Searching For The Meaning Of My Sexuality

This is, for the most part, a re-post of my story under the same title that I posted when I first opened my account. I deleted the story and post it now as a blog. I lost my 30 dear comments but the dislike votes outnumbered the like votes 23-7 so I lost those votes too LOL.

My name is Shannon. All my life I've been on a quest to find the meaning of my sexuality. There have been twists and turns, but I'm loving the journey.

I was raised in a small town in Texas. My parents are extremely religious and sex is something that we don't talk about. Growing up, I knew it existed, but it was something for married couples. But I knew by intuition and common sense that if sex needed to be repressed then it was probably something that was really good.

All on my own I discovered the joy of pleasuring myself. But that's as far as I took it. Some of the girls around town were loose and they ended up disgracing their families. I do love my parents and I didn't want that and, besides, my indoctrinated mind still thought of sex as “dirty” and “sinful”.

After I graduated from high school I got out from under the yoke of my parents and I took off for – of all places - California. It was quite a culture shock and I ran into a crazy crowd. I still don't know quite how, but one thing led to another and before too long I was doing things that I didn't even know existed just a couple of months before. Let's just say it was “sex, dr*ugs and rock and roll”.

That was a weird time in my life. On the one hand, it was very liberating. But it also felt like a bastardization of life – particularly of sex. I knew that I had tapped into something that I could never turn away from. But it didn't feel quite right.

One day I made a pilgrimage up to Ashland, Oregon, for the annual Shakespeare Festival. In high school I took theatre and I had heard so much about this event and I couldn't pass up the chance to experience it.

Well, the festival was fantastic and the town was even better. Ashland is a small college town nestled in the foothills of the Siskiyou and Cascade mountain ranges. There is a beautiful counter-culture and New Age presence to it and most Ashland people just seem to be happy. I knew this was where I needed to be and I never returned to the California scene again.

I worked by day at a clothing boutique and after hours I availed myself of Ashland's spiritual offerings. I had a wonderful cadre of friends and during our musings we talked about how there is more to life than just our selfish pursuits.

With some of my men friends I tried to have sexual relations. And before we had sex I told the guys about my boundaries. For instance, I'm not into – what I consider - disrespectful acts like anal sex, gagging, facials, very rough sex and that kind of thing. But most all of the men forgot what I told them once we got into the bedroom.

I was a little surprised that most of my men friends in Ashland weren't much different from the men I met in California. But it's not my mission to change men so I just moved on.

I went back to masturbating as my way to bring myself sexual pleasure because it always gives me comfort and release. To help myself get off, I subscribed to some porn sites offering videos of women masturbating and making soft love to each other. I also subscribed to a few sites with videos of hetero sex. But I stopped the hetero subscriptions because it was very hard to find good videos of men and women making love. Usually, the guy is banging the girl after five minutes and then he cums all over her.

One day I met this beautiful woman named Sandy. She's a Hatha Yoga instructor and she invited me to start attending her sessions. I had been meaning to get back to that type of exercise because I was a gymnast growing up and I remembered how good it felt to be so flexible.

Sandy holds her yoga sessions at her home and only women attend them. It's not a man-hating kind of thing. It's just that some activities go better with just women around. I'm sure that most men feel the same way when they are out on the golf course with the fellows.

Anyway, we do most of our yoga sessions in the nude. There is nothing sexual about it – it just feels more natural. After our yoga, we sit around and enjoy some coffee or tea and talk about this or that. What is unusual – and what I like – is that the women at our sessions are very open about their bodies and sexuality. Mutual masturbation is quite common as we talk about what's going on in our lives. If you can have a nice meal and talk, or go shopping and talk, then why can't you enjoy masturbating while talking?

Some of the women in my yoga group are into learning more about the spirituality of the orgasm. They talk about Tantric Yoga and Kundalini Yoga and the expansion of our sensory awareness . It's a little difficult to wrap my mind around the teachings. But I am giving it my best and I guess I'm now a Yogini in search of what my sexuality is really all about.