darkboy - Story on a Train
Story on a Train by darkboy
She was one I met on the train, going from ---- to ----. She looked to be in her late 20's, or perhaps early 30's, young, but with a maturity and confidence beyond her years. I was 26 at the time, bouncing from country to country, boyfriend to boyfriend, seeking myself. From the first time I saw her, I wanted to be like her. She looked like she had everything I didn't.
I found myself moving closer to her, until we were sitting seat from seat. I felt grungy and disheveled sitting next to her, me in my purples and blues and browns, hippy-punk clothes, and her in her sharp business suit (but she wore it so casually!)
She started the conversation first, asking me for a cigarette. I couldn't believe my luck. We got to talking, and she was such a good listener, next thing I knew I found myself pouring out my life story to her, all but sobbing on her shoulder. I told her of the last boyfriend, -----, of his abs and his debts and his temper. Classic European male, so dependent. But god was he hot.
"I swear I only stayed with him for the sex." I declared at one point, trying to lighten the mood. And it was her response to this, how peculiar it was - I didn't notice at the time, I don't think, but remembering it now, this was when it all started. She simply gave me a mysterious look and said (in her to-melt-for accent) "Yes, this sex... it is a problem. Something must be done about it."
Like I said, I didn't pay it much attention at the time, oh, a part of me wondered, but I moved on with the next inane comment. It wasn't until the next time it came up that I really started to pay attention, which was when I asked her about her husband. I assumed she must be married, but she said she wasn't. She gave me another of those mysterious looks and said, "I don't need men anymore."
That caught my attention. Something about the way she said it. But again, I let it slide. What could I have said? She told me of her work, that she was a doctor working in the back country in some African nation. I couldn't keep them all straight. A doctor! Since I was a little girl I had dreamed of being a doctor! To be that noble, that dedicated to helping the lives of others... but I'd learned long ago that girls like me don't grow up to be women like that. Still, the word had power.
I asked her how she liked African men. I hadn't been there, except for two wild weeks in Morocco once, and I was genuinely curious. I asked her in a hushed voice, "Are their penises as big as legend holds it?"
For the third time, she gave me that mysterious look, and finally said, "You don't understand. I really don't need men." A wave of jealousy swept over me. I had spent most of my life trying to convince myself and those around me of the independence she brandished so casually, and had never found it. I kept finding myself coming back, again and again, to the same mess with different faces. Like my life was one, unending loop of mistakes and drama and emptiness, colored with drugs and sex, set against a panoply of the european youth scene.
"Surely you must have lovers?" I insisted, disbelieving. She only laughed, as one patiently explaining to a small child, and said, "Even if I did have lovers, they would not be men. But I do not take lovers any more. It would do me no good even if I wanted to."
I must have given her a baffled look, because she continued, explaining, "I don't have the equipment any more. You know, down there."
I can only imagine the look on my face, but comprehension had not yet dawned. She finally spelled it out, "I am circumcised, by a lover I had once in the ------ tribe, a people I used to work with."
"Circumcised?" I asked, "But isn't that only for men?"
"Ah, not so. In many parts of the world, the external organs of women are removed, to purify them of temptation. The practice varies in extremity, some of the varieties can be quite dangerous and painful. That is not the type I chose. But in all of them, the clitoris is entirely removed, to decrease sensation. When it goes, out with it goes all the temptation that leads women to boys. They cannot feel that pleasure anymore, so they do not seek it, and their parents can watch them grow up without fear for their honor."
As I listened to her, my skin began to crawl and my stomach heaved. Perspiration began to build on my face, tiny droplets of sweat stinging my skin. I tried to be horrified by what I was hearing. Was this the legendary FGM I'd heard about? She made it sound so... appealing. I slid down in my chair as she spoke, cringing, but I noticed I had grown wet down below, and by clitoris was throbbing (in terror?), a tiny node of pleasure between my legs. As I slid down in the chair, it pulled my jeans taut over my pussy, heightening the effect. Was I crazy? What was happening to me?
Barely able to speak, I pushed out, hoping my voice sounded normal, "How did it happen to you?"
She looked at me with that appraising look, and then began to speak, telling me the story that would change my life forever.
"It was in 19--, I was working for Doctors without Borders, and I was assigned to the ------ tribe in sub-saharan Africa. There was another doctor I was working with. She had been born locally, but had been trained in Europe and America, and had only recently returned to her homeland after 16 years abroad in schooling.
"She was beautiful. She had almond eyes and dark milky brown skin, perfect lips. I fell in love with her immediately. I have never been one for the men, not since my ex-husband." At this point a look flashed across her face of deep anger, and was gone almost before I could see it.
She continued, "I wanted to become lovers, and I could tell she felt the same way about me, but there was a point beyond which she would not go. She would bring me to the most exquisite places, turning me over and over again with her tongue until I could not tell which way was the sun and which way the earth. But she would never let me return it to her.
"Finally, she told me of herself. She too had discovered, during her time in America, that it was women she liked. But when she returned from America, she could not be accepted in her home village unless she became like them, a woman in their terms. So she accepted. She was medically trained, she did the procedure herself with only local anaesthetic. Furthermore, she took over the duty of performing the procedure on the young girls of the village, so that she could be sure it was being done to them in a safe and sanitary setting, and that the minimum amount of flesh was being removed, only the clitoris. That's the important part after all. Without the clitoris, the desired affect is achieved, and further incisions can only cause complications and health problems later on."
I groaned under my breath, and crouched lower, pulling my jeans even tighter against myself- which sent stars spinning behind my eyes. How different my life would have been if this had been done to me when I hit puberty! I thought of masturbating for the first time at 12 in the bath, then surreptitiously and breathlessly beneath the covers at girls camp, and of the first boys I had seen, as scared as I was, hurting more than helping as often than not. Then later, the assholes I couldn't seem to get away from. None of that would have happened.
When would they have done it? Would it have been before I discovered masturbating at all? Or not long after that first time in the bath? Would I want to know the pleasure before I lost it? Would it be later, when I was fourteen, and my breasts were just beginning to grow, and the boys starting to pay attention? That would have made things different. Or even later... (groan) like now?
My companion continued her story, apparently oblivious to my agitation, "Now that she had told me about herself, she let me see her. She was smooth, like I am now. There was no pink fleshy knob to find beneath the rich dark curls of her pubic hair. She had not lain with anyone since the procedure; she had not even tried touching herself. She did not know what her sensitivity would be like now that things were different, so we discovered together. We found that her entire body had turned into a sexual organ. When I stroked the inside of her arm, or cupped the small of her back, or her nipples, especially her nipples. But down there, it was not so much the pleasure, not anymore. It felt nice just like anywhere else, but no more than that.
"Once I understood what she had done, I became interested. I explored her body and got to know it. I came to watch the circumcision of some of her girls. They were happy, the operation was painless, and they recovered quickly. There were no complications anymore. Our sex during this time was fantastic. it was out of this world. Finally, when I decided to join her this way, the sex we had during the weeks leading up to it were the best I have ever had, will ever have. When we finally did it, it seemed surreal.
"We were both doctors, we did not need anyone else. I wanted to do like she had done, to do it myself. She stood by and watched over me, handing me the tools. She also did me the favor of injecting the anaesthetic, since that would have been too painful, and I couldn't reach properly anyway. Once it took, though, it was like performing it on someone else. The clitoris was like a foreign object, except so familiar that I still know every bump and swell of it. It was so soft and vulnerable and beautiful, I still remember. Removing it was the culmination of something I had wanted for as long as I had wanted anything, I had simply never known how to fulfill it. But now I did. When I made the final incision, severing the clitoral shaft, a shiver ran through me... almost like an orgasm. It was the deepest sensation my body I had ever felt. There was no pain, I just knew I had done the right thing. The whole procedure must have taken not more than a quarter of an hour, but it to me seemed a lifetime.
"After that, we were still lovers for a time, but we slowly drifted apart. We were both fulfilled, and we no longer needed each other. Eventually, I was transferred away. We slept together one final time on my last night, and it was beautiful. Neither of us orgasmed, but we did not need to. We simply touched and pressed and loved, and it was enough. I have never been happier.
"Now you understand when I say I do not need men. I do not need anyone anymore. I have taken care of myself, once and for all. I had all the sex I need in my life. I had a culminating experience which can never be surpassed, so why should I bother anymore? I am free, and now all that energy, the lifeforce which drives sexuality, comes out in my work and in my life instead. I never get tired or disappointed, no matter how hard things get, no matter what new terror I have to face, and that is a powerful gift when one does what I do.
"Do you understand?" She looked at me quizzically, and I could do nothing but excuse myself to the restroom. I think she thought she had scared me off, and she looked vaguely disappointed. This time, she did not understand.
Restrooms in trains are small, sordid affairs, but there is something about the dirtiness and the privacy of it that has always seemed very sexual to me. This was not the first time that I masturbated in a restroom on a train, but it was the best, and, incidentally, the last. My fingers slipped into my wet slit like they were coming home. I could not bring myself to look at my clitoris. I knew what my thoughts would turn to if I looked at it like that, examining it as she must have done while she touched it nervelessly, putting the scalpel to it. Instead, I circled it again and again, lightly, with my fingertips, unconsciously memorizing every bump and swell. I tried to imagine what it would be like to never feel this pleasure again, to have no clitoris, telling myself it was simply out of curiosity, and as much as I was enjoying the pleasure of my clit right now, I found strangely little resistance to that idea. Instead, it brought only a sense of peace and happiness, a sense of peace and happiness that heightened my sensations to a new plateau.
When I came, it was almost with a sense of irritation and disgust, cruching up into myself and waiting for it to be over, wanting to never do it again. I washed my hands and stared at myself in the mirror, confused and spent. I opened the tiny bathroom door (thankfully there was no one in line) and headed back to her, resolved to reassure her she had not scared me away. My clitoris throbbed once.
Special thanks to Doro, whose stories have inspired and aroused me for years.