We secretly talk about it with our roommates behind closed doors. We consult our best friends. We smile nervously about it in group settings. And it’s about time we stop pretending and fess up. Trust me, you will feel better in the end.
If you’re like me, there was definitely no talk about the birds and the bees at my house. Like with everything else, my parents figured if they ignored the issue, they could make it disappear … poof!
In the fifth grade, they refused to sign the consent form for sex education: Permission denied! So while the entire grade learned about the mechanics of human reproduction, I built castles in the sandbox with third graders. I admit, the extra two-hour playground session was fun, but not nearly worth the grief that lay ahead of me. To this day, I’ll never forget the unsigned half-sheet that changed my life forever.
But fifth grade was a long time ago. We’re adults now, and we can make our own choices without our parents’ consent scrawled over a dotted line. How about choosing to stop the charade that we still don’t know what’s going on? The innocent game might have worked in middle school, but it doesn’t become us now. It’s time to step out of the sandbox, friends, and join the rest of the class because it’s time we started talking about sex and feeling comfortable about birth control.
Just this year, I’ve helped friends through six boyfriends, three breakups, countless hook-ups, four pregnancy scares and one abortion. Every menstrual cycle has turned into a cause for celebration. One of those secret moments while sitting on the porcelain throne when your shoulders drop with relief and you swear next month you’ll be more careful.
Go ahead and shake your heads. Make your judgments. But I’m sure you or someone you know is another over-achieving, Ivy Leaguing suburbanite with "respectable" Korean values, who never got a talking to about sex, safe or otherwise!
In our parents’ home, weekly lectures revolved around the following three numerical values: grade point average, SAT score and just how many minutes past curfew did I get in last night. There was never a mention about three popular forms of birth control, never an uncomfortable pause between indecipherably esoteric references, not even a quick three-word phrase: "Son/daughter, use protection," following the usual, "Did you practice piano today?"
If sex weren’t the super-forbidden, untouchable subject while growing up, would we still feel so reluctant to talk about it now? I suspect no. Visits to the gynecologist, buying condoms at the drug store, having a guest accidentally see your birth control pills on the nightstand shouldn’t be so difficult.
When fear of running into a classmate at the pharmacy with Trojans in hand, thus, revealing to the entire Korean American community that you and (insert name here) have sex, actually keeps you from using them, you have problems. One: you’re in denial. And two: the possibility for an unplanned pregnancy. That’s why my friends abort pregnancies; that’s why your friends abort pregnancies. And that’s why you should never have to be in a position to have to make that same decision. If you don’t choose abstinence, then choose to be safe, even if it takes a knock on your roommate’s door to ask for a rubber.
