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works. it will never work.

and I try so hard not to get frustrated, but I can't avoid the knowledge that I am fucked up, I must be broken. I mean, any normal woman would have come by now. so what do I do? I don't know what I need. do I back off and focus on him? that's what I end up doing, because I can't face asking for a little more attention in bed anymore. what's the point? he'll just resent me when it doesn't work again. so I back off. and I can't help resenting him, just a little, for not noticing how much I'm hurting. and not trying, even if I am broken, and I will never ever come.

***

I. Vaginal Pain

When I wrote the above, I was actually pretty close to figuring out how to have an orgasm. But I didn't know that. I'd dealt with the anxiety of being unable to come for so long -- and I'd also recently begun to understand that my sexuality is oriented towards S&M -- and so anguish just flooded out of me, into those words. I craved S&M, but acknowledging the craving made me feel like a "pervert," a "freak." It contributed to my already-overwhelming fear that I was "broken" because I couldn't figure out how to come.

There's one thing I didn't mention when I poured out all that fear and shame: I experience rare vaginal pain -- not every time I have sex, not even most times, but occasionally. Medical science has traditionally failed to care about how women experience our sexuality, so very little research has been done on the subject. As a result, it's impossible to say why I get that pain. Is it some kind of physical problem? That seems likely, because my psychological comfort level with a sexual encounter doesn't seem to correlate with whether the pain happens or not. But because female sexuality is often stereotyped as too mysterious and emotional to be worth rigorous medical investigation, I doubt I'll ever know for sure.

For a while I was sure I was allergic to semen, because I read a magazine feature by a woman who said she was. Aha, I thought. I stopped taking hormonal birth control pills. I made my trusted monogamous boyfriends use condoms. The pain became less common. Yet throughout that time -- continuing through today -- I still get the pain occasionally, very occasionally. Sometimes I even feel the pain during encounters that lack vaginal penetration, so it's clearly not about having a penis in me.

I can push through the pain; I can even have an orgasm, a reflex that feels good yet is surrounded by not-good; but I can't get rid of the pain entirely. Whenever I think I'll never feel it again, it sneaks into some sexual encounter.

The semen allergy theory has been ruled out, since I get the pain without semen contact. That doesn't mean that hormonal birth control didn't have an effect, though -- the pain was definitely worse while I was taking it. The Pill intersects with sexuality in ways we still don't understand; one common side effect is that it reduces sex drive. Perhaps the Pill affected my sexuality in some physical-medical way, worsening the pain problem.

The long and the short of it is that I experience some vaginal pain; the pain is confusing

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