Good Vibrations Magazine

My high school 20-year reunion is coming up this summer. The reunion web site has started making its way around — you know, the one where people post pictures of their children (more so than themselves, what’s up with that?) and state their occupation and marital status.

I received the web site via email a few weeks ago and surprised myself when I had a weird reaction. Instinctually, I wondered: How do I describe my job? Will people be freaked out if I put a link to the Good Vibrations’ web site? Will anyone be offended?

And, uh, why do I care?

Perusing around the reunion site, I looked at pictures of my old classmates. Wow, we’re not kids anymore — how strange it is to look at faces I remember being 17, and now that we’re almost 40….oh my gawd, we’re our parents now. When did this happen? Someone please tell me!

High school. Twenty years ago, I was quiet and shy. Sort of a misfit. Definitely not secure in anything, especially my sexuality. I didn’t really date, and most of the time was dragged along to things like bonfire drinking parties and heavy metal concerts where I felt miserably out of place. I finally met a quirky girl in art class and glommed onto her, and would go to her house to watch 120 minutes on MTV (it was the first time I saw a Smiths video). She’d play Sinead O’Connor and Tracy Chapman and Nina Hagen and we’d go out to the underage new wave club and dance to the B52s and OMD. I cried when a friend I really, really liked started dating a boy and I wasn’t sure why. I felt weird, strange, unattractive, and utterly lost in the world of teenage courting and dating. Maybe it’s because that world would never claim me, and that as soon as I entered college my hunch that I was “different” than my friends was confirmed.

Never in a million years would I imagine myself, 20 years later, worrying about making people uncomfortable with the fact that I work for a company that’s about sex-positivity and….well….sex toys. I guess what happened to me when I received this email was a bit of a reality check, and the realization that a lot of people may not talk about sex, much less sex toys. Also, I think what happened, is that it all came rushing back to me — the feeling of insecurity that haunted me in high school. The feeling of shame about sex and sexuality. The embarrassment of acknowledging that we’re sexual creatures….yep, even the shy, kinda weird girls who spend most of their time in their room listening to Depeche Mode.

So, here I am, a woman of 30-something (well, you can do the math), in a great relationship and a great job that allows me to communicate with others about sex, and I let myself slide back so easily to the person I was in high school; the insecure person who just didn’t talk about sex…a person who was embarrassed about sexuality and just didn’t want to be judged or noticed. Uh, that was weird.

After dealing with it (I think I’ve worked it out now) part of me started wondering…what are the odds that my old classmates are using sex toys?

I came across a survey on the Wired.com blog that shed some light on the subject. Though the average age is about ten years younger than that of my graduation class, I figured it was a good measuring point. According to this Women’s Sexual Pleasure survey, 58.1% of the 1549 respondents like using vibrators and sex toys by themselves, and 54.5% like using them with a partner.

Well, then, okay. Probably over half of my graduating classmates like using sex toys. Good to know.

I don’t know if I’ll be attending my reunion after all. Not because I don’t want to…but I’m doing some traveling in the spring and probably won’t be able to fit in a trip back home.

But maybe I’ll send some Good Lubrications samples or some Screaming O Vibrating Rings with the following note attached:

Dear classmates from high school,
You may not remember me, or if you do, you might remember me as being shy and kinda quiet. Well, now I help create catalogs filled with vibrators and dildos and make short videos about such things as the G-spot and the clitoris. And yes, my mom knows. I hope you enjoy these treats from my place of business…even us “late 30-somethings” need some fun in our lives.

Sincerely,
The girl in the back row