My first visit with the OB/GYN happened in December of 1988. I was 16. It was about a week after I’d been raped by the cousin of a close friend, in the friend’s bedroom.

I told that friend, and my best friend, after it happened. I remember it was the night before Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t bear to eat any of my favorite family dishes. I couldn’t stand the thought of having anyone close to me, and struggled to get through the first few days as normally as possible. I finally told an adult, a trusted teacher, the following Monday. I called her at home that afternoon, and she was wonderful and supportive. She also convinced me to tell my mom.

My best friend came to my house and held my hand while I let my mother know what had happened. My mom was concerned but not devastated. Even now, I’m not sure if her calm demeanor was level-headed or detached. She called the next day and scheduled an appointment for me with her gynecologist, which happened a few days later.

I drove myself to the appointment, just a couple of miles from my high school, and sat in the waiting room for seemingly ever. I know now that OB/GYNs’ schedules can be really upended by baby deliveries throughout the day. But it just seemed scary then, to sit there and anticipate what was coming. I was by myself.

The nurse finally called me back and walked me to the doctor’s office. I sat on a sofa and waited for this woman I’d never met. She came in, introduced herself, and sat in a chair across from me. Dr. D asked me about what had happened, so I told her. She asked me about my sexual history prior to that night. Until that awful Wednesday, I’d been a virgin. She told me what to expect in the exam, that they would draw some blood to do some tests, and that I would have to come back for more blood tests in a few weeks to check again for HIV. She asked if my mom was with me, and I said no.

The nurse led me into the exam room and had me put on a gown and a drape. At the time, they still used cloth gowns instead of the paper ones. That was probably more comforting in a way. Honestly, I don’t know if I would’ve been any more scared if I’d just been naked. I sat on the paper-covered exam table and waited again.

Dr. D and her nurse finally came in, and the nurse pulled up a tray of silver instruments I’d never seen before. I’d let a couple of guys get to third base, but there was no way anything like that had ever been inside me. I was scared. No matter how kind the doctor or the nurse were, no matter how at-ease I was supposed to be because of the “Grin And Bear It” bumper sticker on the ceiling of the exam room, there was no way to make this a pleasant experience. I was having my first pelvic exam in the aftermath of a date rape, and my mom hadn’t even bothered to come with me to the appointment.

The cold invasion of that first speculum, the sound of the little screws on it adjusting it to open… it wasn’t good. Pap smears aren’t comfortable for me anyway, but that one was brutal. There’d been no way to prepare for the feel of that little brush across my cervix. There was no way I could have ever known how violating the doctor’s hand would feel after everything that had happened.

But the important thing here is that I did get checked. Even if it meant I had to go alone, I went, and I made sure I was physically healthy. I survived the rape, and I survived the exam. No damage. No STDs.

Emotionally, I was a wreck for a long time. I still have some lingering issues with my mother about how this period in my life was parented. I don’t think about the rape every day, and haven’t in a long time, though there’s no doubt that it had a dramatic impact on the course of my life.

What I was able to do was take full responsibility for my own sexual health. When I wanted to go on the pill, I made the appointment and did it. When I needed STD testing at the beginning of a new relationship, I wasn’t afraid to go get it. I still don’t love my annual visit, but it doesn’t fill me with dread like it once did. I know it’s a necessary part of life, and I’m thankful we live in a place and age when access to sexual healthcare is so prominently available.

Sexual assault or not, if you know a girl who is getting ready for her first exam, ask her if she wants to talk about it. Offer to go with her, even if it means you spend two hours in a waiting room listening to bad music and looking at pictures of babies who are now preteens. You may help ease the fears of a girl and ease her transition into a young woman.

I have a crush on a rock star.

That’s not really anything new. I’ve been crushing on some musician since the first time I saw Roger Taylor get kissed by the jungle girl in Duran Duran’s video for “Hungry Like The Wolf”. I made my mom buy me my own jazz Oxfords, and only white socks, just like Roger. I’ve also had a major fetish for manscara ever since.

Of course, all of this happened to coincide with puberty. I can remember late nights in my bed, listening to Duran Duran on my little cassette boom box, and feeling myself up. I didn’t really know then what an orgasm was, but I knew it still felt damn good. My junior high girlfriends and I used to write, and tell each other, teenage smut stories of screwing our favorite band member. Most of them were in love with John Taylor or Simon Le Bon. Even then, I was the exception to the rule.

As high school wore on, it was Ian Astbury of the Cult. All that hair, and that voice in the video for “Fire Woman”. I spent many a night getting felt up by a guy, fantasizing about those tight pants and long fingers. Eventually, I learned that I didn’t need the guy to get off. I could do Ian all by myself.

There were many, many times I listened to a song, or a whole CD, and imagined the things I would do to that drummer, or guitarist, or singer. Almost always the singer. They were invariably amazing lovers, but I was always better. Never mind that we’d likely never actually meet.

So now, there’s a whole genre of sex toys devoted to using your music to get off. You can hook them up to your MP3 player and let the rhythm move you, literally. I had to check this out! Personally, I chose the OhMiBod Better Than Chocolate Music Edition. It’s a lovely little wireless number that hooks up to my iPod. I can play it through regular speakers, or through my earbuds for a totally immersive experience. I did a little dance of joy when it arrived, and headed straight for the bedroom.

Oh. My. God. So, for one thing, it’s just a great vibe. It’s well-designed and works quite well. It’s easy to use, to clean, to store. I just like it. Whether I want it slow or fast, hard or soft, there’s always the perfect soundtrack to my orgasm. Repeat, shuffle, personalized playlist: the possibilities are endless.

But the great part is the rock star. I can hear his voice, completely and totally in my head, and time the twitches to the tune. The music crescendos, and so do I. I owe a couple of guitarists a personal debt of gratitude for some mind-blowing riffs.

I may never actually have sex with a rock star; though I’ve known a couple of lovers who thought they were that good. It turns out, I don’t need the messy entanglements, and the stigma of being a groupie. All I need is me and a great song. I can let the toy do the rest.

I recently had a conversation with a friend about my complete and utter disdain for my naked body. Especially if it’s getting naked in front of someone else. Especially if that person has never seen me naked before.

I’m a big girl. I have been all my life. Rubenesque. Voluptuous. Curvy. Fat. I’ve heard and said them all.

I’m pretty, though. I recognize that. Most of the time. I have great breasts and better hair. But I have big thighs and a bigger ass. There are a lifetime of reasons why I turned out this way, which ultimately don’t really change much about who I am. The proof is in the pudgy.

I’ve never had a hard time getting a guy to sleep with me. I had multiple lovers before I married my husband, who absolutely loves me the way I am. He’s seen me at all sizes of big, from a little chunky to ginormously pregnant.

And I’m great in bed. I’m adventurous and generous and curious. I like to come and make my partner come.

So why can’t I see the positivity in that?

Because I’m blinded by the reflection of my huge, white ass. It follows me wherever I go, literally and figuratively. It taunts me, and makes me feel less than I am sometimes, and that can be problematic when it’s time to get naked. Even though I know I’m in a safe, loving environment, I can hear the nagging whispers from inside my own head, telling me that I’m too disgusting to deserve the intimacy and the sexual adoration.

There’s a lengthy history of childhood sexual abuse, a rape in my teens, and a physically and emotionally abusive relationship, prior to my husband. For years I flaunted my sexuality in rebellion of what had been done to me. I would fuck before I could be fucked. If I could control the situation, establish it, and demonstrate it on my own terms, I was less likely to be hurt again. And it turned out that sexcapades in the back seats of cars, and in the dark corners of parks, didn’t demand my nakedness. I could stay mostly dressed and still get laid.

But there was a terrible emotional distance that happened in those affairs, both with my partners, and with myself. I was craving positive reinforcement, and I got it in the form of an orgasm. That was good, but there was no intimacy, no love of any kind in those couplings. Yippee. I could compartmentalize those rendezvous and put them away when they were over.

Then there was my husband. We’d known each other a very long time prior to becoming lovers.
The first time we slept together, I swore I would never fall in love with him, that it was only sexual fling that would be over very soon. I spent that first weekend together working as hard to hide my naked body from his spying eyes as I did to get him off.

Something remarkable happened, though. He made love to me. In new and uncompromising ways, this man touched every curve of my body, all the bumps and lumps and scars, and he celebrated them. He loved them. And me.

What I found was that it made me a better lover. I was able to absorb that positivity, let it pass through me, and back out to him. All those flaws I saw and felt every day just didn’t matter to him, so I could choose to disregard them completely. I was able, and willing, to be more open than ever before.

I still can’t look at my naked body and be happy. I’m not unreasonable about it, just pragmatic. But what I can do is choose to ignore the flaws, to draw on his love for me and my imperfections, and let it bolster my abilities as a lover. When I hear those nagging whispers of body-conscious self-loathing, I try my best drown them out with cries of ecstasy.

I hate Valentine’s Day. Okay, so maybe hate is too strong a word. But I definitely dislike it, and I think I always have.

I remember being a kid and making the Valentine’s mailboxes at school every year. I always liked that part, whether it was an old shoe box, or a paper bag that I covered in handmade paper hearts and doilies. But then came the day of the Valentine’s party itself. Everyone would walk around and drop their store-bought Valentine’s into each other’s boxes. There was no surprise; you knew you would give one to everyone in your class, and that everyone would give you one. Even the people you didn’t like. It was like some weird, forced, social positive reinforcement.

And don’t even get me started on what happens when you like a boy and he doesn’t like you back, or vice versa. It’s just creepy and a little degrading.

I was eleven, in the sixth grade, the year my parents told me they were getting a divorce. It was the day after Valentine’s Day, which also happened to be the day before my mom’s birthday. I remember going out to dinner that night with my dad while my mom went to a friend’s house. (We ran into a classmate of mine at dinner.)  I was the second person up in the spelling bee the next morning, and totally bombed on the word amigo. (Turns out a-m-i-e-g-o is incorrect, no matter how positively you say it.)

I was in high school the year I had chicken pox for Valentine’s Day. I remember my then-boyfriend coming to my house to visit me while I was home sick from school. He brought me a card filled with heart-shaped confetti, and a Mylar balloon. Unfortunately, he got mad that I wouldn’t have sex with him while running a 102.3 fever, and left. We didn’t talk for a couple of days.

There was the year my then-boyfriend (not the same one, mind you) was arrested for failure to return library materials. Yep. I couldn’t make that one up, even if I tried. (And who the hell would try to make that up?)

Or the next year, when the apartment downstairs and over one from ours caught on fire in the middle of the night. We had company, including two little girls, who had to be rushed into the freezing Alabama night without shoes or a coat. Our cat got lost in the shuffle, though thankfully showed up unharmed. The guy who started the fire in the other apartment died.

I can think of two separate Valentine’s Days when my husband and I had huge, blow-out fights that resulted in our not speaking for days on end.

Or the year I had to have minor surgery on Valentine’s Day. I have a two inch scar on the back of my head from that one.

There was one year that was okay: the year my eldest son was born. He was actually born the day before. (If one more person told me to hold out just a few hours longer, I was going to punch them.) Of course, the day after he came home from the hospital–jaundiced and dehydrated–we were forced to huddle in our basement to escape a passing tornado. That was fun.

It seems like there’s always something that happens. I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I kind of dread the day, and the truth is, I don’t need it. While I like hearts and flowers, and I love to get dressed up in my pink, glittery shoes, I can do that any time. I don’t need a special day to remind me to show my husband how much I love him. I try to do that regularly, without the prompting, though I’m sure I fail miserably at times. The beauty of the failing is the making up for it, of learning from it, and moving forward.

That’s the lesson I try to remember, and that I try to pass on to my kids, that every day is the day you share your heart. It’s something I’ll try do this year on February 13th and 14th and 15th, and March 12th and October 22nd. And I’ll wear my pink, glittery shoes any day I choose.