Contact Admin. But I was actually living with a rare and confounding condition that made sex impossible. The victim is a virgin. We tried dozens of times to have sex, but I was impenetrable.
Romantic, lusty, playful, slow: Neither setting nor method seemed to make a dent. I wondered if my conservative Hindu upbringing could have made me fearful of intimacy. I was curious about sex, but my own body seemed to be vehemently against it. We began to find ways to avoid each other. In public, I played the role of a gregarious and impassioned feminist artist, just starting my art career. At home, my body rejected what my heart desired. Whenever I tried, it would be fine for the first centimeter, and then my body would shut down and squeeze tight.
At last, I had a name for what was happening. For example, some women experience vaginismus after childbirth. Unfortunately, the diagnosis arrived too late to save our marriage. Finalizing the end should have been straightforward: We would have qualified for an annulment, but the label terrified me.
To have an annulment would be admitting I was a sexual failure. I was oddly thrilled when the divorce papers were signed: I could keep my secret. I emerged into the post-divorce-apocalypse of New York City a twenty-seven-year-old neophyte who had never been on a first date.
When I did, I met an Italian epicure. He was romantically inexperienced; I was physically inexperienced. He surprised me by baking chocolate lava cakes while I was washing my hair in the shower. Wounds from the harsh words and humiliations of my marriage were fresh, so I sought solace in kindness and those fudgy pastries. My heart and waistline grew. Yet progress on the sexual front was still slow.
