Chapter 6“Who the hell says you have to be gay?” Agnetha grinned, “it’s not about am I gay or am I straight? It’s about do I love this person enough to want to be with them? You want to be with Sigrid, I can see it in your eyes but you’ve put this obstacle in the way. Don’t read too much into the whole gay debate, there’s a lot in it and certainly people have valid issues but most of the time it’s about accepting who you are right now, coming to terms with your choice of s****l partner.”
She leaned back and propped on her palm.
“What do you look for in a s****l partner?”
When Cathy was alive I would have either answered that with the usual cliché or just sidestepped it but a lot had changed since then. Cathy’s body was in the ground, my mother was buried in her bible studies and prayer meetings, the one single girlfriend I had left was now going out with a guy and I was now in a new circle of friends.
I opened up about my s****l history for the first time to one person. It might have sounded odd but at the age of twenty nine I’d had three serious relationships, well four if you count a three week fling in high school. The rest of the time I’d been either studying at a TAFE college, doing night courses or working. I certainly had enough offers but I declined most of them because to be honest, s*x scared me. I felt inadequate when I got naked with a man, always worried that I hadn’t satisfied him and what the hell was an orgasm supposed to feel like?
Agnetha listened without interruptions and about halfway through when one of her kids knocked on the door to ask for some help with homework, she excused herself and had Robbie deal with it. When she returned she closed the door and locked it.
“Where were we again?”
We went on for a good half an hour or more and by the end I was emotionally drained, I felt as if I’d just exposed myself in a very public way. I was nearly thirty but the way I came across it was as if I was a gawky sixteen year old and I said it like that as well.
“There’s no need to feel shame,” Agnetha leaned on the desk, “you’re not the first woman to feel like that. I get women just about every week, some older than you with the same questions and like you they’re stumbling in the dark wondering what the hell it’s all about. Is it okay to enjoy s*x? What if I don’t orgasm? What is an orgasm? The questions go on and on and on. They feel like men have the perfect right to have as much s*x as they want but if they have s*x with more than one man then they’re a slut.”
“Well I’m certainly not a slut.”
“No, but even if you were having s*x five times a week it wouldn’t make you a slut either, so here’s what I’m proposing,” she stared at her diary.
“My diary is almost always pretty full but you come around here every Sunday night for dinner, so how about you and I retire to my office for an hour. I’ll lock the door and tell the family we’re not to be disturbed and I’ll make myself available to answer any and all questions about s*x. There’s no such thing as a stupid question and let’s be honest, asking a stupid question stops you make a stupid mistake,” she looked at me.
“It’s up to you.”
I felt frozen to the spot for a moment in time and then I said yes. Like a flower in the sun, my petals were starting to open, the deep pool within me was beginning to stir but it would take a voice from beyond the grave to help me complete the crossing.