I Was a 5 Year-Old Sex Fiend
I admit it. Spring bloomed early in the head of 5 year-old Pei-hua, then known as SHIH PEIHUA!! in a very angry and disappointed voice if she was being particularly devious. Surrounded in life by boys, boys and more boys, she was more or less, raised by wolves. As all wolves are inherently divided into alphas or betas, she was born knowing she wasn’t gonna be no beta. She wasn’t gonna be anyone’s anything. At some point, the boys of the pack became aware that she wasn’t a…”boy.” It was a slow awareness that passed through the group, but the ones that were hooked were hooked. I could get them to do what I wanted. Show me your new toy. Trade me your sandwich. Let me cut off your eyebrows. Let’s jump on my mom and dad’s bed and pull down our pants flashing each other. Yeah. I was that little girl. Every father’s greatest nightmare, every little boy’s legend. I’m convinced to this day that my best friend from 1st grade became a neurosurgeon because of the trauma I inflicted on him with the game Bee Hospital–I would stomp on bees and he had to bring them back to life. I still remember him so frustratedly reporting, “They seem to keep dying!”
I have often wondered if a father can look at a daughter, at the person she’s developing into, at her interactions with other kids, in particular, boys…and just…know. I loved my boys and my boys loved me. I was a sunny leader, occasionally tyrannical but not for arbitrary reasons, but mesmerizingly curious and daring; they followed me, sometimes to the point of senselessness, like a discovery. Even in a 5 year-old, a father can recognize the workings of seduction. Maybe he could just tell which ones I’d already seen naked.
Mothers knew right away their sons were giving up too much to me. I remember one in particular who didn’t take kindly to her son–my most loyal man–intensely and dedicatedly serving as my guard dog at my feet. In my personal play time, my GI Joe’s were already having elaborate storylines that involved sex, repressed gay longing and the occasional gang rape by bad, romantic lovemaking by good. I don’t think I really knew what sex entailed outside of an outletting of passionate energy. And then, by 8, I discovered a stash of my dad’s porn.
When I look back, I imagine it was all mounting into a (legendary) disaster. It probably was just a matter of time before I started indoctrinating young boys into the realm of the sensual and sexual, a child’s powerful imagination dedicated to the heights of connection and love. It would have been reckless. But amazing. There could have even been a community meeting. I was probably a scandal waiting to happen. The bounds of my curiosity exceeded my age and this became an awkward problem, solved by moving to a more isolated house in another city, and enrolling me first in Christian School where people regarded me as an alien who’d fallen out of the sky, and then public school, which made me quickly forget my past life and the worlds I’d explored.
In so many ways my dad probably thinks I’m sluttier than I am. There were so many incidents throughout the years where it could be construed that I was messing around, from always running off with blackjack dealers until 4 in the morning whenever we vacationed in a casino, or male friends I’ve brought home to stay for a weekend who really were just friends. I never slept with any of them. But what’s it like, for a dad to know his daughter has this hunger, and the power of attraction to feed it, who watched it grow inside her from the earliest moments of her consciousness?
You tell her you can read her mind. Make her fearful of subversive thoughts.
You account for her time, keeping her busy with many structured activities.
You isolate her, so her means to interact outside structured settings is limited or monitored.
You keep her very physically active.
You scare her senseless about serial killers, and boys and men who hurt you when you’re alone with them. Make the inside of your house scary, the outside scarier.
It worked. I was good. But my mind was filthy. You can never keep a good woman down, just underground.
Sometimes, I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t had that sudden switch of realities just before I turned 9. Probably a leader of some gang and a former prom queen. But it’s good, too. My feelings about sex are somewhat repressed and private, but it makes me cautious and it’s made my romantic world a lot more colorful and dedicated. I spent a long time waiting for something worthy. And I did avert any 8 year-old sex scandals.