It wasn't porn. Not really.
Being an only child, I'm not accustomed to having to share my possessions and have always been pretty good at entertaining myself. Unfortunately, sometimes I could take this a little bit too far and prefer to live in my own little world than acknowledge reality. I also really, really resented anyone tidying up for me or going through my stuff. Even now the idea that someone other than me has tidied up my things for me makes my blood boil.

Anyway, I grew out of cuddly toys and Sylvanian Families and My Little Ponies and so on, and at about the age of 14 someone introduced me to the pages of More magazine. For those of you unaware, this was - and probably still is; I've not bought a copy for years - aimed at 18-30 year-olds and focused mainly on the usual fashion and make-up, but the sex section made up roughly half of the magazine - position of the fortnight, extra ways to make sexy time more enjoyable, other people's tips, you get the idea.

Having very few friends and certainly not any I could talk to about growing up with, I got the vast majority of my sex education from it - not so much how you do it, but how you can make it more exciting: until then I never knew there was more than one position or what men looked like naked - yes, my childhood was sheltered. Very sheltered. I never got any sex education off my parents, they just threw a How Your Body Works book at me and expected me to work it out for myself.

This was made all the more interesting by the occasional centrefold image: never completely naked, but often with a horrendously cheesy caption at the bottom. Being fat, spotty, nerdy and with the world's most overprotective mother I was about as far removed from attractive single men as I was from Pluto when it was still a planet, in spite of wanting nothing more than a boyfriend and lots of sex to go with it* and so I could happily lose myself in the pages and hope one day I wouldn't be fat and spotty and nerdy and my mother would calm down some.

Not so. I kept them all in an old bag at the back of my already crammed wardrobe, and came home from school one day to find my newly retired dad saying "oh, and by the way, I tidied your room today."

"What."
"Yes, it was a tip in there so I had a big clearout of all your old stuff."
"(rantings along the lines of Kevin the Teenager probably finishing with "you've ruined my life!!")".

I ran upstairs and, true to his word, my dad had cleaned and polished and tidied and purged every surface, cupboard and shelf in there. My diaries were all neatly stacked in the drawer, he'd thrown out the scrappy little notes you throw to people when you're 15, and had also binned every single magazine in a "I know what you've been reading and it was NOT SUITABLE" kind of way.

I still go mental when anyone tidies my room for me, and can't wait to liberate all my stuff from my parents' house.

* I have calmed down. Honest.
( Maladicta, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 14:40, Reply)