My gosh, transgression? What a word. I wouldn’t say it was a transgression. 

The first person to slap my face in a sexual context was a woman, not a man. And it’s actually quite the story.

I was an incoming sophomore in high school and really coming into what I understood about myself and my sexuality, and by that I mean I was walking around denying that I was kinky, bisexual, etc. I just assumed there was literally no one else like me and something had gone horribly wrong in the wiring of my brain.

We were on this camping retreat and I remember seeing her across this campfire and just being completely transfixed. She was literally unlike anyone I had seen in my hometown. She had a bunch of piercings, she wore her hair short with a little bandana in it, and she was just plain gorgeous. 

We struck up a friendship over the summer, somehow finding something in common between the two of us. I guess we just enjoyed each others’ company. We were compatible, in one way or another.

She and the other girls on the retreat and I decided to exact some sort of exquisite pain upon the guys by making out with each other when the counselors weren’t looking. It really meant nothing. Still being in touch with most of these girls today, only a few of us are actually bisexual and just one identifies a lesbian. But, at the time, it was a light-hearted thing that we just kind of did. I just choked back the notion of butterflies some of the girls gave me when their soft lips brushed mine and I was fine.

She kissed like no other. Once, she tugged so hard on my lip that it started bleeding. Now, I don’t have a blood fetish, but just the sheer aggression in the act got me terribly aroused. She had this boyfriend who I had only seen a picture of, but she insisted that he didn’t care who she kissed because they had an understanding.

I wish I could remember the context of how it was brought up, but somehow she got around to telling me that she “chained her boyfriend to the bed” and had sex with him. My jaw smacked the ground. She quickly apologized, raising her hands and going, “I’m so sorry, Ivy. That was so over the line. I don’t know why I’m telling you this." 

"No,” I responded and sat down on the foot of her bunk. We were alone in her cabin. Her other bunkmates were off on a walk. “Can you tell me more about it?”

She laughed, “what do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.” A flush had risen in my cheeks. My ears were pounding with the sound of blood pumping. “What do you do?”

She went on into detail about just about everything she did. She tied him up, she spanked him, she pulled his hair. She’d even dressed him up as a maid. It was funny how someone just a year older than me could seem light-years ahead of me. 

I don’t know exactly why, but I started making out with her. I guess it was just out of relief of finally figuring out that I wasn’t alone in the world. There was somebody else kinky and bisexual and she was just so open about it. 

I asked her to try things on me and she was actually pretty game. She told me to kneel and put my face to the floor, but I just started laughing uncomfortably. She would try to smack my ass and I would cover it with my hands.

“You know, Ivy, I don’t actually think you’re a masochist,” she insisted.

I scrambled to my feet and shook my head. “No, I swear, I am.” I don’t know what I expected to come of it. It was almost kind of hilarious, me insisting that I was a masochist and begging her to help me prove it. “Give me another chance.”

She rolled her eyes and reached up, burying her fingers in my hair and yanking my head back. And then, with the other hand, came the smack. I’m sure I flinched or something. I may have even yelped. But there was just this sort of floaty feeling I got overtaken with, as if my insides were swimming in a snowglobe. 

I just remember letting out this long sigh and keeping my head how she’d smacked it for a while. My eyes blinked open after a moment and we just stared at each other. I could hear her bunkmates coming toward the cabin. She released her grip on my hair. 

I straightened up and looked at her before we both collapsed into a fit of laughter. The entire situation was so odd. I knew that I had grown from it, but I had to admit in that moment the absolute absurdity of what had just happened.

“We’re going to keep this between us girls, right?” She winked.

For the next few years, we both kept going back to the retreat, first as campers and then as guides for summer jobs. As campers, she would climb from her top bunk down to my bottom one, snuggle into bed with me, tell me about all the violent sex she’d been having, talk me through my own feelings, and kiss me goodnight. As guides, we continued to foster what has become an amazingly fond friendship.

So, what’s my response to my first slap? One of the most hilarious, eye-opening, life-changing experiences I’ve had thus far.