It's funny how they say that you always come home. It's happened to me more than once. Last year after my husband and I split up, I wound up renting an apartment directly across the street from where I had lived until I was about 10 years old. There are days when I pull into the driveway and have sudden flashbacks of my childhood. I can see myself with the group of kids I ran with at the time, heading up to the store to buy candy with our allowances. Or coming home scared to death because I had fallen in the creek and I just knew my dad would skin me alive for ruining my clothes. So many memories. Some good, some bad. Events that can sometimes have a significant effect on our psyches. Especially during the years just before --and then during-- adolescence.

Looking out my bedroom window, I'm able to see the very location of one of those events. To anyone driving by, that tiny house across the way doesn't mean a thing. Practically every other house on the block looks the same. But to me, it holds a great deal of significance. In that house, 22 years ago, I had an experience that changed me forever. One that would shape my life and my views of my sexuality to what they are today. At age 9, I encountered what would introduce me to the world of what we call BE, although then I didn't have a name for it...or really understand it. But I do know this: I have carried that episode around inside my head since then, and it remains as exciting and new for me now as it was that day.

My best friend at the time was Jana. We did everything together that summer. Rode our bikes to the store, hung out by the creek and tried catching tadpoles, and had a glorious time irritating Jana's older sister, Julie. (Just to set the record straight, that is not where I got my on-line name.) Julie, you see, had turned 16 earlier that spring, and with her birthday came all the womanly changes that molded and shaped her into a voluptuous young lady. In other words, she was stacked. And Jana and I took full advantage of the fact that she was easily embarrassed by any mention of her new endowments. So needless to say, we spent a great deal of time teasing her endlessly. Especially because it also gave us something else to concentrate on besides the itchy new training bras we both had begun wearing. It was much easier to torment Julie.

One particular day, Jana's mother had gotten tired of hearing us torture Julie and sent us to play in Jana's bedroom. Jana, not knowing when to quit, kept on with the taunts, even though Julie was far out of range. I told her to knock it off and began searching her bedroom closet for a game to play. No such luck. Jana kept it up. Right up to the point where she simultaneously grabbed my right arm as well as a pillow off her bed and dragged me over to the mirror hanging on the back of her bedroom door. Releasing my arm, she pulled the hem of my shirt away from my body and stuffed the pillow right up the front. The result was staggering. To me, at least. As I stared at my reflection, I could barely breathe. I knew that if Jana's mother came in at that moment, we'd both catch hell. But for some reason, I couldn't...no, didn't want to remove the pillow from my clothing. I wanted it there. I liked the way it looked. I loved how I suddenly had curves where before I had none. I felt lightheaded; and could hear Jana, off in the distance it seemed, chanting something about 'looking like Julie'. I tried to focus my attention on what she had done, but I kept going back to how I was feeling. Scared, anxious, excited. And, oddly enough, wishing I had a bigger pillow. Snapping back to reality, I was aware that Jana had stopped chanting and was staring at me as if I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. I snatched the pillow out from under my shirt, mumbled something about having to go home, and bolted for my house.

Once there, I hid in the sanctuary of my own bedroom with my own pillow. This one not stuffed up the front of my shirt however; but securely wrapped in the embrace of my arms and tucked between my legs as I rocked myself back and forth on my bed, all the while replaying the scene in Jana's bedroom. Only each time, the pillow would get bigger. Eventually, there was no pillow. Just me standing there watching my reflection as my shirt was stretched to capacity and beyond. Hot tears of confusion and shame coursed down my cheeks as the pressure between my legs increased and I climaxed for the very first time.

I moved away the next summer and we never saw each other again. Jana and I never spoke of those events. And it's probably a good thing we didn't even try. What could I have possibly said to her? Until recently, I've never really been able relate to anyone what happened that day. Or how it made me feel inside. I wound up feeling as if I was keeping a huge secret from my boyfriends, and then later, my husband. But how do you explain to your partner that you have this quirky not-so-little fetish about breasts? And not just large breasts, mind you, but breasts growing so large that they could immobilize the person to whom they were attached. And once you explained that part, how do you tell them that you dream about it happening to you? You don't. At least in my case, I didn't. In my mind, there was no way anyone was ever going to understand it. Or so I thought. But that, my friends, is another story.

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
--Willie Wonka

Love and Kissies,
Juliekat