"Let's just say I wasn't as committed to our relationship as he thought I was."
"Uh-oh. I think I know what that means. Was he your first steady boyfriend?" he asked with a licentious smile.
"Yes, but as I said, it didn't last that long."
"I see." He nodded, his right forefinger and thumb squeezing his chin. He was making me feel as if he were a doctor of romance and I had come to him for a love checkup.
"What do you have to study tonight?" I asked, feeling a little uncomfortable under such intense scrutiny.
"Hmm." He thought a moment and then reached under the settee and brought out a textbook. "I know just the topic. During office hours, we had a female patient today who suffered from dyspareunia. I don't suppose you know what that is," he said thumbing through the book.
I shook my head.
"Another term used is vaginismus,
affectionately known as the honeymoon injury," he said, his smile widening. "Enough hints?"
I felt myself blanche.
"Now, now. Someone who wants to be a doctor must be comfortable with every aspect of the human anatomy. Our patient," he said sitting back, "was a nineteen-year-old girl who had been recently married. You understand what dyspareunia is now, don't you?"
"I think so," I said. My heart was beating rapidly, but I felt as if my lungs had stopped working.
"Painful or difficult coitus," he recited. "You shouldn't be uncomfortable discussing any aspect of the human body," he repeated. "Or any of our normal functions."
"I'm not," I insisted. I felt my spine harden into cold steel and sat up sharply.
"Good. Dyspareunia may be the subject of back alley and barroom jokes, but to us doctors it's just another medical problem to solve, another form of suffering for us to end," he declared with the dedication and authority of someone who had been part of the medical profession for decades. "You understand that, don't you?"
"Of course." In my secret heart I wished he had chosen a different subject, but I wasn't going to let him see that this topic disturbed me. That was just what he would expect, and he would tell me how my attitude illustrated why it was so difficult for a woman to become a doctor.
"Let's continue, then." He leaned forward. "The patient confided in me after Dr. Bardot had left the examination room. She felt more comfortable talking to someone younger. She said she had been raped when she was twelve years old."
"Raped! How horrible."
>
"Yes, and that left her with some deep psychological damage." He handed the textbook to me and stood up. He started to pace like a college medical instructor giving a lecture. "This was important for me to know, because dyspareunia can be caused by psychogenic spasms. Please turn to page 819, top right corner." I did so quickly and then looked up at him.
He paused and closed his eyes, grimacing hard as he searched his memory. "When dyspareunia is not due to local causes, or when local symptoms are overshadowed by nervous symptoms, it indicates a psychologic defense mechanism developed by the patient." He opened his eyes and looked down at me expectantly.
I read the first lines. "That's right," I said.
"Good. Let's continue. The defense may be directed against sex and intercourse in general. The possibilities are listed: excessive egotism, ignorance of the anatomy and physiology of the reproductive organs, fear of pregnancy, aversion to the partner, possibly due to a previous love affair or something discovered after marriage. I think it says that even halitosis might form the basis of such an aversion, right?"
"What?"
"Bad breath," he said. "You know. You're in bed with someone, and he turns to you and--"
"Oh." I read and looked up at him. "Yes."
"So if you read between the lines there, before someone marries someone, she should be very familiar with him. They should conduct some test runs, don't you think?"
"I don't know that that's necessarily the inevitable conclusion," I said quickly.
He laughed. "Well, let's use you as a case in point," he said and sat on the settee. "Reading between the lines concerning what you told me about your boyfriend and you, I assume that you and he never made love. Correct?"
"I don't want to discuss my personal life," I said.