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My high school health teacher was a dead ringer for Big Bird. She was over six feet tall with hips and a waddle and had a nose that looked like a beak. I don't remember her name but I do remember that she took a page from the Jocelyn Elders book and proselytized that the safest sex we could have was masturbation. I believed her, but I didn't masturbate. I didn't know how. (It would be years before I used my grandma's birthday money to treat my pearly whites and my sexual disposition to a Sonicare.) The first time I fucked my high school boyfriend, on a red and green plaid couch with embroidered natural horns--seriously, we fucked on top of Christmas while his parents were at the symphony--he was on top of me, thrusting like any and every kid who doesn't know what the hell he's doing and he was doing a little more damage than usual because he was both unknowing and well endowed so he was ramming himself into my cervix with a velocity that made me want to throw him onto the floor and scream: What the fuck is your problem? This is AWFUL! But instead I clenched all my muscles so I didn't pee on both him and Christmas. I held my hand to the burner; I refused to pull it away. He stopped, thank God. Respite is lovely when the task at hand is truly miserable. He asked,

"Are you close?"

"Close to what?"

"Orgasm."

"Oh... yea... I'm close."

Which was the truth if, by close, I meant about 25 years away.

To be fair to the story, the word boyfriend is a bit of a stretch. We attended one concert and one movie. I didn't have the courage to ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance and he had a girlfriend. Think Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. Just like the health teacher I don't remember her name, but I'll never forget that he was willing to acknowledge her, with her odd habits and eccentricities, in public. This girl ate the the peel of the pomegranate, but not the seeds. She was worthy and I was not.

This is all relevant because it fucked me up. We accept the love that we think we deserve and after the Christmas couch and pomegranate peel salad, I didn't think I deserved very much.