OK, that was the post the squeamish could read. If you'd rather not read the part that's not for the squeamish, skip this one.
So, this morning I woke up still feeling about half-dead, and we had our conversation about the night before. She told me she had realized how sick I really was when I crawled into bed and there was no sex. She was right; that was the only thing that would have stopped me. But I began to feel better, and the kids were still with my parents, so my mind began to wander again. We had a nice breakfast together, snuggled and watched some of a movie, and then she toddled off to the shower.
I'd actually been planning to get in there first and take a hot shower to clear my head, so I joined her. She was a little surprised, but happy, and we had a good time together. The only trouble was a moment when there was friction that hurt my penis a little, but I'm used to that; the glans is very sensitive. (If that's too much information, remember that I warned you and skip the rest. That's what we in the business call "foreshadowing.")
We retired upstairs to our bedroom, and she pulled me down on the bed. We spent some more time doing more teasing and playing than anything else, but there were beginning to be connections of the pregnancy-inducing kind, so I got up and got out a condom from the box I've been using for awhile. This is where things went rodeo.
I put that condom on and unrolled it about an inch, then yanked it off with what I can only hope was a manly grunt indicating the stoic bearing of pain. It was hard to tell exactly what sound I was making because I was distracted by the fire enveloping my penis. All thoughts of sex driven from my mind, I inspected the offending organ and found patches of red skin on the head, with a small red spot on the shaft. In the next few minutes, it would get worse. Sex was over for the day.
As I sit here, it's still hurting. I still have no idea what caused this. It looks like it's been badly chafed, and that's what it feels like--like skin that's been rubbed raw. But there's no way it was like this yesterday or even this morning; I could not have missed this. It seems to me that the pain in the shower could have been the first time I noticed it, but I can't figure out what could have caused it. We didn't do anything we haven't done a hundred times before. My wife did wash it, but she used the same bar of soap I've been using for weeks. The condoms aren't new, either--they've got a spermicide in them, but I've never been allergic to them before. The timing is the only thing that makes me think it might be a reaction to some substance. Just to be sure, I went back to the shower and washed carefully with only cold water (warm water made the pain worse, which again seems to point to some chemical reaction or other, but what?)
The worst part of all of it was again being thwarted in making love to my wife, this time when we were both so ready, and being sure she was thinking about whether I had some infection--an infection I didn't get from her. When I got out of the shower for the second time, she made a joke about me picking up VD while out sleeping around. I can tell when a joke is only half a joke, and I told her the truth: she's the only person who has touched my penis since I was a baby.
The whole thing is embarrassing and frustrating and bizarre and literally painful. I don't have any allergies that I know about, but I just have to wonder whether something reacted with something else or what . . . I just don't see how this could have been caused physically. I have new sympathy for women who hurt during sex but still wish they could have sex with their husbands; it's a particularly irritating irony in what I hope is going to be a very small dose, and I can see how quickly it could drive you crazy.
