Objects of Desire

mug full of homemade sangria sat in the cup holder between us, nestled next to the console. Bits of apple bobbed in the blood red liquid, as Rose did not avoid the pot holes.
     
“Did she fist you, too?” Rose asked, both hands on the steering wheel.
     
My fingers held on tight to a cigarette, as my arm dangled outside the passenger side window, playing with the air whooshing by. I gripped the mug of sangria, and chugged.

“Dude,” I said after a moment's pause, “she plunged into me without asking.”
     
“Oh me gawd!” Rose squealed in her east coast accent, the accelerator pushed a bit harder. “The girl made me bleed!”
     
“Me too!” I gleefully shouted, a bit relieved.
     
But this is not where the story begins.
     
***

It starts with my second grade teacher, Ms. Gray- not a hottie, but crush worthy. She was sexy in the sense that I wanted to be engulfed by her, by her strong mountain arms. I wanted her to show me the love that I had only previously felt from my mother. And, yeah, I was seven and confusing maternal love with crushed-out-on-my-teacher love (authority figures do it for me). Not so weird. The “learn about sex” book my mother would give me to read in fifth grade said so. Crushes on older females was okay. So was sex among black people, or people in wheelchairs. Cartoons of diversity doing it. The book didn't discriminate against desire.

***
     
As I lie in bed, my hand deciding which large chunk of silicone is the correct width for this moment in time, I realize my crush on Ms. Gray is also not where this story begins. In fact, it begins with a candle. Another crush, although this time it was strangely on a boy. I blame curiosity.

***

Eight Grade

Some of my friends were already having sex. A girl who was not my friend was pregnant (proof of curiosity expanding in her body). My curiosity led to a candle. Once inside, I felt no flame of desire rise in me. No swelling heat for the boy who was not physically there with me and the candle, even though I tried to insert him in my mind. I was bored.
     
The penetration did nothing for me.
     
And yet...

***
     
I lie in bed, my back propped up on three brown pillows.

I have narrowed down my decision to the three largest dildos I own:

A blue sphinx,
a silver dolphin,
and a pink rabbit.

***

But before this, I am twenty-two and at the supermarket buying cucumbers and condoms. I feel obvious. This, however, is cheaper and somehow less embarrassing than buying a vibrator. I put a packet of gum on the conveyer belt to hopefully distract the cashier from smirking. As I think about this in my pause from figuring out which vibrator I want to use tonight (sphinx vs dolphin vs rabbit), I light a cigarette and remember it wasn't cucumbers but zucchini. The cucumbers looked too big. The zucchini were curved, and that sounded something like potential pleasure.
     
A great line from a feminist porn- writing workshop I took around the time of the zucchini:

“It was like throwing a hot dog down a hallway.”

This does not apply to me and the zucchini.

***
     
Instruments used in an attempt to get off:
*     Jumbo-sized black Sharpee
*     Jumbo-sized black Sharpee with toilet paper taped to the end of it for padding (I learned my lesson the first time)
*     Brush handle
*     Family dog's tongue (bestiality never developed)
*     Aforementioned candle (peach)
*     Pencil (hot dog in a hallway)
*     Beer bottle (unwanted foreign object inserted by first girlfriend in a hot tub)

***

And now we get back to to the story of Kristin's fist, which in a way was a foreign object. I was not prepared for it, it was alien, momentarily unwanted, an unknown object of desire to me until that point, that point when I discovered I wanted it. I want more of that point as I continue to find it, to figure it out for myself tonight (force = mass x acceleration). The sphinx is the skinniest of the three, it's mass now dismissed.