definitely never make the same mistake again!
In middle school, I discovered that liking boys who didn’t like me back was all I’d be emotionally capable of for a very long time. Middle school was also when I went through a phase of liking exclusively non-Caucasian boys. They didn’t like me back, either. Any boy of any ethnicity other than my own was automatically the object of my love. In case you forgot, we are in Maine at this point, and the handful of racially diverse young men I met in middle school immediately struck me as exceptional.I barely knew any of them; I was just attracted to them from afar. Looking back, it’s pretty plain that what I liked was how different they seemed. I was desperate to be around anything and anyone outside of what I’d experienced in my life so far. One could even argue that I wasn’t attracted to the person but was actually fetishizing their race (but definitely don’t listen to that because it’s dangerously close to an intellectually sound argument where I come off sort of racist). All I knew was that in sixth grade Shahin was beautiful and Iranian and so much cooler than me.
Seventh grade was interrupted when I moved to Yonkers with my dad for the duration of High Society, so I never developed a crush on anyone at school. In New York, I did have a crush on the boy who played Young Simba in The Lion King, but since I was only in a room with him one time and our parents were there, our love did not blossom.
My friend Nora from The Sound of Music and I often discussed that great mystery that looms before all adolescent girls: sex. We talked about sex A LOT. Not boys (I apologize if this freaks out any parents)—we did not talk about <3boys<3 and how cute Ryan’s new haircut was, or how dreamy the boys in 98° were—we talked about sex. What we’d heard about it, what it would be like, how you were supposed to do it. We were on a mission to compile everything we’d ever heard about all things sex-related. Condoms, porn, hookers, first base, second base, third base, and by the way, when the hell were we gonna get boobs?
If any parents are still with me, the good news is that we wereway more interested in figuring it out than actually doing it. We were like theoretical sex engineers. Oh! Theoretical Sex Engineer ! Title of my next book!
The other good news is that we were pathetic. We were the blind leading the blind. She told me about a pornographic comic book she’d seen and the offensive joke it contained about Hispanic women’s pubic hair. I told her that a girl from my church had seen Stephen King’s Thinner , and in one scene, the wife leaned in to her husband’s lap and moved her head up and down. . . . So blow jobs involved . . . moving, I guess?
It’s adorable in a super-uncomfortable way, right?
I’m grateful that we were wondering the same things and that we were both hungry to put a name to our feelings and to have someone reflect them back. I didn’t know how lucky I was until I went home and received many blank stares from friends who were not interested in or prepared for talking about sex out loud.
That was the last time I would ever be ahead of the curve sexually. In fact I pretty much plateaued there for the next six years. This was only a noticeable problem once I got to high school and phrases like “fooling around” and “hooking up” were no longer empty braggadocio.
When kids I knew started to go past first base, I felt nervous and excited. It was like waiting in line for a roller coaster, if you’d seen a sex-ed video about how the roller coaster was probably going to ruin your life. For me, the nervousness usually outweighed the excitement. Now that potentially seeing each other naked was part of the package, I would still try to court the male, and then RUN FOR MY LIFE at the smallest sign of interest.I was the romantic equivalent of the annoying friend who goes to the haunted house but chickens out and eats candy apples
In middle school, I discovered that liking boys who didn’t like me back was all I’d be emotionally capable of for a very long time. Middle school was also when I went through a phase of liking exclusively non-Caucasian boys. They didn’t like me back, either. Any boy of any ethnicity other than my own was automatically the object of my love. In case you forgot, we are in Maine at this point, and the handful of racially diverse young men I met in middle school immediately struck me as exceptional.I barely knew any of them; I was just attracted to them from afar. Looking back, it’s pretty plain that what I liked was how different they seemed. I was desperate to be around anything and anyone outside of what I’d experienced in my life so far. One could even argue that I wasn’t attracted to the person but was actually fetishizing their race (but definitely don’t listen to that because it’s dangerously close to an intellectually sound argument where I come off sort of racist). All I knew was that in sixth grade Shahin was beautiful and Iranian and so much cooler than me.
Seventh grade was interrupted when I moved to Yonkers with my dad for the duration of High Society, so I never developed a crush on anyone at school. In New York, I did have a crush on the boy who played Young Simba in The Lion King, but since I was only in a room with him one time and our parents were there, our love did not blossom.
My friend Nora from The Sound of Music and I often discussed that great mystery that looms before all adolescent girls: sex. We talked about sex A LOT. Not boys (I apologize if this freaks out any parents)—we did not talk about <3boys<3 and how cute Ryan’s new haircut was, or how dreamy the boys in 98° were—we talked about sex. What we’d heard about it, what it would be like, how you were supposed to do it. We were on a mission to compile everything we’d ever heard about all things sex-related. Condoms, porn, hookers, first base, second base, third base, and by the way, when the hell were we gonna get boobs?
If any parents are still with me, the good news is that we wereway more interested in figuring it out than actually doing it. We were like theoretical sex engineers. Oh! Theoretical Sex Engineer ! Title of my next book!
The other good news is that we were pathetic. We were the blind leading the blind. She told me about a pornographic comic book she’d seen and the offensive joke it contained about Hispanic women’s pubic hair. I told her that a girl from my church had seen Stephen King’s Thinner , and in one scene, the wife leaned in to her husband’s lap and moved her head up and down. . . . So blow jobs involved . . . moving, I guess?
It’s adorable in a super-uncomfortable way, right?
I’m grateful that we were wondering the same things and that we were both hungry to put a name to our feelings and to have someone reflect them back. I didn’t know how lucky I was until I went home and received many blank stares from friends who were not interested in or prepared for talking about sex out loud.
That was the last time I would ever be ahead of the curve sexually. In fact I pretty much plateaued there for the next six years. This was only a noticeable problem once I got to high school and phrases like “fooling around” and “hooking up” were no longer empty braggadocio.
When kids I knew started to go past first base, I felt nervous and excited. It was like waiting in line for a roller coaster, if you’d seen a sex-ed video about how the roller coaster was probably going to ruin your life. For me, the nervousness usually outweighed the excitement. Now that potentially seeing each other naked was part of the package, I would still try to court the male, and then RUN FOR MY LIFE at the smallest sign of interest.I was the romantic equivalent of the annoying friend who goes to the haunted house but chickens out and eats candy apples
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