Young girls are among the most sexual of all human beings. They do a variety of weird and seemingly unexplainable things.
How do I know they do these things? Because I did them. Most of my friends did them. And unless times have changed, I assume they still happen.
They pretend to be genitals.
Perhaps I had a very lecherous group of young friends. We were seven years old, all girls. Our favorite game was called, “I’m Your Penis.”
The rules were simple. One player would insert her head between the other player’s legs. That player would lock her legs around the head, and look down at the other’s face. This talking head was the penis. The conversations would go something like this:
“Hello, Cara, I’m your penis,” Penis would say.
“Good morning, Penis.”
“How are you feeling today, Cara?” Penis would ask.
“Pretty good. How are you feeling, Penis?”
“I’m feeling a bit chilly. I forgot my cardigan,” Penis would say.
“I’m sorry. Do you like it down there, Penis?”
“I get lonely sometimes,” Penis would whisper.
“How is your wife, Leslie?”
All the penises had wives. The wives weren’t vaginas though. They were other penises – girl penises. Out of all the Penis-Wives, Leslie was my least favorite. She was condescending.
I remember the first time I played “I’m Your Penis” with a boy. It was a friend’s older brother. He was nine, but was as tall as an 11-year-old.
I put my head between his legs. It felt the same, except there was a bump in the place that was supposed to be smooth. I was nervous talking to him because I was afraid I wouldn’t be an authentic penis. He already had a penis — a real penis — I was squishing it with my neck, the zipper of his cargo shorts was digging into my throat.
At first I didn’t talk. I was afraid he would say something like, “A penis would never say that.” He didn’t. He just smiled when I spoke but was maddeningly silent. Maybe he didn’t know how to play the game. Finally I became so bored that I told him I had to meet my penis-wife, Martha, for coffee.
So we switched.
I remember the rush when it was the boy’s turn to be my penis. He didn’t cross his arms like the girls did. He wrapped his hands tightly around my ankles. He rested his head between my legs. He was breathing on my stomach. Suddenly I didn’t want to play.
Why did we do this? We wanted to know what it was like to have a penis. It was a dress-up game of sorts, and the easiest way to talk to our penises was to see their faces.
They role-play sexual intercourse.
I remember when I discovered the miracle of conception. My mother told me point-blank, we were standing in my younger brother’s room after a Mister Roger’s Neighborhood marathon.
The next day I went over my to my neighbor’s house and immediately told her. She seemed confused but intrigued. We finally decided to play, “House.”
I wasn’t sure what she was doing. We were in bed together, under the blankets. Her hot breath smelled like Doritos, and I leaned away when she whispered into my ear. We were in first grade.
“The baby’s asleep,” she panted. We were still playing House.
She was lying on top of me, breathing heavily, my thigh between her legs.
I closed my eyes and was hit by piano runs – a grinning Mister Rogers and the little red trolley – Won’t you be my neighbor?
“No, I think I heard it cry. I’m going to check on it.”
I squirmed away and rolled off the bed.
“I just said it’s asleep. Come back in bed,” she said.
I ran out the door, into the blue-skied street. Coincidently, it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
They masturbate excessively.
When sixth grade boys made jokes about the newly discovered miracle called masturbation, I tried to pretend I didn’t know what they were talking about.
I had grown up watching TLC’s A Baby Story, so I had seen dozens of births, all from the crotch camera seated directly at the vagina. Before an infant’s head emerged, there seemed to be dozens of gloved fingers probing that small space – it seemed obvious that I could use my own hands.
I learned to masturbate early — anywhere from a high chair to a car seat. My favorite place to masturbate was while watching Mister Rogers. I don’t see the appeal now — maybe it was the hypnotic way he changed into his sneakers or that zippered cardigan sweater. Nevertheless, a part of me felt relieved when he died. He had seen too much.
I’ve talked to friends who have confessed to similar stories. So what happens? Why do these strange games stop when girls grow older?
I think they stop when girls learn that talking about their own sexual desire is inappropriate. For me it was around age nine. I talked about masturbation with more girls from ages six to eight than I did from nine to twenty one. When girls first become interested in boys, it’s usually around age eleven. They imagine them as penis-less beings, Ken dolls. They judge them by their haircuts or choice in polo shirts.
Later they learn that they’re supposed to be afraid of penises. That it is normal, that they can get things from boys if they deny them enough — that there is reason to deny because not denying means physical pain and humiliation and only sluts don’t deny.
But in the process I wonder if in denying we were denying our bodies, if we were denying the chance of sexual growth. We learned that we were supposed to be wanted, not to want. So maybe attention became more interesting to us than sex.
All I know is that these weird, confusing sexual experiences we remember (or try to forget) may actually explain some of our sexual desires now. Maybe we should all play a round of “I’m Your Penis.”
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