Sometime around sixth grade it hit me. Yes, IT. Puberty. I was the first girl in my sixth-grade class to be tortured by this genital hurricane. It seemed as though I went from the Punky Brewster girl accessorizing pink lacy dresses with yellow goulashes to the Kelly Kapowski teenager accidentally making a school girl outfit look sexy. It was at this time that I became a victim of bra snapping from obnoxious boys who stayed back a couple years and was introduced to the hormonal incubus PMS.
First I got my boobs and then I got my brains; boobs in the sixth grade and brains in the eighth. As an elder in middle school I started becoming intellectual and curious about sexuality. I lost interest in the wholesome "Sweet Valley High" sagas and started enjoying the subtle and devious writing of J.D. Salinger and Anne Rice.
Like every other impulse for survival, I identified sexuality as an instinctive need and not a superficial cognition. I was ashamed to be curious about sex because I had learned it was bad. I distinctly remember being told to close my eyes during the provocative scenes in the classic film "Pretty Woman" until I was sixteen. Likewise, pornography was absolutely forbidden and considered demonic (along with the other ballyhoo that comes with turning eighteen like cigarettes and jail). Not to mention, the only class I'd ever had about sex involved a video of two genitalia-shaped pancakes copulating.
Breakfast was never quite the same thanks to that cute (yet succulent) euphemism. Soon enough it became clear how sexuality has been distorted. So uncomfortable with sexuality is our society that masturbation is still considered by some to be evil and dangerous -- a scary thought because according to the Discovery Health Channel, some 95 percent of men and 89 percent of women masturbate, therefore rendering the vast majority of the human population satanic.
A health and sexuality resource is absolutely necessary in our culture because we are often misguided in our perceptions of our sexuality, our bodies and our psyche. Coming from New York University, I am bemused by the sophomoric awkwardness that follows the word "vagina" or a conversation about pornography. It isn't that sex cannot or should not be humored, but it is so rare to find comfort on the topic. This is a frightening reality.
Greenwich Village is the American Bohemia. It was not uncommon to hear of naked parties, gay parades and abortion protests. Like the Red Hot Chili Peppers album, Greenwich Village was engrossed in "Blood, Sugar, Sex [and] Magic" and it was in this bubble that I discovered some truth about sex. It is this valuable truth that I hope to offer in the column. The fact of the matter is that when I was at NYU, I never heard about rape or stalking but felt as though there was a distinct comfort regarding sex and gender that incubated sexual sophistication. Ironically, the University of Virginia, while virgin to the open-mindedness of sexuality is anything but virgin to sexuality itself. Whether you play sex like it is solitaire, poker or go fish, it is always more fun and worthwhile when you know the right way to play.
Now listen closely, so that you might stop waking up next to strangers, clenching your teeth from the pains of gonorrhea and invading the privacy of others bedrooms (or closets, as the case may be) and understand this: open your minds... not your legs.
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