It didn't stay there. Gramma picked it up. Why, I don't know. Maybe she was mopping the floor for dust and the sunny yellow cover caught her eye.

She opened the cover and read it. I heard about it when I came home later from school. "What is this horrible thing you've been writing? It's shameful! How could you even think such awful thoughts?" I blushed deep crimson in reply. I put the folder away. I never again attempted to write a story, any story.

Years later, I'd casually told Laura about this incident to show her some of my own transgenderal musings. I didn't give it another thought until about a week ago.

Over a year ago, we had toyed with the idea of doing a vampire roleplaying game. I'd chosen my character, a beautiful castrato born in 1704, and written briefly of his origins. For various reasons, we didn't continue with the game.

Now we're considering restarting it. When Laura and I went out shopping for some alone time, she tried to encourage me to act as though I were my character. I found it hideously embarrassing and could only say "My character would feel X, would do X." "Just TRY," Laura urged. But it just seemed impossible. I couldn't. Deep shame burned within me. "Why?" asked Laura.

That childhood memory came to me. The deep shame I'd felt at having my private fantasies discovered. I couldn't bring such thoughts forward. I'd learned they were safe only if I kept them private. I could think anything in the sacred hidden chambers of my mind. Thus, I could play a character within those unseen quarters. But to make those imagined thoughts and feelings public, even to someone I loved, carried with it a deep shame burning throughout my being. I sobbed as I told Laura what Gramma's ill-considered words had done to me. Then, cautiously, I began speaking as Angelo, the castrato made immortal. Hesitantly at first, as thoughts I could easily imagine were turned into vocal word sounds. At first the words seemed of a foreign tongue, then I loosened up and became Angelo, the feminine eunuch whose angelic voice was perserved not only past childhood, but past centuries. I was surprised at how deeply I could feel his feelings.

This memory had chance to surface a few days later, while we were in the living room discussing various matters. Seemingly out of the blue, I had an epiphany. I've been with Laura for twelve years now. We've had a great relationship. But there's always been one area of our relationship that has been less than satisfactory. I never could fully relax in physically intimate situations. I was rather a frozen block of ice 'touch me not'. That may be rather hard for anyone to imagine, considering the unconventional life we lead, that I could be thus. One would think I'd have long ago lost shame in sexual matters. But I hadn't. Strangely enough, I could function in solitary efforts. I held it a minor miracle that this much was possible. But a couples full joy in giving and receiving pleasure was not to be. It was something we came to terms with as best we could.

And we did so, for twelve years. It was just last Saturday, that a small voice said to me, "What if you play that character you always play during 'fiddle fantasies' while you are being intimate with your spouse?" I'd remembered the raw reality of playing Angelo. Maybe it would work. Laura had suggested that to me early in our relationship, but then, of course, such a thing was unthinkable. I couldn't offer her a made-up chimera, a silly, even filthy mere figment of my imagination! No, I couldn't do such a shameful thing.

But now, I was willing to try it. Perhaps there wouldn't be shame in it, after all. So, shyly at first, I got into 'character' as it were, and found a whole new world of feelings and sensations opening up. I was alive! It was though a part of my being had long been bricked off, and the wall came down. Oh, how ecstatic the elation when frenzy met its full fevered pitch and cascaded into sweet contentment. Oh, such joy, and that we had to wait twelve years to obtain it is sad enough. But sadder still, there are those who never know this bliss, ever. I wonder of my Gramma, who had first instilled the shame, what had her life with Grampa been like? She had briefly mentioned how sex was 'something men liked', a dreadful something wives just had to put up with, as it were. So much has been lost through the ages because of this legacy of shame. So much.

I could go on at length, pointing to the shame christianity brought with it, as it conquered the pagans. But, oh, no need of that right now. We have spoken of such matters elsewhere. Still, as I worked with the Goddess's image earlier this week, I longingly thought of the time when acts of intimate love were thought as honoring the Divine, not as a thing to be considered sinful unless for procreation. However, day by day, we are reclaiming that ancient heritage.