Savannah lives in a large city in the Mid West in America.  She is 37 and married with a young daughter. 

I feel like my cultural background is kind of mixed, because on my father’s side I have, like, a really, really Mexican American family.  I was never really that close with them, but I do think that certain elements of it entered into my life. And then on my mother’s side - she’s not very close with her family.  I lived with a step-father and they were kind of little 1970s California hippies - counter culture.  Do you want me to describe what that meant?  Well, when I was like really little, we lived on a commune and lots of, I don’t know, it was lots of art and music and organic foods and my parents were always scheming up ways to make money without having to go out and get 9-5 jobs, and we moved a lot around the country – trying to find places where my parents could make that happen for us. 

 My parents had come out of San Francisco and Berkeley in the 1960’s and early 70’s. They were… It was kind of like sex was no big deal, in fact it was such not a big deal that you didn’t need to talk about it with your kids. It was a natural thing and it would happen and I kind of felt that my Mom figured I would figure it out. I do remember growing up seeing adults being kind of overtly sexual with each other in the presence of kids and it was not ever a big deal. Like it just was, and it wasn’t something that we even talked about, but it was absolutely there, but not supposed to be a big deal. 

At school, we didn't have sex education, it was like the biology of sex, do you know what I mean?   My real knowledge about sex came from my friends, absolutely, from my peers. But that was hard because I was a year younger than every body.  I had started school early, so a lot of my friends were, like, starting their periods before I did and becoming more interested in boys and stuff and so I still felt quite… I was physically very mature for my age but I felt emotionally quite immature. My friends were a bit advanced so they were all experimenting with sex before I was.

 I was 13 when I lost my virginity.  I had gone out with a girlfriend of mine who was the same age and her boyfriend who was older - he drove us, so he was like 16, 17 maybe. We went to a party at the beach and I… We had been there maybe an hour or so and - there was always lots of alcohol and drugs where I grew up - so I had forgotten my purse in his car.  I had left it in there and I asked him for his keys and I was walking by myself going back to get it and, uh, he... We were like in the back of this little cove on the beach and he said ‘Oh, I’ll walk with you - I’m going to get more beer,’ or I don’t even remember what he said…'something out of the truck'… Um, so we were walking and he started kind of goofing around with me like, um, tickling me and stuff, and at first I just kind of like laughed it off, but it made me very uncomfortable.  And, um, and I asked him to stop, and he didn’t, and he pushed me down in the sand and put his arm across my throat, um, and I didn’t know what was going on.  I knew that it was… that it had sort of gone from a little bit silly and flirtatious very quickly to uncomfortable, and then it was just scary. But I also didn’t know that I was in the process of being raped because I knew him, and I thought - my idea of rape was - I don’t know, you were in Central Park and somebody jumped out from behind a bush with a knife, that was rape - it was something much more dark and sinister, and that you didn’t know the person. So he was kind of choking me, I don’t remember struggling that much.  I remember just being paralysed, terrified, and I didn’t know what to do – that I had done something to make him think that I wanted this, or… and then I thought, well, you know, I was a little concerned that my friend was going to find out and be mad at me. Um, and he pulled my pants down just to around my ankles so I was hobbled, I couldn’t move my legs.  He was big, I was never a small girl, but he was really a big teenaged boy.  And he raped me.

 He… you know that’s weird, I don’t even remember. I don’t remember the next thing.  I remember after, that is that I was with my friends – different friends.  I got my purse out of his car and there were some different friends and we left the party and I remember walking and walking and I was bleeding. That’s all I remember is that we walked to... like a coffee shop or something.

 It’s weird because there’s a part of me that kind of... I was under the impression that this act had something to do with sexuality or desirability and I thought that meant that I was desirable, and that he, you know… I didn’t realize that it was just a complete act of anger. But I… So there was a part of me that thought, a part of me that thought, that I had lost my virginity and that that should be a big deal, but I couldn’t tell anybody because it was my friend's boyfriend. 

But I did tell a couple of friends and it was like not a big deal, but you know I had friends who… so if I was 13, I had friends who were like 14 and I knew people who had been having sex since they were 10 years old, or at least they said that. So you know when I was a kid the worst thing that could happen to you was that you could get pregnant, so the fear of AIDS and that kind of stuff didn’t register yet, it was 1985, so AIDS was not, you know, on the scene, and other things could be treated, and people didn’t really talk about sexually transmitted infections. So I know how lucky I am. With all that stupid shit I did in my 20’s, that I’m not dead now. All the sex, and alcohol and drugs – with the possibility of AIDS… 

 I think after that - I know after that - I became very promiscuous, sexually promiscuous, and I continued with that sexual promiscuity until my mid 20s.  I didn’t, I never really thought that sex was anything special, you know, I was never taught that, and then that experience... but I really still, I did hold on to the idea that I could be a sexual person and thereby have some kind of power over people: over men. So that stayed with me for a long time, that I still somehow thought that this act of rape meant that I was sexually desirable, that I was attractive and that this gave me something that men wanted from me. And that I could use that. I found that I was really good at having either purely sexual relationships or, like, one-night-stands with people, but I was not good at having relationships with people because I became…
 
I found that it was hard for me to become… I wasn’t interested in sex unless I had been drinking, and that once I was in a relationship with somebody, then it was hard for me to sort of open up and explore the sexual relationship with somebody.  I think that it was because it wasn’t about the power of it anymore, it was about sharing or about… intimacy, yeah, and I didn’t know about that part and I was kind of terrified of that part of it.
 
 But I think you should probably note that I was molested when I was seven by a family friend  - there was no penetration, but he fondled me and made me touch him and told me that, told me things like if I told my mom she would know that I was a bad girl and would send me away. Um, so I think that that influenced that as well. It all influences my ability for intimacy, to be intimate, not just to be sexual. 

It took a long time.  I was married before, and we never achieved that level of trust. And now with Johnny… It was time, and just the knowledge that he was not, he wasn’t going to leave me, that he could be trusted.  I was virtually incapable of actually having a relationship until I was about 30. 

 I would just say that, I don’t even know if this fits here or is appropriate, but maybe it is so…now that I’m (begins to cry) now that I’m the mother of a young girl, it terrifies me that anything like that could ever happen to her, or that she could maybe not know how, how special… I feel really weird about it, I don’t want to put pressure on her like ‘save yourself’.  I guess what I would say to her is just ‘know yourself’:  know when it's right, and that no matter what, she always has the right to say yes or to say no.  Thinking about the intimacy part too, I still don’t have that, I still don’t have it, but I’m working on it.  I still…  I want the lights off and my eyes closed unless I’ve had a few drinks...