Girl Talk

I’ve heard my whole life about men and “locker room” talk. I accepted a long time ago that when it comes to dishing the details about the opposite sex, men have absolutely nothing on women. Women, especially close girlfriends, take tales of sex to a whole new level.

My girlfriend and I will talk about the sex act in glorious detail. How long? What position? Had you ever done that before? Did you come? Did he come?

When I have unthinkingly revealed some of these girl-talk conversations to my partners, they have reacted with horror. They make me promise that I won’t talk about them with friends. They profess to never share details. I am stunned and somewhat disbelieving. How could this possibly be true?

My girlfriends have been acting as a social mirror for as long as I can remember. Women watch other women. We watch how they walk, how they dress, how they flirt. We assess their eyes, hair, lips, breasts, ass and legs with voracious intensity. I notice attractive women five full minutes before my date will. Right or wrong, assessing our own physical assets or flaws by comparing ourselves to the same sex is an age-old social game. Are her boobs bigger than mine? Well…maybe they are, but my ass is better. Wow! I love her hair…wonder if mine would do that?

Add to that the fact that women form strong physical and emotional bonds from an early age. Little girls hold hands on the way to the playground. They braid each other’s hair, hug, trade clothes and jewelry. They go to the bathroom and chatter away while the other one pees. They check a girlfriend’s teeth for stray food once she has eaten; give tampons to the friend in need, and empathize over cramps and heavy flow once a month.

It only makes sense to me that once we become women and begin our sexual journey that it would be other women that we look to for answers, reassurance, sympathy and a listening ear. Emotionally, we’ve learned as women to process…and to make sure that we process in detail!

It could even be that after yearly exams that probe our delicate bits with steel and indifference, letting the cute teenage boy in the checkout ring up our tampons, or allowing five medical students to observe our vagina stretched into an unrecognizable shape by an emerging head…Well, the prudishness tends to go downhill.

My girlfriend knows how many partners I’ve had and how I would rate them. She knows who I count as a “half” partner because he only lasted ninety seconds. She also knows about the partner that I don’t count at all because I literally could not tell that we were having sex. I’m actually still not quite certain we even did (yes, it WAS that small).

So it seemed only natural to relay details of a recent sexy weekend to her on my way home from work. She listens, asks questions and makes all the right affirming noises.

Somehow this leads us into a discussion of the differences in the male appendage. She is discussing her partner’s concern over not being totally straight (and I’m NOT referring to his orientation).

“I tried to tell him that I don’t even know any men that are completely straight.” She explains. “At which point he started to cover his ears and insist that I was a virgin before we met.” Yes, her children are, apparently, from God. “So then I just said, well **** has been dating for awhile now and she says none of her partners are ever completely straight.”

“I’m so glad that I get to be a whore to save your marriage.” I respond in a dry tone.

She laughs and we embark on a thorough discussion of length, girth, right-leaning, left-leaning, straight up, straight out, cut, uncut, dark complexioned and fair complexioned penises.

As I describe one that was, for me at least, a startling color, she comments: “Are you pumping gas while on your cell phone? You know that you could blow yourself up?”

“Whatever. What are you doing?”

“I’m putting the meatloaf in while the kids watch TV.”

We laugh together for a moment at the absurd practicality of discussing our sex lives over domestic chores. Still, what else is a soccer mom going to do?

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