The biggest secret I ever discovered was sex. I was twelve years old when I started to wise up to my body changing, and fourteen when I first properly thought about the s-word.

Growing up, my knowledge on the classroom-rumoured Facts Of Life were always rather naïve; my Barbie and Ken dolls sometimes tried giving it a shot, but I could never stretch my imagination beyond yanking the trousers down/skirt up and wearing a puzzled expression as I placed one on top of the other and wondered if they were really enjoying themselves as much as the people on my mum and dad’s fifteen-rated (that’s R-rated in America) movies seemed to be.

It was only when my hormones began pumping that I finally began noticing boys in my school – one in particular – and let my mind drift off into the dangerous territory of wandering hands and possible intimacy. As it turned out, my first boyfriend was not the high school crush I had harboured for so long. However, it was new, it was exciting, and most importantly it was….actually quite a good-looking piece of apparatus. If this was The Thing that I was constantly told by parents, teachers and school nurses to stay away from, I’m afraid to say I was hooked. Read More »

Whore.

I used that word liberally until people starting calling me that. And they’ve used it on me a lot.

I was able to train myself to treat it like any other word, like it wasn’t dripping with spite. Now it no longer affects me, though there was a point in time during which I could have named every single person who had ever used that word on me.

Only women have called me a whore.

Whores aren’t raised. There was nothing that my mother, who was unwavering in her aspiration that my hymen would remain intact until my wedding night, did that made me approach sex so callously. When I was a child, I hated being needlessly touched – poking, tickling, even hugs – and I know that my mother found some solace in that, hoping that it would hold over into my adolescence and adulthood.

It did; I still hate to be needlessly touched, except that my definition has grown from tickling and hugs to include cuddling, be it pre-, post- or non-coital.

Sex has a purpose, so the only touching that I could tolerate was in order to obtain sex. You could say that it was the only poking that I’d deal with. Read More »

The theme of last night’s episode was a little too obvious, don’t you think?

Not only did it metophorically revolve around high school with all of the silly drama between the residents (Izzy and George acting awkward and talking about each other), but victims of a high school bus crash along with Bailey’s high school crush were conveniently thrown into the mix.

Come on, people. We’re not idiots.

Regardless, I got to thinking about all that “high school” behavior. Does the petty chit-chat, back stabbing, or popularity contest ever end? Even as we move on from those good old four years of social scarring, we experience the same sh*t in college. Hello sorority life! How ya doing, roommate d-rama?

And as we graduate into “adulthood” (a.k.a. a more responsible extenstion of college since the partying never really stops), we find ourselves in work environments where people, especially the ladies, are as caddy and self-motivated as ever.

I think we all believe (or hope) that at some point the friends talking behind each other’s backs, getting in fights over guys, or selling out for one’s own benefit will dissipate over time. But sadly, as someone who has been in the working world for almost three years now, I can tell ya it doesn’t. Read More »