind, and spirit. Gay, straight, or undecided, we are all sexual beings with the capacity to experience pleasure. Embrace your sexuality without shame, and let’s hope that those who fight to repress the desires of themselves and others can learn to let go…if only a little bit.
Author: Britt Warner
