Your first night with your husband as a Pakistani arranged marriage bride. Part 1

Much as you have fantasized and anticipated your wedding, everything pales in comparison to your first night with a stranger.

I know it’s weird because contrary to what your parents always taught you which was to not speak with strangers, they are actually going to send you over to sleep with one.

Much to your chagrin, you are excited about it and may even have some hope about it. You hate that you’re getting excited but can’t help it. Slowly your body convinces your sanity that this will be an epic moment and will go down in the books. You give up all control to your body because frankly, your mind has just been a party pooper.

You discreetly but diligently start to look for women who would give up their first night stories. You dare not ask your mother because are you crazy? You dare not ask your sister because you won’t be able to look at your brother-in-law the same if she told you a particularly explicit detail. You can’t ask your grandmother because she has always told you that she is so pure that she should actually be enshrined. This leaves your younger cousin who goes to medical school and your maid. After debating a little about who would be a more authentic source of information you decide that a practical knowledge of the act is everything in this case and therefore you wait for your maid to finish her twenty chores for the day and be at your disposal.

As soon as you bring up your questions about matrimony, copulation and other first night traditions, your maid lapses into a many-minute laughter. She laughs and laughs. She giggles. She snorts. She finally tries to get herself together as she notices that her laughter is causing you to panic. She then excuses herself between giggles and titters.

Gobsmacked at what happened you decide to settle for your cousin who is as smart as she is shameless and may not withhold any information if you asked her.

Your cousin has the same fit of giggles initially that your maid had. But she recovers quicker and seriously inquires about why you want to know. You feel embarrassed at her not guessing that you need some type of rudimentary information from a source besides your prospective husband. But because she is so smart, she catches on quick enough and squeals “So you don’t know anything?”

You frown. What does “anything” mean? You know a little. It’s not like you know nothing. But since sex education wasn’t ever a popular subject in Pakistan to be part of the curriculum you aren’t really sure of the sketchy snatches of information you’ve had from your surroundings. You know there’s nudity involved. You have some idea of acting naive and like it’s utterly unenjoyable but beyond that, your knowledge is pretty limited. For fear of missing out on important wisdom that your cousin may have to impart in this department, you tell her that you know nothing.

Your cousin looks at you wide-eyed for a second but then immediately jumps up and pulls her anatomy book from the shelf. This book looks like it has never been opened. But wait! This page looks like it is pored over regularly. The corners look turned beyond measure and there are even some rude jokes along the borders of the page. Your cousin laughs and laughs like your maid did. You’re again confused as to why she’s laughing. Surely this is a course book. Surely she’s a medical student. Then what’s so funny?

Slowly you catch on. She’s laughing at your naïveté. But then she abruptly stops laughing and apologizes and starts to explain in earnest what this page shows.

Wow! She’s telling you of body parts that you didn’t even know existed in you. And she’s telling you of some choice body parts in the counter gender. You’re starting to marvel at nature’s amazing work when she says “But I have to warn you, this process is extremely painful”.

Huh? Your head jerks up. You had been so busy learning the anatomy that you had totally forgotten about why you were here.

Slowly your cousin explains to you the famous birds and bees story. You ask relevant questions but she can’t answer any. Instead, she leaps up again and grabs another book that says “Reproductive Physiology” on it. She tells you that this is going to be part of her course work next year so she doesn’t know anything either. She wants you to read it with her.

Gosh the medical jargon alone is enough to give you a splitting headache. Not to mention the details themselves. You quietly excuse yourself after you’ve read enough and decide to cross that bridge when you get there.