My sexual education

Sheila has a great post up about V.C. Andrews books, those "creepy dark sex books, marketed to kids." I couldn't get enough of the incest and dark family secrets. And I started reading them at a ridiculously young and impressionable age -- 8.

Danielle, who lived behind my grandparents' house and was my best friend, had an older sister Jenny. Jenny was cool -- she listened to Van Halen and had every V.C. Andrews book that had been printed to date. Not to mention really pretty hair. Danielle and I started reading them, and boy did we get an education.

I remember having a really hard time wrapping my head around the sex stuff. It was just vague enough that if you didn't already know what it was all about, you couldn't really figure it out. Especially as an 8-year old. So I started stealing mom's romance novels. I found no answers in the throbbing members and quivering loins there either. Finally, I confessed to Danielle that I didn't get it. Imagine my surprise when she, one year my junior, very authoritatively told me,

It's when a guy pees on a girl's stomach. That's how people do it.

I was floored! That was how women had babies?! There was no way I was ever going to let a boy pee on my stomach. How gross!

For the next couple of years, I had a better understanding when I read the books. Of course he was throbbing! He had to pee! I was a little unsure why he had to hold it for 18 pages, but whatever. I was really upset that Danielle had known more about sex than me, but I figured Jenny had probably told her -- she knew everything.

Years later, Jenny told me she had told Danielle that. Because she thought it would be funny. And she knew that Danielle would tell me. And that we'd think that for years. One mystery cleared up. I'm still not sure about the ghost in their attic, though.