She knew it was the beginning of the end, that first time she had to work so hard to reach organism that the achievement was crowned on the shocking crest of an insistent pounding above her temples, the new price of pleasure so exorbitant that she swore off what had most given meaning to her life. From then on she preferred the refuge she could only hope to find behind her eye mask, cowering under the covers.
There were small, timid forays after that but they exuded the stink of fear, timidity, reluctance, the antithesis of her signature wild woman scent. They were excursions that avoided the headache only by submitting to the offensive feeling of embarrassment. It was the kind of shame she had avoided in her freewheeling decades of sexual exploration, this ultimate shame of waiting out the nights, stifled.
In purgatory.