John Irving - Until I Find You

“What don’t I get?” he asked.

“It’s not the novel you don’t get—it’s me !” she cried. “ I’m too small, Jack,” Emma said softly. “Even not-very-big guys hurt me.”

Jack was completely surprised. Emma was such a big girl, such a strong young woman, and she was always battling her weight; she was much taller and heavier than Jack. How was it possible that she was too small? “Have you seen a doctor?” he asked.

“A gynecologist—yes, several. They say I’m not too small. It’s all in my mind, apparently.”

“The pain is in your mind?” he asked her.

“No, that’s not where the pain is,” she said.

Emma’s condition had an uncomfortable-sounding name. Vaginismus, Emma explained, was a conditioned response; often a spasm of the perineal muscles occurred if there was any stimulation of the area. In some women, even the anticipation of vaginal insertion could result in muscle spasm.

“You want to avoid penetration?” Jack asked Emma.

“It’s involuntary, honey pie. I can’t help it—it’s chronic.”

“There’s no treatment?”

Emma laughed. She’d tried hypnosis—an attempt to retrain the muscles to relax instead of involuntarily contracting. But even the psychiatrist had forewarned her that this worked with only a small percentage of sufferers, and it hadn’t worked with Emma.

On the advice of a Toronto gynecologist, Emma had experimented with a treatment known as systematic desensitization—or the Q-tip method, as her Los Angeles gynecologist disparagingly called it. By inserting something as narrow as a Q-tip—and when this was accomplished, progressively inserting slightly larger objects—

“Stop,” Jack told her; he didn’t want to know all the treatments she’d tried. “Has anything worked ?” he asked Emma.

The only thing that worked (and this didn’t work every time) was the absolute cooperation of a partner. “I have to be on top, baby cakes, and the guy can’t move at all. If he makes even one move, I get a spasm.” Emma had to be in complete control. All the moves were her moves; only that worked. It went without saying that such a willing partner was hard to find.

Jack was thinking many things, most of them unutterable. How Emma’s attraction to bodybuilders wasn’t the best idea; how her longstanding interest in boys much younger than herself made more sense. And he remembered how adamant Emma was about not having children. No doubt the vaginismus was a reason—a more compelling one than fearing she’d be a bad mother, or like her mother.

It would have been insensitive to ask her if she’d inquired about a surgical solution to her problem. Emma felt squeamish in a doctor’s office; she dreaded everything medical, most of all surgery. Besides, it didn’t sound as if there was a surgical solution to vaginismus—not if it was all in her mind.

Jack didn’t have the heart to tell Emma that she should consider revising The Slush-Pile Reader. He thought that the vaginismus would make a better story than all the small-schlong, big-schlong business—not to mention the unlikelihood of the Michele Maher character having a vagina that was too small. But he understood that Emma’s fiction was a purer choice—a fable of acceptance, and as close as Emma could allow herself to approach her problem. A life in the top position; a lifetime looking for the unmoving partner. It seemed too cruel. Or would this method eventually train her perineal muscles to relax?

“What causes vaginismus?” Jack asked, but Emma might not have heard him, or she was distracted. Maybe she didn’t know what caused it—maybe nothing did—or else she didn’t want to discuss it further.

They took off their clothes and went to bed. Emma held his penis. Jack got very hard—unusually hard, it seemed to him—but all Emma said was, “You’re not really all that small, Jack. Small ish, I would say. If I were you, honey pie, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Emma didn’t exactly say she’d seen smaller—he’d only heard her say she’d seen bigger— but Jack didn’t press her. It was enough that she held his penis. He was awfully fond of the way she held it.

“We should move,” Emma said sleepily.

“Maybe roommates aren’t the best readers,” Jack ventured to say, touching her breasts.

“I didn’t mean we should stop living together, Jack. I meant I’m sick of Venice.”

That struck Jack as too bad, but he didn’t say anything. He would miss Venice—even l’eau de Dumpster from Hama Sushi. He had grown fond of World Gym, and—despite Emma’s bad experience—he occasionally went to Gold’s, though Jack Burns was no bodybuilder; in both gyms, when he wanted to use the free weights, he did his lifting at the women’s end of the weight room.

“You’re going to be a strong boy, Jack—not very big, but strong,” Leslie Oastler had told him.

“Do you think so?” he’d asked her.

“I know so,” Mrs. Oastler had said. “I can tell.”

Jack lay there remembering that, with his small ish penis as hard as a diamond in Emma’s big, strong hand. Jack had small hands, like his mother. He lay there thinking how strange it was that he hadn’t thought of his mom in months. Maybe Jack didn’t like to think of her because he believed he more and more reminded her of his father; and while it wasn’t his physical resemblance to his dad that bothered Jack, surely any resemblance he bore to William would have been upsetting to Alice. Jack just got the feeling that his mother didn’t like him.

Jack was also wondering where he and Emma might move. He’d once mentioned the Palisades to Emma. It was like a village; you could walk everywhere. But Emma said the Palisades was “swarming with children”—it was, in her view, “a place where formerly sane people went to breed. ” Jack guessed that they wouldn’t be moving there.

Clearly Beverly Hills was too expensive for them; besides, it was too far away from the beach. Emma said she liked to see the ocean every day—not that she ever set foot on the beach. Malibu maybe, Jack was thinking, or Santa Monica. But given Emma’s revelation that sex hurt her—quite possibly, it hurt her most of the time—it would have been insensitive of Jack to pursue a conversation about where they might move. Save it for another time, he thought.

“Say it in Latin for me,” he said to Emma.

She knew what he meant—it was the epigraph she’d set at the beginning of her novel. She went around saying it like a litany, but until now Jack had not realized she meant them.

“ Nihil facimus sed id bene facimus, ” Emma whispered, holding his penis like no one before or since.

“We do nothing but we do it well,” Jack said in English, holding her breasts.

It was the fall of 1988. Rain Man would be the year’s top-grossing film and would clean up at the Academy Awards. Jack’s favorite film that year was A Fish Called Wanda. He would have killed to have had Kevin Kline’s part, for which Kline would win an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Jack Burns was twenty-three. Emma Oastler was thirty. Boy, were their lives about to change!

Jack met Myra Ascheim at a breakfast place on Montana, shortly after he and Emma had moved to a rental in Santa Monica. Emma, who bought all Jack’s clothes, dressed him for his meeting. A coffee-colored, long-sleeved shirt—untucked, with the top two buttons unbuttoned—medium-tan chinos, and the dark-brown loafers he wore as a waiter. His hair was a little long, with more gel in it than usual, and he hadn’t shaved for two days—all of which was entirely Emma’s decision. She said he was “almost feminine” when he was clean-shaven, but three days’ growth made him “too Toshiro Mifune.” The shirt was linen. Emma liked the wrinkles.