Childhood sexual abuse left Marcie with a residue of powerlessness on her sexuality. She resisted acting out sexually most of her life, but when she finally gave in to promiscuity, she unexpectedly gained control and became empowered.
Marcie's Story
"I wanted to be a dirty little whore for a little while."
I was sexually abused as a child by three men that are supposed to love you: your uncle, your cousin by marriage and your father's best friend. When they treat you when you're 7, 8, 9 years old, as you are nothing but sex and you don't even know what that is, they have all the power. I was in therapy for a short amount of time for the abuse, so I knew that children who are sexually abused go one of two ways: they have this intense fantasy life as far as sex goes and they're afraid to bring it out into the world because then they'll be a dirty little whore, or they act out on those fantasies and are very promiscuous. I lost my virginity when I was almost 20 and married the man I lost it to. I was a frigid wife, so our sexual relationship was not the best. I decided to leave him because I hadn't experienced anything in my life and I watched all my friends living it up while I was living in the suburbs with a young daughter and a husband that I was not attracted to. I left him and spent 2002 and 2003 being terribly promiscuous and making up for all the lost time and all the men that I did not sleep with in my early 20s.
"I slept with two men in less than 24 hours and I felt powerful."
I'd had a relationship with a man that I worked with and while he was not married, he was in a relationship. We were in this and yet he would go home each night to the woman that he slept beside. There was a day at the office in which we had sex in his office chair and then not long after that I went home and my mechanic, who would fix my car and I would have crazy, wild sex with him, came over about an hour after I arrived home. I decided to go have sex with him, so I cleaned myself up a bit, went over to his apartment and had sex with him. That's what he was good for. He was good for things that I'd never done before because I'd always been too scared and I didn't care about him in a loving, romantic way. He was essentially a penis.
"We conquered men."
I came back a couple of hours later to the apartment that I shared with my best friend and she had been with two men in that exact same day as well. She and I were dancing around the kitchen holding hands and dancing because we had slept with two men in less than 24 hours and we felt so powerful. She had her own issues to deal with and, of course, I had mine and so there we were, dancing in the kitchen and around midnight celebrating the fact that we were normal. We had no issues with sex whatsoever because look what we went out and did. We conquered men.
"I needed to feel like I was the one with power in a sexual relationship."
When I look back on that I suppose the right thing to say would be that I am disgusted by my behavior, but I'm not. It brought me to where I am now, and I needed to do that. I needed to feel like I was the one with the power in a sexual relationship. As an adult you finally realize, "Wait a minute, I'm a woman and what comes with being a woman is sexual power." For me, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. It really was. It was wonderful to exert that sexual power finally, for the first time in my life.
"Now I'm not scared of sex."
I have been in a monogamous relationship for two years with a fabulous man, and our sex life is healthy. I love being touched. I make sure that we have a very affectionate relationship, which I never had with other men that I was with. Even with my friends, I love affection now.
For so many years of my life, my teenage and early adult years, I was so afraid of who I was. I didn't tell anybody anything about myself, which got me a lot of you're so mysterious comments which I kind of enjoyed. But now I'll talk about anything. When you spend your whole entire life running away from who you truly are and then you come to terms with it, it's not frightening anymore. It's not frightening anymore to talk about it.
