Summer. Childhood.

We don’t talk about masturbation. No one talks about it.

‘You Wanker’ we say and we snicker as if wanking is an activity that only a few lesser human beings partake in. Almost everybody does it. There is some whispered myth that women do it less often than men, but perhaps it is just that women admit to doing it less often than men.

When I discovered it, the full knowledge that certain pressures of my fingers would produce such an overwhelmingly pleasurable result, I could not stop doing it. I became an expert at it, finding places that would be private, times when I could sneak away and would not be missed.

Bath times, quick trips to the toilet, and in the evenings, drowsy from the day. I shared a room with my sister and I practiced staying awake till I was certain that she would be asleep. I was stealthful as a ninja, the bare minimum of movement, one finger rubbing so gently that the bed wouldn’t even creak. In the day time on the weekends I could sometimes find a quiet spot, private, secluded. There was a crawl-space beside the house, overgrown with Jasmine and gated by two gardenia bushes pressing their branches together. This was my favourite place, the summer scent, perfumes clamouring, the fat buzz of bees droning sleepy in my ear. I pull down my shirt, exposing my shoulders to the scratch of leaves and the finger creep of a lazy breeze. I imagine I am naked but I am not. I haven’t even taken my knickers all the way off. I have pulled them to one side and they are a damp obstruction but I work around it. There will be grass in my hair, twin plaits, all that wiriness pulled tight, contained. My skirt might suck the damp from the soil. I will be in disarray when I push my way back into the world, blinking at the slap of sunlight. Subterranean creature dragged reluctantly into the day.

There is no other human being in my imaginings. There is just the sense of all the elements settling on my flesh.

The scent alone, whispers love. White flowers, sharp and sweeter than honey. I can’t breathe but for the sense of flowers.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is overcome by poppies. This same drugged haze of scent pulls me down into a languid morphineous fug.

When my mother calls I am a long way away, drifting towards a precipice without hurry. The sound of her voice shakes me out of my timelessness and I am rushing, scared by the possibility of discovery. The fear is a kind of excitement, hurrying towards a quick, barely satisfying climax. I dig my fingers into the soil, replacing the smell of my juices with earth worm castings and loamy grit.