Prophylactics

I am impatiently waiting for my period to start.

Those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning are entitled to chuckle at that. In those early days, I was on a permanent period. Then, I would have quite happily given up the damned things for good, in full knowledge that I had undergone more than my fair share.

Now, I am waiting with some excitement, because it will mean I can start the process of harvesting and storing my eggs for a rainy day (mine or someone else’s). It’s taking a long time. I keep experiencing the kind of bodily insinuations that a period might be on its way, but so far, no luck.

This means that we’re having to use condoms in the meantime. I don’t think I’ve ever fully shared with you just how much I dislike condoms. I’m allergic to the vast majority of them (when I first started having sex, it took me months to work out that you weren’t supposed to swell up for a few days afterwards), and the rest of them irritate me beyond all measure.

I’m incompetent at putting them on. I hate the smell. I hate the sensation. I hate changing position and worrying if they’re still in place. Most of all, I think they seriously reduce sensitivity for me. I know that’s the wrong way round, and that it shouldn’t make any difference, but in all honesty, I find orgasm an arduous process with a condom. Herbert, it seems, is perfectly happy in them; but I’m significantly less juicy.

Maybe it’s because it all seems like a bit of a pantomime. Left to my own devices I don’t ovulate, so the condoms are just belt-and-braces, a prophylactic against my own sense of bodily disappointment rather than any risk of pregnancy. It’s fun to pretend that we might need them, that without them there’s a possibilty. It’s hollow, really, an empty threat.

As hollow as the pregnancy test I took last week, thinking maybe, just maybe, my period was late for a reason.