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The First 50 Author’s memoir helps to normalize sexuality CREDIT: AZZURRO MALLIN
By Srianthi Perera A therapy cult encouraged Natascia Mallin to erase her personal history. But, to the advantage of those who would benefit from a scintillating and honest read into female sexuality, she did not. She came out of the cult, named The Intimacy Project, after four years. It also initiated just the opposite effect: rather than forgetting her history, she dug into it. The result is her memoir, “The First 50: A Saga of Backseats, Bedrooms, Lookout Points, and Dive Bars,” published by Rare Bird Books and available on Amazon. Mallin, a Jewish ItalianAmerican born and raised on the Westside of Los Angeles who is now a resident of Mexico City, pulls no punches in her debut. It outlines 50 erotic encounters that took place between the ages of 13 and 33. She’s 36. Her writing is daring, engaging and passionate, just like her adventures. The chapters delve into her lovers in chronological order, painting them in broad brushstrokes but containing just enough color to understand them. In chapter one, Mallin describes a foray into a steam shower with her first lover: “Engulfed in clandestine embrace, flexing in discovery, 14-year-old Natascia dissipated into expensive vapor and the newness of passion. There was no age. No time. No law. There was only Ricky and the beating rapture of zest. Hours went by. A lifetime. I don’t know. It could have been forever for all I cared, but eventually the water ran cold, and infinity ended. Ricky wrapped me up in a million-thread count, prerevolution Egyptian cotton towel and ushered me into David’s brother’s room and onto David’s brother’s bed. At the end of the quick sexual act, the teen had a recurring thought: “He didn’t ask.” The intimate happenings with equally fleeting other beaus include the surfer boys of Venice, camp friends, the young men she met in the extravagant parties held in
Mallin is a Jewish Italian-American writer who, after spending four years in a cult, broke ties with the leader and began writing as an experiment to see how much of her past she could still remember.
PAGE 20 THE ARGONAUT AUGUST 19, 2021
