Just me E-Book

Reena Hera

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Erotik
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 521

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

A book about the lust for life Rebecca is struck by lightning for seven times, the seventh time out in the open sea. This is really bad, since her yacht catches fire and sinks within just a few minutes. Rebecca, the heroine of the book, is bobbing like a cork in the meter-high waves. She is convinced that she won't be saved this time. This causes her to recall and reflect upon her life: her near-death experiences, her excessive sex life and the erotic experiences she has made all over the world, anecdotes, relationship issues, insights and wisdom. A life full of lust, joy and desperation, her search for a deeper understanding, for the real meaning of existence.

Leseprobe

REENA H E R A

JUST ME

Sometimes one must go through hell in order to gain wisdom.

As for me, I found that deep inside my soul. I realized that all these years I have been interested in esoteric seminars and knowledge, and that made me feel like I had to change myself.

By thinking this way, I had reinforced to my subconscious mind that I was imperfect. I had to learn my life lessons the hard way. I had to endure a living hell first. In this book, I will be straightforward about everything, even about the very exciting erotic experiences I've made. Sexuality is something God wants, so why should it be swept under the carpet?

Dear reader, if this means going through hell for you, I hope that you will rise like a phoenix from the ashes after reading this book, because the sexual desire we suppress or even compensate sooner or later makes us ill. If you get something out of these words of wisdom, I hope it will be that you understand you're allowed to act out the Venus inside you and if that makes you happier than some esoteric course or a health trend, then I have made a valuable contribution to society.

Not just an apple, also an orgasm a day keeps the Doctor away!

Sometimes you have to go through hell in order to gain wisdom.

Well… I guess that was it…

I had just jumped into the water and behind me my yacht was going up in flames.

An ear-shattering noise had made my hair stand on end. Or had it just been the electrical charge of the lightning? Anyway, the pungent smoke that welled up to the helm left no room for doubt.

"Struck by lightning again," flashed through my mind.

I had jumped out of the cockpit, raced to the locker in the back where the fire extinguisher was, and immediately fell lengthwise over the traveller. Seconds later I was back at the companionway, blood was dripping out of my nose and I was holding the fire extinguisher, but the huge black cloud of smoke and the flames leaping towards me prevented me from putting out the fire.

"Damn it, the walkie-talkie is still down there on the charger," rushed into my head. I dropped the fire extinguisher into the flames, threw the waterproof abandon ship bag overboard, and jumped into the water, just in the nick of time because behind me a monumental wall of fire raced to the sky.

I was about 1700 nautical miles away from the coast or a well known island in the Indian Ocean, heading for Madagascar via the Chagos Archipelago.

The storm had been raging all around me for over an hour. I had tried very hard not to lose control of the situation by using the self-steering gear; still, it had been extremely difficult to keep the yacht on course.

Well, truth to tell, I was actually anything but in "control" of what was happening.

As I rode through the tree-high waves and the yacht bouncing up and down from trough to trough, I was barely able to hold the rudder at all.

And now I was floating in the roiling and boiling water of an endless ocean.

The fact that my nose was bleeding was anything but comforting in my situation, given I was so far away from the coast. It is said that sharks can even detect highly diluted blood from miles away, after all…

"I better not kick and splash around too much," went through my head as I tried to reach my dinghy and the abandon ship bag so I could use it to move away from the inferno.

The only thing that was somewhat calming me down in this situation was the automatic life vest I was wearing, which had inflated seconds after I had hit the water surface. Yet, some sailors would rather choose to drown quickly than… well…?

At the moment, I was simply glad that I had towed the boat behind the yacht as a sea anchor. It acted as a sort of brake or parachute which prevented the yacht from succumbing to the violent sea. I had just managed to grab the rope by means of which the boat was lashed to the yacht, and as I pulled on it with all of my might, I could see the small dinghy slowly inching towards me. It took all the strength I had not to let go of this vital connection, so when I had finally reached the boat that was bobbing up and down at the rhythm of the waves, I just tried to cling to the rope on its side. That was no easy task at all. Wave after wave broke over me. My arms were shaking from exhaustion; my hands were red and marked with rope burns. The burning yacht was tossed up and down by the waves, and I was pulled along with the dinghy behind it, like a water skier not wanting to let go of the towline after falling into the water. A huge gust of wind snatched the line out of my hands causing me to lose hold of the boat. I was exhausted. I had no strength left. Again and again I was pushed back under water and could hardly breathe in the foam of the waves. When I managed to grab the rope once more, I wrapped it around my wrist so it could not be taken from me again. With bated breath I watched the yacht, which was now only a sea of flames and black smoke. "How long will it take until the plastic melts and water begins to splash into the yacht through the holes that the fire has caused?" I wondered. The yacht was probably lost either way.

I thought I should probably tie off the line that connected the boat to the yacht, but at that moment I couldn't reach the knife that I had always strapped to my lower leg. Under no circumstances could I let go of the boat now. Each wave threatened to break it away from the yacht. After a few minutes my hands were burning like they were on fire, and I knew I couldn't hold on for much longer.

A wave three meters high is actually nothing special to see when you are on a yacht, but drifting in the water with nothing but flames in front of you was a different story. To be eaten by sharks, to die of thirst, to drown – did I have a choice?

Suddenly, I just felt terribly small and at the mercy of the forces of nature.

Was I really drifting in the middle of this seemingly endless ocean? Was my yacht being eaten up by flames right in front of me? The roaring storm and the lightning strikes all around me were painfully real, not some sort of cruel nightmare! Another gigantic wave threatened to tear my dinghy away from me as it crashed onto us. Both my mouth and nose were full of water and I couldn't breathe properly anymore. "This is the end, this is it," flashed through my head.

Another wave shook my dinghy violently, making it hard for me to keep hold of it. Yet, I wasn't ready to give up; I was still alive, even though I had nothing to cling to but this small boat.

The storm and the waves normally wouldn't have meant too great a danger on my yacht; it was perfectly suited for these weather conditions. However, now that it had been struck by lightning for the third time within a year, it was a different story.

I hadn't taken the warning seriously: the warning that I had received from some energy in the universe on the evening before I purchased the yacht.

°

We had had dinner with friends. While the adults were talking about anything and everything after the meal, I had given the two kids some paper and crayons, so that they could occupy themselves with drawing.

As a former art teacher I like keeping kids busy with something creative so that they don't get bored. On this evening, however, the result of this children's activity was not the usual child's drawing.

Seven-year-old Susanne had drawn a beautiful yacht, probably the result of the conversation during dinner. Above it, however, she had arranged black thunder clouds from which numerous flashes of lightning rained down on the yacht. Flames erupted from the yacht. When I looked at the picture a cold shiver ran down my spine.

"Susanne, why didn't you draw a sunset behind the yacht, or a rainbow?" I blurted out.

The little girl's answer made my blood run cold, although the evening temperature was over 28 degrees Celsius.

"That's how I see it right now, it's pretty simple," was the girl's answer. And, uncommon for a seven-year-old, she looked deep into my eyes when she said that.

"And what's going to happen to me?" I asked her and another cold shiver ran down my spine. At the same time my entrails contracted.

Susanne didn't answer. She just looked deeper into my eyes. During the following night I couldn't sleep properly, and kept rolling from one side to the other in bed… "You're not going to let a young child's drawing keep you from doing what you have been dreaming about for many years," my boyfriend convinced me in the morning. "It's just a coincidence, it doesn't mean anything."

We bought the yacht the next day.

°

And now I was drifting in the ocean, 1700 nautical miles away from the coast.

Another wave crashed over me and the dinghy was cast into the wave's crest once more. Seconds later, a mighty gush of water rushed down on me, and the boat was torn out of my hands. The floods spun me around and around, repeatedly forcing me under water. When I finally got back to the surface, I saw my boat clinging to the wall of the next big wave. Using both arms and the last bit of my strength, I paddled toward the dinghy, but just when I thought I had finally reached it, it was pulled up and came back down many yards further away. I cried out in despair, and was rewarded with another mouth full of salt water.

"OK, just don't panic."

Was that my idea? My muscles convulsed in all four limbs. Finally, gasping for air, I was able to grab one of the board lines that ran around the boat with my fingers. A new wave almost carried me away from it again, but this time I held on with an iron will. Thousands of thoughts were running through my head.

What had made the girl draw this picture? What had she seen? Could she really have 'foreseen' this event? Did some energy in the universe want to warn me?

In general, I believed that, up to a certain age, children are more sensible to messages from the universe. These messages reveal our innermost thoughts. This makes some adults suffer until they start to believe that this makes them feel uneasy. Anyway, at that time some energy in the universe probably wanted to warn me with the help of this girl, as it often has happened in my pretty exciting life.

"I do not actually go with my gut that often. These messages come from my intuition. Instead, I keep chasing my thoughts most of the time, forgetting about what I feel. Well, I should probably go with my gut more often!" was running through my head.

"Oh yeah, it's so easy!"

Whenever I thought of something negative, I instantly got this weird feeling inside my chest, as if some invisible fabric were tightening around me, making it hard to breathe.

"Right now, something cold, wet and liquid makes my breathing difficult!"

However, when I was thinking about something very positive, such as romantic sex or the sensation of flying during an orgasm, my body soon felt very soft and relaxed. In other words, positive thoughts made me fly like an eagle, even without energy drinks or sex. Negative thoughts, however, let me sink like a rock to the depth of the sea.

"Right now, I should probably not think about sinking…"

"Well, right here, now that I'm at the mercy of the waves, I don't need no intuition to know that I'm in the sh...! It's curious though, that inside me, there's more a sense of depth. Where the hell does this come from?"

In my experience, the best decisions have always been the ones I got when relying on my feelings. Whenever I let myself be guided by my intuition, I turned out to be more successful then when I tried to think rationally.

"So why do I even bother worrying?"

Unfortunately, I had listened to my partner instead of the little girl's intuition and my own feelings back at the morning of the day when we bought the yacht. Thus, the inevitable happened. While I was bobbing up and down in the waves like a beach ball in the sea and the inferno on the yacht was still growing bigger – luckily at some distance now that the rope on the side of the yacht had been eaten up by the flames – I shook my head in disbelief.

"I would never have expected aluminum could catch fire," was one of the thoughts that crossed my mind when even the 25 meter high mast was consumed by flames.

My heart almost stopped when it started falling in my direction. Not far away from me the remnants crashed into the water.

Again I wondered why little Susanne had seen all this coming. Why had her voice been so certain when she insisted: "That's how I see it right now!"? I felt like all of my energy was being drained from my body and at the same time, my legs and arms grew weaker and weaker as I desperately tried to keep hold of the boat. However, at least I had forgotten about the sharks that were probably nearby – I had other things to worry about now.

"I have to get into the boat somehow; I won't make it any longer like this," I thought as when another wave was pulling me down.

"The dinghy keeps rolling over because of the waves," was my next thought, "maybe being in the water is more pleasant than the boat after all?"

"No, these splashing waves make it impossible to breathe properly; I have to get in the boat."

The next moment, the dinghy was flipped upside-down by the crushing waves and thereby hit my head. I was cast under the boat where it was much quieter and darker. I could hear the waves crashing onto the hull. I knew better than to trust in the seemingly peaceful quiet down here that somehow resembled calm eye of a hurricane. The sound of the waves reminded me of the flowing rivers in the mountains back home. After some eternal seconds, the boat came back to the surface again and I was shaken and tossed around by the storm once more. Right now, the wind was the most dangerous enemy. It drove millions of tiny water droplets before me, to a height of about 40 cm above the water, and made it extremely difficult to breathe.

The more I tried to take a deep breath, the stronger my feelings of suffocation were. I remembered that I had experienced a similar feeling many years ago.

°

It was during one of my first stays at the ocean. As a child who grew up in the mountains, it had taken the first eighteen years of my life until I came across salt water for the first time. My brother Jo and I had been invited by our rich cousin to her villa at the ocean in Portugal. We drove a few kilometers to a nearly empty beach almost every day. There was a wonderful sandy bay, which was about 100 meters long and nestled in two rock formations. A nice breeze was blowing and the air smelled salty. I would learn to love the smell of sea salt in the air over the years. On one of these days, we were enjoying the two to three meter high crystal-clear waves with big whitecaps on top, which fascinated us. Jo and I really liked to dive deep down in front of the waves so that we could shoot through the water on the other side. Neither one of us noticed that the local guys did not participate in this funny activity. As children who grew up in the mountains we simply found it extremely cool to play with the forces of nature.

"Typical stupid tourists," the natives probably thought to themselves.

Back at that particular day, it might have been better if I had just lain on the beach and passed the time thinking about the previous night. A night in which I had succeeded in giving my sexually very experienced cousin an orgasm, which even surprised her, from just gently caressing her back, her stomach and her enormous breasts for a long time.

Although I was certainly not a lesbian, and actually attracted to guys, somehow, after a few glasses of wine, I found myself in her bed. I was very fond of cuddling, so I could not resist and started to explore her delightful curves. This was all new territory for me, probably for my cousin too, so we took our time. With great patience, I slowly and gently explored every inch of her skin. From her toes to her neck I missed no point, and after this long "hike" through her hills and valleys, I devoted myself to her natural bosom. In the meantime, my cousin was breathing more intensely and obviously enjoyed my tender affection. I could tell by her increasing moans how much she loved the way I explored her body with my hands. Suddenly and only for a split second she had put my hand between her legs. My God, she was so wet. Like nectar it came flowing out of her pleasure garden . Only a few seconds later, she came with screams and moans: "I don't believe it, I don't believe it, an orgasm from only caressing my breasts!"

She pretty much spoiled me when she stated: "You should be proud of yourself. Once you get a man in bed, you will never get rid of him." These words boosted my self-confidence regarding sex, and that turned out to be something most young men couldn't handle. Most men do not like women who are confident enough to take over control. Plus, most of them do not show too much interest in being caressed and fondled. The only thing they are interested in is having sex, as soon as possible. I did not understand why my cousin did not give the same joy to me that I had given to her, so I had to pleasure myself that night. Even today, I still haven't quite forgiven her for that.

However, since I was so consumed by an effusive lust for life and the fun I had playing with the waves that very day, I wasn't thinking of a "next time". Suddenly I crashed into a wave slightly at an angle, and instead of gliding straight through it, I was caught in the vortices of a rolling wall of water.

I was tossed around in a circle on the ocean floor, and before I managed to get up to the surface to get some air, the next gigantic wave had already come crashing over me. Like a ball I was pushed under the surface by the masses of water that violently pulled me back and forth. Even my bikini was torn off me down there. I had lost my sense of orientation and couldn't tell which way was up or down anymore. Everything was spinning; I was surrounded by tiny white bubbles and an unbelievable force which kept tossing me around mercilessly.

My lungs were desperate for air, but there was nothing but water around me. The last thing I felt was losing consciousness while thousands of thoughts about my life and my family were going through my head.

There was nothing left but the fizzing sound of the little bubbles and the rushing of the waves that was getting softer. Suddenly, I felt a strong impact that resulted in unbelievable pain, and though I was barely conscious I started to claw what my fingers could grab of the sharp rocks.

Blood, there was blood everywhere… Staggering from pain like in a stupor I tried to get away from the water on all fours, stone by stone. When I had somewhat regained consciousness I heard the screams all around me.

"There! Straight ahead, she's up there!" "REBECCA!"

A wave had thrown me onto the cliffs so that I was finally out of the water. I had probably managed the rest by crawling in a semi-conscious state. From the roots of my hair down to my toes, my skin was covered in bloody scrapes. I was still shaking violently when I was wrapped in towels and taken to the nearest hospital.

°

This time I was wearing a life vest and the nearest rocks were about 1700 nautical miles away in an easterly direction. Meanwhile, the light in the sky had become scanty, and soon it was complete dark around me. The atmosphere was rather spooky as my burning yacht was being driven away from me by the wind.

A loud noise made me gaze at the inferno. Obviously one of the gas cylinders on board had exploded. Debris of all different sizes went flying through the air. As a result of several explosions, lots of small pieces were hurled into the sky, wrapped in thick black smoke and accompanied by a bright light trail behind them. I certainly do love fireworks, but this was not my taste. After some minutes passed, there was silence again.

First and foremost I had to get into the boat again – right now. I kept trying over and over again. In a quiet bay, it would have been easy. Out here, where I was tossed around by a heavy storm, roaring waves and a raging sea, it was an entirely different story. I desperately hoped the powers I had left in me would be enough to manage it. The boat was flipped upside-down once more, slamming its bottom against my head. I was repeatedly pushed under water. Whenever I tried to get back to the surface again, I was snorting and panting. I pulled, kicked and groaned every time as I tried very hard, but I just couldn't get out of the water and into the dinghy. Slowly, I began to panic.

Again and again, I fell back into the water with a clapping sound. What if I couldn't get into the boat? What if sharks started attacking me? It was growing dark and I knew that sharks were hunters of the night – a fact that worried me even more. This additional anxiety set my last energies free.

I screamed, trying to get the water out of my lungs. The mere thought of a shark beneath me made me "grow wings", or so I felt. Finally, I managed to roll over the side bulge and into the boat. Feeling totally exhausted, I tumbled down into it and just lay there panting for several minutes.

My situation seemed to be a little less hopeless now. As far as I could see, I was surrounded by white foam and a flaming inferno with a column of smoke, which reached at least 100 meters into the sky.

"I just hope someone sees this smoke. Somebody has to notice this huge cloud after all, right? Hopefully it'll be someone who cares… or who is curious enough to take a closer look, at least…"

The yacht, or rather what was left of it, was driven further away from me by the howling winds. Meanwhile, the light in the sky had become sparser. It didn't take long until I was surrounded by darkness. This was the time when my feeling of abandonment grew immeasurably. Even if someone were about to look for me, it had now become virtually impossible to find me. Now there was more to it then to endure the next few minutes.

I knew that I had to survive on my own until sunrise at least. Only the next day, starting with the next dawn, I could hope to be spotted by a ship. That was not very reassuring either. But had my life ever been reassuring?

°

It already started with the rather traumatic event of my birth. I was born in the family room of a farm house at the very end of the Grail Valley, which the locals consider one of the world's busiest valleys. That's probably why I was in such a hurry. Or maybe it was because my mother has always been so easily frightened. It was the so-called 'Day of the Devil' in the valley. That was an old Grail Valley Custom on December 5th. Before St. Nikolaus visits the good kids, in other words, the well-behaved ones, on the next day, the naughtier ones have to tremble with fear on December 5th. Traditionally, some of the men of the village are allowed to dress up and act like the "Krampus", a devil-like helper of St. Nikolaus, during this time, at least for the short period of one or two days. These men usually seem to be having a great time then, making up for certain urges they have to suppress for the rest of the year, I suppose.

Well, at any rate – whether it was out of shock or my innate curiosity – I was a difficult and too early birth. It took me more than seventeen hours to try and get out of a place where later in life it took me like forever to let someone in.

However, what turned out to be even worse were the first sentences ever to make their way into my subconscious mind.

"She's not going to make it," were the words my grandfather spoke as he ran for the priest so that at least my soul would be saved on this devilish day.

I guess I must have left quite a miserable impression. A lot of water was spilled quite for nothing – and here I mean tears.

I drowned out the wailing of the women, I must have somehow not liked the priest. This turned out to be an aversion I've never been able to shed my whole life. An aversion, which reached its peak when my mother told me the following story around my twelfth birthday:

"Your father and I were raised in a very religious manner. After your birth and my serious heart attack that followed soon afterwards, I learned from my doctor that I should not have any more children after you. The doctor even thought that I might very likely die if I gave birth to another child."

My mother continued in a weeping voice: "Your papa and I decided to ask the village priest for the permission for me to take the pill. He rejected our request categorically with the following explanation: 'This is absolutely out of the question! If it is God's will, the mother has to die.'"

"That just can't be true," I thought.

"Condoms or other forms of birth control were out of the question; partly due to our ignorance," my mother added. Besides that, the Catholic Church forbade devout Christians to use any form of birth control.

Fortunately, I didn't become an orphan after all. The universe was probably more benevolent than the Church's apprentice. I can't remember if I was angrier at my naïve parents or at the priest's commanding tone anymore. At any rate, my mother's admission made me furious. Today I'm still amazed that I didn't decide to set fire to any churches at that time.

But let's move back to the room where I was born. The water in my grandfather's eyes must have worked like an elixir of life on me.

"Now I'll show you, I'll prove you wrong!" … And I've been doing this up to the present day.

My difficult start, however, has been an influence on some areas of my life for a very long time. As a visible reminder of a life-threatening bronchitis I survived back then, I got a slightly deformed thorax. Fortunately, the beautiful shape of my breasts makes this flaw pretty "invisible". Apart from that, I simply slept through the first months of my life and as well as a few years after that.

Even the secondary female sex organs, namely the breasts, which are, as we know, every man's favorite topic, could get me out of my sleep back then. Every single time, I had to be forced to suck or drink with a few hearty smacks on my fanny. If they hadn't done that, I might have quite simply starved to death in my sleep. Oh well, I got used to the slaps later on.

To cut a long story short, I had a tough start in life. Even the youngest of my sisters, who were born in the time interval of one year after me – in spite of the medical prohibition I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters – had already outgrown me before I even started attending primary school. I was soon repeatedly outdone in every aspect by the neighbor kids and by my cousins who were about the same age as me.

Particularly worth mentioning is by my female cousin Petra, who provided my parents and me with quite a few unpleasant surprises, which were the product of her childish imagination. One time it was my hair, which she glued together with spit. I used to have curly hair like a baroque angel and all I kept hearing was: "Oh, look at those wonderful curls, how sweet!"

There was a time when I just couldn't stand hearing that anymore and someone, namely Petra, had to do something about it.

Another time, my inquisitive cousin needed me as a guinea pig in her attempt to find out how many stones she could stuff into a human anus, i.e. intestine. The world was full of surprises and discoveries for me.

My little brother Jo had to make an even worse experience with Petra. Although Jo was definitely not homosexual, Petra wanted to try out the powers of her vibrator before sticking this toy into her vagina – in other words, the object of "investigation" in this particular case happened to be my brother's asshole. And this happened without relaxing foreplay, appropriate lubes or gentle penetration. Jo was not particularly enthusiastic. lang=EN-GB>Since my father had always wished for a son who he could share his passion for sports with, I was raised to be sporty and rather "boyish". I had already displayed signs of my innate responsiveness and sensitivity, whish both were simply ignored and suppressed. As a result of this "re-education", I felt more comfortable with the boys that were constantly brawling and fighting with each other than the bitchy brats with their Barbie dolls very soon.

I preferred the male, loud, elbow bumping and show off acting to the whiny "do not touch me"-posturing of my same-sex peers. Consequently, my female counterparts generally tended to avoid me or made fun of me.

For a very long time, the girls thought that I was simply too bright and tomboyish. Therefore they did not participate in my frequently failed attempts to get closer to the male sex with so-called "Zwickabussis" or "pinch-kisses".

Pinch-kisses are erotic advances that require you to pinch the other person's cheeks on either side of the mouth with both hands while you kiss him or her.

They had certainly been invented as a sexual filter by the pathologically prudish women, because pinching the cheeks was probably supposed to nip any notion of sensuality in the bud. That's all they needed: Kids would enjoy an erotic, lascivious kiss when the grown-ups had to suppress every tempting erotic thought.

At any rate, my father desperately tried to make a "real man" out of his daughter. Especially because he had been the epitome of an athletically fit elite-macho, he was selected as one of the 24 most intelligent and athletic students in his age group in Austria and was allowed, or rather forced, to attend an elite school in Vienna. His intense homesickness and his longing for the mountains saved his life after his second year there. He escaped and returned home, back to the Alps. All his classmates were killed in the trenches during the last weeks of the Second World War. In other words, if it hadn't been for my father's homesickness, I probably wouldn't be here now.

The only joy that I could give him regarding sports was that, being the small little girl I have been, I learned very fast to ski particularly well. And that was at the early age of three. For a long time this would be the only area where I had an edge over the male members of my peer group, whom I quickly surpassed. However, I was probably not aware of the dangers involved.

For a long time I simply had the proverbial beginner's luck and therefore the exaggeratedly ambitious goals of my father never had negative consequences. Until one day when I was at the age of four, when the euphoria was clouded by an accident. I had raced downhill on a slope that was way too long and too steep for a child of my age and crashed after somersaulting about five times.

"Just don't tell Mom!" were the words of my father.

I didn't have to, because I became the talk of town for a week after my major crash. This did not, however, dampen my passion for snow and skiing, and that proved to be a major advantage later on.

I learned to swim even faster, practically within a few seconds. After a few timid and failed attempts on my part, my father dragged me up the diving platform and simply pushed me down from it and into the swimming pool, with the words: "Hey, look, a big fish!"

I can still remember this first involuntary diving attempt, the unique rushing of the water, the many oxygen bubbles and the unfamiliar feeling of weightlessness. I did, however, surface from the 'dive' unharmed and that was the end of my first swimming lesson.

°

Right now, I was involuntarily stuck in a wet, cold hell again, and there would not be a way to escape it before the next morning, if there was one at all. When would they send an airplane to look out for me?

°

Although my father, as the principal of a school, sort of had the afternoons off, and probably had the nerves to handle just about any situation, he simply couldn't manage his kids at home. However, my father was not the only one who was overwhelmed by the boyish girl I was, my six other siblings and all the financial worries our family was faced with; as one can imagine, it was, first and foremost, difficult for my mother. And I of all people – just imagine that – was supposed to constantly act as a watchdog for my brothers. I of all people was supposed to replace my mother's lacking assertiveness and ride herd over a bunch of wild boys.

So I was fighting a losing battle between my brothers and my parents. My sisters avoided me and my brothers beat me up whenever I wanted to play the 'educator'. And my parents scolded me because I was obviously incapable of maintaining order.

And when everything degenerated into chaos, we were quite literally beaten up by our mother. Yes, even I was, although it seldom was my fault. Sometimes the wooden stick that she used to beat us up broke, that's how fierce these attacks on our rear ends were!

Shortly before my birth my father's health problems started, and these were to put a strain on our family for decades.

In the years after my birth, the stork put six more kids in our nest, and we changed apartments three times in five years. Then my father had the glorious idea to turn his back on the Grail Valley with all its stubborn and obstinate old women. We moved to the 'Promised Land' of the Inn Valley. And we did this although my father's professional reputation was at its climax and he was very highly esteemed among the community of my birthplace; they even wanted to provide him with a house, if only he would stay in the village.

I call the old women stubborn and obstinate because they had often infuriated and stressed out the young school principal with their domineering and bitchy behavior and thus probably contributed to his illness, which later put such a strain on us.

Even though the town council praised him a great deal at that time, we turned our backs on my birthplace and moved into my father's parental house in Reutling.

That meant I was away from my beloved maternal grandfather but close to my father's mother, whom we kids had always avoided like the plague.

My younger brothers and I still feel nothing but rage when we think of her now, since she was the laziest, most egotistic and selfish woman I have ever met. Plus, her cooking skills provided us with culinary experiences replete with pain and horror.

When she prepared food for us, she actually dared to feed us kitchen scraps from her household. One of these items was the neck of the Sunday chicken, and we even fought over it.

I'm not so sure if the average citizen is aware of the amount of meat that is NOT on a chicken's neck. Even today, whenever my brother Werner has had too much beer, he often bawls: "If she were still alive, I would wring HER neck with my own bare hands."

°

"Hmm, yes, speaking of food, should I go ahead and have one of the seven granola bars that are in my emergency case?"

On such long, extensive voyages, I had always lashed an emergency kit to the dinghy. My tiny boat climbed to the top of a wave's crest, when I suddenly saw it: There was a white spot of light which rose up with the waves and then lowered again. I tried not to lose the faint light in front of my eyes as the boat sank down into a trough. Was that a fishing boat that was fighting this violent storm? It does not matter, whatever it was, I needed to make contact.

"They will not see me, how could they possibly see me?" As if I had seen it coming, I disappeared along with the dinghy in a wave.

Despite the heavy swell, lying on my back I managed to open the emergency kit. Carefully, I tried to keep it horizontal so that the precious content would not fall into the water. I had fastened the suitcase with a leash to my life vest.

Now I took one of the rescue flares, and immediately shut the case before it could get filled with water. Then I bit open the plastic film which should protect the rocket from moisture.

"So ... hold it with one hand and pull on the rope with the other. Damn, damn, shit!"

We had indeed practiced this in sailing school and before my first Atlantic crossing a dozens of times. I always grew bored of the practice. "What is this, it is kid stuff," I had thought.

And now, out of excitement, I almost shot myself and sunk along with my life jacket. So much for theory and practice.

"Breathe, deep, deep breaths," I was mumbling to myself.

I did not have many flares, and I was too hungry for life to shoot myself. So I tried to concentrate, this time with success. The next rocket rose hissing and howling against the night sky.

"Well, at least somebody can notice that there is still a person alive – if there is anyone in sight, that is."

Along with the boat I disappeared again in a wave.

"Damn it," I blurted. It did not matter anyway; no one could hear me out here.

When I came up again after what seemed like an eternity, the faint light was completely gone. My moment of euphoria soon died. My mood got as black as the seemingly bottomless sea beneath me. My situation was clear. It was as plain as the nose on your face class=st>. In this frightening darkness someone could easily miss me. The waves were now so unbelievably huge and were constantly breaking over me. It seemed too risky for me to open the case again. Maybe in the next few minutes the entire content could fall into the water, both emergency rockets, as well as granola bars. I needed to hold on just a little longer, to get out of this storm. I therefore abandoned the idea of using further signal rockets immediately. To tap into these energy reserves now would certainly be a waste. I also wanted to save the two cans of Red Bull I had left for as long as possible. Maybe this energy drink really could give me wings, in case no other help should appear. Dreaming is always an option. I wish I had had a can of Red Bull when I was a child.

°

Even back then I was daydreaming about flying up to the church ceiling and not leaving all the miracles to Jesus. I wanted to fly to a place far away from my crazy life. A place where there would only be my true childlike self, where in my inner light I could find out who I really was.

Back in those days, I was probably as far away from having this dream fulfilled as I was right now.

The daily church services, which we were forced to attend, probably spoiled this institution for us forever.

My grandma sang, like so many of our relatives, in the church choir almost every day – which was one more reason that made me desire to fly away. We had to accompany her to Church every time but we did not take part in the singing.

Two of my brothers had been trained to be altar servers. Back then that was a very important thing for boys at their age, a task of significance and somewhat high value, so to speak.

Thank God this cup passed from me. At this time girls were not tolerated in the patriarchal world, even if they were as boyish as I was. I pouted; I wanted to fool around with the boys in the sacristy instead of having to sit in the pew with the boring good girls.

The move to Reutling and the culture shock that came along with it caused my already fragile self-confidence to suffer further hits below the belt. These included – apart from the linguistic shock that people in Reutling experienced when they are confronted with the almost incomprehensible dialect from the Grail Valley – cultural, culinary and financial shocks.

Due to the move and the building of a house, we had really become as poor as church mice. One could say that we slipped from a safe little place down into the slums. Just like one entire wall of the house 'slipped' or rather came down and plunged into the basement one day, next to my mother and me as we were boiling potatoes. That incident happened during the process of remodeling my grandparents' so-called 'witch house', which was what we called the former washhouse of my great-grandparents' farm.

In order to save time and money my uncle, who was the architect in charge, simply had not sufficiently supported and secured the wall of the old house. I am sure that this would make the headlines of the local newspaper if something similar happened today. And nowadays this is not so easy any more – at least not with something positive.

I had once again survived a near catastrophe. While us kids – I repeat: kids – were busy with the clean-up operations, my father was expected to play cards with my grandmother, which often happened when there was work to be done. My mother, I think, shed bathtubs full of tears on account of this ancient tyrant.

That's why the Grail Valley remained the idyllic homeland that had been taken from me for a very long time. My Grail Valley grandmother knew how to strongly support my predilection every time I visited.

My father had dared to take her daughter and therefore her family and her grandchildren away from her. And now I had to pay for it. She never really seemed to care too much for Jo and Werner, but everyone was of course taken with me as a girl amidst a crowd of madman. My brothers called me 'traitor' because of that.

During my stays in the Grail Valley I had to witness the outright hostility directed at my father, for, after all, he was the one who had committed the crime of fleeing the valley. Nowadays, I can totally understand him and accept it. But what could I have understood as an 8-year-old girl back then?

I can still perfectly remember a visit sometime between Christmas and New Year's. We were supposed to stay for two weeks, at least until Epiphany. My grandmother was happy and enjoyed bossing everyone around. My father went skiing with us to avoid her.

Quite unfortunately, it happened that my brother Werner broke his leg; so we had to curtail our vacation. That's when I got to know a different side of the grandmother I had loved so much until then. She pretty much knocked the stuffing out of seven-year-old Werner, who was lying in the family room with his broken leg and who was probably in horrible pain.

Slightly toned down, it sounded like this: "This moron boy just had to go and break his foot! You stupid jerk, now everybody has to go home because of you! I could kill you, you fool!"

And to top it all off, she banished the seven-year-old boy to the pantry as a punishment, despite his shock and severe pain.

After that, I didn't like spending my vacation at my grandma's place in the Grail Valley too much anymore. It had been my privilege up to that time. In the meantime I had found out why my grandfather, who actually really liked me a lot, did not appreciate my visits that much: It was because my grandmother always wanted me to sleep in their bedroom.

"It'd be way too scary for our poor little girl to spend the night all alone in another room!"

Well, I can't remember anything I would have been afraid of, but I didn't dare contradict the old shrew.

At some point I finally got it. That's how the frigid old woman could avoid any kinds of sexual advances from her husband, at least for two to three weeks. From a certain age on – I think even earlier – sex was only good for making babies anyway. " I can do without those crazy 3 minutes," I got to hear again and again , and not just from my grandma .

So the only "action" that took place in their bedroom was when the hens started to cackle wildly in the middle of the night and my grandpa, dressed in his nightgown and a sleeping cap – yes, really – and armed with a pistol from the nightstand, dashed out of the room to catch the fox. He never succeeded. On the following day, we kids followed the tracks of the fox using the feathers that the hen had lost. Well, this meant one less chicken for the soup. Given the choice, I wonder what the chicken would have preferred.

One can imagine that my surroundings – I'm talking about the Grail Valley women – were not exactly appropriate to provide a girl like me with role models for a modern, open and mature relationship. My erotic feelings, my Venus, where certainly not awakened in this environment.

However, these years provided me with other profound experiences. One of these days my uncle Franz had planned to go on a mountain hike with two German tourists. To escape my nagging aunts, I begged to be allowed to join the men at least for one day. My persistence was rewarded. I was invited to come along on the mountain tour.

Before the trip could start, I had had to fetch cigarettes for my uncle and the Germans, as I often did. Actually, I went to the nearby bar pretty much every day to do so. I still remember the brand, "HB". The man liked to call them "hanging breasts" for fun. Back then, I used to blush at the thought. However, I was willing to accept and ignore this kind of "humor" if it meant an opportunity to escape my grandmother's company, at least for some time.

We drove deep into the valley to the place where the road ended. From there, we went uphill on foot for quite a long time, heading for a place that offered a marvelous view of the mountain, the beautiful Schönbachler Horn. Although almost 3,000 meters high, this mountaintop could be reached with normal hiking boots, and without the usual equipment like rope, ice ax and crampons.

The view was fascinating, indeed overwhelming. We were surrounded by glacier flanks and huge ice fields below us. I was fascinated by the many crevasses in the ice.

During the last half hour of our descent, more and more heavy black clouds appeared in the sky above us. The mountain tops were shrouded in fog, and we decided to run the rest of the way. Having grown up in the mountains, one is accustomed to jump like a Capricorn over stones and rocks.

The path seemed endless to me. Once we had finally arrived at the car, I fell asleep as soon as I had taken my seat in the back. The three men started telling blonde jokes, and I was too young to have anything to contribute anyway. I also couldn't quite figure out what could possibly be so funny about these jokes at that time.

Suddenly, I woke up because of a deafening noise. "Now that drunkard has driven our car into the ravine!" was my first thought. And my second was, "I'm still alive!!" Even though my eyes had been closed before, I was blinded by the bright light that had accompanied the crashing sound.

The car reeked of sulfur. Our driver had brought it to a halt with great difficulty. Now I noticed the sudden downpour and lightning all around us. "Ooohhh holy shit... we have been struck by lightning! The car has jumped half a meter into the air!" yelled one of the men. Several minutes passed before anyone of us managed to answer him. I was completely speechless. I had been so rudely awakened that I was shaking like a leaf now.

The engine of the car was still running. At that time, the cars did not have all these built-in electronic systems that are standard with the ones of today, so we were able to continue our journey unhindered. The rest of the way, we went at an unusually low speed. Apart from that, we were all really quiet; my companions quite obviously didn't feel like telling stupid jokes anymore. "That's what happens if you make jokes about women," was the conclusion I drew at the time.

This experience influenced my behavior towards the male gender just as much as the women in my home environment.

Don't run women down and let them have their own opinions – that was the consequential message I got out of it at that time.

As soon as we arrived home, the three men chose to celebrate our survival (or maybe rather drown out the feeling of terror) with a lot of beer and liquor at the bar around the corner, the one where I had bought the "hanging breasts cigarettes". "Don't tell anything about this to the women," they had drummed into me before.

°

But let's get back to the Inn Valley, to Reutling, my father's favorite place, which was home to similar 'witches'.

My first experience with male creatures at my age must have left a deep and lasting mark on my subconscious, particularly with regards to dealing with the other sex and handling my career and my success.

My first childhood love and the first outburst of my untamable inner boldness culminated in a marriage proposal to my neighborhood playmate (we were both about 7 years old), which was promptly rejected with the following words:

"I'd never marry you, you're just the daughter of a poor school principal and my father is the village judge. I'm going to marry a female doctor someday!"

Looking back, I can say that I'm really happy that it all happened this way and that I didn't get married to this boy. Nevertheless, his words affected me deeply – and they really hurt. It was especially painful that I could not say anything about the incident at home as I did not want to upset my parents.

My self-confidence had plummeted to zero – or even below zero. And this was very soon reflected in my academic performance.

I have never been dumb, though. I can even remember myself wondering why the teacher kept explaining things over and over again, sometimes even up to five times although everyone had already fully comprehended the topic – or, maybe that was not the case for everyone…?

Back then, nobody had explained to me that you have to 'internalize' the material you comprehended. That's why, or so I've come to believe, I slept through two thirds of my school years. During the other third I was constantly brawling and fighting with the boys at my age, so I could not concentrate on school and failed in showing my potential.

At the beginning I had a very nice teacher . She protected the unusual girl that I was and accepted the wild creature, the witch in me. She was a very caring and attentive person. I loved her for that. It was especially useful for me that we had the same way to school. Today her role would be called 'bodyguard'. On my way home I would cling to her coat-tails, or her hand, so I would be safe from my classmates' attacks. Obviously, I couldn't count on my crabby girly 'friends' to help me, and even though I was a tomboy I was simply too weak to defend myself against the overly powerful boys.

That's why my first three years of school were somewhat bearable. After her came Coughie, also known as Smokie. He was a chain-smoking giant who was constantly tormented by coughing, or rather choking fits, and who had to prevent himself from suffocating during one third of the lesson and smoked one cigarette after another during the other two thirds.

As a teacher, Smokie was as out of place as a dolphin in the desert. And what was even worse: I had also lost my guardian angel for my way home from school.

At any rate, Smokie found out that I was dyslexic, and thus an absolute failure when it came to spelling. No one knew much about this problem; let alone how to overcome it.

The only positive thing I remember from this time at school was the following statement from Smokie: "Her essays are sensational, she's going to be a writer someday, but she needs a secretary with good spelling skills."

Well, if only he had known that nowadays all you need is a good laptop and a word processing software tool with a spell-check function.

That would have spared me some painful days back then. And so it happened that, even though I was classified as a quite intelligent student, they said:

"With these spelling problems we can't send her to high school, not with all the will in the world."

I could see how disappointed my father was. All of my life I had dreamt about writing books about true love and passion, and about gaining experience and the wisdom and knowledge acquired throughout the years.

°

It will probably come to nothing, I thought, being thrown back and forth by the waves as the raging storm reached its peak. I was so terribly tired, and wanted to sleep, but I was afraid I wouldn't wake up again if I allowed myself to doze off.

°

During my school days I did not care about it at all. I slept through most of the hours in class. For me, they were just too boring, and this was reluctantly accepted by my parents.

Besides that, my parents didn't have the money to send two of their seven children to an institution of higher learning. Hence, my problems at school were a welcome excuse. I gave up, only did the bare minimum, and not even that. One can imagine that I delivered a remarkably bad performance for the daughter of a principal.

While my father was bitterly disappointed, my mother coddled me. These weren't quite the greatest circumstances as one can imagine. My classmates started teasing me more and more.

"Once your self-confidence is at zero, your environment will do the rest."

I can remember that, after a time when I was suffering from a fracture of my lower leg ( back then we had ski bindings made of metal spirals), I repeatedly faked pain. My ancient skis with their flat or barely rounded tips had sealed my fate and I had had another horrible skiing accident.

My equipment was simply not suitable for this. I wore a cast for the usual period of time and found out that because of this I got much more attention than usual, and my brothers and classmates took care of me. My cast was littered with autographs of male 'fans'. My mother, and thus the doctor, had to respond to my fake pain. The result was that I had to wear a cast for eight weeks during a growth spurt.

Today, a shortened lower leg and a twisted spine bear witness to the medical ignorance of our family doctor back then.

Was it my own fault? Was it fate? What had all this been good for?

Furthermore, my mother succeeded in keeping me away from all the activities intended for adolescent males, which I would have loved to take part in them. She would neither let me play football with my male peers, nor was I allowed to join the Youth Alpine Club.

A supposed heart deficiency served her as an appropriate explanation – after all I was genetically her daughter and she preferred to keep me out of harm's way by all means.

By the time I was ten, I had beaten everyone at skiing, even people who later became big names in the Austrian National Team. They even wanted to promote and financially support me, the 'wildcat', and my brothers in a team as our family wouldn't have had the money for these extra expenses.

A local delegation came to us with such an offer, but my mother chased them out of the house. And not just once!

In hindsight, this is, despite everything, somehow understandable, since my father had once crashed his motorcycle against a tree in a race. Remember also that there were only leather helmets at the time. Afterwards he lay unconscious in the adjacent field, with a basilar skull fracture. A friend saved his life on the spot by getting the coagulated blood out of my father's throat with his bare fingers. Otherwise my father would quite probably have suffocated on his own blood!

He finally got to the hospital (back then there was no emergency rescue system in this place) and was in a coma for ten days, more dead than alive. The whole valley, and especially the doctors, called it a medical miracle that he had survived this accident in the first place.

If you consider how much luck you need to survive such a terrible accident even today, it really was a miracle that our father could actually walk out of the hospital on his own two feet afterwards.

Our family and especially we kids, however, suffered from the long-term effects of this accident for decades.

I was really good at skiing but my mother denied me even that because of my father's accident. You know, you can crash into a tree when you're on skis, too, not just on a motorcycle.

This hardly helped improve my reputation among my classmates, as one can imagine. Even back in school there was a certain 'hierarchy.'

So my mother successfully prevented me from participating in all extra-curricular events like skiing trips, nature camps or various other trips which would have been necessary for my socialization process.

And that's why I wasn't invited to take part in any pubescent learning processes about sex. It was my overprotective mother's fault that I had simply never been there in any of the crucial moments. Thus, my classmates made their first experiences with masturbation and other erotic games without Rebecca . Since one heard all kinds of things after the weeklong school-sponsored skiing trip or the stay in a youth hostel during the weeklong excursion to Vienna, I knew that almost all of the girls had put their hands between the legs of each other. These were all just harmless girls' games, after all.

But since I had never been part of this and the others were curious as to whether I was really a girl or maybe a boy after all, four of my classmates were waiting for me in the equipment room one day, and before I knew what they were up to, they had already pulled down my skirt.

I can still remember that I was torn between indignation and crying, between sensing impertinence, protest and… maybe they were interested in me after all… a certain sexual pleasure.

Being a good little girl, I had to feign indignation, but I wouldn't have rejected it if some girl had wanted to 'lend me a hand', or maybe even her tongue, as well. Just like classmates granting favors to each other.

Therefore, I didn't make much of an effort to fight them off. And when, in the (on my part) faked heat of the moment, the nicest of my classmates slipped her fingers inside me, my restraint was finally gone completely .

"Aaaah"… Somehow it felt good to have been accepted into the circle of the 'feminists'.

Are you shocked now, dear reader? It was quite normal for girls at that time and actually harmless. It was probably the same for boys.

I had secretly watched my brothers as they mutually pleasured themselves and rubbed their dicks until something spurted out many times. It was particularly interesting for me when my brothers announced the motto: "Who squirts the most?" Again and again, I sneaked up to them to attend these male ejaculation games. One had always heard the most amazing stories about such erotic games from various convent schools or boarding colleges, and not only in certain corresponding films.

In the afternoons at home, my brothers would proudly present me, the sister, to their friends. I already had quite womanly curves at the appropriate parts of my body for my age.

This was considered a sensation among the other guys in my clique, who were two to three years younger. For me, this was one of the few highlights in those days.

Girls who dared to play around with boys without inhibitions and shyness were pretty rare. And the fact that there was a hole instead of a dick under the already burgeoning pubic hair caught the boys' interest for a few weeks, months, even years. Later, the guys invented a game in which they lined up with me and two of my less bitchy cousins in a circle. The leader gave the command: "One, two, three, pants down... one, two, three hands on... one, two, three start masturbating!" We girls had nothing to take into our hands, so we could just slip our fingers into our pussies and move our hands back and forth like the guys did. This proved to be extremely boring in comparison to having a cock in our hands, so we girls begged to be allowed to pleasure them. After some time I was so well-integrated into the group that they would let me massage one of their dicks more and more often. I simply loved it and it was one of my daily highlights during this period. It was not until much later that I found it awesome when one of the guys put a turnip, banana, cucumber or something similar into my vagina. That was all we dared for the moment, and I felt like it at least once a day.

On peak days we even managed to enjoy more than ten rounds of our pants-down-game. I can still remember a neighbor boy – he is a famous man now – who allowed me to lend him a hand in order to get a little juice out. He was about to despair because he couldn't get anything out of him, and he blamed it on his lack of technique. So I rubbed his cock until it turned red and blue.

Whenever we did this, we went to our reed hut on the banks of the Inn. We felt safe there.

Only when it came to my friend Isidor, even my sensitive womanly hand technique failed. Not even a drop of the manly juice came out of the boy's cock, which at any rate was very hard and erect.

The next day I had a charley horse in my arm, just like from chopping too much wood.

So if you want to have a charley horse, you do not need to cut wood, you just have to masturbate.

At one of these occasions my brother Othmar had his hard penis stung by a bee. God, did we laugh about that at first! Even I, the only girl who had been allowed to participate at that day and who was feeling a bit uneasy at the sight of the gigantic penis, had had a good laugh in the beginning. But when his cock swelled up like a balloon and his pain got so bad that he could barely stand upright, we had to go back home to call a doctor. Our official explanation was that a bee had simply got lost in his pants. We vacillated between laughing ourselves silly and being completely horrified.

Faced with the mega-dimensions of Othmar's manhood, I had a question bubble up in my head: "Can this male instrument of pleasure actually burst in such a situation?" My curiosity dumbfounded our mother and drove her to despair. Even the doctor was not able – or not willing – to answer that question.

True to the motto 'the laugh is always on the loser', Othmar was, for a time, the source of many jokes about "the balloon-cock".

It took days before he was able to participate in our youthful sex games again, and he had to wear my pants, which were quite a bit larger than his own. His imposing manhood needed more room.

Despite these rare, amusing highlights, my time in junior high was one big cry of distress. I still ask myself today how I ever managed to survive the fear and terror I felt every morning for four years.