Erica Garza's Getting Off is a memoir about Garza's addiction to pornography that began when she was 12-years-old. I read about Getting Off in New York magazine. Or was it the New York Times? Or was it The Daily Mail? I can't remember, but here's a summary of the relevant first four chapters.
In the prelude of Getting Off, Garza, who grew up in “boring” Southeast LA, shared that after she had sex with Clay, she gave herself: “[…] two orgasms in the wet spot of the bed. Once, to a three-minute clip of a teenage cheerleader fucking her stepdad on the kitchen counter while her mom showers upstairs […].
In the introduction, Garza wrote
that “incestuous cheerleaders” was one of her preferred genres of porn. And that she would masturbate in her closet
“for hours”. “From watching soft-core on cable TV at twelve [12], to downloading
photos at a snail’s pace on AOL at fourteen [14], to tuning in to streaming sites
with broadband forever after […]”
A footnote in the introduction
related from the BBC that a 2015 survey given to seven hundred youngsters, ages 12 to 13, revealed: “[…] that 12 percent of those surveyed said they had taken part in,
or had made, a sexually explicit video.”
In chapter
one, Garza wrote that as a 5th grader, she stared at her teacher's "crotch":
“There seemed to be no one I didn’t find attractive in my fifth-grade class […] even our teacher, Mr. Rivera. In class, I’d stare at Mr. Rivera’s crotch, trying to imagine what he looked like under his clothes. I stared at my female teachers’ breasts and long legs […]”.
“There seemed to be no one I didn’t find attractive in my fifth-grade class […] even our teacher, Mr. Rivera. In class, I’d stare at Mr. Rivera’s crotch, trying to imagine what he looked like under his clothes. I stared at my female teachers’ breasts and long legs […]”.
This was when Garza was
approximately ten-years-old and during her pre-pubertal period. (She got her first
period at the start of high school and considered herself a “late bloomer”.) I
beg to differ.
In chapter two, Garza learned
about masturbation from listening to Dr. Drew’s Loveline radio show:
“[I]t was Loveline that first introduced me to masturbation, which would soon
become my primary method of acting out. I was twelve years old when a caller
fascinated with water faucets—a woman—called in and gave me an outlet for all
my pent-up sexual frustration […] She said all she had to do was sit in the
bathtub, spread her legs, and turn on the water faucet. I could do that.”
“I remember the chill on my dry
kneecaps, pressed up against the cold walls of the bathtub while the steady
stream of warm water plummeted to that untouched space between my legs […] And,
catastrophically, I remember the pleasure […] Should I do it again? Yes.
Absolutely. Of course I did it again. And again […] I hadn’t even gotten my
period yet.”
“Throughout the rest of my years
in junior high […] I masturbated. Not just reserved for the bathtub anymore, I
masturbated when I got home from school, before dinner, after dinner, and soon
found that I couldn’t even fall asleep without an orgasm.”
Eventually, Garza masturbated to
porn:
"I
started staying up late, when my mom and dad were snoring away in oblivion, to
watch soft-core porn on Cinemax […]"
"[And] [d]uring the day, I made other arrangements. I’d wait for Gabe [Garza’s brother] to leave the house and then I’d raid his stash […] Dirty magazines. Unlabeled VHS tapes. I masturbated every day, multiple times a day, until I was exhausted and sore.”
"[And] [d]uring the day, I made other arrangements. I’d wait for Gabe [Garza’s brother] to leave the house and then I’d raid his stash […] Dirty magazines. Unlabeled VHS tapes. I masturbated every day, multiple times a day, until I was exhausted and sore.”
My
online sexual proclivities began with chat-room encounters when I was thirteen […] I always lied about
my age, usually saying I was sixteen, which neither the twenty- nor
forty-five-years old minded.
"My private high school was a
fetishist’s dream. With its plaid skirts, knee-high socks, nuns in habits, and
a pervading atmosphere of innocence and sexual repression [...] When I found this
pressure [of studying] was too much, I excused myself from class for a bathroom
break. Masturbating in the school bathroom required all the usual sensations of
control I’d grown used to. I had to be quiet if another girl was in the next stall.
I had to keep my feet relaxed and still on the bathroom floor. And I had to be
sure to achieve orgasm quickly, to avoid raising suspicions. I’d emerge from
the bathroom sickened with myself but light-headed with pleasure. Were other
girls doing this? I couldn’t know for sure."
Sixteen-year-old
Garza found a copy of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson sex tape in her brother’s
drawer that she described as “my most exciting and equally debilitating
discoveries, which she watched with Monica, her brother’s “first serious
girlfriend.”
Continuing to chapter four, Garza
wrote that she had her first (lipstick lesbian) kiss in bed with her brother's girlfriend:
"When
my feelings got unbearable so that I had to look down [from watching the sex
tape] to keep from soaking through my pants, Monica said, abruptly, “You know,
if you were a man, I’d choose you over your brother.” Subsequently, Monica
“[...] leaned in and softly kissed me on the mouth with her full lips. My first
kiss. I froze. “Kiss me back,” she said, pulling her face away from mine."
After
streaming porn became available, Garza’s lust: “[...] gravitated to categories
like cheerleaders, schoolgirls, and teens [and] to lesbian scenes, which were
equally exciting regardless of the age of the actresses.”
Ultimately,
Garza lost her virginity during her senior year of high school in the Angel Inn
motel to Roberto, who was older than Garza by “at least a decade”. They “[...]
continued sleeping together through the end of high school [...]”
