6 Things You Learn When Your Penis / Vagina Doesn't Work

Chloe certainly hadn't. Because countless young adult novels and impatient dudes have told them so, many women think sex is supposed to hurt at first. Chloe was no different -- or so she thought. Even after multiple experiences were thoroughly un-awesome, she chalked it up to her sexual inexperience. Maybe this was simply what sex was like for women -- could 40,000 hack standup comedians be wrong? "It wasn't until after a couple of partners that I realized it was a problem," Chloe says. "So I did the thing you're not supposed to do and I went on WebMD, and all the symptoms matched up."

Then she did the thing you are supposed to do and went to her local sexual health clinic, where she was properly diagnosed. Don't mess with your babymakers on the advice of WebMD, kids. He's probably not even a real doctor.

The weird thing about vaginismus is that it's often entirely psychological. It's basically a reflex, like what happens when you poke yourself in the eye. "It's disappointing because I really do like sex!" Chloe says. It's like your mind is at war with your body, but more accurately and more confusingly, like your mind is at war with your mind. "Even masturbating is difficult because that's still a form of penetration," she says, "So my shower head gets a lot of use."

For many people, the cause is a physical trauma like childbirth or a traumatic sexual experience, but for others, there's no discernible cause at all. You just wake up one day and find your fun zone out of business. The tragedy doesn't end there, because ironically, "worrying that nothing's going to go in makes it worse," Chloe says. Trying to power through also makes it worse, because the pain reinforces your anxiety, which reinforces the pain. God, what about doing nothing? Yep, that also makes it worse.

And, like many junk-related disorders ...

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And then there's the obvious impact it had on her relationships -- specifically, a long life spent getting to know that shower head. "I've had partners, but I've never had a relationship," she says. "I'm a solitary person anyway, but this has stunted my relationship growth." For one thing, it's an awkward subject to broach with a potential partner. "When do you bring it up?" she wonders. "Never, except when you're about to get physical ... The first question is always, 'Can we try it from a different position?' Second question: 'Can we try it, you know ... the other way?'"

In case any potential suitors were wondering, the answer is no, but some enthusiastic under-the-desk time is still on the table. Wait, we just confused ourselves.

Still, we live in a heteronormative society, bless us and keep us. Penis-in-vagina is the apex of straight sex for many people, and sometimes you really want a good porking the way the Lord intended. Fortunately, there is treatment. Unfortunately ...

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Because the condition is often psychological in nature, treatment will usually involve some lengthy sessions on the couch. "It's a lot of talking and resolving conflict with yourself," Chloe says. Where it gets a little weird is where you find out that the couch isn't the only thing you're going to be sitting on.

If you've ever worn contact lenses, you probably failed miserably at first, but over time, you trained your reflexes to accept having shit shoved in your eye. It's the same principle, but instead of using your finger, which clearly hasn't been working so far, you're using a series of "smooth, penis-shaped cones of different sizes" to slowly talk your vagina into receiving larger and larger objects.

"Dilation therapy," as it's coyly called, is somewhat controversial. Some experts believe that it's useless for solving a psychological problem, and honestly, it sounds like it could introduce some new ones. For something that sounds like a prank, though, it has a remarkably high success rate. When combined with other therapies, it completely solves the problem 93 percent of the time. Not bad for sitting around on the world's most pathetic set of dildos.

A foray into the micropenis fetish scene might be uncomfortable on a number of levels, but at least it's not likely to scar you in an actual blood-spattering sense, rather than a mental one.

The same can't be said for the man that we spoke to ...

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WARNING: This is about to get gross and terrifying.

Doctors saw something up when he was a kid, but his Dad merely asked him once, "Is everything okay down there?" Carl said yes, and that was it. Like Chloe, he had to figure everything else out on his own. For instance, he picked up that boys are supposed to pull the foreskin back to clean the glans, but he couldn't, so he improvised. In unknowing solidarity with frustrated sisters in spirit, he'd grab a removable shower head. "I would place a water jet into the hole and fill it up like a balloon," he says. During the day, the foreskin would also sometimes bundle up and stick shut, and when he yanked it out to pee, it would then swell up with urine like a balloon and then pop open, spraying piss everywhere.

So Carl grew up with uncomfortable hygiene issues and a dong that always smelled like car park hobo pee. But then he turned to the penis's other famous function, and things got worse. When an uncut penis slips into the nearest vagina, the foreskin's supposed to slide back. Carl's couldn't. But it yanked as far back as it could go, stretching to the point of severe pain. This gave him the unique agony of feeling his too-small orifice forcibly penetrated by his own penis. Condoms didn't help or hold the skin in place. In fact, somehow due to his bunched-up skin, condoms kept breaking. So yeah, sex was bad. And while it's possible to get by without sex, Carl's own relationship suffered hard.

Doctors he consulted proved useless, preoccupied once again with our old friend erectile dysfunction. "The doctors assumed I was young male saying I couldn't get an erection," says Carl. By now, he was able to retract his foreskin while flaccid but not while hard, so the doctors saw the skin slide back and concluded he couldn't possibly have phimosis. "At the time," he says, "I remember thinking, 'Please don't make me get an erection.'" They didn't, but he now wishes they had. Then they'd have diagnosed him right off, instead of making him tear himself up with his own experiments.

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Microscopic tears ripped Carl's foreskin, which made sex more painful than ever (and pushed that relationship even further onto the rocks). Later, however, he found a real doctor who prescribed him an effective steroid cream. Over the course of two years, the foreskin's opening grew from the size of a fingernail till it could go halfway down the head. But this was too gradual for his girlfriend, who dumped him. That was it. Within a week, Carl got himself snipped.

Yup, circumcision is the ultimate phimosis cure. Your foreskin can't be too tight when you have no foreskin. Adult circumcision is reasonably common in Carl's home of Australia, where 3.8 percent of males uncircumcised at 15 voluntary get cut by the time they're 65. Some doctors in the US similarly report doing thousands of the procedures. After a little poking, Carl even found a place willing handle the whole thing in one hour -- no "prior consultation" or any of that bullshit.

"At some times, I was worried I'd succumbed to a good sales pitch," he says. The place was a tiny clinic that also did hair plugs. Joints like that are as much about the cosmetics of a sculpted member as they are about medicine (this one, for example, buries "medical reasons for circumcision" as one item on a longer FAQ list).

There was none of the usual surgical drama. No hospital gown, no shaving. Carl just dropped his pants and hopped on the counter, like he was jonesing for an intimate tattoo. He stayed awake during the whole thing and could have even watched if he'd wanted, but he let the doctor block his view with a visor. The only pain came when the needle injected local anesthetic into the base of his penis -- after that, he felt tugs on the base without feeling anything in the penis itself. He spent the hour on his phone, playing Puzzle Bobble and texting friends who had no idea where he was. He ended up snapping a photo of his bloody penis; in hindsight, he wishes he'd taken a smiling selfie.

And then it was done. You can go browse other people's pics of freshly cut and stitched cocks if you like, as well as photos of detached foreskins. Carl's liberated prepuce was enormous and looked like a lobster. "I thought (this was an ego trip), 'all of that was far too tight for my penis, my penis must be huge!'" He should have taken it with him. "It would've easily made a romantic necklace or something."

He was sent home with a grim parody of the famous Viagra warning: He had to call his doctor if the penile bleeding persisted for four hours or more. And sure enough, after four hours, he was still bleeding -- a blood vessel was blocked, and the area around the frenulum had swelled up even bigger than the glans. So he rushed back to Dr. Hair Plugs for another few snips before getting ready to recover for real.

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The doctor's orders were to abstain from masturbation for four weeks and from sex for six. Carl heard of one man who tried masturbating after ten days; the results apparently put Carl's own agony to shame. By the end of the period, Carl did indeed masturbate as scheduled. He got some lube (a new experience -- he hadn't needed that for jacking off pre-circumcision; now "If I'm going to do it, I have to commit"). And he let loose, scoring the greatest orgasm of his life. "I feel confident I could meet another adult circumcision survivor," he says "and have the following conversation: 'That first time, ey?' *raised eyebrow, sly smile, slight head nod*."

Carl has a visible scar line. His frenulum area is oddly shaped, and there's a "weird lump on it that looks bad (STD bad)," a result of the initial complication. But he's all right now. He can have sex normally. He uses condoms just fine. There is no pain.

So if you or someone you love is suffering from a junk-related disorder, for the love of god, don't let the awkwardness of the subject deter you from getting help. Society's prudishness about genitals is a horrible reason to have to endure physical torture every time the lights go out. Flop out your junk and start that conversation today.

Manna discusses genitals in every imaginable condition on Twitter. Menezes tweets about genitals as well but usually in code.

For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Awful Realities of Having Size JJ Boobs in Sixth Grade and 6 Awful Lessons I Learned Transitioning from Female to Male.

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