Ah, middle school dances. Remember those? Middle school was a time filled with girls who like boys but are taller than them and boys who like girls but are suffering through that awkward I might-be-going-through-puberty-soon stage. A time for “do you like me? check yes or no” notes, relentless bullying as a sign of flirtation, and teachers who are more in tuned with the adolescent gossip than the actual students are. So when you bring all of these elements together for a school dance: the awkward meter skyrockets! As we take a trip down memory lane, let us remember those crucial ingredients needed to concoct the perfect middle school dance.

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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.

Of course nothing lasts forever, especially in the way of young love. Back when I was sixteen I thought I was head over heels, but in reality I hardly knew what I was doing (though I loved every minute of it). The moment I realised my first proper relationship was over, I became stranded. I felt lost not having someone’s hand to hold, or body to keep me warm. I missed the secret smiles and endless daydreaming, I missed the butterflies in my stomach…and I missed the sexual education I was giving myself too.

By this time I was seventeen. The Internet had taught me things my mother would choke trying to explain, but I craved new experiences; I wanted to experiment.

My experimentation led me to aptly named AdamEve.com, a website dedicated to the needs of lusty human beings the world over – and no sexual partner required! From then on, I never looked back. These ‘toys’ as they were called gave me a whole new level of pleasure – and most importantly, they didn’t mind being stuffed in the back of a drawer, ignored all day then abused at 3am. They were cheap, reliable, long-lasting and – most importantly – available in every shade from skin tone to purple rainbow glitter.

Sexist remarks aside, I still see a place for men in the bedroom. A vibrator may buzz happily and light up like a spaceship, but it’ll never keep me warm at night, nor ruffle my hair until I fall asleep. The experience of making love to another person is one that can never be replicated by any form of man-made silicon. But for the price substitution of a first date, you can’t really complain!

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.

Whores can have decidedly unwhorelike beginnings. Like me – kind of. I lost my virginity when I was 18 to my first boyfriend, two weeks before I left home for freshman year orientation. It was fast, unremarkable and sadly funny in retrospect. “Barbie Girl” was playing in the background and the song lasted longer than the sex. It was in the back seat of the car that he borrowed from his uncle. Oh, and even better – the holder of my virginity was someone that I was dating for the summer. He returned to the Midwest the day after and I was relieved.

From the start, sex was never about being in love or expressing love. I never had a boyfriend in high school because everyone (including me) just hooked up. Yet in hooking up, I got hurt a lot. My feelings were always inconvenient, were never returned and ultimately became a burden.

But after the first sex, I was dangerous. Because for the first time, I felt like I was impervious to developing feelings for anyone and therefore able to keep myself from feeling any sort of pain. There would be no sense of rejection or longing or heartache if I was emotion-less.

Whores don’t exactly realize that they’re being whores. I developed an interesting reputation during the first few months of school. Because I was four hours away from my hometown, I knew that I was free of any preconceived notions about who I was or who I was supposed to be – which allowed me to finally express myself in ways that I couldn’t in high school.

I was virtually invisible in high school and in college, there was nowhere for me or what I never realized was my overt sexuality to hide. I flirted with everyone, boys, professors, sometimes even girls. Because I was unaware of it, I thought that I could feign innocence, but once I was attuned to it, I knew that I was trouble.

Since those days, people have always told me that they admired me. That they wished that they could let themselves be more like me because I didn’t live my life ‘safely’. A friend said that she actually wondered what it was like to have my sex life. The girls who weren’t calling me a whore (to my face at least) told me with wide-eyed awe that I had sex “like a man.” I still don’t know what that even means.

Maybe because I had conquests; because I unapologetically broke hearts; because I answered to no one.

These girls watched me approach sex and treat other people’s feelings with such recklessness and impulsivity and seemed to believe that my sex was the fun everyone should be having. Sometimes as I was doing whatever I did, or even before, I’d wonder what the hell I was doing to myself. But afterward, I always knew that what I did, what I’d always done, was act on impulse. I knew who and what I wanted, albeit fleetingly, and there was no pretense – I took it because I could. I took it because it was mine to have.

So once the word whore lost its painful edge, I actually didn’t care that it got hurtled at me a few too many times. I wasn’t sleeping with their boyfriends; I wasn’t sleeping with their exes; I wasn’t sleeping with their brothers. I just made no secret that I was doing exactly what I wanted.

What did bother me: If I was having the ‘fun’ to be experienced by all, why was I the only one having it? I became pretty tired of letting people learn from my mistakes; I wanted to watch them make mistakes and learn from theirs instead.

But I’m not one to let other people live while I hold back and observe.

So maybe I have sex like a man.

Would you call me a whore for that?

I don’t care.

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.

I still am faced with moments where a friend gives me the cold shoulder because I stained her favorite sweater or one of the senior managers at work won’t even acknowledge my presence because I’m an assistant.

Seriously?

It all reminds me of that time freshman year where Ashley whispered something about me to Sally and neither one talked to me for a week. Or when the senior bitch walked right by me when I said “Hi” to her in the hallway.

Ah, the wounds of adolescence. Do we ever really get over it?

Although, Grey’s presented a way too obvious “lesson” between the hours of 9 and 10, I must say it made me stop and reevaluate our treatment of each other for the remainder of my evening. Would the world really crumble if we halted judgmental attitudes and were actually open and honest? I think we all need to get over ourselves and play nice. Because, honestly, it would save us a lot of trouble.