Episode 5

...Alexy on....

I can’t deny the spark between us since the very first moment. I don't know who this man is, his name, age, or anything, but I know exactly what his simple touch does to my body.

I don't know why I feel so attracted to him; normally, he's the type of guy I run from, but the intensity in his eyes and the way I respond to him are beyond my understanding.

There's nothing stopping me from acting on a desire I feel. I'm a free, independent woman. It's not like taking a gorgeous stranger to my hotel room would be something out of line or wrong. There's really nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with wanting to feel pleasure.

My inactive and frustrating sex life has gone on for far too long. I've only been with one person in my entire life, and I can say with complete certainty that my biggest regret was not allowing myself to have more than what my ex provided me—which today, I understand to be nothing.

I should have slept with other people and ventured into the various ways of giving and receiving pleasure, but I let monotony and frustration take over my life simply because I believed I was in love.

Today I'm 25 years old, and I feel like I haven't lived at all, that I did everything I could, that I gave my all in everything, and didn't enjoy a single second of my life.

I lost my virginity at 18. I met my ex in college; he was graduating in economics. At first, everything was perfect. Lucas seemed to have walked out of a romance movie.

He wasn't a bad guy, but he was selfish.

He was attentive, kind, and polite until we started to deepen things. We dated for a few months until I had my first time. I don't think it was the worst experience in the world; I've been through worse, but it was frustrating. The promise that pleasure would come after the pain was never fulfilled; it was uncomfortable and nothing more.

I remember we got to my place, made out a little, he took my clothes and his off, we lay down, and he penetrated me without warning or any stimulation.

But he was amazing at everything else: loving, caring, delicate, dedicated; he supported me and helped me with everything.

I was going through the biggest financial crisis of my life, and for a while, he helped me afford food. I was grateful to him; I felt indebted.

We were together for two years. I believed I loved him. I'm not sure, but I think that's what I thought at the time.

Sex was relatively apathetic for me. I stopped feeling pain or discomfort, but pleasure was also nonexistent. We didn't do anything different, no foreplay or anything like that. It was a quick in and out, and that was it.

I never demanded anything from him. Opening my legs for him to have pleasure seemed right, but when he asked me what I felt, I didn't lie. I didn't feel anything much, sometimes a slight pleasure depending on his intensity, a pleasure that came with great difficulty and disappeared very easily.

I talked to Lucas several times about it, read, researched, talked to friends, tried to explain that I didn't feel pleasure to the point of climaxing, that it wasn't as good for me as it was for him. I tried to give some ideas and even made an effort to change our sex life. I learned several things in theory to try to put into practice and improve our intimate relationship.

Our fights started there, first because I wanted more. I was the selfish, unsatisfied one. Women would die to have the man I had, and honestly, he was so great in every other way that I believed it to be true.

Lucas didn't accept any of my attempts to improve our sex life; in fact, it only got worse.

For him, it was just a matter of getting on top of me, putting on a condom, and penetrating me dry until he came. The problem was never him, it was me. I was supposed to love that, and he was great in bed; I was the one who didn't recognize it.

In the end, he said I was frigid, that there was nothing I could do, it was my problem and all.

I ended up believing it; I convinced myself he was right.

It took me a long time to understand all the brainwashing he was doing to me. He said I had nothing to worry about, that even though I was that way, he would love me, that no other man would put up with a woman like me, but he loved me, he would stay with me, even though I had this problem.

We had sex whenever he wanted. I felt obligated to be there for him, after all, I didn't feel pleasure, but he did.

We spent every other weekend together. Every time he slept with me, I felt horrible, but I loved him. I needed to understand that this would be our life, my life, with any man. At least he understood and accepted me.

That's what I thought for a year and a half... a year and a half of pure sexual dissatisfaction, until I had the courage to go to my gynecologist to talk about this issue. I wanted to know if there was a way to treat it, if there was something I could do about it. Then I found out there was nothing wrong with me.

She referred me to a sexologist colleague, and I went secretly, without him knowing.

From the sexologist, I went to the sex shop, from the sex shop to my house, and I had my first orgasm alone, with a mini vibrator that looked like an egg.

For me, it was like being born again. I cried for three hours. I hated myself and blamed myself so much for being incapable of something like that. Knowing that I went through all that and actually there was nothing wrong with me, it was a mix of relief and disappointment.

Understanding that the problem wasn't me, but rather how terrible our sex life was, became clear quickly. Lucas wanted to come, and whether I enjoyed it or not didn't bother him in the slightest.

Our arguments became much bigger when he found out that I was capable of climaxing alone and not with him. But even so, he made no effort to give me pleasure. For him, I would continue like that, unable to feel pleasure while giving him pleasure.

The rest of the hell I went through during our relationship and after we broke up is something I simply refuse to remember now, but the fact is, I learned to feel pleasure alone, and that's how I've been for years, until now.

My block with men remained right there beside me. The things Lucas did after our separation only made me run further away from any kind of intimacy with a man, and the emotional attachments scared me even more.

Once I tried to be with a girl. I thought maybe my problem was that I wasn't really attracted to men, but I realized that my block was with any person and that women didn't really appeal to me.

While my block with men continued, I enjoyed the pleasure in every way I could by myself, and as my therapist says, we need to know our body and pleasure to know another body and provide pleasure. That's what I did.

My sex life is no longer a frustration. I know my body, my needs and desires, but something is missing: the human warmth that no vibrator can give.

When I set foot in Italy, I swore to myself that I couldn't be like that anymore. It had been years since I'd been with anyone. Pleasure wasn't the problem; the problem was that I didn't have a person, my person.

Going back to an empty house every day became my biggest frustration, and I knew that for me to be able to open myself up in a relationship, I needed to open myself up sexually with someone else first. It would be much easier to deal with it without emotions or any kind of pressure.

It was a door I had to cross.

If I could feel pleasure with a stranger, I could feel pleasure with the right man, the right way, and without all this insecurity in my head.

One thing led to another, I'm not going to lie. I already entered Miriam's club to hunt for someone. I wanted to leave there with a sexy man by my side, who would be able to give me exactly what I wanted.

In Los Angeles, I didn't go out, I had no friends, and no courage to spend the night alone at a party. My co-workers were all married, and when I went to socialize with them, it was always something at home, just family or co-workers, limiting my options a lot.

So the club would be my chance to try, to want, and I wanted to.

I didn't think my body would react so quickly to someone other than myself, because I knew every pleasure point and everything that made me come. I really knew myself very well, but another person, another person wouldn't know how.

I don't know who this handsome stranger entering the hotel room with me is, but when he lightly touched my arm with his fingers as soon as he arrived at the club, my body responded to him faster than I could think.