Disability and Sexuality Part 4: Awakenings and Bath-Gasms!

For too many families, sex is still a taboo subject. If you have a disability, even more so. I was completely ignorant of what was happening to my body when I reached puberty. And while I eventually achieved a healthy understanding of my sexuality, the road I took was much longer and more confusing than it should have been. I certainly don’t blame my parents, it is simply how things were back in the 1970s and 1980s. I grew up in a very traditional French Catholic family, and my parents never talked to me about the birds and the bees. The other major obstacle my sexuality faced was recovering from numerous orthopedic surgeries: It is very difficult to pay attention to developing hormones and budding sexuality while in a hospital bed. And while I had older siblings, I never got a chance to ask any of them “What the heck is happening to my body?” The only sex education I received was in my very last year of high school and even that was just a one-time event filled with unsexy illustrations, and no details relating to actual pleasure. Ikea furniture assembly instructions and diagrams are sexier than what we had to go through in that Sex Ed class: “Insert slot A into groove B”. Now THAT’s what I’m talking about! In fact, I was so ignorant of what goes on in the body of a typical early teenage boy, my first orgasm happened by surprise, in a bathtub. There I was blowing bubbles with a straw. Up the bubbles would go into the air and then slowly floating down, landing on my body. Since I was in the water, my skin nice and wet and the bubbles started to accumulate. One by one the bubbles started popping. I liked the sensation so much, I sent a huge batch of bubbles all at once soaring above the tub. As the bubbles began to float back down and landing around and on my genitals. I experienced an erection. Not the first erection of my life, to be sure, but still, things were heating up in my tub. While rinsing off the bubbles, and happily rubbing myself down there mostly because it felt so nice, I apparently did enough to cause my very first ejaculation. My intense pleasure was immediately chased away by fear and panic. My terrified mind began racing with the following thoughts: “What the bleep was this white thick fluid coming out of my penis? Am I dying? Do I have cancer? And why, oh why, is it sticking now to EVERYTHING?” Splotches of semen were clinging to my skin, the tub, the drain. I was TERRIFIED by what happened. But at the same time, doing “it”—whatever the heck “it” was—felt so damn nice. I was confused and scared. Cleaning up the mess with my washcloth as the bathtub drained, my teenage mind started putting it all together. The scarce details provided by our high school Sex Ed classes, the language older boys used when they thought no adults were listening: I had learned how to “jack off,” that is, masturbate and ejaculate. As scary as my first ejaculation was, I took a lot of baths that summer and at odd times like the middle of the afternoon. I took so many baths in fact, my mother asked if something was wrong. My explanation was that I was in pain, and that a warm bath helped reduce that pain. This was a believable lie, given all the major surgeries I’d gone through. Back in the ‘80s, access to sexual information was not as easily available to teenagers as is it is today, but my budding sexual drive would not be denied. A year or two after my first bathgasm, I started lusting for more knowledge and stimulating imagery. Around the age of 15 or 16, whenever I found myself alone in our home, my need pushed me to search for any kind of erotic material. Like many, my first discovery was the wonders of the women’s lingerie section of the Sears catalogue. But that satisfied my curiosity only for a brief period of time. Soon, I was invading everyone’s privacy by exploring the cupboards and even the bedroom dressers of various family members. Soon I discovered erotic pictures and stories through the wonders of Penthouse and books like “The Happy Hooker” by Xaviera Hollander. Luckily for me, and for the sake of a balanced education, I also discovered “The Joy of Sex,” one of the better books out there on this subject matter. It always intrigues me how strong the sex drive is, and how lucky I was to have self-educated myself in my youth. By the time I lost my virginity at the late age of 26, at least I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, and how to do it. However, many others who are more isolated by their disability, or isolated by strict parenting, are not so lucky. I would never dream of telling you, dear reader, how to live your life or how to raise your children, I personally feel that NO ONE should ever be terrified by their first orgasm. Especially if your child has a disability, do not handicap them further by freaking out and shutting down when they start asking about sex, or if you find them masturbating. Instead, teach your children with age-appropriate materials, and encourage them to explore this very powerful but beautiful and natural drive.