Samira GuptaDirty – is such a dirty word. A neat little package of judgment summed up in 5 letters from the morally superior, their final verdict on your personal hygiene or lack of it, your roving mind and your desires that the virgin body should not have.
Dirty is meant to shame you. When little children dig their snot-filled noses in public, we call them dirty. When teenagers return home after an evening of play, sweating, cheeks flushed, and eyes bright, they are sent immediately for a bath, less their body odour and dirty clothes permeate the entire house. When young girls are curious about sexual pleasure, they are shut down, as if the mention itself will violate their pure virgin selves.
I was a dirty girl. I dug my snot-filled nose when I felt like it. My sweat-filled body stank up the house every evening when I returned from a game of basketball. As I entered my teenage years I had many dirty thoughts. My virgin body did not feel violated. It felt alive with need and desire. I was curious to explore and imaginative in building scenarios where certain things would happen with the opposite sex.
In the society I grew up in, periods were discussed in hushed tones. Sex was the forbidden fruit, only granted upon marriage. Any sexual exploration, even thoughts, were strictly off limits. Girls from good families did not desire desire.
As a teenager, I had no one to turn to. One afternoon, a few of my friends and I tried looking at nude photos of celebrities once, giggling and deeply uncomfortable with the strange sensations it evoked in our groin. We did not know what it was. The computer was switched off within minutes, and each of us was uncomfortable and ashamed.
While my friends decided that they did not need to explore further, my curiosity grew. I turned to books, racing through Mills & Boons and Sidney Sheldons in my search for answers. I developed a picture in my head – of the man I wanted, how he would love me and how I would moan in response. I watched boys with an intensity that made people uncomfortable. I was labelled ‘desperate.’ Maybe I was desperate – for answers, for romance, for young love – neither of which were available to a girl in an all-girls school.
My first real experience of pleasure was with a boy who loved to watch porn but was awkward when it came to putting his knowledge to use. Our relationship was a forced one – where friends convinced me to date him and the relationship that ensued was one that I neither wanted nor desired. We did not have sex. I had the wherewithal to refuse because it did not feel right, much to the disappointment of everyone around me.
In college, I earned the nickname Virgin Mary, not because I was still a virgin (which I was) but because I gawked at the idea of one-night stands and was awkward when friends discussed random hookups. They thought I was frigid. I thought they might be right.
I was a stranger to flirting and my rigidity kept men at bay. I did not think I was pretty or sexy. According to one particular friend, I was not dirty enough. I mistook sexual innuendos for friendly banter and developed a reputation for being a good girl. Well-meaning friends kept the bad boys at bay with stern warnings, “Don’t mess with Sam. She’s not that type of a girl.”
I wondered what type of girl I was. My spotless status preceded me and I fell into a pattern of hopping from one (bad) relationship to the other. The boys I dated were much like the men in my racy novels, bad enough with their language to make my body tingle and just out of reach. They made love with fervour, their enthusiasm focused single-mindedly on their own pleasure. I was a novice, so I played along, thinking that a successful sexual episode was defined by the intensity of a man’s moan. As his moans grew louder, mine subsided into the quiet recesses of my body. I did not take centre stage. I was always the supporting actor.
I brought the baggage of my sexual failures into my marriage. I did what I thought all men liked. I had been trained well enough and I knew I could provide pleasure that would satiate the most lustful of minds. After the first few times, my husband asked me, “What do you want me to do? What do you like?”
No one had ever asked me that. I shrunk away from the question. I did not want my husband to know that I had a dirty mind. I did not want him to know that I had never felt the release of a real orgasm. I did not want him to know how badly I craved to be touched and explored. I did not want anyone to know that I had no idea how to pleasure myself.
I closed the conversation firmly by saying, “I like everything you do.” Instead of mustering up the courage to have a conversation about sexual intimacy, I turned to books once again. I devoured fantasy fiction, my dirty mind thriving and alive with the romance that can be found only between the black-and-white lines of ink. I read with an intensity I should have felt in real life. In the pages of my novels, I felt seen, heard, touched and loved. My ears burned, my cheeks flushed and desire heated the flesh between my legs.
”What’s so interesting in that book of yours?” asked my husband one day.
“Everything,” I replied, smiling.
“You smile a lot when you read. Is it spicy?”
“Yep!”
He laughed and walked away, knowing I wanted my privacy. But what I wanted was him and I did not know how to say it. I spent a decade in this state of unsureness. I made excuses and kept myself busy. We had a child to raise and a studio to run. We retreated into our worlds, resigning ourselves to fantasising and aching for things that were right in front of us but just out of reach.
When I turned forty, something changed. It did not happen overnight, like curd. No, this was a slow brew, fermenting in a grand old oak casket for twenty years. At forty, it had reached its maturity and was ready to be opened and tasted. I had completed a year of therapy and worked through my years of sexual repression and feelings of shame. I felt bolder and ready to ask for pleasure.
But how could I ask for something if I did not know what I wanted or how I wanted it? A friend suggested a vibrator. It was all the rage. It came in discreet packaging, an ordinary brown box with my name on it. My heart thumped and my hand trembled as I took what I now consider the first steps to sexual freedom.
I gave myself my first real orgasm – the type where stars explode in your head, your vision blurs and your body trembles as pleasure tumbles out in wave after wave of release. There was a soft click as if a door had been opened. My dirty mind had found a space in which she could thrive.
I took tentative steps toward my newfound freedom and began asking for what I wanted. My husband complied with the eagerness of the men in my books. He wanted to please, and I wanted to be pleasured. After thirteen years of struggle, we seemed to have found a level playing field—and play we did.
I annihilated the good girl, burning her to smithereens. From her ashes, in the style of my racy novels, emerged a brilliant phoenix with golden wings, a woman who could make heads turn, was unafraid to be wooed and unapologetic in her desire to provide and receive pleasure.
Dirty is such a dirty word. It can break you if you let it. But if you embrace it without shame, you permit yourself to be just that – a dirty girl..
This essay was written in response to the prompt in the Ochre Sky Memoir writing workshop facilitated by Natasha Badhwar and Raju Tai.
