Even so, there are times I can't resist, especially in showers, bath tubs and swimming pools. They tend to naturally accommodate the process with those swirling, silk fingers of water that seem to reach with purpose into crevices and cracks and right through bikini bottoms. It's as if the water wants to make you come in it, seed it, give it life.

Don't get me wrong, I have a clit built like a trigger. I can come and come and come, sometimes so fast it scares me. I can come by pressing my legs together tight, then releasing, by rocking back and forth in my seat in tight pants, or even by meditation, a sort of self-hypnosis. I can come without touching myself. I can come by reading the right book. Sure, I can create those faint, chilled bursts of clitoral pleasure that fade fast as cheap fireworks, even cause them to repeat on automatic, lose a bit of breath in the meantime, but I never get to that heavy g-spot, Tantric brain-expanding, sweating, moaning like a bitch in heat, getting it good from behind variety of come. The problem is I never scream, never shudder, never fall into an empty space through time like I do at orgasm with other lovers. I guess that's why I dream.

Now, I've been told outright by doubters that there is no such thing as a wet dream. Some disbelievers even go as far as to tell me they think only adolescents can have wet dreams--a sort of uncontrollable bodily rite of passage, awkward and akin to classroom boners and period stains on white gym shorts. Let me tell you, when you awake in colorless night to the sound of your own moaning, or snap open your torpid eyes to a slice of shocking midday sun with an orgasm still humming its last three notes before dying, your lips shuddering, hips humping, body trembling, pushing shut your lids to grasp at lingering scenes of being fucked by dream demons, licked wet by Goddesses, forming impossible positions with multiple ex-lovers, trying to hang on to the fleeting images of a sex scene you just lived, but won't truly remember flashing behind your eyelids, you'll be a believer, a believer of something that can only be classified as decidedly adult, as well as an extremely creative way of dealing with sexual tension, nocturnal emissions notwithstanding.

If I wasn't such an over-sexed person, finding sensual possibilities in the design patterns of tiny flowers and hints of eroticism in the rolling gestures of clouds, blurring mental lines between gender and age, simply finding a good conversation enough of an attraction to make me want to fuck whomever has given me that momentary click, maybe my inner sanctum wouldn't try to compensate for my lack of self-pleasuring with the aid of dreams. It's not like I can control being one of the horniest people I've ever met; at least I'm self-aware of that constant draw to meld and make the beast with two (or three or four) backs.

I've often wondered why I feel this way: I'm sex-positive, a sex writer, a sex educator, and yet I'm not prone to playing with myself. I should practice what I preach, right? I own lots of sex toys, and I know how to use them. I just prefer to not use them when I'm alone. What surprises me is the basic, and seemingly fundamental, trace that leads me back to my peculiar lack of desire, or aversion to, self-pleasure and masturbation in general. It's simple really, like most problems, it all began in childhood, although I did not realize this until only a few years ago, as a 30+ year old woman. I have come full circle from a childhood bath episode that can still bring a blush to my face, and shame to my emotional surface just from thinking about it.

When I was five years old, still quite a young five, and rather smallish for my age, I had a girl cousin, I'll call her Sara, who was two years younger than me, whom my family used to visit sometimes on vacations. Being both small and young, we were often bathed together as children. One day we were left alone in a bath tub to play Barbies while my busy aunt had other mommy things to attend to. Alone together, facing one another in the bath, legs outstretched, we began to kick water at one another, splashing with abandon. This was certainly something we would not have been allowed to do, had we been attended by an adult. I had already begun to feel mischievous from all the splashing.

Soon our little feet were kicking closer and closer to each others genitals. As the water splashed over our tiny bodies, I began to feel a special tickle between my legs, especially when Sara's foot touched the space in between my legs. The giggling grew to a frenzy, as we both found out what fun water play, combined with our first mutual masturbation, could be. So we both began to scream shrilly, to kick harder, as we purposefully forced water, and our tiny toes, toward one another's now open legs. This is my first memory of pleasant sexual experience: Sara's toes and cool water splashing against my warm genitals.

My aunt came in amidst all the splattering and giggling and little girl's shrieking, and I knew we were in big trouble. We immediately stopped; I was trying to catch my breath, panting as I awaited a scolding for making the bathroom so wet. But what I got was far worse than I could have ever imagined in my tiny world at age five. My aunt grabbed us each by one arm and dragged us out of the bath tub and jerked us onto the tile floor. There was so much yelling, I could barely hear a word uttered. Sara was shrieking in pain and regret, and I was crying out loud, mouth wide in shock and fright. My aunt was huge, all mouth, shouting, "You girls will never touch yourselves there again, do you hear me? You are naughty, dirty girls!" We were both shamed verbally, repeatedly, and then punished with no dessert after supper.

After that incident, my aunt, who to me was a beautiful and special woman, and my part-time caretaker on vacation, began to give me the cold shoulder. I overheard her talking to my grandmother, telling her it was all my fault, as I was the eldest of the cousins, that I had caused her daughter to misbehave so badly. I was shocked, unable to speak for a whole day after the event. Sullenly, I went to bed early that night and cried myself to sleep. I thought I had ruined my relationship with my aunt and my cousin, and that I was a dreadful, dirty, naughty girl. I did not know any better, for that was what I was told, and how I was treated ever after, or so it seemed ever after, to my five year old mind.

Now, each time I try to get over my jack-off shyness, I no longer have to work as hard to overcome shame and anger, as I did as a pre-teen and teen. I let myself fall into the rhythm of it all, and just go with it. Instead of turning that shame inward, and repressing it, I can understand now where it all began. If I'm bold, and I want to purge those feelings well, I let my anger fall into a place where it belongs: to the woman, my aunt, who made the decision that day to shame her niece and her daughter, and quite possibly to have caused us both to lose years of precious self-pleasure and sexual exploration, even basic self-esteem. I forgive her, but this is a lesson to be learned by all women. Of course, it is an endless cycle which needs to be broken, as my aunt, no doubt, was taught by her mother that her genitals were bad and wrong, and something to be hidden and untouched.

Nevertheless, I will not forget that day nor the effect it has had on me, my womanhood, my self worth and my value as a sexual woman. Sometimes I wonder about my cousin Sara. We are no longer in touch. Perhaps she was young enough to have forgotten. Perhaps by me being the childhood scapegoat, Sara was able to not have had to take the brunt of that incident and its psychological repercussions. I can only hope she has grown a healthy sexual self-esteem.

I know I'll not forget, and I'll never neglect, my pussy, my clit and my big girl cunt, of which I am now the proud owner and user, abuser and masturbator. Now, I'm a dirty girl; I can be a dirty, naughty girl--only it's during fun, adult sex play--some place where I feel safe, in control, and coming in orgasmic buckets. No shame, no pain--but it took so much work to get to this place.

This is my plea to mothers, big sisters, aunts and grandmothers, to all baby sitters and caretakers of young girls everywhere: allow our girl children to touch themselves without being made to feel shameful, sinful or wrong. Allow our girls to grow into mature, healthy women with a strong sexual self-worth through welcoming, rather than by chastising, sexual exploration, experimentation and sex play among themselves, as well as with other children.

If we are forbidden, at such an important age of discovery and development, to pleasure ourselves, and to learn about others, what type of message does this send to our children? If we are not even allowed to touch our own bodies, how will we ever grow to learn to trust others to touch us in a loving, healthy way? If we are not allowed to gain knowledge about what is sexually gratifying on our own, if we become so sexually needy, so sexually dependent upon others (most often men) for our very orgasms, what does this say about how we view ourselves, our girls, our women in this world?

I challenge all women and men in charge of young girls to consider re-learning the myths we were taught about our bodies and our genitals in our own youths, to re-evaluate what we learned (or didn't learn well enough) about masturbation and orgasm, to re-educate ourselves in such a way that we may facilitate raising a new generation of healthy, sex-positive girls who will grow into strong, sexually self-supportive women. I believe our young women deserve at least that chance.