My former job, on a glossy magazine in the Noughties, used to involve endless talk about sex and pleasure. I’d go into the editor’s office and she’d say something like, “How’s your love life?” And then, as a by-the-by, “Oh, and have you got any story ideas?”

It was almost part of the job to be sexually playful: going to parties with famous people, being “naughty”, coming back with a good tale the next day that might become a trend in the magazine. Being one of the few bisexuals on the staff, I was counted on to come up with some extra spicy stories.

But three years into the job, my world started to collapse. I was trying to sound chirpy when the editor asked if I was feeling myself. I shrugged and said I was fine, but in fact I’d spent the previous day in hospital, lying on my back with my legs in the air as the doctor used a scalpel to carve a triangle of skin out of my perineum, the sensitive area between your anus and your vagina.

They’d told me it was just a “procedure” which hadn’t sounded that bad. But I cried, not just for the pain but for the sense of defeat. Once I was a sexual adventurer. Now I felt like a sexual cripple.