Formative Memories of Budding Sexuality

The summer before middle school, I was swimming with my best friend at his grandparents’ house. This is one of those formative memories I remember very vividly. It was a particularly cool summer evening and I’m not sure why we chose to swim. We were alternating between the pool and the hot tub to stay warm. The hot tub was lined with jacuzzi jets both on the walls and the sitting steps. As I splashed about the hot tub with pool toys, he calmed and sat still, shoulder-deep in the water with his legs spread apart, straddling the jet on the seat, the bubbles disturbing the surface of the water right in front of his face. 

His manner of sitting looked odd, and giggling, I asked, “Why are you sitting like that?” 

Smiling, he responded, “It feels good.” 

Despite being of opposite genders, we grew up very close friends (in spite of teasing from our peers who would accuse us of dating) and we talked to each other about everything unabashedly. I had a vague knowledge of sex from health class and from discussions among my peers, but my knowledge was mostly about male arousal and I was mystified by my own arousal. I assumed the water was giving him a hard-on. 

I sat across from him, also straddling a jet, not expecting to feel the same because of our differing anatomy. But it felt good immediately, and we exchanged eye contact and laughed — I’m not sure why we giggled throughout this event; perhaps from thrill, or the absurdity of what we were doing. I expressed to him that it felt good for me too. I felt a throbbing sensation grow in my groin. I leaned forward with my elbows on my legs, and the pleasure became almost unbearable. I moved off the jet, because the sensation was overwhelming and also because I had to pee. 

“Why did you stop?”

“I have to pee.”

“It’s okay, just do it in here. I do it all the time.”

I laughed at his crudeness and tried to pee, but I couldn’t. So I sat back on the jet. The pleasure grew frighteningly intense and I began to breathe faster and feel my vagina start to twitch involuntarily. I was slightly worried that the water was making me overheat, and I was afraid to continue because of how strongly the sensation felt. He was watching my reaction intently. 

When I moved off the jet for a second time, he said, “Just keep it there. Trust me.” I sat back down and kept it there, determined to go on even if I peed. A sensation welled up in my stomach, similar to the feeling like I was about to cry. I began to feel contractions deep in my groin, then the pleasure blossomed in my clitoris and throughout my vulva. I involuntarily humped the jet a few times and I think I grunted. Even in the midst of orgasm, I recall feeling embarrassed to be experiencing this in front of him. But he was smiling and watching curiously. As the feeling abated, I moved off the jet. 

“Have you ever felt that before?” he asked.

“No.”

I waded around a bit while he remained on the jet. After a while, he got up and went back to the pool. I don’t think he had an orgasm, but when he got out of the water, I could see his little hard-on poking to the side. 

I revisited this memory for weeks afterward; it would bring me vestiges of the feeling and I would get wet down there. We did this together once more the next summer, but we were more inhibited and embarrassed by then, and did not speak about it freely afterward like we did the first time. That time, he did orgasm. He kneeled in front of a jet on the wall, instead of straddling the one on the seat like the last time. I sat a few feet from him, on a jet, watching him mounted on the jet in my periphery. Watching him excited me so much that I felt the feeling of impending orgasm within seconds, but held it off because I knew he wouldn’t feel keen about doing it alone after I finished. I watched as his ears and cheeks got red, his breathing got faster. A few times, he glanced over at me and we exchanged nervous chuckles and embarrassed smiles. After a few minutes, his demeanor become much more intense and breathless. His back muscles tensed and he thrusted into the wall and sighed. He backed off the jet and looked at me, smiling, as he rubbed his swim trunks in an effort to get his sperm out. I could see white ribbons and wisps coming to the surface. I could see his hard-on more clearly, still tenting his swim trunks. It pushed me over the edge. I came, grinding my clit into the jet. I couldn’t help but ogle his body in the midst of orgasm, though he was watching me curiously. Afterwards, we laughed about it and went on as if it had never happened.

Despite our shared experience, we never did become romantically or sexually involved as we got older. We never spoke of it again, though when we got older, we would speak to each other about our separate sexual encounters. When I was 16, he came with me to get a vibrator from an adult store. He remains my best friend to this day, but I have not seen him for the better part of a year, since he left for the Navy. I always felt a certain lust towards him since that shared experience, but he never expressed any interest in me—he would even express disgust when our peers would joke about it, claiming I was “basically his sister,” which was true. I can’t help but wonder how things could be different if the two of us had linked together. 

My middle and high school years were uneventful sexually, though I remember being crazed with lust. I was deeply unhappy most of the time, and turned down the boys that asked me out despite being maddeningly horny. I was self-conscious about my appearance, being biracial. I was visibly ethnic; almost white-passing, but in Crackerville, I was distinctly “other.”

In early middle school, I joined the modified wrestling team as the only girl. I remember noticing the bulge in the boys’ singlets. Seeing their bodies so clearly outlined in the singlets would make me wet, and wrestling/drilling with certain boys would make me blush from the intensity of my arousal. I was once drilling with a cute boy a year older than me. I forget what we were practicing (maybe cradles), but it involved him putting his knee in my groin. It turned me on, and I began to lightly push my clit into his knee each time he did it. I was about to come, but the drill stopped and I went the rest of practice with a swollen, hypersensitive pussy. He never gave any indication that he noticed what I was doing. That same year, I began to wake up with my panties soaked, with wisps of memories of sexual dreams. I did not know, at the time, that they were wet dreams; I thought that only happened to boys. 

After my first wrestling season sparked my attraction to the male anatomy, I began to stare at pictures of naked men on the internet for hours while my clit was swollen and throbbing, and my underwear soaking with my fluids. I did not yet understand how to give myself an orgasm. I began to seek out sexual pleasure the summer before my freshman year of high school and would hump the arm of the couch and other household objects, having to change underwear each time afterward, though never feeling satisfied. It wasn’t until later, when I was 14, that I learned to use my hand. I was taught, but that is a story for another time. To the horror of my current self, I used to do it discreetly under my desk, through my pocket, in high school; while driving; in bathrooms; and even while sharing a room with someone at night. I used to sneak peaks at my male friends while they peed or changed into swimsuits when we were outside, even if they specifically told me not to look. It is really some cruelty of nature that humans take twice as long to mentally mature as to sexually mature.