I was four the first time I saw a magazine centrefold of two adults having sex, and eight when I learned what fellatio was. My childhood holidays were characterised by terse conversations between my father and grandfather as they debated the rising costs of butt plugs and the durability of blow-up dolls.
Growing up in our family business – running adult shops with dancers in the back, as well as owning massage parlours and sex clubs – meant I was subjected to as much objectification as the girls my grandfather hired to gyrate on stage. When I failed to develop large breasts, my father asked me if I planned to join the “Itty Bitty Titty Committee”.
As a child, your family is your world. The images and paraphernalia I saw when I was young transformed sex from something adults did in private to something that was marketed, sold and consumed as a commodity. This desensitisation might explain why I spent my 20s hopping from one sexual partner to the next, constantly seeking meaning, constantly returning to a place of numbness and indifference.
I am 33, and I have no idea what sex is, or should be. I have spent my adult life attempting to define it, wondering when intercourse will cease to be a transaction and become a marker of intimacy. I have had a hard time discovering what I like and might need from a sexual partner. I detach from myself when I am having sex, my lust and affection dissolving into the performance I now know is a mask for my discomfort.
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