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Whisper #34 – Everybody Needs a Bosom for a Pillow

By on 26/10/2011 in Blog, Whispers

Author: Katyboo who blogs here, and tweets as @thevoiceofboo

 

My eldest daughter is experiencing the first throes of puberty.  She is not impressed. Not impressed at all.  During the summer holidays I mentioned that it might be time to get her fitted for a bra.  She all but got down on bended knees and begged me to wait just a little longer.

She said in a rising wail: ‘Why? Why do I have to be a teenager? Why can’t I just be twenty five and skip that part?’

I said: ‘There are good things about being a teenager.’

She said: ‘What are they?’

I could not think of anything off hand.

She flounced out of the room, triumphant.

I have relented about the bra fitting for now.

This is mainly because I remember the utter humiliation of going for that first bra fitting with my own mother.  I really had nothing to show in the breast department at the time.  Not like Busty Brindle, the girl in my class at school who all the boys used to yell at when we did the 100 yard dash in P.E., and whose chest wobbled like spectacularly unstable jelly.

All the other girls in the class, myself included, were fascinated by her development, but I don’t recall that any of us were particularly eager to join her.  We did not want to be full of feminine allure and the object of ogling. We wanted to keep on playing British Bulldog and pick our scabby knees.

My mother on the other hand was keen to get the bra fitting out of the way as soon as possible.  She deposited me with the lady with the tape measure in the Marks & Spencer’s fitting room as if she were the first person to have invented bosoms.

I don’t know who was the most embarrassed, me, or the tape measure lady.  She did her valiant best, but there really was nothing to measure.  My maternal grandmother, who was nothing if not eccentric, used to describe her breasts as ‘two fried eggs on a plate’.  She used her bra to keep emergency fivers and the odd treat for sulky grandchildren in.  On one memorable occasion she pulled a Robinson’s Golly badge out of her left bosom area for me.  I was, as you can imagine, very impressed by this.  I hoped in later life to be able to make my bosoms do something similar.  It now seemed as if I might get the chance.  As the tape measure lady was fumbling about my upper chest region in the hope that I might suddenly sprout 38 DD knockers and give her something to placate my mother with, I thought of all the things I might keep in my bra, clear as it was that I would not be keeping my wayward chest in it for quite some time.

I got as far as wondering if it would make a good place to stick a supply of Sherbet Dib Dabs when the woman pulled the tape measure from round me with a snake charmer’s flourish, and announced that I was a 28 AA.

I was absolutely sure that she had pulled this figure out of her arse.

I was proved right after I got home and tried on my bra, only to find that there was room for a score of Sherbet Dib Dabs and possibly 2oz of pear drops.

Despite the fact that I was wearing some complex elastic strapping merely to support two empty wind socks of material, my mother still made me wear the bra every day.  It was clearly visible underneath my school blouse, and led to derisive jeers from the boys who, quite rightly, asked what the point was? Unfortunately they thought I was trying to be come hither, and tormented me to the point of distraction.  They would not believe I was actually more keen to go thither.

The idea of burning my bra was becoming more appealing on a daily basis.  Not to liberate my oppressed female self, but to go back to being the androgynous child I had been quite happy as.

In my later teens, my bosom was still more of a problem than an asset.  I hung around with a group of girls my mum insisted on calling the Valkyries.  They were all rather amply proportioned, and to a woman had gigantic bangers.  One of my friends was so generously endowed in the bosom department she had to sleep in her bra, because otherwise her lolling boobs gave her a dead arm.

By this time I had managed to grow to a reasonably respectable ‘B’ cup, but I can’t say I was having any problems with dead arms.

The best that could be said of my breasts were that they were pert.  One lunch time in sixth form, a group of us sat round reading Just Seventeen, a then very fashionable magazine for young women.  We read about the pencil test.  Apparently it was very important for women to have pert breasts.  It did not explain why this was so, and we never questioned it, we just knew that we had to aspire to pertness.

The test for pert breasts was to stick a pencil underneath your boobs. If the pencil was trapped by the weight of your bosom you did not have pert breasts.  If the pencil rolled onto the floor, you were sufficiently pert.  I was the only pert one among us.  As one of my friends commented at the time; ‘I don’t know about a pencil. I could get a whole pencil case under there with no trouble at all.’  She seemed proud of this.  I picked up my fallen pencil quietly, and went off to dream of bosoms rolling with stationery.

It has taken me nearly forty years to come to terms with my bosom. I do not see why my daughter shouldn’t delay things a little longer.  It’s not like her boobs are  going anywhere. Except south.

If you’d like to write your own Whisper, we’d love to read it! The submission guidelines are here.

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Whisper #32 – Oh Baby, Maybe

By on 05/07/2011 in Blog, Guest Posts, Whispers

Author: And Then There Were Three

I think it’s fair to say The Boy and I have a pretty healthy sex life. He has a very high sex drive (3 times a day would probably just about keep him satisfied). Mine is not quite so high, plus there are just not enough hours in the day once we’ve factored in working, eating and a bit of sleep, but I’m hardly a once-a-week-is-plenty-thank-you-very-much girl either. We generally manage to reach a happy medium which keeps us both satisfied and far enough away from starvation or sleep deprivation.

However, I’m conscious I should probably be writing this in the past tense, as things stand at the moment.

Last night The Boy came back from a couple of nights away. Usually I would be falling into bed with him at the first opportunity. Last night I only had sex with him because if all goes well I will ovulate in a few days, and I don’t want to miss any chance we might get. I still love The Boy, and fancy him loads, but if his penis got broken and we couldn’t have sex for the next two weeks, I think I’d feel pretty happy. Not for his broken penis, obviously – apart from anything else he would never stop moaning about it – but just for the ‘no sex’ thing.

I’m really struggling to separate sex from trying to conceive at the moment. When we first started trying it was all exciting and new and naughty. We’d spent the whole of our adult lives being incredibly careful to avoid pregnancy; sex without contraception is like sampling the forbidden fruit. Was.

Back then, in those heady first few months of trying, I’d engineer particularly romantic and passionate scenarios, thinking that was the kind of sex that was sure to result in conception. Now it’s all charts and timetables and scans and what the consultant has told us to do and medication and horrible side-effects. It’s all about: when’s the best time? If we skip tonight and I don’t get pregnant, how will I feel? Last month we did it in this way, and this often, and I got pregnant, so we can’t risk not doing the same this month. What if, despite all this sex, I still don’t get pregnant? We absolutely must do it now. Should we be doing it more often? Less often? If I don’t orgasm will that make it less likely that I get pregnant? Oh, skip the foreplay and just come already.

Basically I feel so much pressure to do it even when I’m so not in the mood, I’ve talked myself out of being in the mood at all. Ever. Despite the fact I’ve always enjoyed sex for its own sake, I’m turning into one of those women who doesn’t see the point if I’m not ovulating. The Boy has noticed. He keeps buying me sexy underwear and propositioning me. Which just makes me feel less sexy than ever.

It all comes down to that ‘Men are from Mars’ conundrum (an engagement present from my in-laws, which I was quite offended by at the time. It’s actually saved rather a lot of arguments and misunderstandings in the ATTW3 household). Men need sex to feel loved, women need to feel loved to want to have sex. The Boy propositioning me whilst I (and he) knew I was miscarrying probably gets the top spot in the ‘not feeling very well loved or understood’ moments from our relationship, even though rationally I know that was him trying to show how much he cares about me. What’s wrong with flowers though, that’s what I want to know.

We’ve maintained the equilibrium pretty well up to this point, through thirteen long months of trying to conceive (TTC). Hopefully, once this horrible, desperate month is over, we can move on and back to the usual state of affairs. I really hope so, because I so want to want to have sex with my husband again without it always being about what may or may not occur nine months from now. I can’t help but wonder, with quite a lot of sadness, whether we’ll ever recapture the spontaneity of pre-TTC sex though. I do hope so.

 

If you’d like to write your own Whisper, we’d love to read it! The submission guidelines are here.

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Whisper #30 – Living Without Icing

By on 14/06/2011 in Blog, Guest Posts, Whispers

Author: English Thorn, who blogs here.

 

Just under three years ago I stopped orgasming. I didn’t stop trying, I didn’t stop having sex or masturbating, but one way or another I just didn’t come. At first I tried not to stress about it, knowing that if I worried about coming then I’d make the problem worse, but as the months went on I went through several phases of getting down about my anorgasmic state.

 

A year ago I decided that I’d develop my kinky side; I’d been interested in elements of BDSM since my early teens but had pretty limited experience. I started my blog to document my misadventures and thoughts, which inevitably covered my orgasm problems.  Unexpectedly I found that D/s (Dominance and submission) could give me satisfaction to match an orgasm, and could also help me get closer to a climax.

 

A commenter on my blog responded that she’d seen an NHS sex therapist for her problems, which prompted me to consider putting more into overcoming my problems. I spoke to my doctor about getting a referral to the NHS psychosexual services; it’s been six months now and I’ve still heard nothing but I can wait. In the mean time my boyfriend has been very supportive. We balance big attempts with going-with-the-flow; he’s there to comfort me when I get emotional, we always talk things over when anything happens (or doesn’t happen) and thanks largely to him I have a much better understanding of what’s happening to stop me from coming. I seem to be riddled with strange anxieties that rational sensible me doesn’t have, but which creep out during sex.

 

The hardest thing about anorgasmia is choosing how to approach it – do I just shrug my shoulders and start seeing myself as someone who just doesn’t come, or do I see it as a problem that I want to fix? Either way sometimes are going to be difficult, but arguably it’s harder to try to fix things – every discussion of orgasms leaves me feeling a little deficient, a tiny bit of an outsider looking in, desperate to be a part of the club of which I used to be a regular member; every time I miss climax by a mile it feels like a step backwards.

 

So when I recently heard of a special technique which had a name that implied trouble-free orgasm I got very excited – maybe this would help with the breakthrough. Usually I’m fairly rational and skeptical, but in my enthusiasm I somewhat suspending disbelief. The instruction was in the form of a video which my boyfriend and I watched together; it was uneasy viewing but I put that down cultural differences between us and the target audience. My boyfriend, however, was deeply offended by the portrayal of men as inattentive and/or incompetent at pleasing women in even a basic, straightforward way; it didn’t take much discussion for me to agree.

 

Despite this I was still eager to give it all a go, my boyfriend less so. I discussed dropping the whole thing with him, but he reassured me he wanted to try it for me, but several weeks passed and nothing happened. At this point we watched the video again to remind ourselves of the technique details and it precipitated a pretty dramatic discovery. This time we became aware of the contradictions in the philosophy of the technique – being told to throw away all rules, and yet being given terrifyingly detailed instructions that must be followed for the technique was just all back to front, plus there were conflicting messages about the aim and likelihood of orgams. Further to this, some things just didn’t make sense; all the half-decent sex advice I’d seen so far in my life emphasised that individuals vary hugely in their erogenous zones and sexual preferences, yet the technique was very much one-size-fits-all, and that started to ring serious alarm bells.

 

In our deep unease we started to do a little research into the (for-profit) company that had formulated and marketed this technique – in my enthusiasm for finding a solution to my orgasm problems I’d ended up (very distantly) involved with a company that seems, on the evidence, to be a front for a cult! Like many cults they’re prone to litigation and what you might call forceful PR, so I am reluctant to name them. Suffice to say my boyfriend and I dropped any idea of attempting the technique, and any other possible “miracle cures” for my ongoing problems. It’s back to waiting for the NHS and occasionally having a go at working things out myself.

 

I did get one positive thing from my experience – the video reminded me of the importance of staying in the moment during sex, and that has helped when I’ve found my thoughts drifting in unhelpful directions. It’s a very common piece of advice for these kinds of problems, but something that can be hard to actually do. I’ve painted a somewhat gloomy picture of a life without orgasm, it’s not so bad really – I still get a lot of sexual pleasure and the lack of orgasm hasn’t hurt my self-esteem or relationships. As I said to one of my friends, I’m missing the icing but at least I still have the cake.

 

If you’d like to write your own Whisper, we’d love to read it! The submission guidelines are here.

 

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