SEX, TATTOOS AND OTHER TABOOS

Forbidden things fascinate me; things I am told to not do. Things like sex, getting a tattoo, dating bad boys and such like stuff. Since I was young, sex has always fascinated me- maybe because everyone got so nervous or smiled sheepishly when I asked where babies come from and how they are made. My mother was most honest, being a guidance and counselor, and told me the truth. I found adults quite dumb when they told their kids- my pals- that babies were bought from the supermarket. It was clear however that this was a subject people didn’t want to talk about. And I was curious.

I got my hands on sex magazines and read stuff I wasn’t supposed to read. Later in high school, I found the legal stuff I could read about sex without hiding i.e.  Mills and Boon romance novels. I occasionally got my hands on some porn tapes but what I watched was miles away from the kind of “passionate lovemaking” the novels described.

My pals in school, the ones who had been there and done it described it as a fabulous, mind blowing experience and they were looked upon as goddesses. The more honest one admitted it was painful and didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. They didn’t want to do it again. I did! Well the painful part put me off but Cosmopolitan magazine said that if you get an experienced person who knew how to handle you, it was smooth. Now the trick was to find someone “experienced”.

Meanwhile, I watched some flicks with sex –the beautiful way- not the porn way, and I begun to have a more positive attitude towards sex. Porn bored me eventually. It was not creative. However, I vowed not to have sex as a teenager till I found out everything I could about it.

After school I was in peer counseling groups which advocated for abstinence. I preferred to preach condoms. I knew at sometime in my life, I would try it before marriage. No need to preach water and take wine is there?

And so at twenty, I did it for the very first time. And no, it was not with “THAT” special someone- I had also vowed to not give it all to just one guy (ego issues :-)) I will not describe it but I will honestly say that I don’t regret doing it.

People say that having sex comes with feeling of guilt or feeling dirty. I had none of that. Maybe it’s because I did it because I wanted to and when I wanted to. And by doing so, I satisfied my lifetime curiosity and made my own opinion of sex from experience.

There are many other things I should not do but will do because I want to know how it feels like. Getting a permanent tattoo, dating bad boys, falling deep and stupid in love, and having my heart broken are things I must do in my life. I’m only human and I have only one life. I plan to experience everything I can because I guess I fear losing out on life. More than I fear doing the crazy frightening things in life, I fear not doing them and reaching sixty only to look back and mourn that I played safe and learnt nothing.

And when I am sixty or so, I want to sit and say, I have been there, done it all, explored places I dreamed of and lived life on my own terms. I want to do much, feel much, see much and know even more. I don’t plan on dying not having tasted a share of the many pleasures and pains of life that make us wiser.

@hellenmasido