Back

Debutante

Essay by Madeleine Roux

Birds do it! Bees do it! Well, not really, but chimpanzees do it and so do we, too (we being humans). Most of us, at any rate.

No, I am not talking about sex in the strictest sense but something more primitive, something that comes first, the explorations of the monofucktial experience, something that most people discover as a rewarding facet of growing up. Until recently, dear reader, masturbation was a complete and utter mystery to me. Until recently, I had only ever made a few half-hearted, unexciting, and somewhat embarrassing attempts that ended in my apologizing profusely to my self for my oafish and insensitive behavior.

The truth of the matter is that I never turned me on, there was no, "Yay me! I wanna fuck me now!" Nor did imagining sex with a man seem to cut it. Let's be frank Ñ it's simply not believable! Haven't met a man yet that wanted to spend that much time pleasuring me with no thought to his own batch of cookies. Now, I am absolutely confident and at ease in my own skin, I even believe that I am beautiful, although what I see in the mirror is not always the equal of what I feel in my bones. On a basic level, my juices only flow when there is another person involved to do the basting.

How many sex-toy parties have I nodded and smiled my way through the showcase, all the while wondering: how does this apply to me? What the hell? Am I broken that I feel the need for some hot pink, gummy, strawberry-scented monkey wrench to tweak my plumbing into proper performance? Some sensual cinnamon goop to grease the old cogs? To quote Charlie Brown: "Good grief." I'll be in the kitchen helping with small, phallic-shaped canapŽs.

Oh, but the pendulum does swing...

It happens on a bright, crisp fall day, wood smoke in the air, the strange heavy musk of fallen leaves lingering over the cobbles, and thick sunlight like honey over it all. A dear friend, quite the Fan sophisticate, has asked that I water her plants while she's out of town: a couple spider plants, an aloe, a dragon tree, all the regular bathroom varietals. Indeed, it is her well-decorated and exquisite townhouse that has hosted the majority of the aforementioned parties, to which I lend my dutiful and friendly culinary support.

I find a note on the kitchen counter:

"Darling, make yourself at home. You know where everything is, but feel free to look for the really good stuff. Quality time alone Ñ whatever will you do?"

At the bottom right corner of the note, a grotesque and winking caricature - of her, I can only imagine.

Poor me. After the requisite inventory of food, beverage, entertainment, and some good old-fashioned snooping, I water her leafy bowers and create a mental checklist of which frozen pizzas will be consumed, which movies watched on the enormous television. I would also like to catch up on my reading, my current focus being the journals of Anais Nin. At that time, I was just starting into the author's romance with June.

Cozying a cup of tea, I take my book and settle onto the big burgundy daybed, spilling myself into a pile of about four dozen plush pillows of various designer shapes and designer sizes.

I take a sip of my tea. I read:

"Sensuality is a secret power in my body... Someday it will show, healthy and ample. Wait a while."

Hmmm. Another sip of tea, another several pages, I set my empty cup aside and snuggle deeper into the drift of decorating flotsam. Then, without any warning:

"I have wanted to possess her as if I were a man, but I have also wanted her to love me with the eyes, the hands, the senses that only women have. It is a soft and subtle penetration."

There it goes Ñ the string that runs from the back of my tongue like a plumb-line to my twat has been plucked, a pizzicato twitch promising suddenly, like an orchestra warming up, a host of songs yet unsung. I am resonant, I am fumbling, I am...

Holy shit. That's the spot.

In the midst of swirling fingers, sticky scents, and a novice's boundless enthusiasm, I am not thinking about a man. I am making love to a woman, the woman, all women, glowing bright and dangerous, elegant moans, toes digging deep into wine-colored satin, spilling sex slipping across Egyptian cotton, 600 thread count!

I am pinching nipples, mounding breasts, I am kneading thighs, arching my back, licking fingers like batter from the spoon and going back for more until I can't take anymore but cannot get away from me. Reaching climax, I sing out in such a way as would make Grace Slick proud. My hands fly back from the explosion, one wrapping, white-knuckled, around a rung of the bed frame, the other sweeping across the bedside cabinet, knocking over my teacup, some African violets, and then, oh my.

Like watching a movie, I have no control over the events that follow. Seemingly of its own volition, the door of the cabinet swings slowly open, emitting a rosy golden pulsing light, filled with fairy dust, celestial power chords, and Anais' sweet voice calling my name across the ages. Inside, objects of every shape and size, solar-powered, hydroelectric, sculpted, molded, folded, and all the untold secrets of the pot of gold.

What to do? Still swept up in the sweet high of victory, I select an unassuming leopard-print vibrator, turn the knob and shyly introduce it to my inner thigh, thus setting off a whirlwind ride of epic proportions. I explore every thing, every item, plying myself with purpose, resolved to learn the secrets of each knob and ridge, committed to bring myself one, two, three, countless times more, making up for so many wasted years, singing out in endless refrain with all my self-requited heart.

Some time later (I notice that the light from the windows is now rather more halogenated than solar), unable to lift limbs or accoutrements, I fall back into the damp musky bedding and a pile of sticky toys and spent batteries. Unable to place specifically where the whirring and buzzing is coming from, I finally realize that the next door neighbors have for some time now been running their various and sundry kitchen appliances on high, blend, heavy rinse, extra fine, and puree, respectively. Laughing, I wonder if I should send a thank you note, possibly compensation of some sort toward their electric bill. Grinning, I flop over onto my belly and taste a pillow with my new-found bliss.

In summary, now in my late twenties, I have finally joined the majority of the human race, and I feel a great and stupid love in my heart for all my brethren and sistren. I have been admitted, at long last, to that formerly elusive club of clit-fidgeters and tommyknockers, monkey spankers and trench-ticklers, cunt-cuddlers and Ñ well, you get the point Ñ all joined together in a grand chorus of self-love and peace on earth. Suffice to say, I have become my own best friend.

Back