Unashamed

UNASHAMED

This book is a work of fiction.  The characters, places, incidents, and dialogue are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real, or if real, are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Emma Janson

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in an manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For more information, to inquire about rights to this or other works, or to purchase copies for special educational, business, or sales promotional uses please write to:

The Zharmae Publishing Press, L.L.C.

1827 West Shannon Avenue

Spokane, Washington  99205

www.zharmae.com

FIRST EDITION

Printed in the United States of America

Zharmae Publishing, logo, and the TZPP logo are trademarks of The Zharmae Publishing Press, L.L.C.

ISBN:       978-1-937365-09-7 (pbk.)

                978-1-937365-07-3 (mobi)

                978-1-937365-08-0 (epub)

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Emma Janson

Spokane, Washington

Aknowledgement

A special thank you has to be given to the people who supported me through the writing process…

Ed, Caidyn, Jay, Cheryl, Leigha, Mandy, Jen, Hufsa, and Travis. But most of all to you Leigh.

I respect you for encouraging me to tell my story, even the embarrassing bits.

I dedicate this book

To the people who find knowledge and advice within the mistakes I have made, and to those readers who are strictly entertained. May you laugh, learn and find peace in your own rainbow.

To the mighty dry hump—the godsend to any little girl’s clitoral repertoire.

My sexual adventures began with mutual exploration and self-gratification. This lets me know there are others with freak tendencies. Thank you, friends, family, and girls who in their own prepubescent curiosities let me play humping games. After all, it was you who unintentionally led me to personal sexual discovery.

Thanks to all who lay beneath me under the Cabbage Patch sheet set, reenacting adult roles on cheesy seventies sitcoms. I played the role of Jack Tripper from
Three’s Company
and you, the various women he tried to have sex with, including my favorite character, Lonna, the older sex-starved woman always throwing herself at Jack’s feet. All she wanted was for Jack to
caress
her body, a word we copied and used over and over again as the Cabbage Patch kids covered our shame.

Bless you for suggesting we brush our teeth before we practiced French kissing for the boys, for sneaking me into your mom’s room to show me porn, and for letting me taste her edible underwear before cramming them back into the package half eaten.

Thank you, babysitter, for comforting me as tears wet my cheeks over my stubbed toe from a vigorous game of kick-the-can. The view of your ample teenage breasts peeking curiously from your sweater as you hugged me is an image timeless to this day. My ticket to hell may have been purchased for crying uncontrollably to get that second mesmerizing look.

Thank you, friends, for letting me sleep in your bed during a sleepover, rather than on the floor, and for undressing in front of me proclaiming, “Who cares? We’re both girls.” Ladies, thank you, because through the confusion of sexual identity you were always there to bring me back to the bosom of familiarity. Pun intended.

They want pride and fireworks! They want balloons and screaming trannies with bad wigs to parade down the street! But, the fact is, most coming out stories
are
boring. It’s the before and after we all sit on the edge of our seats for. Mine is no exception; my story is totally lame. To make it worse, there are three of them, but we are not to that part yet.

Every person remembers their first crush. For me there were a few before my world revolved around my first “girl” crush in eighth grade.

It literally began on the very first day of school. She was full of sunshine and rainbows from the moment our eyes met. When she smiled, her brilliant teeth gleamed from cheek to freckled cheek, offset by a summer tan. She scanned the room and made a beeline for the empty seat next to me, beaming when she asked if she could sit there. She had the biggest turquoise eyes that complimented her wide smile, freckles, and perfectly teased bangs. No one could refuse her when she smiled.

She pulled supplies from her pink and purple bag, making eighth grade small talk. “Isn’t this exciting? The first day of class! How was your summer? Hi, I’m Sunny.” Then she reached out her hand to shake mine with confidence. She looked like the cover girl from one of those teen magazines with floating text next to her head that reads, “5 Ways to Get Him to Ask You to the Dance!” Yes, she was
that
cute. She sat, we talked, and by the end of class, we were passing notes back and forth, making plans for a sleepover.

Our inevitable friendship was always upbeat. She laughed out loud because of me. It truly was my humor that won her heart and the title of “best friend.” My ability to make her giggle until she fell asleep earned me rights to more sleepovers. Every night we spent together that summer was invested in lying on the roof to get what we referred to as a “moon tan.” We even went so far as to bring up the tanning oil and spray bottles full of water to mist our skin. It was these simple things that made our relationship blissful. But the bliss lasted only until the boys took interest and the bombardment of locker love notes began.

Suddenly, yours truly became the jealous gangly friend who didn’t understand why her locker wasn’t filled with valentine hopefuls. The boys talked to Sunny as if I did not exist and made the burn worse by mocking my eighties’ hairstyle. Of course, her teased, sandy blonde hair was perfect. She must have had the one and only magical can of Aqua Net.

Being her friendly invisible ghost became my place in the world.

After watching Sunny reject many courting boys, it felt right to explain my feelings using carefully thought out words and expressions. My confidence was boosted because of our friendship, but we had to be alone in case she smacked me to the carpet. It was during a sleepover while making the bed when my mouth decided that it didn’t need to discuss any of what it was about to say with my brain.

“I like you. Like
really
like you,” I blurted as I fluffed a pillow and tossed it to the head of the bed. It was a poorly executed statement but boldly done. This was my way of testing her to see her reaction before I went any further. She was on the opposite side of the room gathering more blankets when my statement stunned her mouth in an open, fixed position.

She freaked out with a high-pitched thirteen-year-old, “Eww,” preceded by head rolls and hand waves to emphasize her disgust after which she chastised me as a “gay lesbo” who was no longer welcome to spend the night. It was attached at the end like a postscript when she said, “Oh, and by the way, I’ll kick your ass if you ever look at me funny again.” With her, like, totally valley-girl accent,
okay
?

It became real, however, when Sunny blabbed my delicate, unstable claim of passion to my entire eighth grade class. It traveled through the halls like a lingering fart, making everyone scrunch up their noses. This forced me to exploit my sister’s new cheerleading popularity to clarify the so-called truth. My sister told everyone that Sunny was a ditz who was starved for attention.

Four days later, Sunny said she was sorry and invited me to stay the night. She missed our friendship and wanted it back with established limitations. The privilege to sleep in her bed was gone. My new place in the world was on the floor next to her twin bed. Her stipulation was accepted and we remained friends.

After the trauma she caused me for weeks, coming out to my parents did not seem so difficult. But the only way to tell them such devastating news was to write a poem. How gay—a coming-out poem. It took me two hours to write. For an eighth grader, this was more than enough time spent on literary arts.

Trying to figure out how to explain myself took months; the whole process of reading my work and trying to say what was clearly said in the poem took minutes.

If only my coming out tale was as elaborate as others. The stories told from gay boys these days are so over the top they must make shit up to earn rainbow-colored cock points among their friends.

Every now and then you will hear the truth about how one guy sat his mom down, told her, she cried, and that was it. Those people get an “Aw, that’s nice” reaction with a pat on the back. No one buys them an apple martini just for the tale.

People want drama and flair and snapping of the fingers when you tell a coming out story, even if it ends in devastation and total family rejection. They want to hear that you cursed out your dad in the garage for calling you a fag when you handed him the flathead instead of the Phillips screwdriver. That you had this deep emotional red-faced monologue about drama club and Carlos the pool boy. They want to hear about how your mother collapsed in the kitchen and had to be taken to the hospital. How Grandma was helping you pack your stuff and found the photos you and Carlos took on the bean bag. They lean on the edge of their seats for it! I tell people that all of the juicy stuff is usually in the middle; then I share my gay-ass coming out: I wrote a fucking poem story.

It took me nearly two hours to write the poem. My stepmother, applying makeup in the burgundy-carpeted master bedroom, provided the perfect opportunity to read it. She was curling her hair, dressed in a bra, skirt, and pantyhose, during my first attempt at coming out. My butt floated on the edge of her water bed as the notepad shook in my hand.

“I wrote a poem, here it goes. You ready?” I waited patiently for her to look my way and give me the accepting head nod which she carefully managed as she held the curling iron in a rolled piece of hair.

“Sure,” she said vivaciously to appease my desire for an audience.

I am wondering if I should tell the unsuspecting world of my internal secret
Or if tomorrow is a good place to start.

My eyes broke from the paper to check her reaction. She was motionless as the burning hair spray sizzled from the heat. My hands shook the notepad a bit as the guts and glory of the poem spewed from my lips, but I never looked up from the page. Then in encore style I finished:

Or maybe I’ll die a meaningless fool knowing I should have told the day before.
In question still.

I waited, poised on the water bed with bated breath. She rolled another piece of hair around the curling iron and said nothing. There was a long, awkward silence, “That’s it? Oh, I thought there was more!” She laughed loudly. “Beautiful. Didja write that yourself?” Her heavy Midwestern accent bled into each word and each syllable.

“Yes, it took me two hours. I really poured my heart out.” I felt some relief as I gently yet nervously swung my leg back and forth over the edge of the bed.

“It’s very good, honey. Yer very talented; you should read that to yer dad.”

I kinked the corner of my lips upward in a smile, but I wondered one thing. “Did you get it?”

“Suure,” she drew out the word again with her singsong, Northern-Ohio charm that turned the word into a three-note harmony. “Beauta-ful.” That was all she said before she teased and puffed her hair higher. My projected heart-to-heart talk with tears and hugs of acceptance never happened. I was left sitting on the water bed very unimpressed with the way it was handled. I fully expected a dramatic scene like in soap operas complete with orchestral music in the background and close-up shots of our eyes pooling in tears. But, this was unexpectedly blasé, and I didn’t know what to do with the lackluster moment. It totally threw me off, so I simply jumped off of the bed and shuffled back to my room. After plopping myself on my twin, I began mulling over the months it took to finally tell someone; how it came out in a two-minute poem and how absolutely nothing had changed. My stepmother continued teasing her hair in the other room as I tapped my pencil on the mattress in confusion. She heard my poem, but didn’t
listen
to what was said.

Later that evening, during a commercial, of course, I read it aloud to my dad. He said he genuinely thought it was well written. When asked if he understood it, he said, “yes” just before he unmuted the television to continue watching his show.

My mother’s reaction was very understanding. She gave me the “It’s-normal-it’s-a-phase” speech that every parent in denial feels they are obligated to declare. That’s the safe way to say she was a groovy parent, but, if I decided to be a raging homosexual in leather ass-less chaps, it better be temporary because she wants grandkids; so don’t fuck this up or she will get my demons exorcised! As they say, Mother knows best, so it was written off as a part of growing up.

So, rather than focus my energy and newfound sexual tension on the complexities of identity and all that mumbo jumbo, a revolution of porn in the media exposed me to a bigger, more adventurous goal; to touch myself whenever possible.

Indulging in sneak peeks at my dad’s hidden nudie magazines was far more important than the roots of my sexual orientation. My mother’s porn collection that she owned with her second husband became one of many sources of entertainment. Forwarding past the man sex to the housewife and Avon lady fucking in the parlor was part of my process. Dear Grandma’s romance novels from the bookshelf of her private collection were not safe from the mission to turn myself on. My routine involved flipping to the middle of the book to read about “smooth sun-kissed skin, hard nipples, and hot, wet pussy” while Grandma cooked her famous beef and homemade noodles.

She nearly choked on her Pepsi once when she caught me reading one of her cherished Indian-and-white-woman lovemaking scenes. My heart catapulted through my chest when she disrupted my visual of Red Cloud about to give it to his white woman lover in the cabin before her asshole lumberjack husband came back to smack her around.

Jane was arched over the bearskin with her ass in the air feeling intoxicated by the heat of the moment. Red Cloud’s bronze skin and animalistic lust for her petite frame made Jane feel every sensation of her throbbing wet mound of passion. Red Cloud couldn’t speak English, but he didn’t have to say a word to know that Jane’s heaving pussy needed to be filled.

The build of tension before Red Cloud inserted his pulsating man beef led the reader into intense anticipation and escalated my body into full masturbation mode. This is when Grandma caught me reading on the floor, and I’m pretty sure it caused me to piss my pants. She took the book and forbade me to read anything else on the bottom two shelves, as she explained they were books for adults. She should have let me read about the insertion of Red Cloud’s penis into Jane’s vagina and how she squirted all over the bear skin before the lumberjack burst through the door with his musket. Damn Grandma for the denial of these adventures.

After Grandma’s restriction, my sexual curiosities escalated with no source to draw from. I would have indulged in the entire collection, if gone unnoticed. Maybe that’s a good thing, though. Otherwise, I’d live on a reservation with my husband TuTonka Thunderbird and a papoose on my back. Hey, it could have happened.