Vagina monologue

Last night - I'm sorry, but I really feel this has to be chronicled somewhere - we were in the shower, our hands covered in blood, fishing around in your vagina for your tampon, which we thought had somehow got sucked too far inside and lost. I thought I'd identified it, this mass I could circle with my finger, but it resisted all attempts to gently pull it away from your vaginal wall. In retrospect it was a damn irresponsible thing of me to suggest we sterilize some salad tongs and make a go of it, especially since we still don't know what it was exactly we found in there that wasn't your tampon, and our best guess is your womb. From now on I promise to refer all such matters to a licensed OBGYN.

After that, needless to say, neither of us were feeling very romantic or sexy, so we called off the sex we'd planned as a climax (ha) to our day together. I don't think either of us minded, except that we both felt this vague sense of guilt and worry we get whenever we go a while without sex; we're both scared of slipping into the habit of a sexless marriage or something close to it.

Of course, we weren't really feeling like sex before our crisis either, were we? I felt like hell and you didn't know what to do about it. More than that, your period meant you weren't too emotionally stable. I said at the time it was a powder keg of a situation.

I also said, in the shower when we were holding each other after we were finally convinced there wasn't in fact any tampon inside of you, that I was also sure there was something better I could have done to defuse it. You'd think that something would be easy to identify since the problem was I wasn't doing anything at all, only lying there and wishing I could go to sleep. Acutely aware of your expectations as I was then, I couldn't bring myself to either meet or dismiss them.

I'd like to write that I'm tempted (but I'm not - you understand?) to write "We woke up early and bone-tired, spent the entire day together, and I ran out of energy for you a few hours short. You wanted more, but I didn't have it for you. I was done." That sounds like a cop-out. Surely I could have plowed on.

But plowing on through conversations with customers, Reese, etc. is easy to do. In Reese's case you just make the assorted noises that allows him to continue what is basically an extended monologue. In the case of customers, they are asking the questions, driving the entire conversation, and you are answering. In the case of strangers, it's a matter of jabbering, niceties, ritual language. It's a very different thing from the demand to "talk to me, about anything."

To say nothing of "Make love to me." The last time we did, I had some trouble keeping my erection as hard for the entirety of the session, as you yourself noticed. It was unlikely this night was going to go any better, me feeling as I did, so I was definitely not looking forward to it.

There are ways to force yourself, of course. Fantasizing in your head.

What's funny is when I'm trying to do this as we have sex and then you say, "Talk (dirty) to me."

Anyway, I still don't know what I should have done. Maybe just have taken that nap before we we went to lunch and the library.

Safety in writing

Testing, testing, one, two, three.

You told me last night you think of my writing as my second job. It was one of many times I've wondered at how you sometimes seem to accord more respect and confidence to my dream than I do.

This book on writer's block you picked up for me at the library continually drives home a need to feel "safe" in writing - obviously not from physical harm, though I'm fairly sure that's a requirement, but safe from judgment, either by others or one's self.

Writing this blog to you feels safe, in part because it's only for me at the moment - I won't tell you about it yet, not until your birthday I'm thinking, and then you'll hopefully have a sizable backlog of posts to read and I'll have insured I can keep it up - and in part because it's electronic. When writing on paper I dicker over how I will phrase this or over that word choice. I think you can tell as much by reading the journals I've physically penned. To me, at least, they betray a certain self-consciousness, a hindering awareness that someone else will eventually read this (and it's interesting I assumed that, looking ahead to a future a few years out or even after my death and concerning myself with the question). But maybe I just think so because I know that's how I was feeling when I wrote them.

The time when I felt the least safe writing came during what we grinningly refer to as our "pre-courtship courtship". I wanted to write a short note to you and leave it in your mailbox, so I whipped out my pen and paper as I sat down to breakfast. The note was really a piddling little thing, only a few lines long; just a bit of wittiness to go with whatever object I was meant to be returning to you.

Three hours later I'd dumped what seemed like half my notebook's pages into a nearby garbage bin, all with a few line written upon them and all crumpled up, and I'd missed all of my morning classes. Lunch was being served.

I realized that something was very wrong with me then, but I didn't know whether to blame it on a psychological compulsion or, because at the time I was at the apex of my commitment to Jesus, on demonic attack. I got up from the table without finishing your note and in succession visited George Thomason, Mitch [whatever his name was], and without quite meaning to Melanie Sumner. George was saddened and sympathetic, Mitch prayed for me but basically seemed concerned with other matters, and Melanie told me writers are often crazy - which actually helped a little.

Hm. This whole room just started vibrating. Kinda strange. I think I'll hit PUBLISH POST now before the whole building collapses, so you have a final message from beyond the grave to read.

I need to get back to writing the story anyway. I am, after all, at work.

I love you!