I’ve never fisted anyone since. If a woman wanted to be fisted – vaginally, I mean – then I know from personal experience that it can be done safely, and how to go about it, so I’d be prepared to oblige. But there’d be nothing in it, particularly, for me, and I’d never initiate it myself.

In a way, all new experiences are good. I remember once hearing three of my bones break, and it had sounded a bit like a kid running a stick along a picket fence. It hurt, of course, but I remember taking time to appreciate that the sound had been wonderfully strange and sinister. I still remember it.

But fisting is more like one more item on some purity test, that I never thought I’d check off. “Have you ever fisted someone? Well, actually yes, now you mention it, I have.”

I know that my “she raped my fist” heading is politically dodgy. Getting my fist inside Sal was something that she wanted and I didn’t, but I could have taken my hand away if I really objected. 

You could argue that using the word “rape” to refer to something that wasn’t at all traumatic is trivialising rape. That’s arguable, but I’ve kept the heading because it’s what I thought the next morning, reading the Chronicle and having a cup of chai by the river in Hermann Park, after we’d gone our separate ways: “wow. She raped my fist. That minx.”

Anyway, people can have very strong feelings about the non-okayness of killing people, and still find themselves saying, “I could murder a curry”, when all they mean is, “I’m hungry.” It’s not trivialisation, it’s hyperbole. I use hyperbole and gross exaggeration at least 144 times a day.

There’s an issue here about how people pick up new sexual interests and skills. But I’ll think about that in a later post. For now, it’s time I got back to the story about Sa’afia and Ana.