Right now, I don't know how I feel. Rather, I know how I feel, but it's a set of disjoint emotions, the cumulative result one of confusion and ambivalence.

Tonight, after twenty-seven months of prepartion, two years of hormones, eighteen months of RLT, fifteen months of waiting for surgery, three weeks of hospital time, two weeks of physical recovery time and seveneen seconds of foreplay, Jessie and I made love for the first time with my new body.

The results were... inconclusive. 

I was horribly nervous when we started, like some twittering virgin on her first date. In many ways, I was. I'd been dilating for weeks, of course, but I'd never had anything up there that wasn't hard plastic or visibly being
guided by someone else. I'd only ever put my own fingers in there a few times, and that was more to prove to myself that I could more than anything else. Jessie had trouble keeping an erection, and several times before we even managed to tie we'd had to pause for more lubricant or other things.

Finally, after about fifteen or twenty minutes of trying to find some position that would work, I lay on my side and Jessie took me from behind, which took a little effort but seemed to work fine, with the one caveat that I couldn't
really feel anything except pressure around the opening and inside. When Jessie began actively thrusting within me... well, frankly, it hurt. I wasn't tense, and I don't think Jessie had the wrong angle or was doing something incorrect, but every push hit the back wall, and the repeated hits started to get sore after a while.

Part of me wanted to call a halt to everything, but I knew I needed to see this through to the end and so rather than say "this hurts" or some other damper on the situation, I simply lay still and tried to let Jessie enjoy things. Except, Jessie wasn't enjoying it either. My mate was so nervous about hurting me, about my not enjoying things, about everything that could go wrong that zie couldn't achieve orgasm, and eventually zie had to pull out of me to take things into zir own paw until zie was so close that anything could have set zim over the edge, and then within half a dozen thrusts within me again zie was done, and all I had was blood and lubricant on my sheets, bodily fluids all over my thighs and a pain in my crotch.

Before I started transition, masturbation was necessary, and it was physically enjoyable but emotionally crippling. During transition, masturbation was an infrequent need, physically stressful but usually fun if my arm didn't grow
fatigued first, emotionally upsetting but still stimulating. Now, there've been fun moments, but on the whole sex was just painful, and it wasn't even emotionally stimulating. It was just... there. A part of me felt good knowing
that Jessie was in the "right" hole, but it just... wasn't what I expected.

In my first relationship, the first month my boyfriend and I were together, I didn't climax once. It took four tries for Jessie and I to achieve an orgasm together when we first moved in with each other. This is no different in its own way. Unfortunately, while I'm consciously aware that this was my first time, that sex is no different from any other act and takes time and practice to get good at performing and that we were both too nervous to really
actually enjoy the event, there's still the part of my brain that bought into the hype that sex would solve all the problems I'e had with my body and that this would be some magical act performed instinctively by any two people in love with each other.

More than anything, I think I'm embarrassed and upset with myself at having fallen for another Big Lie. Society is filled with them, like "the media try to be objective," "the two-party system is a success," and "the earth is round." They're falsities so pervasive that they take on a semblance of truth just because of the number of people who believe in them, but that really have no basis in fact. I've tried so hard to be honest and open about myself, my transition and my expectations of everything as a result, but here I fell for the classic motif hook, line and sinker.

Of course, looking at it afterwards, there's a lot of other facts that I know are important factors in what happened but that don't make me feel better. I was incredibly nervous, as I said, and so was Jessie. Zie was, in fact, so
nervous that when zie did climax, it wasn't fun for zim either. It had been too much effort. It took forever for us to find a position we could use. We had no experience. I could go on, but the point is that I shouldn't have expected it to be this grand thing the first time, and I let myself get swept up in the hype and anticipation and then I let myself get hurt when it wasn't like that.

I feel like a fool.

I can only hope that when next we try this, we take the time to do it better and remember what we did this time so that it's better for both of us. I refuse to accept that this is how sex is going to be for the rest of my life.

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In other news, I've been back to work for a week now, and it's as if I've never left. No work has amassed since I left, though many projects are waiting for someone's authorization or signature or something to start, and others are hovering on the edge of being released from the drawing board to start being implemented. Meanwhile, I'm playing a lot of Freecell and reading Slashdot and the Register.

I still haven't got my diary from Thailand into shape for posting as entries in my journal proper, but that can be tomorrow's project, I suppose. I spent most of Wednesday unclogging a mailing list, and I've been debugging some configuration issues that have arisen from the server move. All in all, my life is starting to return to pre-trip levels, whatever those are. 

I'm glad I went, but I'll be a hell of a lot more glad when I can really enjoy the body I bought while I was away.