“Let me understand… do you really mean what I suspect you just told me?”

“I think you understood it very well, Lilli.”

Lilli stood perfectly still for a moment, staring speechless at her friend Dora, looking at her like it was the first time she truly saw her. Dora was her closest friend, they shared almost everything since they were children. They were grown like sisters. More: like twins, despite their physical differences: Lilli was slim, long legged, had a lovely, innocent face on an oval shaped head, bright green eyes showing her curiosity about the world, auburn straight hair and natural brilliant although a bit too tiny lips. Since her childhood, on the other side, Dora was a miniature prototype of a mediterranean goddess of fertility: short, round shaped, with large hips, a bit fat ass, a mass of dark brown curly hair surrounding her round, chubby face, a vague permanent smile on her fleshy lips, wide sweet brown eyes.

Adolescence brought them some more physical differences: as Lilli became an even slimmer, small breasted, somehow ethereal young woman, Dora developed heavy, large tits that looked made for milking babies, a large yet somehow attracting body, her smiling face and even sweeter eyes suggesting a quiet, maybe submissive mind.

They lived in door-to-door apartments since their birth, few weeks one past the other. Same babysitters, same schools, same games, same holydays, same friends. Despite their different complexions, their mothers, who were close friends, encouraged them to wear similar dresses, like real twins, how they were often told. Inseparable until the end of the high school. It was a trauma for both of them discovering that the other wasn’t planning to share the same college: economy for Dora, visual arts for Lilli.

For the first time since they could remember, they were separated, in different far towns. The first two years, they regularly met for Christmas and summer vacations. At the end of the second year, Dora announced she was about to marry an older man she dated for some months: she had got pregnant, she wanted that baby already growing inside her, and she wanted her baby have a daddy. She had decided to drop her studies, going to live with her husband in his town, even more far from Lilli’s.

It had been another shock for Lilli. Her best friend – her twin! – was about to definitively separate from her, to start a whole new life with a husband and a child, just the first – Lilli was sure of it – of a number of kids. Lilli cried and sobbed for days, sad like she had suffered a definitive loss.

They occasionally exchanged letters, some sparse emails, a phone call every three or four months. Dora had her baby; another a couple of years after, than a third, all female. In the meantime Lilli graduated, started working in an important factory as a creative designer, met and dropped several young and less young men, always both physically and emotionally unsatisfied with them. She liked men, but she hadn’t still met the right one. She liked sex as well, but was deceived by the selfishness of almost all the men she had sex with: not even slightly interested in her needs and desires; or at the opposite so much engaged in giving her pleasure that she couldn’t reach it, feeling suffocated by their obsessive goal of leading her to a climax she hardly experienced with them.

She used to find relieve and true pleasure masturbating, while fantasizing about her perfect man, about how he penetrated her with some caring rudeness, focused on both his and her pleasure, giving a tangible mean to the word “intercourse”.

Now a beautiful woman in her late 20s, Lilli was a successful and wealthy professional, but she felt the constant lack of something. She longed the deep, rich, wonderful relationship with Dora, that constant feeling of mutual, immediate understanding that had been the mark of her childhood and adolescence.

It had been a big surprise – almost another trauma – when in a lazy late spring Sunday afternoon she was spending alone in her home, a book and a glass of Coke as her companions, the ring had announced a visit and she had opened the door: standing somehow shyly yet smiling in the threshold there was her… Dora.

“Dora! – she cried jumping forward to hug her – Is it really you? I can’t believe my eyes! What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Lilli. Guess what? I’m about to become your new neighbour… My husband has been transferred here, and I insisted to find a home near to yours… and now here I am” said Dora with a bright, warm smile, her sweet eyes flashing in happiness.

They entered the home and sat in the balcony, chatting happily for hours, telling each other ten years of life, success and defeat, joy and grief, family events and new friendships. Dora looked genuinely happy with her life, her husband and her children. And at the same time she felt Lilli was somehow uncomfortable with her own affective and sexual life.

It had been at that time when Dora said something causing Lilli to jump on her chaise longue. “W-what??? No, sure you’re kidding. It’s impossible you did something like that”.

“No kidding, Lilli. My husband and I discussed about it for a very long time, and we agreed this was the only way to solve our problems… Well: my own problem”.

“But… but… there are many other options, I’m pretty sure of it. Less invasive, less radical options, I mean. If I understand what you’re saying, you’ve agreed to submit to a barbaric practice, something that happens only in Africa”.

“Don’t be so sure, Lilli – Dora’s voice was still sweet, just a little hint of sadness in her words. – I’m not the first European woman who submitted to this practice, and sure I won’t be the last. I’m in a quite large company, you know. It’s just a fact people don’t like to discuss about, let alone to admit they’re involved in first person.”

An astonished silence fell between them. Dora stood quietly, giving her friend the time to realize her statement. Lilli was struggling to fully understand what Dora was talking about, genuinely horrified yet somehow fascinated.

Eventually she recovered her voice. “Would… would you mind to show me it?” she asked in a flushed whisper, not even believing she was asking for it to her “twin”.

“It’s not something I walk around showing to everybody. But you aren’t just ‘people’, so there’s no problem. But please, just look; touch if you want, ask questions, but don’t judge. I’m not a monster, I’m just Dora. Yes, something has changed in my body, of course, and in my mind as well. But remember I choose it, and now I’m happy with it”.

Dora stood up, slowly lifting her long skirt up to her waist and pulling down her large, simple white cotton panties, kicking them away and sitting again, legs wide open, on the edge of the chair. Her pubis well in sight, she held her fat thighs, letting Lilli to see in full light how she had been changed in her most private parts.

Lilli looked fascinated at that smooth surface, where nothing laid of what usually is visible between women’s legs. Just a tiny, perfectly healed white scar in the middle, a little hole at its base… nothing more. Lilli felt tears in her eyes. “Oh, Dora, honey, how could you…”

“Shhh… shhh… I warned you: don’t judge. And don’t be sad for me, I’m perfectly happy, my life has dramatically improved since I let this happen.”

“I can’t believe it. How can it be better being mutilated, deprived of your sex? What about your pleasure? What about your sexual life?”

Dora slowly closed her legs, letting her skirt fall covering her legs. She relaxed on the chair, stared at her friend and spoke with her calm, ringing voice, every hint of sadness suddenly vanished: “My sexual life is richest than ever, Lilli. My husband and I have sex more frequently and more satisfying than before my modification… ‘infibulation’ is the right word… and we are very happy. We love each other more intensely than ever, in a way I couldn’t even imagine before.”

“But… but… your sex is sealed, is nullified…” Lilli was fighting for the right words, overwhelmed by Dora’s revelation.

“My vagina is sealed, yes. But my ass and mouth are always ready to receive my adored husband’s manhood. And the pleasure I can give him that way is my own pleasure.”

Lilli’s pale face showed her disbelief and her confusion. “You’ve got no more clitoris – she managed to go on after a silence – so you can’t feel any pleasure. No clitoris, no orgasm, right?”

“Right, sweetie. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be gifted with other kinds of pleasure. My mind gets very excited and glad every time my husband discharges his semen into by body, especially in my mouth. And my heart is every time full of love. It isn’t an orgasm as usually it’s meant, but it’s something comparable to it.”

“We couldn’t afford another pregnancy, – Dora went on – so we decided, after our third daughter was born, we had to stop it.”

“This is something I can understand. But there are other ways, from contraceptives such condoms or pills to sterilization. You have destroyed your sex instead.”

“You don’t see the point – Dora retorted. – My husband’s religion forbids him to use contraceptives of any kind. And I didn’t want to be sterilized. I want be able to give birth to more babies, if we can afford the costs”.

Lilli’s eyes wide opened in disbelief. “And you accepted such a butchery because of you husband’s religion? I can’t accept it. Our bodies are more sacred than all those stupid religions.”

Dora said nothing. She just stood up, joined her friend and slowly lifted Lilli’s t-shirt until her breasts popped up. “And what about this and your sacred body?” she asked in a slightly reproaching tone of voice while playing with a tiny golden piercing ring dangling from Lilli’s left nipple.

“What? But this is just… just…” Lilli’s voice faded while she looked at the ring like it was the first time she saw it.

“This ring is a violation of your temple, Lilli. Just like my infibulation. When you let your nipple being pierced, you confessed me that it had turned almost numb, and that you never could lactate a baby from it. So, you modified your sacred body in a very similar to a mutilation way, you can’t deny it.”

Overwhelmed, Lilli stood still and silent for quite a while, then eventually sighed and reluctantly admitted: “You’re right, Dora. But it was just a nipple, not my vagina…” Her voice sounded unsure, her mind was full of doubts. And, despite all her feelings, her sex was becoming more and more aroused.

Slowly, very slowly, both women regained their balance. For Dora it was time to go. “I’ll move to this building next week. I’ve still a lot of things to pack. I hope my revelation will not affect our relationship. I love you, Lilli, you know it.”

Already a bit confused, fighting with her conflicting feelings, Lilli reassured her. “Just a last question. After that I’ll drop this subject. Why did you tell me about your… erm… infibulation?”

“Because you’re my best friend since we were born, Lilli. And because I think you should think about it. It could be the right answer to your sexual and affective problems.”

“What? Oh, no, it’s impossible. I couldn’t even imagine being mutilated and sewed like you. No way I could accept something like that on my own body.”

“Think about it – Dora repeated. – There are different levels of intervention. We’ll discuss about them when you’ll be ready to deal with this subject. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

1. To be continued