5.Aisha Paul

  Women's magazines are expensive and depressing.

  I always assumed they were written by women for women to guide them, like self-help books. Quite the contrary.

  'How to impress your man in ten ways'

  'How to drive your guy crazy'

  'How to save your relationship'

  'How to find out if he's satisfied in bed'

  'How to make him lust for you again'

  After reading about twenty of them, I had a rough idea that sex was about understanding the man's needs and making him happy. Also that virginity was a big deal and is to be only lost to a worthy man. The boys' virginity didn't really seem to matter. In fact these magazines encouraged you to sleep with someone with experience!

  Armed with all the knowledge about what's expected of a woman, I was sure to knock sex out of the park. But, of course, I had to get into shape first. I stood naked in front of the mirror, and used my two fingers to poke and flick the fat beneath my arms and on my thighs just as they had instructed. 'If it jiggles, it's fat,' they said, and 'Why be fat when you can be skinny and fabulous?'

  For the next few days, I was depressed.

  Megha and I went jogging every day at five in the morning and then at six in the evening. She mostly sat on a bench and Snapchatted risqué pictures to her not really my boyfriend who didn't think she was fat at all. He must be blind. He should have seen the last three cover models of Vogue, all of whom could have passed through the eye of a needle.

  'You can't match up to them,' said Megha, foolishly. 'And moreover, it's all Photoshopping and airbrushing.'

  'Of course I know it's airbrushing. I'm not a fool. But that's how we are supposed to look, otherwise why would they shrink their waists in the first place?'

  Megha had no answer to that, instead she asked me something else. 'So have you decided who you want to have sex with?'

  'I have given it some thought.'

  'Aren't you scared?'

  I shook my head. I was terrified. Not about how my first time would be, but about how the subsequent times will be. The magazines had made me believe that not all women come during sex.

  Then what's the point! What if I never come?

  That would be a travesty.

  I had to find other ways to satisfy myself in case the mystical man, who would wrest away my virginity, fails to make me orgasm. It was time to indulge in that once shameful activity—masturbation—and see if I was self-sufficient.