The Christmas that went wrong: I met my new girlfriend’s family – and talk turned to my book on masturbation
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My partner’s family knew I was writing about self-discovery and self-pleasure, but I wasn’t prepared for where the discussion would take us. I flew from London to New York on Christmas Eve 2014 to spend Christmas Day with Cassie’s family. It’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to do when you’ve been going out with someone for 10 years, but I’d only known Cassie a few months. She came out to her father about dating me and it didn’t go down well. Then, a few weeks later, she told him over a family dinner that I was writing a book about masturbation. Her sister and mother took her aside in the kitchen afterwards. “Why didn’t you just tell him she’s writing a book on travel, or something?” her sister asked.
Spending Christmas Day together was supposed to smooth things over, but no sooner had we sat down to eat than her father asked me about what I was writing. Maybe he thought I’d changed my mind, and gone for something a bit more Downton Abbey? Cassie’s sister looked at me intently, daring me to come out with it.
“I’m, er, researching masturbation,” I mumbled, suddenly self-conscious. I had an interview lined up in San Francisco with a pornography star turned sex artist called Annie Sprinkle, but decided not to mention this. Instead, I muttered something about masturbation being, “you know, the foundation of female sexuality. And stuff …”.
Cassie’s face suggested a firing squad had just entered the room. “Who’d like a pig in a blanket?” her sister interjected, trying to act normal as she passed around a plate of frankfurters wrapped up in Pillsbury dough, one of the family’s Christmas traditions.
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