Reading with My Body
Before there were lovers, there were books.
And before there were books, there was that place--a small patch of carpet beside my bed, the comforter draped over my head like a tent, a flashlight wedged against my collarbone. The bulb ran hot. The batteries dimmed too fast. But I didn't care. That halo of flickering light was mine. Sacred. Secret. The words inside it felt like something I shouldn't have--but took anyway.
It wasn't just that I loved to read.
I read like I was starving. Like I'd been born with an unnamed appetite and books were the only thing that knew how to feed it.
My room smelled like pencil shavings and warm flannel. My sheets were rough from too many washes. Sometimes I could hear my parents downstairs--arguing softly, or not speaking at all--but inside my paper cave, I was untouched. Untouchable. That hush of cotton and breath and story was the first place I learned the seduction of control.
Sometimes I'd lie flat on my stomach, elbows sunk into the mattress, my chest radiating heat from the friction, thighs parted just enough to let the air in as the paperback lay open between them. Other times I'd curl on my side, the book pressed to the soft bend between my legs. I didn't know it yet, but even then--I was reading with my body.
Not just my eyes.
My skin.
My breath.
My cunt.
The ache came not from plot. But from pull.
A sentence I wasn't ready for--but recognized anyway.
A paragraph that made my stomach drop.
A line that curled under my ribs and pressed there, patient.
I would re-read certain passages--not because I was confused. But because I understood them too well. And they understood me back.
No one had told me that girls could feel that way from words. But I did.
My thighs pressed together--slowly, involuntarily--at the smallest hint of implication. Not because it was graphic. But because it was precise. Because it had aim.
Because it curled around my hunger like it had been written just for me.
Other girls wanted horses. Or prom dates. Or a boy who passed them notes in math class.
I wanted to lose my breath inside a sentence.
I wanted to find the one phrase that made my entire body still.
That flashlight ache wasn't about sex--not yet.
It was about recognition.
The flicker of something unspoken but true.
And no one could see it.
No one could reach me there.
Books were my first mirror.
And my first kink.
Sentences That Knew Me First
I devoured everything. Judy Blume was the gateway drug.
Deenie. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. Forever...
In Deenie, it wasn't the brace that stayed with me. It was the stillness in bed. The quiet hum of something unspoken. Her breath slowing under the covers. The sensation of heat without explanation. I didn't have a word for arousal. But my skin did. My breath did. The way her body paused--and mine mirrored it.
And Forever? That wasn't smut. That was clarity. A girl deciding she was ready. No one pressed her. No punishment came. She didn't lose anything by wanting. She didn't gain permission--she took it. Calm. Conscious. Hers.
I remember the exact moment she says yes.
It wasn't dramatic. No thunderclap. No music. Just a girl, alone in her own wanting, speaking it aloud.
And suddenly I wasn't just reading.
I was inside her skin.
My fingers dug into the spine.
My breath narrowed.
My thighs tightened--and didn't uncross.
Not from guilt.
From claim.
I closed the book--not because I was done.
But because I didn't want the feeling to dissolve. I needed to hold it. Preserve it. Like a moth between my palms--delicate, desperate, alive.
It wasn't about being turned on.
It was about knowing.
Knowing that one day, I wouldn't ask permission to want.
I would choose.
And that choice would be mine alone.
The Books That Dared Me
But not all the books gave me room to breathe.
Some made me hold it.
Long. Quiet. Tight.
And the one that did it first--and hardest--was Flowers in the Attic.
That book wasn't meant to be read in parts. It devoured me.
I read it in gulps--pages clutched tight, flashlight beam trembling, my thighs pressed hard together under the covers. My jaw ached from clenching. My breath came shallow. I wasn't scared.
I was caught.
It wasn't just the premise--siblings locked away, unraveling slowly.
It was the way need began to bloom in the dark. The intimacy of hunger denied too long. The wrongness of it didn't matter to my body. Not in that moment. Because what was happening between them wasn't about incest.
It was about proximity.
About silence stretched so thin it snapped.
About desire that turned claustrophobic.
The first time they kissed, I dropped the book.
Literally.
It thudded to the carpet, pages splayed, and I sat there frozen--my hands clenched on my thighs, my stomach fluttering with something that felt like panic and pleasure at once.
I shouldn't pick it up, I thought.
And then I did.
Because my mind flinched.
But my body wanted to understand.
Not the taboo. Not the danger.
The power.
Because something sacred and feral lived inside that room.
Something made of withholding.
Of containment.
Of slow-burn pressure so tight it became prayer.
That book didn't ask me to enjoy it.
It dared me to stay.
To feel aroused and unsettled at the same time.
To name that ache--not as dirty, not as wrong--just as real.
I didn't touch myself.
But my palm pressed hard against my stomach, like I was trying to hold the heat in.
My other hand stayed clenched in the sheets, white-knuckled with restraint.
I read slowly. Deliberately. Breath hitching on every line that landed like a lash.
It wasn't lust.
It was a threshold.
Flowers in the Attic wasn't romantic.
It was instructional.
It told me: sometimes discomfort isn't a warning.
Sometimes it's a door.
Wifey Gave Me Permission to Want
Then came Wifey.
Yes--Judy Blume again. But not the version on the classroom shelves.
This was the book she wasn't supposed to write.
The one hidden in nightstands. Whispered about. Passed between women like contraband.
I wasn't supposed to be reading it.
Which made every page holy.
Inside was a woman who wanted more.
More sex. More truth. More herself.
She wasn't a villain. She wasn't a saint.
