The first orgasm I ever had was while I was standing in the shallow waves of the Pacific Ocean.

I was 10 years old.

Of course I didn’t know what the “word” was for what I was experiencing, I only knew that if I walked out slowly into the ocean and let its cold waves lap up against me right “there,” a delicious feeling would start in my toes and spread right up through my legs into my abdomen and beyond, right into my throat.

“That’s an orgasm,” my ever-so-much wiser than me friend “B” told me one day as we were driving along Crenshaw Boulevard in East Los Angeles on our way home from high school.

It took me that long to ask somebody.

What did I know from “orgasms.” I’d never even heard the word before. But I figured “B” would know what I was feeling so I asked her. After all, she drove a Volkswagen Beetle. Definitely the sign of someone who knew all things beyond the kinds of things parents talked about.

What I did know was that the Pacific Ocean and swinging on a playground swing both caused that incredible feeling all over my body.

(Oh, oh, oh. The days of the full body orgasm!)

Seventy years later, I would be telling a man I was dating about my love affair with the Pacific Ocean and playground swings when he told me that when he was young sometimes all it took was a stiff breeze to make his you-know-what rise up and shout Hallelujah!

“Hallelujah!”

That’s what I felt like shouting while standing there in the Pacific waiting for the next lap of waves to touch me in that perfect place.

“That water’s too cold for you,” my mother would shout at my hasty run toward the ocean when we arrived at the beach.

“That’s what she thinks,” I would say to myself as I headed out, away from the confines of the sand, the blankets, the family and all things “non-orgasmic” toward the big blue ocean.

Orgasms.

How nice they are. 

I like them even today.

And even though I now live a million miles away from the ocean in the middle of the desert, I have found that there are all kinds of—shall we say—more proactive ways to enjoy them than waiting for the right wave.

That being said. It’s a wonder what memories Facebook can bring back.

The other day a Facebook friend of mine posted a picture of the Pacific Ocean that she had taken. I could see her in my mind’s eye.

“Let’s pull over so I can get a shot,” she’d be saying as she and whoever it was were driving north on Highway 1 in Northern California.

And then, innocently enough, she’d put the picture up on Facebook where I’d see it and…

Oh, my God.

You know exactly what happened.

Let me just say this.

Some people, are really good photographers.

~

Author: Caremelene Siani

Editor: Travis May

Photo: by Karen Turner (used with permission)