As a child, I learned how to yearn for a man’s cock. How it felt when I curled my hand around it, soft and limp at first, like jelly, and then as a large warm hand moved my fingers carefully against the tip, in larger and larger circles, I watched out of curiosity, how it stiffened. It reminded me of those cheap popsicles I loved to suck, encased inside long plastic tubes which I impatiently tore open just to reach into the sweetened ice.

I learned how it felt when it was pushed deep inside my mouth, how it felt when I almost choked on it and couldn’t tell which skin, which flavour, belonged to me. How my mouth could never be big enough to cover its entire surface- smooth, almost waxy even, my tongue tracing each vein and bump the way I would let my feet slide from one marble tile to another as though I were ice-skating (I never picked up ice-skating). And I could literally feel the blood pumping into it as though it were a balloon, turning it raw and red. Raw and red. Funny how when the desperate urge for sex strikes, we slip back into primitive talk- plain monosyllabic descriptions: Hard. Raw. Red. Big. Good. More. More. Nice. More. Yes. Slow. More! Fast. Now. Come. Now. Words which, are in every child’s daily vocabulary. Commands which, a child could easily understand and obey.

And why shouldn’t they be obeyed? Adults teach children to listen to them, no matter what. Adults teach children what is right and what is wrong, even if right is wrong and wrong is right. There are no instincts to tell a child that there are certain things that they shouldn’t do to each other, certain places that they shouldn’t touch on and inside each other. There are no instincts to tell you that your sibling or uncle or cousin or stranger from church shouldn’t be playing with your body. They seem to have so much fun with you, so you have a lot of fun too.

One day, when you realize that the girls in your class go “Eeeeee!” every time someone cheekily talks about six and squirm when they need to go shee shee as they call their vaginas, “there, down thereee”, (and the penis, “you know boys got that thing”), you instinctively know the crude hokkien terms to those parts and exactly how two people could have good good fun with them. Your only response is to burst out laughing as you roll your eyeballs and scoff at their naivety, all the while secretly thinking that you’re so damn smart, like those big adults like that.

After that you spend the rest of your life trying to unlearn what you were taught. You spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what is good and what is bad, what is okay and what isn't, even if it feels damn nice. You spend the rest of your life fearing and desiring every single fantasy you have ever dreamt of and every tiny little touch- hand on hand, fingers clasped, eyelashes on eyelashes, a quick peck on the cheek, lips on neck, on breasts, tongue on cunt, on cock, in ass. You spend the rest of your life feeling like a fucking dirty whore who doesn't deserve any love and who will burn in hell because you love how it feels and you hate how it feels.

You spend the rest of your life fighting against yourself because it isn't you and you want to sulk in a corner and sleep all day and cry all night and feel sorry for yourself but that isn't you either.

You wonder if maybe, just maybe, if in the end there is no way out, perhaps the resistance, the negotiation, the very struggle itself, is who you are.