Um, what do you want to know? So I’m 43, and um, my passion at the moment is about presence, and being present in myself and that’s influencing most of life, that’s kind of where I’m at. And apart from that I have two children, aged 21 and 17 and three step sons, and I’ve been with my partner for 10 years and I’m a homeopath and I’m thinking of becoming a lyricist and I love loving people.

So I was the third, I am the third child from my mum, but my brother had a…his father was a wandering Spaniard, my sister’s father was my mum’s cousin’s husband who later became my sister’s and my abuser, so that was interesting. Really violent – my father was really violent, and sex was very present in the house. My mother never married - and my dad was incredibly violent and my mum was very gentle but I can see now that she was probably really irritating in her kind of need to please everybody in that setting. I remember her, she was quite slow at things and his temper would kind of just go. But there was a lot of sexuality in the house, so kind of Playboy magazines were coffee table reading, and I think my dad would bring other women into the house for my mum to watch him have sex with and, whatever went on it was very kind of dominant. And then my sister’s dad lived with us for a year and I don’t know what age my abuse started, but it was always there, there was always a kind of sexual atmosphere and even when my dad left when I was 8, my mum, who was delicious, I loved her completely, she had an affair with her best friend’s husband who was also our kind of second carer –and they had an affair for 25 years so that was all very…well we all had to collude with that secret. And he would come over and have sex under the guise of haircuts, and then we’d all go and have tea together, all have Christmas together, all go on holidays, with both mums, and what was fascinating was that both of the women in his life died within 6 weeks of each other, so he was sort of left. He was married with five kids, and his wife supposedly didn’t know about the affair, but she talked to my sister once about it, because after she’d had her …she was very very religious, she was a Salvation Army woman, and after she’d had their fifth – the last two were twins – she just wasn’t interested in sex, and there was a sense that my mum kind of fulfilled that, so he got sex with my mum and marriage with the woman. And my mum longed to be married, you know, having never been married she actually longed for that and he was endlessly promising her he’d leave but it was just this whole… And when we all grew up the three of them would go on holiday together and yeah, you know… (makes an explosive sound). And then later on I found myself in a similar situation, I had several affairs, so it was all very warped and twisted.

I definitely got my early sex education through abuse. I was abused by three different men, two much less so, and it was never kind of penetration. With the uncle it was either in their family garden, so we’d go for tea and they had this incredibly long garden and they grew loads of vegetables and somehow I would find myself at the bottom of the garden taking him a cup of tea or something and he always wandered around naked, and we’d have to kind of wank him off, or take our clothes off. He did it to my sister and I independently – she was his daughter. And he’d rub himself – take my clothes off and rub himself against me and wanking, and possibly blowjob, I’m not sure. And definitely snogging, I remember his scrawny neck, snogging thing. This is when I was 6, 7, 8… that kind of age. And then the other time was long after he’d stopped living with us he’d gone back to live with his family but he and my mum were still really close, I don’t know whether they were having sex – I don’t think so, and this was after my dad had left so when she was having the affair with the other guy, he’d come and take us for days out, so we were really poor, we didn’t have much, we didn’t have any money so it was ooh, nice day out at the beach, so it was always a really odd trade off cause we’d have this day off school, drive to Littlehampton, it was always Littlehampton, and we’d buy ham, strawberries and bread, and picnic. I have a feeling my mum was wanking him off in the car, I always remember her hand being across there (indicates lap) and then we’d picnic and I’d swim and then somehow we’d go off for a walk separately with him in the sand dunes. And where my mum’s head was…I don’t know if she knew what was going on, I have no idea. My sister thinks she did, I think there was something very gentle and naive about her, I think she was really naive, but I don’t know. So I’d find myself in a sand dune with him, wanking him off or blow job or… And then interestingly, years later when my kids were small a friend of mine lived in Littlehampton and she said let's go to the beach. And so mostly I’ve been out of my body, most of my life, and not feeling any of it actually, it was all completely in my head, and we drove to the car park and I just trembled, it was the same car park and I just was like, ugh, that was it, it all came back to me.

And then two other guys, they were both in the Salvation Army and one of them, I was walking home with him one day and my sister and his wife had gone to get fish and chips, and he just said to me ‘I bet you can’t take my clothes off’, and I was about ten and I said ‘I bet I can’. So I had to strip him and he stripped me and then I had to wank him off. And I just remember thinking where’s my sister? I’m really clear about the sensation that I had at the time – it was a cold that rushed from my feet up to my head and I just went completely out of my body. So what I’ve gotten recently is ‘This is not happening!’ and I think I’ve spent most of my life in ‘This isn’t happening’, in lots of situations. And only last weekend doing the movement work that I do, I understood how I override in sex. So if I’m – well override generally really, but particularly with men. So if I found myself within that first dating thing, and it’s like you’re sitting there and it’s that moving toward and I don’t know what to do, cause I don’t know how to be with somebody cause I’ve spent most of my life out of my body. So I’m completely out of my body and then just main line sex. So I go from good girl to dirty girl and then it’s just like boom. So actually he’s not there, and I’m not there and I’m ‘doing’ sex. There’s no kind of intimacy, love…and I’ve realized that that’s been for most sexual experiences. Cause I kind of like sex, but I’ve really understood that I haven’t been there; I’ve been doing it, rather than it being it. And I can actually feel the override; it’s just like zoom. It’s been really interesting to kind of get that.

So when I started to be interested in boys it was in this state of override. I’d find myself with boys, and men, and actually didn’t know how to be intimate – I’m just learning. Although when I was at school, so 10/11 I was kind of endlessly in the back of the sheds at school fondling boys, so I was quite sexual at that age, then everything stopped until I was 17. So from 13 to 17, secondary school, nothing, except kind of fantasy –kind of longing- you know, disappointed love, unrequited love stuff. The thing I think changed things so much was going to the wrong school, you know, if I look back it was like stupid school to go to – completely on my own, none of my friends went, and I found myself in this huge environment – completely just blew me away for five years really. So I was lonely and quite isolated and I spent a lot of time just… And there were two boys in particular – one of them I ended up as an adult having a kind of thing with, we had a big love thing for a bit – but just this longing for love and that wasn’t so much sexual, it was much more of a longing for love – so sex was always very disconnected from love – there’s a kind of longing, there’s an unrequited love and then a sexual act but the two haven’t merged together.

I lost my virginity when I was 17 – and it was over two nights.

It was with a boy who’s now my oldest child’s godfather. I love him with a passion. And both of us were 17 and everyone was losing their virginity and we hadn’t, so we were at a party with 400 children sleeping on the floor, and we kind of ended up under the same blanket. And then the following week we were invited to dinner with a friend and her boyfriend. Her parents were…her dad was a famous writer, it was a very gorgeous house and we went to bed in his office. And I kind of half lost my virginity, it was interesting. We went to bed and it was all really kind of fumbly and not great and I thought I had, I had really kind of messed his bed up. And then the following night we stayed at this guy’s house and his mum was out and then we properly had sex and I spent hours on the toilet bleeding – yeah – really like hours of bleeding. But while we were having sex the things that really stand out are that we played Chariots of Fire on a record going round and round, and the guy that I was having sex with, his father had died when he was 15, and he sat up in the middle of it saying “I can’t bear it, my dad’s watching. This is all really wrong, this is all really scary”. So it was all, you know, again very disconnected. And we had sex again a few times and we were kind of together for about a year, but it was just very clear that it was a sexual thing not a love thing, except now we have a very deep love thing. At the time it was just like, ugh, really scary, it was just like let’s do this thing. He was a virgin as well and we were very clear. He was quite ham fisted, you know, clumsy, and I don’t know, probably still is – actually I had a couple of boyfriends before that, and what comes out is this very definite – it’s like there’s a really dark intention, I’ve had some really dark sex with people. It’s very energetic; there’s a kind of shoom….absolutely no emotion. It’s like umm, it’s not so much like I’m dominant, but I guess I am, it’s covert dominance actually. It’s kind of dark, spider like, and I guess quite controlling.

Primarily the feeling I had when I lost my virginity was complete separation between – what I couldn’t bring to this boy cause I was kind of bleeding all over the place so I really felt at the time that emotional disconnection, I couldn’t kind of get it, so there was an emotional split that happened. But I remember going home and ironing some clothes and my sister and my mum were downstairs and I just remember nursing this secret, it was like, you know, I knew something had changed. And then I quite quickly had sex with quite a few different boys; it just kind of opened the door. I mean I wasn’t hugely promiscuous, but fairly promiscuous and complete love of love affairs, extra marital, that kind of thing, cause I think there's something, looking at the abuse stuff, it’s a place of power for me, to know at 6 that I can turn a man to jelly is very powerful. So that’s what comes out, so actually not dominance, it’s a kind of really a place of power. And I’m just turning that around cause it’s not the right power, but I guess it was the only power – that was where I got my energy source as a child. And it was huge to know that, as such a young child, to know that I could have that effect on men was huge. And I never got into the, I’ve never had around sex any of the kind of shame, guilt, blame – it’s not there at all. Or I haven’t touched that yet. So I’m quite up front with it.

I do enjoy sex – this is what I mean by the override, I need to explain that more. I do this movement work, and I was doing it with my partner and he came up close and he was behind me and I was really in myself and what I got actually – what’s really going on - was complete repulsion. Its total, it’s like ugh, I felt like Gollum – so that’s actually what’s happening, it’s just like ‘Get off!’ but because I had to suppress that, and that’s obviously the pattern, that’s completely denied and overridden. And sometimes I catch myself, you know, very much in my mind, and I can kind of get the repulsion. So it’s a complete split, a complete separation that was set up from day one – I split off from myself and so I had to do this thing that repulsed me and find a way of surviving it. So it’s been really fascinating – it was amazing to get the repulsion and I think that’s going to be my route back in because now where I’m at is kind of some kind of commitment to really feel that. And so what I’m playing with is my boundary, and so regaining my true power, not my override power, which feels much healthier, at the ripe old age of 43, just to get my truth.

It’s really clear to me now how my early experiences have affected my later sex life, but had you interviewed me a year ago, I'd have said ‘no, it’s had no impact at all, I’ve dealt with it, it’s completely fine. I love sex’. It’s only because I’ve just done four years of getting into my body. And I think with abuse, with any abuse, you move out and then locate there for the rest of your life (indicates movement from body to head) until people find their way back in – and I think most people don’t find their way back in, I think that just becomes their experience. The difference is it’s a mind thing – and it’s what most of us do, is view our experience from our mind. We’re looking at our experience, whether it’s a sexual experience or another experience from our mind rather than be the experience, which obviously a true expression of sex is being a sexual being rather than looking at it. And we do look at it, that’s why we create the fantasy that doesn’t live up to the reality, we’re referencing how it should be, could be, might be, wasn’t, didn’t look – so we’re not actually there.

With my own kids I was always really open sexually with them, not in the way that my mother was, but I discussed it and made them very aware of the potential for abuse – I suppose I was kind of abuse sensitive. And when my son went to boarding school one of the things I said the day he went was what do you do if somebody approaches you sexually, so he was 13, and he was great, he was just like ‘Fuck off you wanker, leave me alone’.

When they were young I made all that clear, and we talked about sex a lot. And my cousin and I, we kind of grew them together and we were clear about it – they had the language around it. And I was really up for them exploring it at any point. And when my daughter was about 14 she said to me one day ‘I want to get to know boys’. And I took her out for dinner, a friend of mine bought her two novels, kind of teen things, and I took her out for dinner and we talked. She knew all about sex but we talked much more about the possibility of her having it, and any kind of questions. And she lost her virginity at 14 and a half, but I didn’t find out till she was 15. Which was fine, it was absolutely fine. And both of them, so then my son lost his when he was 16? 16 or just 17. What’s amazing for me is that they were both completely in love when they lost their virginity and she stayed with her boy for 2 years and he’s been with his girl for 18 months. So it’s really delicious. And I’m really happy for them to sleep over in bed with them and it’s a kind of open, easy thing. Ideally I would like to think that love was included in losing your virginity, and then I also get that losing your virginity isn’t a particularly loving thing, but I have some fantasy about the sweetness for my kids of loving and that kind of first love. So I guess, yeah, an ideal would be first love, an exploration together. And that newness. I never got that – I never had that. I knew exactly what to do – I knew how to turn boys to jelly. I never got the sweet stuff.