Ugh, not sure why I forgot this, or perhaps repressed it as one of my most regrettable choices, but I did turn down one offer that now I wish I hadn’t.
The offer was from my husband, possibly in the second year of our relationship.
We were some four days into a vacation, staying in a beachside motel that had an outdoor deck/bridge separating the bedroom and bath, which were together, and the kitchenette, which was on the other side of the deck.
After a long, dehydrating flight and bus trip, and being some four days without the strong French press coffee my digestive tract needed to work at all, I was quite uncomfortable and feeling filled with rocks.
I had brought only a bulb syringe and was going to need to use a bowl from the kitchenette as my water reservoir. I felt extremely nervous even telling my husband I was having problems (he is NEVER constipated) and requesting some privacy.
It took every ounce of courage to mention being constipated, let alone that I needed to do unspeakable things with a rubber bulb. No sooner had I gotten this out, my husband said “want some help?” in a tone that I read as at least 90% joke.
Feeling unsure of my abilities to get the nozzle in past the cobblestones in my rectum and uncertain if I could avoid introducing too much air and giving myself even more terrible cramps, I raised an eyebrow at his probably joke-y offer and took my bulb, hidden under my beach towel, to the kitchenette alone.
Over a decade on, I absolutely wonder what would have happened if I’d treated his offer as serious and asked for help. Would he have been icked out by trying to fill my already filled rectal vault, and the unavoidable brown-ness of that task? Would he have perceived it as kind of sexy and eventually been happy to help when I needed? Would he have discovered the magic and would enemas have entered our play?
I now wish I had been willing to risk some brown and some cramps and taken the request as if it had been offered at face value.
The only time I asked him, many years later when I had fresh surgical incisions in my abdomen and was miserable with many days’ constipation, his first response was “no,” but this, too, must have been a joke because he relented when I asked again. That said, I could tell it was a task for him and in no way a pleasure.