I am Josie, a mixed-race girl and a fast jet pilot in my country's Air Force.
My partner, Otis, is an Air Force officer, five years older than me, also mixed race and two ranks senior to me. He is in electronics and he cannot talk about it. I'm not cleared to enter his work building. The Air Force has liberal policies, and after signing a sworn statement that we are in a long-term relationship (for two years), they issued us with married accommodation.
I graduated second in the pilot training course. The top six on the course get the choice of helicopters or fast jets, of which I chose the latter.
The Air Force needed more knowledge about the stresses and strains of high-speed flight on female pilots. After my Top Gun training, I was told I would have a long medical, but I was due for one, so I thought nothing of it.
The day of the medical arrived, and I had been flying in the morning. The medical took place in the afternoon. I had been told it was going to be of the empty stomach variety, but drinking fluids was OK. All the stuff at the start took an hour, and then it got unusual.
The doctor leading the medical team said, "Some female fast jet pilots are having vaginal prolapse problems."
Well, it wouldn't have been with the male pilots, would it?
"Please, can we test your pelvic floor muscle contraction strength with a measuring instrument? I have to ask, you are not a virgin?"
"No. I'm not."
They should have known already.
"Have you tried to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles using the methods which they taught you at flight school?"
"Yes, partly because it increases my sexual pleasure and that of my partner," I replied a little slyly!
My efforts had enhanced my sexual pleasure, and that of my partner, who thought it was great!
"Clean up in the shower," and she gave me a paper smock to wear.
Once I had showered and dried myself, she sat me in the Gynaecology chair and showed me the measuring instrument. A neoprene bulb is on the end of a plastic tube about five millimetres in diameter. A thin wire in the tube runs from the plug end to the bulb.
She said, "The bulb contains a pressure sensor, and I pump it with air by hand until you tell me you can feel it in your vagina. Pumping stops if you say it feels a little too full for comfort. I can release some air until you tell me you are comfortable. Are you happy with that, please?"
"Yes. To see what I'm capable of down there will be very interesting!"
The Doctor continued, "We have to insert the bulb sensor element. Would you like five minutes alone to get in a good frame of mind, please?"
How delicately put!
She left, and I played with myself, got moist and so I called, "I'm ready."
The doctor (called Janet) inserted the sensor and squeezed the pressurising hand pump bulb. I could feel the measuring bulb expand. "It's not hurting?" she asked.
"No. It's fine."
"I'm sure it's pumped sufficiently and is ready for your efforts. Please, try to give it a hard squeeze."
Stroking my breasts with one hand, I stroked the inside of my thigh with the other. With good sex in my thoughts, I shut my eyes and squeezed as hard as I could.
"Well done. You produced a pressure sixty percent above average, so you must have been training hard. Do you mind talking about it?"
"I lie on the bed, get comfortable and make myself feel sexy. I put a middle finger in my vagina and concentrate on squeezing it. If possible, I repeat this every two or three days for at least a half hour. Sometimes, I try to do it twice a day. I got my partner to put his finger in and squeezed it. He said it gave him a surprise, so I repeated it with his dick inside me. He nearly fainted with pleasure."
Janet laughed.
Then she said something interesting. "Girls with your part African heritage seem to have stronger than average pelvic floor muscles. There is no proof, but evidence for that opinion is growing. I only saw one girl who did above sixty per cent. Please, will you keep up the training?"
There are stories about girls trying to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles by hanging weights from a dildo in the vagina, and I talked about that.
Janet said, "It is a bad idea because it risks tearing the muscles and please don't do it. They talk about it on sex websites, but no one ever talks about the serious downside."
"You never did it, did you?"
Truthfully, I never did and said so.
"When pulling a lot of G, do you get vaginal pain?"
"No. Not so far."
She explained that the Air Force was looking at seat restraint designs to tighten around the female pelvis during high G manoeuvres. These could cause other problems and the programme was in trouble.
"Thank you for being such a great help to us."
Janet said, "You are in excellent shape but please, can we run some more tests? It may take four or five hours?"
This was a surprise, but I was ready to go along with it. Frankly, I had little choice.
"When did you last have a bowel motion?"
It was the early afternoon by now. I had a BM the previous evening and told her so. I was in for a lot of high-G flights the next day, so my tummy had to be close to empty. Since then, I have eaten only a little. In the morning, I relied on energy drinks, a Hershey bar and that good old sugar-in-water standby. Never try high G manoeuvres on a full stomach.
"You are at liberty to refuse this because it's not a vital part of your medical. What I am going to ask you to do is to check the performance of your digestive system under stimulation. It will affect your fast jet status only if it reveals a problem which doesn't show anywhere else. All the female pilots who have agreed to this next test have passed. Remember, you do not have to agree to it if you find it distasteful, and some do."
"If you agree, I will mix you a full-strength castor oil laxative. I want to see how long it takes to work. This tells me about the speed of your digestive system, which is quite important. The oil is going to be mixed with fresh lemon juice, sugar and warm water. A glass of orange juice is ready if you need it to help with the taste. Do you agree to take part in this test, please?"
"Yes," I said, feeling rather less than pleased. My mother had given me castor oil as a girl a few times and I knew what it did to you.
Janet continued, "There is a toilet in a cubicle just off here with a modesty curtain that you can pull down. Ten minutes after you take the castor oil, I want you to drink half a litre of warm water. As soon as you feel anything is about to happen, sit on the loo right away. Every ten minutes after that, I want you to sip more warm water. This will help eliminate all traces of the castor oil from your system, and speed up the entire process."
Janet's words prompted unpleasant memories of my youth.