Black Cherrie Club Blog

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    From Shame to Sheer Pleasure: Unlearning My Sex Ed

    By Cherrie Garcia

    Growing up, my world was body-positive before that was even a term. My mother is a lesbian, and for as long as I remember, her partner was part of our family. Nudity wasn’t something to hide in our house—my mom would wander to the kitchen in the buff, sun-touched and matter-of-fact, as if modesty was a private joke for someone else’s home.

    As a teen, she even took me to the nude beach—I can’t remember if I was 17 or 18, it became a sort of summertime ritual to stand at the water’s edge, skin bare to the sun, laughter mixing with the crash of the waves. In our home, bodies were neither shameful nor strange.

    But sex—desire, longing, even just the mechanics—was another matter.
    No one ever sat me down to talk about wanting someone, having boundaries, finding pleasure, or giving it. My mother never brought home a man, and rarely mentioned boys at all. Her only advice, tossed lightly over her shoulder, was “Don’t be easy.” I remember being twelve and silently wondering—easy for who? Was wanting sex giving too much away? Was holding back the goal?

    I learned to be at home in my body, but not in my desire. I grew up with a comfort in nakedness, but a confusion about sex.
    Maybe you know that space too: where your skin is only half the story, and wanting—really wanting—is the part no one ever mentioned.

    I figured out I liked girls and boys in seventh grade—not some dramatic epiphany, just a warm curiosity when I looked at pretty lips or the line of a shoulder, no matter who it belonged to.
    I wasn’t ashamed—my mother’s example taught me, at least, that love didn’t have to fit anyone else’s box. Still, it was the early ‘90s, and if a kid at my school had come out as anything but straight, they would have been eaten alive. So I kept that part slippery and silent: not erased, but certainly untested. I worried what might happen if anyone really saw me.

    So even though my skin went naked to the sea and I grew up seeing two women make a home and a life together, I still carried that old fear—the one the world hands queer kids: that your longing might be too much, or simply not safe.

    I carried that quiet attraction—a secret warmth that I let bloom only in fiction, in silent daydreams, in half-understood lyrics—until I was nineteen. Even then, after years spent wandering nude beaches and growing up in a home where nothing about bodies was taboo, actually acting on my desire for another girl felt like a foreign country.
    I’d kissed boys in a half-confident, half-performative way, always wondering if something more profound was waiting if only it were allowed.

    When it finally happened, it was nothing like a movie. She was older—much older than me. She had the blunt confidence of someone who had made peace with herself the hard way. That first time, every nerve in me was strung tight with nerves and awe; I remember her laugh, soft and quiet, as she asked before each touch:

    “Is this what you want?”

    No one had asked me that before. Not a teacher, not a boyfriend, not even my own reflection. The world had only handed me scripts about what I should fear or avoid—never what would make me feel good, or right, or real in my own skin.

    With her, I was clumsy and bashful, startled by every new shiver of pleasure—and unimaginably relieved when, in the aftermath, she just held me, let me cry, and told me that being desired could be both a release and a homecoming.
    In that bed, in that crumpled moment, I realized shame was something I had learned—and, maybe, something I could begin to unlearn.

    Unlearning: How I Got Free (And You Can Too)

    Unlearning isn’t a one-night transformation—it’s a series of gentle rebellions, big and small.

    For me, it began with that first taste of real consent (“Is this what you want?”) and deepened through every new experience where shame lost its grip, if only for an hour. I sought out sex-positive books, joined online communities, which back then wasn’t exactly easy since most chatrooms were yahoo and aol. Trust me if you every frequented those chat rooms in the early 2000s it was quite the ride. However, I did find small groups of like minded people along the way and listened to people who turned consent into a celebration, and little by little, I risked saying out loud what I craved.

    I began to realize:

    I learned that sex, love, and intimacy are meant to be playful, not performed. That pleasure is a conversation, not a transaction. That my “sex education” would never be finished—and that’s wonderful. I get to be delightfully unfinished, learning pleasure and re-writing old scripts as I go.

    What I Know Now

    These days, I am still unlearning. Sometimes shame creeps back in—old teachings, loud with fear. But mostly, I listen to my body the way I would listen to a beloved friend: with patience, warmth, and wonder.

    I know now:

    So if you, like me, learned shame first and pleasure only after, know this:
    You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You have time to create a new story with your body, your heart, your wildest want.

    For the Brave: Where to Start Unlearning

    📸 by GEORGE DESIPRIS

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