I'd been babysitting for Gwen and Ron. They have twins, age five, and they're a real handful at times. It's no wonder that their parents need the occasional break. Accordingly, I came in and Gwen and Ron fled the scene with loud cries of joy, leaving me to wrestle with the little fiends.
I fed them and bathed them and did my best to run them ragged before tucking them into bed, whereupon they promptly fell asleep, leaving me to watch TV and mope until their parents returned home. I have to admit I was still moping when Gwen and Ron did return.
Gwen and I settled down in the kitchen for some coffee and a chat while Ron wandered off to play with the computer. Gwen told me about their night out and I tried to be enthusiastic and pleased for her but I was still feeling down. Gwen caught onto that fact pretty quickly and finally taxed me with it.
"You appear to have some sort of problem," she suggested. "You look as though you lost a twenty and found a dime. Want to talk about it?"
As a matter of fact I did want to talk about it, but it wasn't the sort of discussion I wanted to have with my mother or friends. Gwen on the other hand. . .
"Um, yes, kind of," I admitted. "It's about my boyfriend. . ."
My voice trailed off, not quite knowing what to say.
"Let me guess. He wants to have sex and you don't?"
"Something like that," I agreed. "He's been leaning on me pretty heavily lately, wanting to take our relationship to the next level."
"And you don't want to?"
"Not exactly. It's a little trickier than that."
Gwen gave me a 'tell me more' look, waiting patiently to see if I wanted to. I chewed on my lip, trying to think how to phrase it.
"Ah, it's not that I don't want to. I think I'm ready to move our relationship along but. . . I'm scared," I blurted out with a rush.
"You're still a virgin?" asked Gwen, sounding slightly surprised.
"Um, no, and that's part of the problem."
"He expects you to be a virgin? A bit chauvinistic of him," Gwen opined.
"No, it's not that. I'm just scared of having sex with him."
"Ahh. A nasty experience?"
I nodded miserably and explained.
"My last boyfriend seduced me, but I was willing to be seduced," I told her. "The trouble is that the first time hurt me quite a bit."
"That's unfortunate, but that only occurs the first time. After that, things should be fine," Gwen assured me.
"Should be, are the operative words. It seems that hurting me that first time really excited my boyfriend. Enough that he wanted to make sure he hurt me in subsequent encounters, and he did. After a few times I'd had enough and I dumped him but he didn't want to be dumped. I had to take out a restraining order before he got the message."
"There are," Gwen stated very firmly, "some real assholes out there. You were unfortunate enough to run into one of them. But you do know that not everyone is like that?"
"I know, I know," I said miserably. "Still, it's left me rather nervous where sex is concerned. So it's a case of I want to but I don't want to because I'm scared."
"I'm not sure what to say in this sort of situation," admitted Gwen. "You really need to experience some sex that isn't painful. Maybe that would relax you and you could look at your relationship with your current boyfriend from a different point of view."
"It's what they call a Catch-22 situation. I'm not willing to have sex because I'm scared of what the man might do, but I need the man to do it to show me I don't need to be scared."
Gwen smiled at that observation.
"Maybe you should hire a professional escort and order him to have sex with you. He'd have to please you if he wanted to get paid," she said, in what I hoped was a tongue in cheek manner.
"Oh, yeah. I can just see me trolling through the internet trying to find a male escort." I shuddered delicately.