Vibrations

It was my younger sister who bought me my first vibrator. We'd been talking about our sex lives and she was astonished that I didn't have one. Apparently, all women of a certain age should. I didn't dare tell her that at the ripe old age of 42, I had never even masturbated.

I always enjoyed waking up from a particularly pleasurable dream with that tingly feeling between my legs and pressing my thighs together hard, welcoming the mounting pleasure that threatened to take my breath away before subsiding into a feeling of relaxed but not quite fulfilled wellbeing? Does that count as masturbation? I didn't think so. I had never even caressed my clit lovingly and certainly never inserted so much as a fingertip. A Tampax was the extent of my internal exploration and that, remember, has a cardboard applicator. I couldn't be doing with Lillets which involved manual dexterity and fiddling about to get it in the right place.

Truth be told, I didn't actually like myself very much... down there. I thought it looked horrible. How could anyone else ever want to touch it when I certainly didn't. It was only from watching an episode of Sex and The City (my, that series has a lot to answer for) and hearing Samantha exhorting Charlotte that she should examine herself with a mirror and learn to love what she saw that made me realise that I needed to do that too. To become less repressed, less anal, less ocd. On reflection, it all fits in with the food and self image problems I had at the time.

Again, Sex and The City had an episode where an artist painted the cunts of several women and displayed them at a gallery. Seeing all those different shapes and sizes, one after another was rather liberating. It wasn't cold and hard, the way they showed pussies in 70s porno mags which was my only other previous experience of other female genitalia - my sister, our friend and I had found a copy of Men Only in an alley when we were in our early teens and spent an evening perusing the pics and the stories when our friend's dad was out. The cunt paintings were warm and vibrant and showed that no-one had a picture perfect clitoris and vagina combo - they were all individual.

However, despite the above, I certainly wouldn't say that I didn't welcome digital stimulation and penetration by my Husband, which I must admit to enjoying very much - just not doing it by myself. That seemed somehow sad and rather disturbing, especially as I was married with children and shouldn't be needing to do 'that sort of thing'.

Oh, how we live to smile at the rigid beliefs of our past selves. Especially before the advent of the access-all-areas information-fest that is the internet.

The infamous episode of SATC where Charlotte bought her first Rabbit was the clincher and I started to realise that I needed to get with the programme and experience that side of life first-hand so to speak but I just wasn't brave enough to go into Ann Summers in person and the shame of having something like that arrive via post if ordered over the internet... A step too far. Then my sis announced that she'd been to an Ann Summers party and ordered two Rabbits as birthday presents - one for me and one for another yellow friend. The next time we got together, she produced it and I immediately hid it upstairs in my hatbox, under a pile of clothes in the cupboard under the eaves - access to which is obtained only by moving a chest of drawers. Oh, the shame! It burned into me knowing it was even in the house and I left it there unopened for almost six months...

Copyright: Havingmycake