Pushing Past

He is there – on his knees, his face buried in my pussy – at my request.

“Come here and give me an orgasm,” I’d said, and that is exactly what he is doing.

And what he is doing – lapping at my clit, curling his tongue in on itself to slide inside my opening, unfurling it again on the upstroke – is what he knows, from long practice, works.

Except, right now, it isn’t working.

What usually feels like teasingly sensuous soft flutters of his tongue, now feels like tortuous sandpaper scratches.  While normally his ministrations would pull forth sighs of pleasure from deep in my chest, they now elicit a tensed-throat groan of discomfort.

What used to be an activity that guaranteed me an orgasm – his oral ministrations have always been one of my favorite things about our sex life – has become anything but a sure thing.

Closing my eyes against the bombardment of thoughts distracting me – Given the severity of your PCOS, said my OB/GYN at my last visit, it is going to be really difficult to tell where those symptoms end and menopause begins – I touch his shoulder.  “It’s…” I begin.

What can I even say?

I know I asked you to give me an orgasm, and I know that’s what you’re trying to do, but…

I realize you’re not doing anything different than normal, but right now I feel like my vagina is being attacked by a porcupine.

It’s not you, it’s me.

I’m broken.

I take a deep breath, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat.  “I think we need to try something else,” I say.

And, because he is a gem of a man, he looks at my face, kisses me gently on the inner thigh, and nods.  “Okay.”

I can feel the tears springing to my eyes but I bat them back and smile at him through damp lashes.  Okay, I think.  Okay.  I can do this.

It is an alien feeling, being simultaneously present in one’s body and completely absent from it.  It is an unwelcome dissociation, one that makes me feel like a stranger in my own bed.

I want an orgasm.

I need one.

Not in an oh-my-God-he’s-got-me-so-HOT-I-need-an-orgasm kind of way, but rather, I need an orgasm in the way I sometimes *need* to eat.  With food, it boils down to blood sugar:  To relieving hunger pangs, to bringing back mental focus, to ridding myself of a headache, to turning irritability into good humor.

Ditto, orgasms.  Sometimes I just *need* one.  To take away the jumpiness, to lower the high pressure buzz in my body, to relax, to refocus, to unwind.

And he understands that.

He has always understood that.

And he doesn’t take it personally that it is, at times, for me, an internal demand.  A physical need, as opposed to one born of specified desire.  He likes giving me orgasms.  Whether it’s to release a pressure valve or to luxuriate in mutual pleasure or anything in between.   He enjoys giving me an orgasm – every time; period – whether he gets to have one or not.

I appreciate his joyful acceptance of my needs more than he will ever know.

With this front-of-mind, I smile down at his simply-nodded “Okay” and together we change positions.

He places a towel down and pulls out my toys, arranges my legs so that he can lay comfortably between them, and concentrates on making me cum, working my glass against my g-spot in slow thrusting twists while I buzz my vibrator over my clit.

My muscled walls clamp tight against the invasion, not to hold the smooth hardness of the glass inside me but to push it out.

I tell him what’s happening.  He ceases movement for a moment, and I can see him mentally working over what to do.  He nods once, as though to physically demonstrate agreement with his mental conclusion, then adds a substantial amount of lube to the shaft of the glass and continues his previous movements with infinitesimal deliberation.

There are more moments like this – moments where something is not quite right for me and he adjusts accordingly – and with each one, I have the feeling of having successfully eliminated an obstacle.  Each time, the critical distracting chatter in my mind – What is happening to me?  Why is my body so uncooperative?  Is this what it’s going to be like in the years to come?  Why are my responses so unnatural?  When is this opposition between my brain and my body going to end? – eases to a quieter level, until it is no longer a deafening roar but eventually a low murmur and, finally, a whisper muted into silence.

It is in that silence that, at last, I feel wholly in my body once again.  It is in that stillness, having pushed past the conflicting agendas of psyche and skin, that I feel once again anchored in my Self.

Having pushed past the doubt, I feel with confidence the tightening ball of lightning sparking in my belly.  Having pushed past the tension, I relax into the trembling pleasure twitching against the muscles in my thighs.  And there in my clit – finally, FINALLY – I feel both sensations coalesce in the tell-tale tickle-pain that will lead me along the edge of the cliff that drops into orgasm…

…if, with his help, I can just.push.past.