1. I am a nineteen-year-old woman. I'm a virgin by common moral standards, and sex scares me. Religion is a dirty word in my personal experience, and I'm one of those people who says gosh, geeze, and darn just to avoid it, although I can swear like a sailor with no provocation.

2. I don't like relying on anything. I used to drink and pop at least eight 350 mg painkillers every day. The people I've talked with about sex agree that they wouldn't know what to do if they had to be celibate. Addiction runs in my family, but I can kick habits like those mentioned above in a single day. It hurts like a bitch, but I think I get a power trip out of it. Nevertheless, I don't like trying my abilities where I don't need to.

3. Pretty much every male figure until third grade was a perceived threat. My first male teacher, a Vietnam vet, spoke to us early in the year about a friend who died in the war. He showed us the etching of his name on the War Memorial. Up until then I hadn't really thought men could have the kind of peace he did. It wasn't depressing, or overly reassuring. Just this brief little talk, but he trusted us and cared enough about us to do it, and I loved him for it.

4. Oftentimes, people blame tumultuous childhoods for issues later in life. Those who don't know me well tell me I'm very strong, assertive, and sexual, but my closest friends know that if someone so much as touches my arm without my consent, I'm likely to feel nauseous. I had a violent upbringing.

5. Referencing 1 and 2, I despise weakness, particularly co-dependence and reliance. I can't deal with people in pain or withered from sickness, and I can't really stand the thought of coming to rely so heavily on someone else for physical purposes. I can pleasure myself, and I do so three or four times a week.

6. On a cabin trip we took, I wrote a note to my boyfriend in his diary and removed the bookmark. I told him the gist of what I'm telling you, and to forgive me and be patient with me because it's difficult to think about what's happened. Several days later, he sent me a note telling me that I am not, as I wrote, "dirty," and that he respected me. I almost cried, so I went to bed at 19:00. A few weeks after, he gave me a carved picture frame with a picture of us in it. In the back cover, once you open it, is something I wrote him. It made my eyes water and he cuddled me for a very long time.

7. I've been masturbating since about the fourth grade. I looked at filthy stuff, even then--mostly rape and violent assault. I was eleven.

8. Scars and bruises and rope, all placed artfully, turn me on. I hate seeing bruises on the face. I can't tell you how much. But old gashes, purple and yellowed skin, and bloody noses are fuel to the fire.

9. Sex was a solid enough concept by the second grade that I was forcing my favorite doll, one with short hair and highlights and tanned skin, one that looked exactly like me, to prostitute herself to my other male and female dolls, but mostly male. I made a little veil, and they would go underneath it and I would violently mash them together, a deep voice growling, "Take it. Yeah. You like that?!" while a higher, pleading, scared voice said things along the lines of, "No! Stop! Please!" I entertained my friend with my antics and she joined in. Then she moved and I had no one with whom I could share my little game.

10. I didn't care if my Barbies were naked because they didn't look like real people or kids, but if my baby and porcelain dolls were exposed, I could freak out.

11. Shortly after getting into darker and darker porn at eleven, I discovered gay fiction. I read it avidly, and it was much more calming and normal than the shit I'd been viewing before. For years, I could only come thinking about gay sex.

12. I was terrified when I first started menstruating. Before, I passed as a boy, a quiet one, but a boy. The jig was up.

13. If I don't masturbate for three days I have a sex dream. That's that. I'm two or so years past the puberty gate, and my sex drive can go like clockwork rather than spontaneous, unbidden hours of... well, "heat," I guess.

14.  I hated myself for several years before going through severe depression, self-mutilation, therapy, suicide attempts, and an SSRI that gave me paranoia alongside my "uplifted" moods. During this time, I began drawing obscene pornographic comics involving tentacles, rape, torture, date rape, imprisonment, gang rape, and murder. They made me laugh and feel good about myself. Filled four decently-sized sketchbooks in something like three years.

15. The pastor at my school liked to see kids in his office. I stopped attending Sunday school at six because I always wanted to be near my mother, no exceptions, and when I was left in the class, I laid low at first, trying not to be noticed, and then I acted out. I was very, very happy to go. It's been thirteen years. I have never told anyone anything about this and this the last time.

16. His son ran Christian Youth Nights at the Lutheran church and offered twisted logic aside his Jesus rant. He told us men and women have their places, then had the boys and girls play various Mars Vs. Venus games. One of them could be compared to Venus in Furs. I thought it was fine, even fun at first, but then something was wrong and slowly throughout the night I felt dirtier, and dirtier, until I finally sneaked out through the girls' locker room. To this day, no one  from my hometown talks about it. My peers say things like "Oh, well, that's just what kids do, right? I mean, it was a joke. Totally funny. Why are you so uptight?" I'm one of those people who doesn't shower or try to mentally cleanse or repress after something bad happens. I earned that anger. It is mine, and I am going to keep it until the day I die.

17. I don't trust authority figures because of all that and many, many things non-sexual, but the sight of an officer's uniform still gets me going like no tomorrow.

18. Every girl I liked in the past was heavily religious. I moved to a big city where it wasn't much of a problem, and then all I had to do, with the people I got to know, was ask. However, every boy has had to pursue me like nobody's business. The main reason my boyfriend is my boyfriend is that we shared that hunt. We challenged each other, he, used to being in control, me, used to being alone with free rein. One of our friends has called him my bitch, and I laugh, but I'm perfectly weak to him if he deserves it.

19. My first boyfriend hit me during our second fight. In passing period. In front of my friends.

20. I hate Hollywood movies with unattractive, geeky failures who magically obtain the perfect woman because it's fine if they're untouchable, but a female is a sexual object, and that's all she's good for. On the other side, I hate movies which figure that the only way to have a strong female character is to "give her control of her own sexuality." As long as she flaunts her double-Ds and gives blowjobs because that's feminism. Which is to say, I despise Hollywood. But it goes into another factor, because I don't believe all of these gorgeous gals are flocking to the computer science building, that many of these women aren't fully consenting with the plot, just going along with it. And this should really have its own point, so check out #24.

21. Some of my more disturbing fantasies include inter-species rape, zombies, blood kinks, cannibalism, broken bones, amputation, alien cross-species implantation, and... horrible things involving Robert Downey Jr. Honestly, given the chance, I want to make him cry and crawl and beg on his knees. That's affection.

22. I love love love telling erotic stories and I'm very good at it. I've never not gotten a reaction.

23. I goaded two men on a ferry to have sex with me when I was seventeen, but they said, after some conversation, that I was too young, and they respected me. Lesson from that is: Sex ≠ respect. Again.

24. Non-consensual, real life sex makes me physically ill. Occasionally I drift back to old habits and check out some simulated rape videos, but I always come back to the same conclusion. No exceptions.

25. My boyfriend is the most patient person I know. We're about to have our first anniversary, he's a healthy 18-year-old boy, and he's never pressured me into sex. His most repeated and honest phrase during make-out/fondling/fingering/jerking time is "Only if you want to." I want to tell him I love him, but I have this strange, old-school idea that you only say that to family members. Dating, engaged, or married. I say it jokingly to friends, but I've never said it seriously to anyone when it wasn't platonic, and I burn with embarrassment and a bit of shame thinking about it.