The jury is still out on my breasts. Unlike most women I know, I could take them or leave them. I mean, sure, I could certainly tell you what I'd do to make them visually more appealing, but not with very much passion. Here, I'll get it over with: it would be nicer if they were a bit more firm, better if they were perkier, pleasing if they were less round. Actually I have more of an issue with the ribcage underneath. But truly, when it comes to my boobs, it's difficult to feel very much at all.

Maybe that's because THEY don't feel very much for me.

I just felt myself up to make sure. I crossed my arms in front of me, rubbed in circles until my nipples got hard (which only took a fraction of a second), gave a little squeeze here and there, and felt a little tingly. But not too tingly. Not tingly enough.

Why is this, I wonder? My breasts are not too big or too small, they're not unshapely or way lopsided, and the nipples are pretty regular. I can manage cleavage when desired, and I promise you they haven't been neglected since the eighth grade. Boys trying to look down my shirt regularly enough gave me something over the flat-chested chicks, but when I began to let them touch me there, the arousal I felt had more to do with what I imagined would come next than what I was feeling at the moment.

If it's all in my head, it's not because anyone in my family ever called them "dirty pillows," or we were ever very concerned with covering ourselves up. On the contrary, my family was quite comfortable with their nudity, and more than once my naked mother proudly proclaimed boobs to be one of our family's greatest assets.

But I do know I've disregarded my breasts from the beginning, and even worse, I may have subconsciously tried to destroy them. I wasn't at all interested in the training bra my older cousin encouraged me to get, even when it came with matching underwear. I went through with it as an obligation (and by the time I was fifteen, a necessity). And later, when was fully developed, I walked the two miles home one blustery western New York night with only a thin white T-shirt under my dad's old army jacket, too drunk to notice that it was unzipped. The next morning when I got into the hot shower I screamed when the water touched my nipples--they burned like crazy. I thought I might have gotten frostbite but everything looked okay and it didn't hurt to touch them. But in extreme cold or heat, especially in water, the pain comes back.

So if I'm sensitive to water, why doesn't licking feel like much? It doesn't feel bad to have my breasts caressed, but I have to really concentrate to feel anything pleasurable, the kind of pleasurable you start to feel in places a bit lower. Now that I'm older and I'm not as nervous during intimate contact, I can concentrate more on enjoying the actual sensation. Still-- sucking, squeezing, it rarely thrills me. Maybe biting would do the trick.

Even when I've had boyfriends who have adored my boobs it hasn't warmed me up to them. "It's only skin," I would think every time. I'd rather you scratch my back.

All Personal Breast photos by Robyn Eden.