My Long and Exhausting History of Dating Married Men

In Year 10, my English teacher loaned me one of her favourite novels, Fortune’s Rocks. This was not the first novel she’d given me but it was the first novel to ever turn me on. Fortune’s Rocks is a 1999 romance novel that details an ardent affair between a 15-year-old girl and her married 40-year-old professor. It was the first time I’d read explicit sex scenes and I was hooked.

I read it like a secret: under the covers at night, in the bathroom, at the back of the bus. It gave me that tingly feeling I’d later recognise as a desire for sex or masturbation—both of which I hadn’t experienced yet. It wasn’t just the bits about sex in this novel that got me excited; it was the imagination of it all; the longing; the unspoken…