Love Me: The Manoir

'Owning my Sexuality'

It was at the age of fifteen that I began to speak a lot more about sex, which was ironic coming from a girl who hadn't even been kissed let alone 'done the deed'. But I was still the most vocal in that subject matter. I had been watching porn long before my peers, and strived to be as outspoken as I could on the topic. Maybe this was a form of compensating for my inexperience, but I also think a large part of it was also just to add another trait to the personality, another thing people could remember me by – Ella, the girl who talks about sex a lot.

At fifteen, this seemed like something that was pretty cool to be known by. I was breaking down barriers, walls, society's obstacles in front of a woman owning her sexuality. I could talk about wanking, watching porn, fantasies, what I liked and disliked as easily as reading off a shopping list. There is a video somewhere of me listing as many porn categories as I could in one minute. For someone who was so open about sex, it would take me years to realize that what I was doing wasn't liberating. I was objectifying myself.

I would watch aggressive porn, ones in which the women would more often than not be restrained, and fantasize about being used in that way. I wanted someone to throw me to a bed and do whatever they wanted. I wanted to watch someone else receive sexual gratification from my body. And by this point, I would have given myself to anyone. I was so obsessed with the idea of losing my virginity, of playing out these fantasies in my head. There was also something so preposterous about me being a virgin still at the old age of fifteen.

Not only was I beginning to speak more about sex itself, but also about sexuality. Around this point in my life, I began to realize that I was also sexually attracted to girls as well. It wasn't just men's arms, men's collarbones, men's this and that which excited me, but also boobs. And girls with piercings and short hair. Well versed in the internet, it didn't take me long to find the identity of pansexual for me to begin using it to identify with.

To me, being pansexual meant that there was no obstacle between who I did and didn't find attractive that was defined by their gender. As long as they had dark brown curly hair and strong eyes, I would most likely be in love. It was a concept which my mother never truly understood when I told her, and one which she would either joke about insensitively, or try and speak with me about in a patronizingly PC way.

The problem with being pansexual in secondary school is that you have to make a choice. Do you enter the incestuous pool of openly out people in your year, or do you remain peaking out the closet. You're out (technically), but the only people who you'll ever go for will be men. I chose the latter, and while I still fancied girls in my year I kept it to myself. They weren't interested in vaginas let alone me, and I wasn't about to make a fool of myself by making all the girls around me think that I liked them. I did have some level of standards, they were just very low.

Man, woman, or everything in between, I decided at fifteen that the sure-fire way to making sure someone stuck about was through sex. It was what I was obsessed about, and therefore everyone else must be as well. I would dream of giving up my body to someone.

And then in January of Year 11, right after my mocks, the opportunity arose. Andrew, the boy I had spoken to years before, was the perfect solution to all my problems. In a desperate act, I sent him a Snapchat with some generic message like 'someone pop up' which was only sent to him, but with the guise that it was a mass message sent to everyone. When he didn't reply to that one, simply leaving me on read, I chose to message him again, and from there a conversation sparked.

In retrospect, at this point Andrew was not very interested in my conversation. He would infuriate me with one word replies, or no replies at all, and I would spend hours trying to illicit any kind of response from him. And eventually, I found out how.

One evening, the conversation became dirty. There was nothing more tantalizing than slowly watching as his interest in me began to peak as I made sexual innuendos and responded to his lewd comments. We talked in great detail about what things we thought we would enjoy in sex, what porn we watched, and eventually how horny we were making each other.

I would leave suggestive messages and hope that he pried for more, sometimes commenting on how sexy I was feeling because I was wearing underwear – just my underwear. And in the spur of the moment action, I would do something that would later define every relationship I would have romantically and sexually.

I sent him a picture of my arse. It was taken from a strange angle and was slightly blurry, but the adrenaline I got from it was immense. My whole body shook as I waited for his response, desperately wanting to know how he would react. He sent me back a video of him saying how impressed and turned on by it, and later asked for one without my underwear on. He said after he preferred me with underwear.

This was the reaction I had been craving for what felt like my whole life. I wanted someone to look at me and desire me. Someone to think about me and get aroused to the point where they could bear the thought of touching me. I liked being the object of his gaze, it made me feel special. And pretty. And like I had some value to bring to this world which was not just being the end of some joke.

I felt like my sexual awakening was coming (even though I was already well versed in the mechanics of sex), and Andrew seemed like my one-way ticket out of singledom. And then it all collapsed to the ground as most things had done in the past. He grew bored of me, bored of talking about the same things, bored of describing how we would fuck each other despite the fact that we had never met. He didn't seem to want to meet me; when I had asked, he said he wasn't free for months, and this should have been the sign that he wasn't interested.

Yet I persisted, not wanting the fantasy in my head to drift away. It took him another few weeks to finally tell me that he 'didn't have time for girls' because our exams were coming up. Exams...they seemed so small in comparison. What were GCSEs in comparison to losing the one potential link to sex that I had ever had? Where was I supposed to go from here?

But exams did come, and for a month I buried myself in my notes and forgot about boys and girls, and instead focused on my studies. There were some tearful ones – my Geography exam in particular where I missed out a 25 mark section – and overall I was ready for the summer which felt like a chance to finally grab some freedom.

I had been through my training on how to be a proper teenager – now I wanted to put it into practice. I wanted to party, I wanted to drink, and most of all I wanted to whore myself out to whoever would take me.

Sunday 5th March 2017

WELL THAT WAS CHEEKY

Today me and Andrew reached a whole new level. Sexting. And god did it make me horny, like unbelievably horny. I sent him a picture of my arse and his reaction was superb, he was lost for words. He sent me this video where he was speechless. Anyway, we got really explicit and I was so horny, and he was so hard. He showed me his hard on through his boxers and his dick looks a reasonable size. God all me and him talk about is sex, I wonder what we'll talk about in real life. There is no doubt in my mind that he likes me now, and there is an actual chance that I might get a boyfriend – how mad is that? God I am so horny, I would fuck him right now if I could. Arghhh.

-    Ella