Orgins of it all:

The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom... for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.

William Blake

I didn’t have any boyfriends in high school. To my knowledge no boys liked me. I was fat, weird and I wore a black trench coat all the time. Even in the summer when it was really hot. Sometimes I put my backpack on under my trench coat and pretended that I was a hunchback. Needless to say, I wasn’t too sexy. I desperately wanted to fall in love with someone and have sex but I pretty much figured it would never, ever happen for me. Instead I sat at home listening to The Cure, The Violent Femmes and The Smiths, alone in my room. I was busy writing long dark poems, smearing my blood in my journal and planning out my funeral. Oh, did I mention that I didn’t have too many friends either?

If I didn’t end up killing myself, I thought I might join the convent and become a nun. My mom was a nun for 6 years before meeting my Dad. If she could do it, so could I. I wanted to have sex but I figured no one would ever want to have it with me so this seemed like a practical solution to things.

After I moved away from the backwoods where I grew up and started college in the city, I miraculously lost 30 pounds and my virginity. It was amazing. For the first time in my life boys were noticing me, interested in me and I felt … not sexy… but on a good day, sorta pretty. In my early 20s I had a boyfriend who was totally in love with me. The kind of guy who would tell me I was the prettiest girl in the world (and who meant it when he said it), the kind of guy who told me I was beautiful everyday, the kind of guy who brought me flowers and wrote me poems and wanted to marry me. The kind of boy who gives you ‘letters and sodas’ (Liz Phair, Fuck and Run). Never-the-less this was all a bit much for me at the time. I don’t know if I handled it quite the way I should have. Because the thing was, once I got a taste for men and sex, once I felt a little bit attractive, I got a little greedy. I wanted to go out there and try it all! I wanted to have all kinds of wild and crazy love affairs with the men of the world. And I did. As they say ‘be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.’ Well that’s exactly what happened – I got way too much of what I wished for.