works. it will never work. and I try so hard not to get frustrated, but I can't avoid the knowledge that I am fucked up, I must be broken. I mean, any normal woman would have come by now. so what do I do? I don't know what I need. do I back off and focus on him? that's what I end up doing, because I can't face asking for a little more attention in bed anymore. what's the point? he'll just resent me when it doesn't work again. so I back off. and I can't help resenting him, just a little, for not noticing how much I'm hurting. and not trying, even if I am broken, and I will never ever come. ok I. Vaginal Pain When I wrote the above, I was actually pretty close to figuring out how to have an orgasm. But I didn't know that. I'd dealt with the anxiety of being unable to come for so long -- and I'd also recently begun to understand that my sexuality is oriented towards S&M -- and so anguish just flooded out of me, into those words. I craved S&M, but acknowledging the craving made me feel like a "pervert," a "freak." It contributed to my already-overwhelming fear that I was "broken" because I couldn't figure out how to come. There's one thing I didn't mention when I poured out all that fear and shame: I experience rare vaginal pain -- not every time I have sex, not even most times, but occasionally. Medical science has traditionally failed to care about how women experience our sexuality, so very little research has been done on the subject. As a result, it's impossible to say why I get that pain. Is it some kind of physical problem? That seems likely, because my psychological comfort level with a sexual encounter doesn't seem to correlate with whether the pain happens or not. But because female sexuality is often stereotyped as too mysterious and emotional to be worth rigorous medical investigation, I doubt I'll ever know for sure. For a while I was sure I was allergic to semen, because I read a magazine feature by a woman who said she was. Aha, I thought. I stopped t