Unidentified Storyteller (7:21)
I'm 17 years old and my parents are out of town, so naturally I am butt ass naked in their king sized bed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I'm watching my boyfriend roll a condom onto his dick for the first time. Sam looks like exactly what you would picture the cool guy in his the gathering group to look like. And he and I have been dating for over a year and we've been the whole time really, like, will they or won't they about sex? Because I'm terrified, Because that seems like a really adult thing to do. And I have not yet felt like any sort of adult, but I cannot keep my hands off of him. And I'm just really curious, like, I want to do this. I want to see what it's like to do all of this. So he starts to enter me and I feel this really big thing of pain and I think like, oh, hymen. Interesting. But it doesn't stop and it gets bigger and it feels like he's just slid a knife in between my legs or like I'm a wishbone and he's torn me in half. So. And I look at his face and he's like, kind of frustrated, it looks like, because it's not going in. And I, like, try, and I'm like, gritting my teeth and I can do this, but my eyes start welling up and I push him off of me and I curl up in a ball. And when he asks me what's wrong, I tell him I really thought I could do this, but that hurt way more than I thought it would. And I look at him and he looks so disappointed. And I could tell he's thinking, what is wrong with her? And I am also thinking, what is wrong with her? A couple months later, I go to the doctor, and Dr. Gold comes in the room, and she's running through her little checklist of, anything else bothering you. Depression, anxiety, pain during sex. And she says that. And all the breath goes out of my body and I ask her to repeat it. And she leads me back to the table and puts me back in the stirrups and does a little poking. And she tells me that I have vaginismus. And she tells me that vaginismus, which is a super hot word, is it's basically an intruder alarm in my vagina, that whenever any contact comes at it, the muscle spasms and it basically closes and it hurts. It doesn't feel like a muscle spasm. It feels like a stabbing, but that's what it is. And when she tells me this, everything just goes dark and quiet. I feel like she just gave me a cancer diagnosis for my vagina and my sex life. And I'm just thinking, you know, I'm 17 years old and who's going to want to have sex with me now? So I tell her this, and she's like, no, it's totally fine. All you have to do is have an orgasm first, and that loosens up the muscles, and it should be totally fine. By the way. This is not true. It's medically bullshit. But she tells me this, and I'm like, okay. And I go, I leave and I tell the boyfriend, but I'm so, like, scared, and I feel so guilty when I tell him because I feel like I'm telling him, I'm sorry you have to put up with this malfunctioning burden thing. I'm sorry I've given you extra homework to do, and we try it and it doesn't work, and it's just as painful, and it just is impossible. And he and I kind of fizzle out after that, but I think that I've done something wrong. Like, I didn't follow the instructions right, so I'm too embarrassed to go back to the doctor. So I just, like, obsessively start Googling this thing you do. And one thing I learned is that for most people, or like half the people with vaginismus, it can be caused by sexual trauma. So at this point, I'm in college and so I make an appointment with a therapist in downtown Boston to get checked out under the hood. And the second I walk in this room, I know I've made a huge mistake. She just looks like everybody's mean English teacher in a burgundy pantsuit. And when I tell her that I think I might like men and women, she looks at me and she's like. So I guess I don't understand why this vaginismus thing is so important to you. Like, if you can just choose to like women, what does it matter if you can't be with men? And I know in my head that that's wrong, but I just paid her a lot of money for this opinion. And she has diplomas on the wall and she has way more experience than I do. And so I apologize for wasting her time and I leave and I don't come out to anyone else for two years. But I did learn from this therapist that I do not in fact have sexual trauma, which I should have figured out already. So the next thing I try is something called pelvic floor physical therapy, where if you are me, it means going to an office building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a 50 year old woman with a bob and a baby voice uses a variety of techniques including dilators, AKA prescription dodos to fix you. So I'm like looking everywhere in the room but at her face and she snaps on this latex glove and I'm on the table and she imagine like if you're looking, if you're looking at a genital and like this. And she would like, it's a clock. So she would push on the muscles at 5 o' clock and 6 o' clock and 7 o' clock and hold on them until they calm down. And we do this over a number of sessions. And she's super sweet and patient, she's really gentle. But every time I leave her office and I get on the train and I cry the entire way back to campus. So this is my life. This is my entire life. In college I kind of stopped dating and I don't hook up with people. And I just figure like, this is not the body. I'm going to shop to other people. But in my senior year, I meet Emily. And Emily is a redhead and she's a sculptor and she's tall and she's skinny and she's a sophomore, but she went to Catholic school, so she's been queer way longer than I have. And the first time I kiss Her, I feel drunk and she tells me she wants me to fuck her with a strap on. And I race her to Good Vibrations and we pick out a kit and we set a date for that weekend in her dorm room. And we're like, the time comes and we're making out and we're laughing and it's fun and I'm getting all dressed up, but I get on top of her and all of a sudden I freeze. And she asks me what's wrong? And I was like, I am just really scared I'm gonna hurt you. And she like smiles at me and she grabs me around the hips and pulls me into her and it's so wonderful. I don't come, but she does. And when I watch her come, I feel like I've had 10 orgasms. It's so good. And then I graduate. And after graduation, I meet Luke, AKA Luke Skywalker, because he looks exactly like Luke Skywalker if he were a musician and sexually competent. So Luke is, he's in a band on tour, he's a drummer. And he's crashing at my friend Megan's house and Megan sees the two of us flirting together and she goes to get tacos at 2:30 in the morning in Rhode Island. And like in 12 seconds he and I are all over each other and we're making out and hands. And we're like running through the house and tearing off our clothes. And eventually I have him upstairs on a futon and I'm straddling him and I just rip the band aid off. And I tell him, just so you know, I don't do penetration. And I'm thinking like, so this was a fun night and this night is now over. But he just looks at me and he's like, yeah, cool, okay. And he kisses me and it's. I probably get like 45 minutes sleep that night. We have to set three alarms in the morning to make sure we wake up. And yeah, I leave with the biggest fucking smile on my face. But strictly speaking, I don't think this was what we'd call a successful one night stand. Because two years later, Luke is standing in the snow outside of my apartment in Montreal and he's just got off a 12 hour Greyhound bus from Boston to come see me. And I look at this like, shivering, tired boy. I'm like, I want to fuck it. So I, I take him upstairs to my tiny Canadian bedroom and I like, we get naked and we're on the bed and I show him how to do that like, vagina clock fingering Thing like the therapist, the physical therapist did. And it's such this weird feeling to feel so turned on and so scared. Scared and so excited and, like, in pain and all this stuff at the same time. But eventually my body starts to calm down and we decide it's time. And he, like, starts to inch into me. And it's like 1 inch and 2 inches. And I'm, like, pulling him closer to me with one hand. I'm pushing him away with the other because I want this so badly. And this is as close as I've ever come. But also it hurts. It hurts so much, but it's not actually unbearable. And eventually he's all in me and then he's fucking me. And I'm rubbing my clit because I want to have a good time. And it's warm and it's close and it's complicated. And, like, way before I know it, I'm coming. And then maybe two seconds later, I am balling my fucking eyes out. Like, completely out of surprise. And probably the ugliest crying ever. Like, I'm red and I'm gasping and there's, like, snot everywhere, and he's three inches from my face. I tell him, like, please don't move. This hurts so much. And he's like, I'm not gonna move. And he just holds me and he stays inside me. He hasn't come yet for, like, 45 minutes. And I just, like, need to tell him all of these crazy, mixed up thoughts that I'm having in my head right now because I'm feeling everything. But I'm also crying really hard. So it's like that crazy crying, hiccuping, crying, hiccuping thing, talking, whatever. And I'm telling him about how relieved I am because I really never thought this would be a thing that would happen in my life. And so I'm, like, happy because I did it. But also I'm grieving because seven years ago there was this girl on a bed who somehow got it in her head that sex was everything that made me valuable. And I couldn't do sex. So by definition, I had no value. And I'm also scared because I know that sex changes you. And I wasn't sure that I was ready to change. Like, do I have to be straight now? If that therapist was right when she said that the only reason I like women is because I'm afraid of rejection from men, then, like, is that it? And just because I can do this penetration thing, like, do I have to? Eventually, Luke goes back to Boston and He and I go back to our normal relationship, which is a lot of, like, sexting and sending slutty Tumblr photos to each other and falling asleep together on Google Hangouts. And it's great and it's totally normal, but I think maybe when I go visit him in Boston, like, that's where I'm going to feel that it's different. But I'm there for like a week. I have maybe 30 orgasms, and nobody has mentioned penetration at all. And I'm really confused. This doesn't make any sense to me, so. And it's not until I'm in a bar and there's this drunk dude that I get in a fight with about whether or not lesbian sex counts as sex. When I have this, like, epiphany that I have this epiphany that the reason sex didn't change me is because I'm 24 years old and I have no fucking clue what sex is. I'm pretty sure it was sex when I was 15 years old and my boyfriend fingered me in a cemetery. And I know that what I did with Emily was sex. And I know what I did with the girls after her was sex. And I am pretty sure I know it's sex. The time that I once masturbated to 54 orgasms, like, kind of by accident, a different story. So I know that there's something wrong with my body, but also, is it wrong if it's working for me? So I still don't actually know what's up with my body. It's changing a lot and all the time. But a couple months ago, I'm sitting in a Kaiser facility in San Francisco and this pelvic pain specialist comes in and she looks at my chart and she tells me. She's like, I can fix you. There's this treatment for vaginismus, which is basically 12 Botox shots into your vagina. And that makes the muscles relax. It's like a 12 week treatment, and then it's done forever for a lot of people. But there are some side effects. You know, it's surgery and there's anesthesia and it's going to hurt after. And not to mention the urinary incontinence. And I look at her and, like, I look at her and I tell her, you know what? No, thank you. It's my body. Thank you, y'. All. I'm not done yet. I tell her, no, thank you. Because my body and my sex life are actually perfect, just like they are right now.
