positive and feminist messages about sex, my own sexuality remained invisible

positive and feminist messages about sex, my own sexuality remained invisible, bewildering and hard to talk about. When I started having sex around my mid-teens, I liked it -- I liked it a lot -- but it seemed weirdly lacking. I'd never figured out how to masturbate, so I couldn't show my partners how to pleasure me. And although I occasionally suspected that I wanted something like S&M, I didn't understand how far I wanted to go. A couple of teenage boyfriends tied me up... but then they acted solicitous and went down on me, which didn't send me over the moon (though it was fun). From this, I concluded that S&M was boring, but the truth is, I hadn't come close to the extremes that form my preferences. It was years later that I released my need for agony, tears, bruises and blood. te Ok ok Ill. Frigid As I got older and had more sex, my apparent inability to orgasm became the most toxic secret I had. Most of my closest friends didn't know. For a while I thought I must be "frigid," and ripped myself apart over the idea that I was a "frigid bitch,” even though that made no sense. It was ridiculous to conceptualize myself that way -- my sexual desire was undeniable, unavoidable. But I had no other words, no other images or stereotypes, that described a pre-orgasmic woman. When I did tell my friends, it almost never went well. The best-case scenario was a conversation with anecdotal fragments: "I knew a girl,” one friend advised, "who couldn't have orgasms. Then one day she was tripping, and having sex, and she fell asleep, and when she woke up she was having an orgasm.” I also found a book on my father's top shelf, written by a guy who said he could give "any" girl a squirting orgasm. The author claimed that the key was for the woman to be comfortable. He also claimed that the woman had to not know what he was trying to do. In fact, the book explicitly recommended that men prevent their girlfriends from reading it. Needless to say, it was hard to extrapolate a Unified Orgasm Theory from these tales. The only things that seemed clear were that I somehow needed to both "let go" and to "keep trying.” But how? Every once in a while I made the mistake of telling someone who was convinced they knew the answer -- which was: sleep with them. When I got drunk with one sexually experienced male friend and asked for advice, he insisted that if I'd just fuck him I'd be sure to come. "Anytime you want,” he slurred, "I'll give you an orgasm. Guaranteed!" The fact that I was not attracted to him was, in his view, unimportant. Worse was my lesbian female friend who declared that I had "issues." She said that I ought to sleep with a woman. Ultimately, she turned out to be right that the problem was one of sexual identity, but she was wrong that I was a repressed bisexual. Her campaign to get me to sleep with her ended in a threesome with a guy I had a crush on. I liked bits of that evening, but most of it was boring -- if not distasteful. When I tried to talk to my HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018499