LITMIR.BIZ

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shower situations in our dorm bathroom, and one time she came in and started throwing her shampoo and conditioner at me because she was mad that I didn’t wake her up for her exam. I was so confused (and still am!), because I didn’t know that was my responsibility.

      I ended up leaving that dorm—not because of my excessive masturbation but because Melissa and I clearly didn’t get along—and I moved into a different dorm with a sweet roommate who at one point asked me why they call it a blow job.

      “I don’t know,” I said. “Because you blow?”

      That’s totally incorrect, of course. It’s actually because a guy blows his load in your mouth and not about us at all. Big surprise.

      I got it out of my system, and I have an irrational fear that someone is watching me whenever I’m intimate with myself. I know that’s ridiculous, but it’s hard to shut off all the insanity that’s going on in my brain at any given time. I feel like getting myself off would force me to confront the things that terrify me about myself, and to face sexual desires I don’t even know I have. Masturbation acknowledges your sexuality in a way that we never did in my household, and while it was easy to get stoned in college and block out those childhood messages, as an adult I find it surprisingly difficult. Which perhaps is why I still feel an incredible amount of shame when it comes to self-pleasure. Once, when Chris was traveling for work, Allison Janney and I were talking on the set of Mom. “Chris is gone and I haven’t masturbated in four months,” I told her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think I probably should, but I can’t.”

      Allison just looked at me and said, “Oh, honey, you’ve got to work on that.”

      Needless to say, I’ve got a complicated relationship with masturbation. I think we can all agree that men don’t find themselves in that predicament.

      For a lot of women, the four years of college are a time of sexual experimentation and, in some ways, I definitely wanted that experience for myself. I loved going to frat parties and flirting with boys, but then I would get wasted and run away as fast as I could. I felt like the definition of a cocktease.

      There were definitely a few times when it got a little scary, most notably during my sophomore year. I was talking with a guy at a party when I told him I had to pee. He said I could use one of the bathrooms upstairs. In fact, he had a private one in his room! How convenient! He said he’d show me the way and went into the bathroom with me, locked the door behind him and started trying to make out with me. “This is not fucking happening,” I said. Maybe I didn’t use those exact words, but close, so he left and locked the door from the outside. I was stuck in the bathroom and could hear him in the hallway talking to his friends, saying something like, “I got this; it’s all good.” I turned into that mother who can suddenly lift a car when her baby is trapped underneath—I heard this guy with his friends and just thought, I am a warrior and I’m getting the fuck out of here. So I picked the lock—which was not especially hard, it’s not like I’m a champion lock picker—and I made my escape. These days, there’s a lot of talk about college sexual assault, but that conversation was not happening in 1995, it was just “you get drunk at a frat house and it’s up to you.” So I channeled my inner ninja and dealt with it.

      I have had one one-night stand in my life. After Chad Burke, I dated a guy named Dave on and off for most of my college career. During one of the off periods, I had a drunk night with some guys who lived on the floor above me in my dorm. We were all drinking and laughing about something stupid in their room, and I saw one of the guys look over to his roommate and give him a head jerk that clearly said, “Time to leave, wingman.” You know when you’re wasted but then something happens that jolts you back to reality? That head nod did the trick. The roommate understood the signal and left, and the other guy and I started kissing. Suddenly he was on top of me, and I said no, and he stopped, groaning, “Oh fuuuuuuck,” mostly to himself, in a clearly frustrated tone. I didn’t want to annoy him or be a tease, so I gave in. I was pretty resigned and unsure, but I said okay. I gave consent. Still, it’s not a good memory. I was so disappointed in myself for conceding, and despite having spent plenty of time wishing I was more sexually daring, that wasn’t a great night.

      It wasn’t all sexual nightmares, of course. There were good times, too, though the best of those came later. About a decade later, but they came.

Listener Advice: I Was the Short Girl. What Were You?

      I grew up in a tall family. My mom is five seven and my brother is six four and my dad’s side is all very tall, too. I even have a female cousin who is six one. But I was always the little one. At home, in school, in theater, everywhere. This is perhaps most apparent in elementary school class photos, where I am always relegated to the end of the front row, about a foot shorter than everyone else. I was young for my grade—I started kindergarten when I was four—so that may have contributed, but the height discrepancy was more than just an age thing. By fourth grade, my parents considered sending me to a growth specialist, where I would be injected with hormones. They decided against it, and around junior year of high school I finally started growing. Today, I’m five four. Not tall, certainly, but fairly average.

      Still, as a kid, being the short girl became my identity. It made me into a little Napoleon. I was insecure at school, and I covered that up by being loud and bossy at home. It didn’t help that I felt like I lived in the shadow of my older brother, Bob, who I couldn’t stand. Today, I adore him. He’s a professor of sociology at UC Davis who specializes in bullying and has worked with Anderson Cooper to raise awareness about what it’s like to be a teenager in today’s world. But back then, when the two of us were teenagers, we hated each other. He was a big tough guy, and I was a tiny short girl, and he generally overpowered me.

      I had all of two victories over Bob when we were kids. The first was during a snow day. We rarely got snow days in Edmonds, because the city is close to the water, so it doesn’t snow much. Always rain, never snow. One day when school actually did get canceled due to the weather, we were out in the driveway and he threw a snowball at me that landed smack in the middle of my face. So I reacted quickly and threw one right back at him … and nailed him right in the nose. I couldn’t believe it! It was the first time I showed any hand-eye coordination in my life. The shock on his face was priceless. Of course, then he ran at me and grabbed me by the neck and shoved my face in the snow, but I was still euphoric. What a victory! The short girl had won!

      My brother is three years older than I am. I spent a lot of my childhood running around the house yelling, “I hate Bob so much! I hate him, Mom!” And she would give me the classic “One day you guys will get along,” and I hated her, too, for saying that.

      I seriously couldn’t imagine us ever being friends. But now we are. Incredibly. Maybe, sometimes, Mom does know best.

      (There was one time—one time!—growing up when my brother was not the worst. I’ll never forget it. I was in eighth grade and Kate, my neighbor, was one of my best friends. Most of my guy friends at the time were only friends with me because they wanted to get close to her. You’d think I would have resented that fact or, at the very least, that it would have offended my proud fourteen-year-old sensibilities, but mostly I loved it because it was attention, and, even better, attention from boys. One day Kate found out that some lame dude we knew said I was “homely” behind my back. I told Bob, and he called this guy and said something to the effect of “I’m going to fucking kick your fucking ass; I’m going to kill you.” He scared the shit out of this guy, and Kate and I were listening in on the other phone—this was back in the days of landlines, when it was far easier to eavesdrop—and I couldn’t believe my brother came to my rescue like that. He loved me! It was very sweet, but apart from that we didn’t have much communication until I was older and we were both living in California. Now we’re very close.)

      Anyway,

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