Sex is Killing Me

Girl Kid and her b-friend have been going out for six months. Even though he’s tall, dark and handsome and he ought to be beating them off with a stick, she’s his first girlfriend. Girl Kid experimented a couple of years ago with the “pretty boy” that everyone thought was “so gangsta”, but decided that 1) he was a tuber, and 2) she wasn’t interested in dating someone she had nothing in common with and who is a mental doorknob, even if he is “hot”, which I thought was a pretty good lesson to learn. Girl Kid doesn’t like clingy boys, and she doesn’t like being dragged around by the shoulder in public like a side of beef. This is pretty much as it was back in my day, “Look at me, I’ve snagged someone! See, I am worthy of love! You can tell because, he/she’s attached to me like a remora!” Not that most high school kids even know what a remora is. I’m just saying.

Girl Kid had decided that she wasn’t going to date someone who went to her same high school, because she didn’t want to be burdened with a guy hanging around all the time. And then she met this particular boy, and made an exception. She even asked him out for their first date, which is something she thought she’d be too embarrassed to do. The two of them have been best friends ever since, logging literally hundreds of hours in person and on the phone. Even I like him—he’s smart, cute, polite, funny, has long blue hair, and he’s a RPG gamer, so it’s all good. It was adorable how initially shy he was about revealing his geek side—Girl Kid had to reassure him over and over that being into Warhammer was a good thing in her eyes, and that he really couldn’t be too nerdy for her. Girl Kid may look like a high school goddess, but she’s a geek at heart. Even Boy Kid likes the b-friend, and that speaks volumes to this boy’s general quality, because Boy Kid has standards for human behavior and suffers no fools.

So, I knew eventually that the issue would come up. You know what I mean, sooner or later they’d get around to “it”. Over the years, I’ve been very upfront with my kids about sex and protection and birth control and how they should come to me when they need information or a drive to Planned Parenthood or whatever. Boy Kid is such a shy boy that he hasn’t crossed this bridge yet. Girl Kid swore she wasn’t ready and that she’d tell me when she was. And I trusted her. I also know that things can happen, and I figured that if something “unplanned” happened, we’d deal with it.

B-friend’s parents are the “you must wait until you are married” types; but this seems ill-advised to me. You wouldn’t buy a pair of pants without trying them on, right? So why would you marry someone without doing the same? Besides, what if you didn’t even know how to put pants on? How awkward would that be? All I’m saying is: try before you buy, and learn to put on pants really well. You’ll be a happier person for it.

B-friend was over last weekend, and as per usual, they spent all their time in Girl Kid’s room, and the rest of us in the house were out and around doing other things. I should probably mention that both Girl Kid and b-friend are 16 and a half…old enough, probably. Later in the day, I was in the bathroom, and saw something floating the potty. It was red. It was synthetic. It has a reservoir in the tip. Several things went through my mind in rapid succession. “Oh god, here we go.” “At least they used a condom.” “Why didn’t she tell me so we could get her on the pill?” “I hope that doesn’t plug the plumbing.” And,“Oh shit oh shit oh shit!”

Later I asked Girl Kid, “Okay, we’ll go to Planned Parenthood tomorrow then, okay?” She tried to act clueless. I told her about my discovery. Apparently nothing did “happen”, because trying to get a condom on for the first time caused irreversible deflation, and from what I gather, emotional pain and suffering for both parties. I tried to let her know that this was expected the first time, and that there was nothing wrong with either of them. There’s a reason people make condom jokes. Girl Kid emphatically did not want to talk about it, then or ever. (But, she does have an appointment today.)

All of this caused several violently conflicting states within me. One, I was crushed that she didn’t want to talk to me. I was hurt that they must have planned ahead for this, but Girl Kid didn’t do what she’d promised a hundred times, which was to get birth control arranged before hand (it turns out the “it” part wasn’t pre-planned after all, and that they’d used a condom that her friend had given her as a joke). Two, I was saddened that her first “real” sexual experience was a bad one. I know, I know, almost everyone has a bad first time, (or at least the girl does). My first time was beyond horrible, and it destroyed the relationship. I wanted something better for my daughter. How weird is that? I probably should want her to wait until she’s eighty to be having sex, instead I find myself hoping that she’ll have a fabulous sex life full of joy and happiness. Fortunately, she and the b-friend seem to be recovering from their trauma without losing their friendship.

I don’t want Girl Kid to be like I was, thinking there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t having orgasms from the standard “stick it in and poke around” procedure that works so well for men. I want her to be much better informed than I was. Now, I have all this information I could give her that might shave years of sorrow, shyness and bad sex off for her. Even simple things like, “You can help him put that thing on, and that will work wonders for him. Or, “Don’t let oral sex be one sided, make sure you get yours.” Or, “85% of women can’t have fun from missionary alone, try different things and tell him what works.” Stuff the men in her life may not know unless she teaches them. But I can’t tell her any of this, because she won’t have it. If I try to bring up even the most discreetly worded subject that is even remotely in this area, she goes all hypersonic on me, “La la la go away I’m not listening to you!”

So, Girl Kid will be left to make her own mistakes in life, and all I can do is wish her the best. For once, I can’t help her. She’s on her own, because apparently I’m just not the right person for this, and the people who will help her are pretty much as clueless and uninformed as she is. Soon she’ll be moving away and leading a life of tragedy and joy that I will know nothing about, and it’s gutting me. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.