When my mother died in my arms I experienced a breakdown. During counselling I was advised to keep a journal, recording all the incidents in my life, and the resulting subsequent thoughts and feelings. The following stories are based on extracts from my journal concerning my experience of sexual relationships in later life.
Chapter One
My parents were strict Jehovah's Witnesses. I don’t know how the JWs are now but back then in the late 40s they had a very peculiar view of sex. I was born eight years after my parents married, and now I wonder if they actually knew what to do in bed. My mother told me in later life that after I was born they had a visit from a district Overseer and an Elder from the Kingdom Hall who warned them about having sex for bodily sinful pleasure as any such activity should be restricted to bringing children into the world to the service of Jehovah. The lecture obviously had the desired effect as I was an only child. Sex was never discussed and my first period when I was 12 came as a big shock to me as I thought I was dying. My mum soon initiated me into the secrets of womanhood which then consisted mainly of tying a strip of old sheet around your waist and between your legs and washing what Mother called my kitten regularly.
Father was the manager of a pot bank at Meakins, a local china factory in Hanley, one of the pottery towns near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, where we lived. Mother ran a small grocery shop which we lived above. My Father died of a heart attack at the breakfast table when I was 16. I was studying for my school certificate exams at Thistley Hough the all-girl grammar school at the time. I did pass with distinction in all subjects but Mother had a breakdown which meant I had to take over the shop and forget plans of attending university and becoming a journalist.
After a couple of years, Mother recovered enough to manage the shop and I got a job at my father’s pot bank learning plate painting. My fellow workers were all girls who were a jolly bunch, always laughing and full of hair-raising stories of their adventure with boys. I didn’t join in as the Witness influence was still strong in my mind, but I did listen, and this was my sex education.
To me with my upbringing it was like a religious revelation that I would actually take another person, another human being inside me. I was surprised to hear that boys had a thing that was meant to go inside girls and that they only had one hole for peeing and sexing. From the girl's stories of of some of the boy’s things, I didn’t see how one of those could go inside me. I had of course discovered my clitoris and had been guiltily masturbating quite regularly but it was obvious that anything larger than my finger was not practicable, especially the huge things the girls were boasting about.
A lot of the talk was about how to enjoy boys without getting pregnant. The favourite method seemed to be letting the boy use his fingers between your legs and then put his thing in your mouth to squirt, and swallowing was the best way of keeping your best dress clean. I always wondered what I should do if a boy peed in my mouth instead of squirting. Some girls said if you let a boy put his thing in your bottom it was almost the same as proper sex and safe, but there was a story of a girl who had got pregnant as some of the boy’s semen had found its way into her vagina. The fear of pregnancy hung over the girls all the time.
As for me I had never even spoken to a boy, although being amongst the pot girls certainly aroused my interest, and when I saw an attractive boy I would get a burning feeling inside and imagine him doing the things to me that the girls spoke about. I was never to share their experiences, as when I was 19 Mother was permanently paralysed down one side by a stroke and needed 24 hour care.
I left my job and cared for Mother for the rest of her life. Mother took it as a sign from Jehovah that had rescued me from a life of sin as the pot bank girls had a terrible reputation in the town. I took it as a duty and looked after her and the shop
I was 43 when Mother died in my arms from another stroke. I think I had a bit of a breakdown as I sold the shop and practically everything belonging to my parents, moved to London, staying in a hostel at the back of Oxford Street. I found a shoe sales job at the Saxone concession in Selfridges, the famous department store. After about a year. I was promoted and became the manageress of the Saxone shoe shop in Regent Street. I eventually bought a house in Chingford, north east London.
I didn’t go through the menopause. I just realised one day that my periods had stopped probably due to stress and grief.
My hair is naturally very blonde and fine. I wear it below shoulder length and it has a tendency to tangle and matte up. I was pleased to find my new neighbour, Valerie, was a hairdresser. and that she could call once a week to sort my hair out. She was a lovely bubbly plump girl, the very opposite of me and we became very close. I was able to tell her everything about my life and she was a little shocked to find out that I had resigned myself to being returned to Jehovah unopened. She did propose introducing me to some of her husbands’ single men friends but I was awkward among men, and made excuses.
By this time, I had switched jobs to a local solicitor’s office. I hardly spoke to any of the men there on subjects not to do with work. I later found out that my office nick-name was ‘The Ice Maiden’, if only they had known about the volcano inside me! One of the office juniors once said that he really fancied an ‘Arctic Roll’ and everyone laughed and looked at me. I was puzzled and a bit upset then, but now I know why he said that, it makes me smile, he was an attractive lad.
My friend was a keen gardener and her garden was immaculate whereas my garden was a jungle, so it would be a regular thing that we would spend a day together when she would tidy my hair and then tidy my garden, chatting and giggling all the time with tea and cakes on the patch I called my lawn, weather permitting. Of course, the conversation turned to her sex life and my lack of a sex life and she gradually revealed the things she and her husband got up to, tying each other up and having sex with other people, sometimes in a group.
Not even the pot bank girls did that sort of thing. I was absolutely enthralled.