Sex Ed: Stories about the education of sexuality

This week we present two stories from people who navigated the joys of sex in surprising ways.

Part 1: When Eva Bloom struggles to have an orgasm, she turns to research.

Eva Bloom (she/her) is a sexuality educator and researcher. She is the creator of the inclusive, anti-oppressive, and evidence-based sex-ed web series for youth “What’s My Body Doing”, which has garnered over 1 million views. She holds a Masters of Science with her thesis focusing on sexuality and technology, with interests in self-compassion and bisexuality. She has spoken at the Guelph Sexuality Conference among others and is a winner of a Planned Parenthood Toronto’s Choice Award (2017) for excellence in sexuality education.

Part 2: Dasha Kelly Hamilton thinks of a creative way to teach her daughters about sex.

Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent. Through responsive and respectful intentionality, Dasha leverages the creative process to facilitate critical dialogues around human and social wellness. Dasha delivers her engagement sessions to campuses, classrooms, correctional institutions, association conferences, social service agencies, municipal departments and team retreats.
Her nonprofit, Still Waters Collective, has curated poetry programming and spoken word events in the region for almost 20 years. The work has impacting more than 13,000 youth, provided professional development to more than 100 young people and created platforms for thousands of voices to be honored and heard.
Dasha has written for national, regional and local magazines; produced three collections of poetry; recorded four spoken word CDs; and published two novels. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and has taught writing courses at Mount Mary University, Alverno College and UW-Milwaukee. Dasha served as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy to teach, perform and facilitate community building initiatives in Botswana and the island of Mauritius. A former Artist of the Year for the City of Milwaukee, Dasha was recently named the city’s 11th Poet Laureate.

Episode Transcript

Part 1: Eva Bloom

So it’s the eve of my 18th birthday and my boyfriend is coming over to visit me in my residence in first year. We’re going to hang out, have sex, and, more specifically, I’m going to be losing my virginity. I’m feeling nervous and excited.

So we met at summer camp, the classic camp counselor romance, sneaking off into the forest to make out and encouraging campers to guess if we were dating. By the time November rolls around we've had lots of sex, just not the mystical penis-in-vagina kind which is apparently the only kind that matters for virginity losing. But it’s been a lot of fun and I care about him a lot and trust him so I know that, no matter what happens, it can’t be so bad that we break up or the world explodes.

Eva Bloom shares her story with the Story Collider audience at Burdock Brewery in Toronto, ON in October 2019. Photo by Stacey McDonald.

But before this is going to happen, I have to jump through a couple of hoops. Unfortunately, my roommate in my dorm room is sticking around that weekend so I have to find another place for this to happen. Luckily, I ask another friend of mine who has a single room in the residence if I can borrow her room. I mention the roommate situation, not the virginity-losing situation but, being the hero of a friend that she is, she agrees.

The evening rolls around and my boyfriend gets to my residence. The tension is building. I can feel the butterflies in my stomach getting restless. And we walk down to my friend’s room, open the door, and it’s just wall-to-wall white and pink feathers and ruffles. I count at least seven pillows in some kind of like castle formation but we’re both too nervous to even turn to each other and laugh at what a situation we've gotten ourselves into.

We settle in and start getting sexy and I pull out the singular condom that, I kid you not, I got at an educational play during frosh week about what first year is supposed to be like. Things are going well until we put it in backwards without any lube and then there's some movement and a whole lot of friction and then it’s over. I have officially made my debut into the world of penetrative sex.

And as I lie there, almost sinking in to all the blankets and ruffles, I feel fine. It was fine. It didn’t feel great but I love my boyfriend and it was a pretty decent way to welcome in my 18th birthday.

So I didn’t expect to have an orgasm the first time I had penetrative sex. I’d been a sex nerd for several years before this, binge watching every sex ed video I could on YouTube so I knew that it wasn’t going to change me as a person or mean that we were together forever. I knew that sometimes people took a little bit of time before they had their first orgasms. You had to try different stuff, get comfortable with your body, explore your partner, that kind of stuff.

But two years pass and I have not had an orgasm yet and I’m starting to feel worried. I feel like there's definitely something wrong with me. I actually buy a book called The Elusive Orgasm to see if that will help but no success.

I’d started actually texting my boyfriend things that I like and don’t like about our sex life hoping that he’ll get the hint and maybe start going down on me more or something but he doesn’t, so I imagine over and over again the conversation I'll have with him, walking up to him and saying, “Why don’t we try different things?” Asking him to work with me to make our sex life more pleasurable.

But I also imagine over and over again all the things he could say to me. That my body was gross, that I was being too needy, that I wasn’t worth the effort of trying any of that, so I never ask. No conversations, no changes, definitely no orgasms.

I only remember one time where he explicitly gave me feedback about our sex life. He's over one weekend and it’s evening time. We’re getting sexy and, mid-disrobing, I suggest that we try some wrist ties and some blindfolds, some standard beginner BDSM activities. And his response is to laugh in my face.

He says, “Ha-ha. That’s so funny you're like the daughter of a minister and you're so kinky.”

I don't know remember what I reply but I do remember it feeling like a punch to the gut and tears welling up in my face.

So I did get my first vibrator at this point in our relationship and had some of the best sex ever with it, but still no orgasm. And after hearing that vibrators were the ultimate solution for people who couldn’t have an orgasm, I was back at square one feeling more hopeless than before. So I gave up. I figured orgasms weren’t that important anyway. I figured that this was my problem and I was making way too much of a big deal out of it and I shouldn’t even be bringing it into the relationship anyway. I let it make me feel small and helpless and broken and unworthy.

At this time, my education was taking another turn. I started down the path to become a genuine sex researcher. My undergrad program was interdisciplinary and it encouraged us to explore our interests and try independent projects and, oh, boy, did I.

I did a project on the history of the birth control pill and, wait for it, how scientists have studied clitoral and vaginal orgasms over hundreds of years. I was on the path to becoming a genuine sex expert. I even started a YouTube channel where I shared evidence-based sex ed all without having any orgasms myself.

It was becoming more and more apparent the huge discrepancy between all the things I was learning and how dissatisfied and unpleasurable my own sex life was. And the irony did not escape me with any of this. I was really left feeling stuck and alone.

So we get three years pass and the boyfriend and I break up. Right before the summer before my last year of university, he decides he is no longer in love with me anymore. And as I cry and nurse the first breakup of my first adult relationship, I also feel like a door has been opened. I can finally explore my sex life without the years of feeling like a failure and baggage and pressure. I feel like I have a clean slate.

So I go on a couple of dates that summer but my sex education doesn’t really begin until school starts, if you know what I mean. I started a relationship, an amazing friends-with-benefits relationship with a dude who drives us to get fries after our first hookup and is very punctual about our Sunday night hangouts. Which means a lot to me, punctuality. And it’s amazing.

But more importantly, I also find this amazing sex podcast called The Dildorks, and somehow hearing personal stories, storytelling gets to me and changes my perspective in a way that reading all these papers and books never did. I can suddenly see myself as a sexual being in a totally different way and I’m conceptualizing sex way more broadly than I ever have before. It’s amazing.

So another year passes and I am still sex nerding it up but I've left the worry and the book-buying behind. One night, I’m hanging out at my student house with some friends. We may have smoked a little bit and we are doing an impromptu sex toy unboxing, which sometimes happens when you're a sex educator, pulling out and do a little show for the crowd.

As you may remember, I have tried vibrators before, but when I decide to bring one back to my room and try it out, I figure it’s not going to do anything like last time, so just some fun sensations, nothing that will actually rock my world.

But as I bring it back to my room and turn it on, I notice that it’s a little bit stronger than the other one I bought before. And as I start using it, I feel a warm, tingly sensation move up from my body starting at my toes and then my stomach. And then as it goes, before I can even realize what’s happening, eureka! Orgasm.

So it turns out, all I really needed was a rabbit vibrator and myself, the person who knew my sexuality best after all. Thank you.

Part 2: Dasha Kelly Hamilton

I was at a house party and it was a grownup house party where most of us had kids at home house party. Not the we’re-all-new-at-being-grown-and-somebody-is-making-a-kid-tonight house party. Not that one. This one.

It was roughly eight years ago or so and I’m heading to the bar, which is basically a bookshelf that’s been repurposed as a bar for this night. It’s positioned between the sink and the breadbox, but I don't care. We've got it worked out.

So I’m heading to the bar and there was another woman who’s coming to the bar to also refill her drink. I’m drinking whiskey, she's drinking wine. And she turns to me and she says, “Oh, you smell delicious.”

Okay. I just looked at her and I said, “Hah, well, that works out,” and I look her in her eye.

So I don't know where this is going but I feel this charge is happening. As long as I’m clear where it’s not going, I’m two whiskeys in so let’s play. “What do you have to say?”

Dasha Kelly Hamilton shares her story with the Story Collider audience at Dandy Mischievous in Milwaukee, WI in October 2019. Photo by Mahdi Gransberry.

So she kind of challenges and unchallenges and we settle into this conversation and she starts talking about how there are eight or four different groups of fragrances and those fragrances are grouped into scents. And the scents that come from spices and fruits, those are the fragrances that are described as delicious.

So I ask her how she knows these things. Is this her work or is this a passion? How did she find it out? And she started talking about this boyfriend that she had back in college and that’s what now has become a scent obsession began with buying him colognes and how she was fascinated with how that sample of smelling the box in the mall was very different once that scent was on his skin. And even how much more different it was when it was transferred on her clothes or in her hair.

So at this point we have fallen into this really cozy conversation. We’re leaning across the breakfast counter so people have to pass by us on this side to go to the fridge to get the ice. They're passing by us on this side to go get the extra hummus and we’re leaning over our drinks. We’re leaning into our stories.

At one point she says, “You know, if I would have known that you don’t need a boy to orgasm, my high school experience would have been completely different.”

The entire party went silent, mostly in my head. Because there were still people passing to get ice. There was still music. There was still hummus, but I had been transferred to my bedroom in middle school. I had been transferred to my bedroom where I was making stuff. I’m talking spirographs, I’m talking clay play, I’m talking fashion plates. It was water colors, it was latch hook kit sets, it was clay pottery wheels. I made stuff.

It was fabric that I sewed into fashion designer gowns for my model designer teddy bear named Jenny. Making stuff.

And inside that room that’s where I had this sanctuary. And inside my house I had a sense of safety. But in those years outside of my house, things were really confusing, complicated even.

So outside of my house, like all of us, I was different. I couldn’t breathe as easily outside as I could in my house and definitely in my room with all of my craft and stuff. So outside of my house, my different looked like me being the army brat. Here I was, I had just moved to the hood from Korea, which is hard to explain that I’m not Korean. I’m an army brat so, no, my father doesn’t have a rifle in his house.

Well, no, I’m not from Georgia, which is where we lived before Korea. And, yes, I’m from Wisconsin. I don't know. Maybe that’s why I talk white. Maybe that’s why I ask so many questions. I don't know. Maybe that’s why I talk so much at all. I don't know why I’m in the other classes that you're not and why you ride the bus and I ride the bus but I can’t find a seat. I just want to go home.

So for me, I found that school there were kids who were my friends one day and the next day they were the same fellowship of people who made fun of me. So I just remembered that time of my life always being anxious, always, as my husband likes to say, keeping my head on a swivel. Making sure I was trying to be prepared for the next thing when I wasn’t cool, when we weren’t friends, when we were. I just want to spend a lot of time trying really hard to figure out how to try even harder.

I couldn’t wait to turn the block where I lived. I live about two blocks from school. So on my block I had my house, I had my room and I had my friends.

Now, friends is a very explicit and limited thing. So I had the girl who lived next door to me and we were the same age but she only played basketball and went to church and I didn’t do either of those things. The house next to me, these boys were also my age but they weren’t allowed to leave the house or the yard, literally their house was a stay-off-my-yard-people so they couldn’t leave their driveway.

So everyone else on my block was much older than us and so my friends were my friend-boys. So the boy across the street was my age, so we were friends. Me and him and his friends, and his older brother and those friends. And when I say we hung out, we hung out. All types of games.

And I thought about them in this moment over these drinks when this party went silent in my head. I thought about how the games changed. I remember when Donkey Kong and UNO and I Declare WAR changed and I thought at that moment how things would have been different for me too if I would have known then about my body and myself and what I deserved.

So I had this moment, and I want you to think this montage of a drafting table and the Mission Impossible wall and the idea of light that goes on. I had this moment where I was thinking of my girls who were 10 and 11 at that time. They're going to have so many house parties in their future. I didn’t want this story to be one of them.

So I thought buzz-mitzvah. It’s going to be like a coming-of-age thing, right? I was going to bring women that knew them and then we’re going to talk about how we learn about our sexuality and how you're going to explore boundaries and there would be a vibrator or maybe a coupon, but something that would remind them that they did not have to wait until they were grown to figure out who they were for themselves.

So this group of this house party, we all came together every six months or so. We were an MFA program. So I come together six months later and said, “Okay. Buzz-mitzvah. Here’s how it’s going to go. Here’s where I’m stuck, though. I don't know if 13 is too soon or 16 is too late. College may be way, way... I don't know.”

I’m looking across the room at one of my friends. She starts crying. And it wasn’t joy. It wasn’t because she was moved.

I was like, “Crystal, why are you crying?”

She said, “Dasha, that’s a horrible idea. Nobody wants to get their first vibrator with their mother. Nobody.” She said, “That’s terrible. She's going to figure it out. She's going to figure it out. Please don’t do this. This is an awful idea.”

“Crystal, I have to say the tears are compelling. I’m pretty set that this has to happen in some fashion, but you're crying, and I love you and I respect everything that you've... okay.”

So I put it on ice. I thought about it a bit more. And life tends to sneak up you. Well, that was in my spirit. So this wasn’t about finding a way to fall on this conversation. I've always been in this conversation with my girls. I mean they were at the Vagina Monologues at 10 and 11, 11 and 12. We have a breakfast that we famously call Hashtag Butt Sex. We talk. But I know I had information too and I wanted to make sure that information got embedded in them and they weren’t asking these questions.

So because it was in my spirit, the universe responded to that and I was prepared and not prepared when I got the phone call that one of my girls had shared pictures of herself with a boy she liked at school.

“Oh, you want to send pictures of yourself, huh?” And my lecture quickly became fussing. And then I heard myself yelling. I heard my voice screaming, felt myself crawling up her chest and it wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay. I was terrified for her and I know that I was terrified for the little me that didn’t have someone screaming at me. I had plenty of people around who knew me and loved me but who would ever think the honor student was trying to figure her way through the world this way.

I was terrified because I knew, in yearning to be seen, how I was giving out pieces of myself that was the only currency that seemed to matter where I was and how many decades it has taken me to reclaim those pieces back. She deserved better than that and she deserved the best part of me.

So I dug in the only thing that I knew, the only thing that got me through those years, got me through those ideas of myself, and that was making shit.

So this buzz-mitzvah became a body of work. And the first thing that we did we watched the documentary about the influence of sexualized media on women and girls and how it’s not an accident, it’s not by happenstance and we’re all steeped in this water together. Then she had to write a poem on how that deliberateness made her feel.

Then we took a cardboard cutout with the grocery store and we did the outline of her body and she had this cardboard silhouette of herself. We interviewed five boys and five girls, men and women in her circle of family and friends about what they had advice for for when they were at that age. She took her favorite comments and we put graphic text so she had this hanging at her wall.

Our favorite was, “Boys are dumb and girls are silly.” Still true.

There was a video of watching the actual live birth and then making a comic strip of a sperm and an egg. There's a claymation exercise which was a chance to study STDs. There's an abstract oil painting and water colors of how you would characterize your best traits and your personality. This is a body of work.

And I've been thinking a lot about that being my next show, thinking a lot about how to actually translate that into an experience for other mothers and daughters and caregivers and how to bridge the conversation of past and future and now, because as woman and girls and biology is past and future and now. The lessons are familiar but they're always changing.

And as for my niece, and she gave me permission to share this story, she's a high school graduate. She's working in our family business. She's very clear and secure about who she's going to be and, like all of us, working through who she used to be.

And for me, I’m grateful to be a part of a narrative where she's going to have plenty of stories to tell, plenty of house parties she's going to be at. And I’m hopeful and prayerful that everyone of her stories that she chooses to tell, they're all going to be delicious. Thank you.