chapter one.

last night i masturbated next to my snoring boyfriend. it's almost shameful to admit at twenty-nine, but it was the first time i managed to reach orgasm with only my fingers and imagination. and granted, my imagination was running wild, enthoused by a bondage short story i read online recently, and i was so wet i was happy to be sleeping on a towel - not that the self-pleasuring session was pre-planned, but that's what i do when i have my period - there is just no way i'd leave a chlorine bleach tampon up my vagina all night, thank you. i wouldn't even mention the orgasm, except that it surprised me. over the years i've masturbated and reached orgasm a million times - just not with fingers only. i remember being four years old and masturbaing by pressing my crotch against an old wagon wheel - for some unknown reason we had one of those old wagon on our land, one without the arches for the hemp covering or anything, but still it was there, immobile and useless. i played on it a lot, and eventually, i guess, discovered its crotch friendliness. i remember being barely older and using a plastic baseball bat. it's not as gory as it sounds: i figured out that if i propped it just right under my counter, it would hold, and i could lift myself up and again, rub against it. i guess my discoveries at an early age included a lot of rubbing. anything i could when the mood struck me, which was often. there was the unfortunate gum incident. the time i cut my skin with scissors. the baby bottle, the glass. surprisingly no banana. later i discovered the shower head and the bath tap, and i stayed with that for years, until, i guess, i was old enough to have the guts to walk into a sex shop to buy myself a vibrator. did you know red ones actually go faster?

back to last night. i couldn't believe he was sleeping. i don't believe in false advertisement, and i had made very clear right from the start what kind of a sex drive i ran on. more like a sex engine. and it had been a two weeks dry spell and by then every time we got in bed i could feel how gorged with blood my genitals were, just expectant and hopeful. i guess that's why it was so easy to reach orgasm - five minutes and i was done. only one problem though: masturbation doesn't bring on as much endorphins as the (ahem) real thing. and i was left, happier perhaps, but staring at the ceiling in the night, listening to the snores of the man i love. i pushed him, moved him, pulled his pillow, told him in whispers and then in normal conversation tones that he was snoring, i massaged him, nothing would do it. i got up and took my pillows - i'm very fussy about pillows, they need to be just so (and guess what, they do not manufacture just-so pillows: i have to make them myself) and walked up to the guest bedroom. my mind was spinning with projects and ideas and thoughts of the passed day and week, and the word insomnia came to mind, but eventually, out of exhaustion perhaps or boredom, i fell asleep.

i dreamed that somehow and for some reason, my name was on a most wanted list of some sort. three names in a report, and mine was one of them. the last one, after my two male accomplices (and that's all i remember about the poor souls...) and i knew the report came from the fbi. what they would want with me, little uninteresting (to the fbi) me, i cannot recall now that the dream has faded, but at the time i knew. and i knew i had done it. i was just shocked that they'd figured it out. and shocked to see my name, black on banal paper. and a little afraid. if they could find out my name, and write it properly in my mother tongue, with accents and all, well i was probably in big trouble. and they probably could find me.

what i am left with in the mornings are clips of dreams. like i hit print screen in my brain just before consciousness clicks on, and i get a facsimile of the situation as it was then. not only the images, smells and sounds, but the feelings and thoughts as well. but it eclipses the complexities that i guess and can almost touch, the saga that brought me in and out of that tumultuous story. and recently, i've been having very complex dreams (or so they feel when i get out of bed), and very dark ones. no nightmares per se. well, when i think of a nightmare i think of that time my mom had come to school and then transformed into a hideous alien and i ran. or of that headless horse in the shower, into which the body of a kidnapped boy my age was inserted. i don't dream of anything of the kind nowadays, but it's difficult for me not to categorize my dreams as nightmares when i know that some big corporation or government agency is somehow after me, that some man i've dreaded for years is right around the corner stalking me, that the house is on fire because i lit the match. it seems that my nightmares have received a generous upgrade, from low quality b-category gory horror flick to hollywood suspence and drama. perhaps.

it's like my dreams are an episode of 24. and my life? a sitcom some days. but one of those that makes you smile more than laugh. a bad sitcom on other days. and a soap opera when some people put their nose in my business. i can't stand that drama, though. i find it hard to believe, even though i know just how true it is, that i was once a drama queen. now i'm a reason queen or something. i can shut up and bottle up and wait and be quiet and patient. it's the actress in me that enjoys being cast as a saint. the rest of me looks down, amused at how well i can suspend my disbelief, at how good an actress i would have been in the end. would have been, is, same thing here. it's only the paycheck that separates an ordinary human from an actor. and the waist line, more often than not. at least that's part of my story, the big why of the small question, why i didn't pursue my dream of being an actress. i loved it enough. and still that is a sacred place. but i was young and naive in some ways, and too realistic in others. i was never interested in movies. tv? never. i wanted the stage to be my set and bright spots to glow in the sun's place. first reality check: you want to be a theater actress? you want to starve. and what it means, and what was demoralizing to me, is that you'll work for months on one play, give your guts out, shed your hair and let your emotions down, and then you'll do it again for a few weeks, a few months if you remember not to say "good luck" and don't walk under a black ladder while breaking a mirror, and then... nothing. it'll go away and you'll start over. and over. the loss that i feel just thinking about it, how vain it all is, it's like a ball in my stomach, a tight ball of bread, you know, just like when i was a kid and would roll up my slice of white bread into a compact mass of carbs and sugar. but back then i would savour the ball, slowly and in a few bites. finishing a play is more like a whole loaf rolled into a tight ball and swallowed at once. boom, down as far as it'll go. and now the pain.

but that's me being a drama queen again, or as much as it is now allowed. a more pratical answer to the big why is simple math. seventy of us. sixty girls. (yes, most of the ten guys were gay, and yes, all the other ones were popular and... taken.) all pretty and skinny and good. well good. well... wait a minute. so all my life i'll be competing against these girls, and more girls, all pretty, all skinny, all good? i was pretty at the time. pretty enough. i'd wear risky outfits, like the backless black shirt that prompted a guy to tell me that was he my boyfriend, he wouldn,t allow me to wear such a thing outside. allow me? puh-lease. no man has ever attempted to tell me what i could and could not where, in or out, and that is just as well for them. oh you don't want me to wear that? so long, you're history. but at the time i almost took it as a compliment, and my bra-less breasts held high at the time, and life was good. but skinny? i've never been skinny, and will never be. that's fine. i am a woman, not a waif. that. is. fine. but it's not what directors want. and so i could keep going, but i had to do it knowing, understanding, that i'd be judged on my physique all my life. that's when i closed the door. i knew my insecurities would get the better of me in such a situation.

or so i thought. it's years later, and i don't know anymore. the choices i made at 17, 18, 19? they're ridiculous choices. some were good, but almost by chance. i don't deny what i did then, and i probably wouldn't change anything if i was given a magic wand (that's a blatant lie! for one thing i'd make myself skinny!) but the nature of choices i made when i was that young is ridiculous. good or bad decision, if it'll affect your entire life and you're 17, 18, 19? ridiculous. what did i know then? so little. i was a ball of (no, not bread) pain and scratches, rolling with the wind on stony winding paths, bleeding along the way. i was wide-eyed and yet older than i am now. i was, simply put, not the same person. it's a cliché, no doubt, but in my case it's almost litteral. not the same person. and who i am now and who i was then all the me's in between would tell you: i can feed you bullshit for hours. on the plus side, i'll probably swallow yours too. i'll know it's bull, but i'll ask for more.