Me, Shere Hite And Master Bate...

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I had a less than happy childhood the way I carry on sometimes, but most of it was pleasant enough I suppose. I've only ever lived in four houses, in all my life, and I've never moved away from the Town where I was born. I probably never will now. I'm not exactly an adventurous person by nature and I hate it when things change.

I don't really remember a lot about the first house that I lived in but I know that it had Walt Disney characters on the wallpaper in my bedroom. But maybe I just got told that. I remember being in the little above ground pool that was in the backyard and Dad would swim around and around in circles chasing us, pretending to be a shark, and we'd run, screaming through the shallow water as if Jaws himself were right behind us. I'm not sure if I actually liked it or hated it- but he created a pretty good whirlpool that would stir up all the dreggy leaves off the bottom. We had a little dog and a cat there, but those one's ran away. There was an outside toilet and our Grandmother lived across the road.

Then we moved, not too far away at all, to a better suburb, away from the grime of my industrial city. I lived in this next house for twenty years with my Mother and Father and three Sisters. There are a lot of dead pets buried there- there's even a mass grave of five or six baby rabbits that all died of Myxamatosis on the same sad day. All of the cats are buried in the front garden and the birds are down the side of the house- near the Roses- beneath my bedroom window.

The first bird that I buried along there was Soloman the baby sparrow- who I managed to save from another cat we once owned. He must have fallen out of his tree; he was so small that his bulgy little eyes hadn't opened yet and his tiny grey body didn't have a single feather on it. I remember taking him grocery shopping with me on a Saturday in my red crocheted purse, but after a while I must have forgotten he was in there, and I started throwing it up in the air and catching it. I know I didn't drop him so I don't know how his poor little neck got broken; I just know that I didn't mean to hurt him. I might have only had him for a few days but I really liked feeding him his sloppy Weet-Bix off a matchstick and wiping his little beak with a tissue so it didn't gum shut.

I share my room with my baby Sister. I don't like to. She's so airy fairy. She's a sook and a dobber and I hate her because she never leaves me alone- but we have to live together for twelve years against my will. We divide the room into territories constantly- and luckily for me I get to sleep closest to the door- most of the time- so at least I can still access my bed and other stuff with relative ease- while she had the more difficult task of having to keep a hold of one of her possessions at all times in order to avoid some rotten punishment. One time I took the arms off her favourite teddy bear, Bippi, that she has had since her first birthday, for stepping on my piece of carpet. Another time I took his head, for a different reason, but someone sewed it back on to him for her.

There were the rare times that we seemed to get on; when she had lollies for instance, or when we were both fighting with the two older Sisters instead for a change. When we were very young we used to play Hide and Seek in our bedroom. My favourite spot to hide was behind the drawers in my cupboard- actually up inside behind them, and I was so small and skinny once that once I was inside the drawers they hardly even seemed like they'd been left open anymore.

I also liked climbing up on top of our bunk beds and, by crawling backwards, scrambled somehow into the very top of the cupboard before my Sister finishes counting to ten. The cupboard has a little sliding door that you could close, upon yourself, so that you were completly in the dark and out of view as you lay scrunched up like a foetus inside the tiny space. By rights I shouldn't fit in there at all. Lying there, waiting to be found, I would often think of myself as Flat Stanley, a character from a book my other Sister had. It was a story about a boy who was so skinny that he could waft under the door as easily as a piece of paper; and he was always falling through letterboxes or the grates in the road. Funnily enough, he almost looked like a straight line from the side and could fold himself up when he wanted. I really liked that story- when my Sister let me read it.

Sometimes, when we weren't playing Hide and Seek, I would climb into the cupboard with all my secret stuff; like my Mother's Shere Hite books that I had stolen from her, and my coconut-shell monkey ashtray that held all of my pocket money, and a piece of bark from under the pink-flowered tree. I would hide my stash of empty Chicken-in-a-Biscuit boxes in there- alongside my stories, and my diaries and the letters from my pen friends that I kept in an old take-away container. I also kept my little dog's brown leather collar in there after she died, and strangely, I would pick it up every now and then and sniff it from time to time to see if I could still detect her lovely doggy smell. I would stay hidden in there for hours sometimes; sometimes until I couldn't feel my own legs anymore.

I don't remember ever learning to read or write, it is just seems to be something that I have always been able to do- like it is innate in me or something- as were the instincts that told me to always keep my stolen copies of Sexual Honesty and the Hite Report hidden, and not only from my Mother and Sisters. When I was still five my Father came across their hiding place- which was in the top of my cupboard as you now know- and not only did he get very cranky with me for reading them but he also took them away. We've never spoken about it since.

Most five year olds I've met don't read avidly about sex- or anything else for that matter- and if my Father ever reads this story, you may want to skip this next part, Dad, actually, because it didn't take me very long to find them again. These were my favourite sorts of stories when I was five; much better than Yertle the Turtle or The Lorax; though to be fair those are both excellent stories as well. I would lie in my bed under the doona, facing away from the door, so that no one could see what I was doing, or reading, if they happened to suddenly walk in on me. One the rare few times someone would disturb me I would simply let the book drop quietly shut and then pretend to be fast asleep. I knew enough, even at that early age, to know I had to hide the truth about who I am.

I read those books from cover to cover so many times, so much in fact that the pages were all dog-eared and falling away from their spines in the end, but I never got tired of them. I don't need pictures. The very thought of sex has always excited and fascinated me; and the more explicit and hot the thought the better. I like to think that my brain is a sexual organ in and by itself, just another erogenous zone with unlimited potential. My thoughts are what turn me on or off; it's not just the button thats pressed between my legs.

Mostly. I've learnt- the fun way- that a lot, if not most, of the chemistry is between the minds, and if you are the type of person who'll accept it, my advice is to just let your imagination run wild and do what you want and feel; whether you are with somebody or all alone. Fuck. You only live once. And if you don't know how to make yourself cum- learn. You'll never know what you could have been like if you don't. Women- let your lover fuck you like a whore and they'll never have the need to visit one behind your back. Sex is better when you feel slutty and wanted. And if you are still lying prone, flat on your back thinking of England you had better just be preserving energy, or just be too fucked to move anymore, Girls, or I promise you- you're missing out. And Never fake an orgasm- ever- that's just one less you'll get in Life that you were entitled to.

I've learnt all of this the hard way- let me assure you.

I used to be a lousy fuck until I got over myself and stopped pretending that my saggy tits weren't lying flat on the bed next to me. Well, lousy might be too strong a word, but I certainly had no idea how to fuck well. Maybe the people with fewer hangups than Myself start out as great lovers, but it's been a progressive thing for me, and I haven't finished improving yet, either. When I realised that letting loose with the occasional (and accidental) fanny-fart doesn't mean the World will end I learnt to relax and was finally myself in bed- though to be accurate my bed is one of my least favourite spots for sex, and it rarely happens in there anymore anyway.

I still hold back sometimes- but for the most part it's all fingers and fluids and tongues and accepting and receiving- being both dominant and submissive. As it is meant to be. Fuck romanticising sex. It's not supposed to be pretty. It's animalistic.

You, or maybe someone just like you, wouldn't necessarily think I was an overly sexual person on face value, but I have been thinking and living for sex since I was a very small child. Children have the right to be sexual too. When they are by themselves I mean. I was. That might creep you out but I fully believe that the only time a child's curiousity concerning their own sexuality should be repressed or discouraged is when adults are invovled; and I'm not even talking about when those arseholes who also happen to be pedophiles become invovled with children. Don't even get me started on those Filth yet. But for the most part, adults can only teach a child an adult's perspective of sex, and for some of us that meant that sex was only ever depicted as a negative, dirty thing- that was to be avoided entirely if possible; and if it couldn't be avoided then it was to be endured and put up with rather than something to be experienced and enjoyed. And that's wrong.

Sex isn't a lesson that kids need to learn from adults. In practice or in theory or in practice. Just proving a point. Most kids find out about life and sex on their own, or with other kids- and that's the way it should be. If you have any questions regarding this little fact then you can contact Me, Shere Hite and Master Bate and we would be more than pleased to handle your enquiries shortly. And you might not have realised it yet, but that's also the name of this story.

And no; I couldn't word that last sentence any better.

But I did try to.