Chapter 8
I walked into the waiting room the following evening with the same sweaty palms and locked-up throat.
I was lucky. They had a last-minute cancellation on Friday at 5 p.m. I was excited to finally receive treatment, but I also dreaded the poking and prodding I’d have to endure over the next hour. I could already feel my pelvic region tensing up, like a clamshell about to be pried open.
I slipped out of work a few minutes early and arrived just in time to complete a pile of paperwork. Once I got to the form outlining my sexual history, I gulped. Even five years after fleeing my religious household, discussing my sex life still made me squirm. And they wanted to know everything .
As I filled out the form, painfully outlining that I was an involuntary virgin in desperate need of help, I peered around the waiting room at my fellow patients. I noticed two of them were pregnant, and one carried a baby about six months old on her hip. That’s when I realized the main reasons why people did pelvic physical therapy—for pregnancy and postpartum.
I shuddered, my vagina clamping down even further. I was far, far away from ever having to fathom that reality. I couldn’t even get a tampon in there, much less push out an eight-pound baby.
They’re cute, though . I smiled as the baby gazed at me with giant unblinking eyes. I waved, and he broke into a huge, toothless grin.
I finished the mound of paperwork, laying it face-down on the clipboard as I walked up to the front desk. I didn’t want my sexual history to be on display for all to see, but I knew that the medical assistants would be rifling through it anyway. The receptionist was on the phone as I handed her the clipboard, and she took it without a word, barely glancing at its contents.
Alright. I settled back into my seat. So far, so good. You can do this.
You know you still have to tell the therapist all about your sex life, right?
Ugh. Shut up.
My eyes darted around the room as I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair. I didn’t know what was worse; that I had to describe my sexual history to a doctor, or the fact that I hardly had one to begin with.
A nurse opened the door and called out a name that wasn’t mine. One of the pregnant women stood up and waddled into the treatment area.
I hugged my arms across my chest. I was surrounded by pregnant and postpartum women who clearly had no issues having sex, and eventually I would have to walk back there and admit to the therapist that I was an almost 27-year-old virgin who couldn’t even insert a tampon.
This is mortifying .
“Avery?”
I jolted as the door swung open. The nurse locked eyes with me, and I slowly rose to my feet, my ears ringing as I was led into the treatment area.
Down the hallway, the nurse led me into what looked like a typical exam room, except the “bed” was completely flat, with adjustable pieces for what I assumed were different exercises. It looked incredibly uncomfortable, and not just because it had very little padding.
At least it’s not stirrups. I gulped as I sat down on the bench-bed-thing. It made of think of the first and only time I’d ever been to a gynecologist. It was a year after leaving college, when I was twenty-three years old. I was trembling before I even made it into the exam room, and the cold, impatient doctor had no sympathy for my condition. She shoved her fingers inside me without warning, and my cries were met with a flat, “Stop screaming.”
I never went back. Which meant I’d never had a pap smear, although I doubted I had any sort of cancer. But it also meant that I’d never had my equipment checked to see if my pain was caused by a medical problem.
But after what I’d read online, I doubted it was. My pain was mental; I had a brain full of anxiety and religious trauma.
The door cracked open, and a face half-covered by a surgical mask peeked its way in.
“Hello? Ah, Avery, nice to meet you.” The therapist was a brunette woman, possibly in her late thirties, but the mask made it difficult to tell. Her demeanor was cheerful and nurturing, and as she shook my hand, I realized I liked her better than the gynecologist already.
“So…” She plopped down in a chair, flipping through a clipboard in her lap. “My name is Jane, and I will be your physical therapist. Give me some background on what’s going on.”
Ugh, where am I supposed to start?
Just saying the word sex felt painful, as if it burned on my lips, and uttering the proper names of genitalia was impossible. The doctor listened intently, with the occasional nod, as I struggled to spit out my story. As uncomfortable as I was, she was an excellent listener, and her attentive blue eyes reminded me of my mother.
“Alright, so from what I understand, you’re having difficulty with penetration,” Jane remarked, making some notes on her clipboard. “Have you ever had an actual penis inside of you, or just fingers? Toys?”
My whole body cringed at her bluntness. With my upbringing, this was going to take a long time to get used to. If I ever got used to it at all.
Thankfully, Jane sensed this, and she chuckled, “It’s okay. I know it’s tough to talk about these things with a stranger. But I’m a medical professional, and I need to know these things so I can help you. Why don’t we go back a little further? What sort of sex education did you have growing up?”
“None.” I spat out the word like it pained me.
“Ah, I see. Was it for religious reasons, or…?”
“Yes.”
I swear, this woman can read me like a book.
“Is this common?” I asked, finally mustering the courage to squeak out a question. “Women who grew up in religious households having issues with sex?”
Jane smiled and nodded. “But it’s not just religious households, or ones where there’s no sex education. A lot of young women have trouble with penetration. It sometimes stems from deeper mental conditions, like anxiety disorders. But first, I need to rule out any medical causes. Have you been to a gynecologist?”
My uncomfortable silence gave her the answer she needed .
“Now, I do want you to try and see one,” she instructed. “While there are plenty of exercises we can do to strengthen your pelvic floor, it will only do so much if there’s a medical issue.”
“What medical issues can cause this?”
“Quite a few. Pelvic inflammatory disease, endometriosis, ovarian cysts… that’s why it’s so important that you’re checked out down there. Now, today I’m just going to do an external exam, check you for any painful spots…”
“So you won’t be… inserting anything in me today?”
“I will not.”
Part of me was relieved, but the other part of me felt sick. As terrified as I was, I needed to get over this issue, and it sounded like it wasn’t something that could be fixed in a single physical therapy visit. After five years of putting this off, I had a feeling it would take months of therapy for me to even insert a finger.
Jane had me lie down on the table, and she left the room while I stripped off my underwear and hiked up the skirt of my dress. My legs trembled as they lay exposed on the table, covered by a flimsy paper sheet. The therapist wasn’t even in the room, and my thighs were already clenched like steel.
Yup. I groaned, laying my head back on the table. This is definitely going to take months.
Jane returned, sitting on a stool next to me and steadying my shaking legs with her gloved hands. Just as she’d promised, she didn’t insert anything into my vagina. Instead, she felt around the outside of my vulva and inner thighs, working on desensitization therapy for my incredibly tense muscles. Over the years, fear and anxiety had compounded my condition to the point where I was afraid of not just penetration, but of any touching below the belt.
“You did good today,” Jane remarked half an hour later, as she finished the last of her examinations. As she stood up, I could finally breathe again, and my thigh muscles ached as if I’d just run a marathon.
“This really is going to take months, isn’t it?” I sighed.
She nodded. “It’s the same for any form of physical therapy, not just pelvic. But if you keep working at it, I promise you’ll see results. Now, I’ll leave the room and let you put your underwear back on. But remember,” she said as she opened the door with a loud click, “I want you to see the gynecologist before our next session, okay?”
I smiled and nodded, pretending that nausea wasn’t rising up the back of my throat.
I got dressed, paid my co-pay at the front desk, and left the physical therapy office with mixed emotions and very sore legs. As I sat in the driver’s seat of my car, I could still feel the therapist’s fingers pressing against the strained muscles of my pelvis.
The visit wasn’t what I had expected. I knew I wouldn’t be cured in one visit, but I’d hoped she’d be able to do more for me than just poke around the outside of my vagina. It certainly wasn’t enough to prepare for my weekend with Tristan.
You’ll be more relaxed when you’re aroused, I reassured myself, although I doubted that statement. Besides, those exercises were still helpful. At least now I can be touched down there without panicking.
Even if there wasn’t a miracle cure for my condition, I was still satisfied with my visit to the physical therapist. Just being able to come to terms with my condition and seek out help was a relief. It made my sexual issues feel less like a hidden, shameful secret .
But the bad news was that the appointment made me late for TCG Night. Everyone was already paired up and several turns into their games once I arrived.
“Sorry about that.” Devin frowned sympathetically as he stood behind the counter, sorting C his nerves tense as I rolled up his sleeve. “I never realized, that your tattoo is of Cremara.”
“Uh, yeah.”
Devin pulled his arm away, quickly covering the tattoo with his sweatshirt sleeve. A cold trickle of embarrassment crept down my neck. Why did you just grab his arm like that, you weirdo? Why do you care about his tattoo?
But a single question, one that didn’t involve my awkwardness, lingered stronger than the rest .
Why even have tattoos if you’re going to cover them all the time?
In all the years I’d known Devin, he always wore a sweatshirt while working at the shop. Even in the hundred-degree summer heat of Florida, I never saw his bare arms except for the few times he rolled his sleeves up. And even then, he always seemed cautious of how he positioned them. Cassidy and I even joked about it once, mentioning that it was probably why Critical Games’ A/C was always cranked up so high.
We continued setting up our game in silence. It made me uncomfortable, because just a few seconds earlier Devin had been his usual sarcastic, teasing self. Now, as he sat silently shuffling his cards, I knew something lurked behind those multicolored eyes. My tattoo comment had set his nerves on edge.
For the next hour, as we played our game, it lingered in the back of my mind.
Even once round two began and I joined another group, I kept an eye on him. For the rest of the night, he stayed behind the counter at his computer, his face deeply focused and devoid of emotion.
And not once did he roll up his sleeves. His arms remained covered for the rest of the night.