Pain.

This is probably going to be a TMI blog entry, so if you’re squeamish you should probably stop reading.

You’ve been warned. Carry on. 🙂

I had been reading an entry on LKH’s blog earlier this week. It’s on my blog-roll somewhere to the right, so I’m not going to link to it directly. I have a love/hate thing with LKH which I’m not going to get into here, but in her blog entry she talked about not writing about what you know, but about writing on what you want to know about. I think that actually makes a lot of sense, provided you put in the research behind it – whether it’s about firearms, or how the post office works, or repairing car engines, or whatever. If you’re going to write about something, you’d better be able to back up what you say. Eventually people are going to call you on it.

When it comes to writing about sex, I have a bit of an issue. Not because I have any direct issues on *writing* sex, but because for a number of medical reasons, I can *only* write what I know. And it’s not much. I suffer from Interstitial Cystitis – which essentially means I have agonizing flare ups of constant bladder pain, the urge to pee 24 hours a day, bladder spasms and pissing blood. It’s all very exciting. Not really. It sucks. I’ve had it for nearly 10 years now, and I’m in a hazy form of remission – for the most part, if I watch what I eat/drink, I can keep it tolerable. If I don’t, then I pay the price.

I also have Vulvar vestibulitis – which has gone through several name changes, I think. Atrophic vestibulodynia is what they call it now. In either case, it translates into extremely painful sex. Imagine having sex with someone and they’re wearing a condom made of sandpaper. That’s about the best way that I can describe it. Now, I have a somewhat milder case than others. Some people can’t walk or sit because of it. Some people can’t work. I just can’t have sex very often. Although, sometimes, like today, sitting is painful. It’s tolerable, but my crotch is burning as I write this. I have tried numerous things and been to hordes of doctors, but I’ve had this condition since I was about 19 and it’s never really gone away. What does it mean? It means I’m so sensitive in the vulvar region that even the light brush of a q-tip causes a really horrid burning situation. Can you imagine what sex feels like?

Once you get past the hymnal ring it actually gets better, so if done correctly I can actually manage a decent enough time. 😉 But condoms hurt, fingers hurt, tongues hurt. All of it hurts. And it never really stops hurting. My uterus is tipped also – which doesn’t mean anything directly, but it does make penetration interesting and somewhat painful depending on the angle. Some people are into pain, but I’m not really wired for that. And besides, I think what appeals to people who like pain in their sex is the fact that, eventually, it stops hurting. They get to choose how much or how little. I get pain whether I want it or not and there’s nothing sexy about that, at all.

Now, why am I telling you this? It doesn’t really have any bearing on anything, but I’ve come to realize that when I am trying to write up a smuttier sex scene, I really have no way of actually knowing. Even simpler things – sex against the wall, or the shower or in a chair – all are out of my reach. Reverse cowgirl? Doggie style? Congress of the Cow? *snerk* Don’t make me laugh. It won’t happen. I can’t tolerate anything except missionary. I find it rather depressing on the whole, but I’ve come to at least accept it somewhat (it’s been nearly 15 years, after all). But it does make it hard to do “research” in the name of writing. I don’t know where that leaves me in the “write what you know” game – or even the “write what you *want* to know” game, for that matter. As much as I might want to know (and God, how I *want* to know), I cannot do it without the trade off of sitting on a bag of ice cubes for hours afterwards. So tell me – is it worth it?