I was an inquisitive child, forever digging around in drawers and closets and it didn’t take long to find the hidden Penthouse and Playboy magazines, high up on a shelf in my mother’s wardrobe, underneath stacks of winter blankets. Plus, there was a triple X comic book, depicting all manner of sexual exploits. The dirty storylines and images utterly fascinated and stimulated my imagination.
The women in the magazines were displayed like objects of beauty to be marveled at, worshipped like goddesses. Works of high art, like the white, stone statues I had seen on museum field trips. Except, they were in technicolor–flesh and blood women, and they looked so glamorous, like naked fashion models, with glossy red lips and sparkling chandelier earrings.
One day, when I was in third grade, I rolled up a summer issue of Penthouse and slipped it into my school bag. On the bus ride I revealed, only to choice individuals, the suntanned and tan-lined centerfold, a busty brunette, spread-eagled on a rock beside some exotic shoreline.
I was watchful for the sharp eyes in the rearview mirror at the front of the bus. It didn’t take long before the game was up. The driver walked toward me as if in slow motion. I felt dizzy, as if I would faint. Butterflies in my stomach, as if I would throw up. The other kids scuttled back to their seats in horror.
She didn’t speak, but reached for my bag. I handed it over. She took the magazine out and gave back the bag. I hoped that was the end of it. It wasn’t.
We had a different bus driver after school and when I got home, the morning bus driver was sitting on the couch in the living room talking with Mom, in a low tone. The house was quiet, the baby was napping. I slipped past them and went outside to the back steps to pet the cats.
After the bus driver left, Mom didn’t say anything, but walked right past me to resume reading her book on the chaise lounge. She ignored me. Pretended I wasn’t even there. I prodded her to speak. I couldn’t stand her cold silence. She finally, reluctantly spoke. She said she was very disappointed in me. I could tell how angry and humiliated she was. She said those books were left behind by my father and I had no business going through her things. There was no further discussion.
The shame was doubly felt. My own and then the knowledge of the humiliation I had caused Mom. My arms and legs felt heavy, frozen and yet hot at the same time. A rock sat in the pit of my stomach. I felt as if what I had done was irreparable. There was no erasing it, no way of ever righting the wrong. A black mark, forever on my record.
But, from that point on, my sexual interest was stimulated. I had discovered this secret world. I wondered if others had discovered it too. Sure enough, every one of my friends’ parents had a stash of this type of material, under a mattress, in the back of a drawer, in a high bathroom cabinet. Some, maybe had one or two, others had full collections stacked way in the back of a closet.
By the age of eleven I had read enough Penthouse forum letters and little paperback erotic novels I would find from time to time to understand how it all worked. I had also learned how my own pleasure center operated. And of course, I would steal away from time to time, with a thin volume from Mom’s Life Cycle Library reference books for the finer points of the education no one wanted me to receive, the way I saw it.
Today, I wonder if early exposure to pornography destroyed my erotic mind. This theory has been posited around lately, due to the rise of internet porn and its attending addiction.
My coming of age in the 1980s was hot on the heels of the women’s liberation movement. The discovery of the clitoral orgasm and women’s freedom of sexual expression. Think Shere Hite and Erica Jong. The erotic sphere was just opening up for us. I knew instinctively and strongly believed that we had a right to pursue and experience pleasure in all its forms.
As I grew older and learned more about sexual politics, I felt vindicated in my sort of fixation with sex and all things sexual. But, I do feel my exposure was at way too young an age and the shame surrounding it might have messed me up.
On top of that, I was molested by trusted adult men in my life, before the age of ten. So, maybe the influences and experiences just created this perfect storm.
Perhaps the combination of seeking love and male attention, plus my strong sexual impulse was like a loaded gun. And I was trigger happy.
Megan Miles, Author 