I went to a physical therapist for maybe three months, did the rest of the therapy at home and I haven’t really had any issues since.”
I’m gaping at her. “How did I not know about this?”
Shannon grins. “Sorry. Next time one of my reproductive parts shorts out, I’ll be sure to bring it up at a staff meeting.”
I stick my tongue out at her.
“Wait,” Butter interrupts. “Physical therapists...for your...vagina?”
“Yes.”
“But...” She blinks at me, and then at Shannon. “For your vagina.”
Shannon lets out a deep sigh. “Yes.”
“They have those?” Liz squeaks. Shannon nods. “Around here?” She nods again.
Butter explodes. “Are you freaking kidding me? We don’t have an Olive Garden, but we have vagina therapists? What even is real life?”
Shannon ignores Butter’s outrage and focuses on me. “How have you had this for two years? You’re with Ryan!”
“We’ve been in a...dry spell,” I say evasively.
“Honey, you guys have gone two years without sex?” Shannon asks, awed. Liz’s eyes get wider.
“Technically,” I say with a huff, “it’ll be two years in thirty-four days. The last time we tried was on our second anniversary.”
Clutching her glitter brush like a security raft, Butter looks traumatized. “Tried? As in, you couldn’t even do it?”
As I’m trying to think of a way to explain this to her without causing her irreparable mental harm, Shannon moves in front of Butter. “It’s like this,” she says. Shannon holds up her hand and points a finger at Butter’s face. “If I try to poke you in the eye, what happens?” As she moves her hand closer, Butter instinctively slaps it away.
“If you poke me in the eye, I’ll punch you in the boob.”
I stifle a snort as Shannon continues. “Go with me here. If I move my finger toward your eye, what happens?” She waves her finger past Butter’s eye, and thankfully, no one is boob-punched.
“I blink.”
“Okay,” Shannon says, slowly. “Now, even though you know it’s coming, and you know I’m not going to actually poke you in the eye, what happens?” Moving her finger at a glacial pace, Butter’s eye still slams shut of its own accord. My knees clench a little.
“That’s vaginismus.” Shannon says, shrugging.
“Oh my god, you poor things!” Butter says, clutching her heart.
“Hey, I’m fine now,” Shannon says, throwing her hands up. “Kat’s the one with the broken hoo-ha.”
“You know,” I say, taking a long pull of my coffee and wishing it was spiked with bourbon, “you’re kind of stealing my vagina thunder here.”
Shannon goes over to the pot and refills her own mug. “I just can’t believe you’ve gone two years like this. Didn’t you do the therapy?”
Liz, sort of looking like she wants to be set on fire, quietly asks, “What does that mean, exactly?”
I shrug. “My doc said it was all about retraining the muscles or something.”
“So why didn’t you?” Shannon insists. “I mean, two years, hon.”
“I did try!” I say, feeling defensive. “Well, I tried. It wasn’t one of the finer moments of our relationship. She gave me this little packet of things to try with Ryan, and we did for a while, but it was weird, and he seemed really uncomfortable. So I decided I’d figure it out on my own when I had time to focus on it.”
Everyone is staring at me. Finally Butter says, “And how’d that work out for you?”
My brows furrow. “I just sort of lost track of time, I guess.” If I weren’t so annoyed by the look they are all giving me, I’d have to laugh at the perfect unison in which they all started giving it.
Shannon’s face looks like she’s trying to solve a complicated math problem in her head. “Wait, your second anniversary? Is that why you told him you weren’t ready to live together?”
“Could you for once not remember every tiny detail of everything?”
She gasps. “Is that it? I figured you were just being stubborn about commitment!”
“Oh, stop it. It’s not that. But when we tried the therapy stuff, it was so goddamn awkward, and I just wanted to be super sure that when we do try again, it actually works. All the failed attempts didn’t do wonders for my self-esteem.”
Shannon frowns. “I can see that. You need to be comfortable when you go for it.”
“See? It’s not like I didn’t want to get it sorted. I just didn’t have the time to invest. Now it’s been nearly two years, and Ryan is supposed to ask me to move in together, and I want to say yes, but I can’t until I fix this, and I’m five months away from thirty, and I don’t want to end this decade with a broken vagina, you guys. I just really don’t.”
“That’s not good decade juju, no,” Butter adds as I suck in a lung-piercing breath.
“And you can’t just say yes and actually take the damn time to work on it while you’re living together?” Shannon asks.
“No!” I yelp, surprising even myself with my vehement tone. “When you move in with someone, it’s supposed to be all happy and exciting and horizontally mamboing on every surface of your new place. Not awkwardly sleeping together, wondering when one person is going to get their nethers back on track. I don’t want that hanging over us if we do this.”
Butter is lightly pulling the bristles of her glitter brush back and forth across the top of her station. “So, you and Ryan aren’t doin’ it, but you’re—I mean, you guys do the other stuff, right?”
For the first time in this conversation of horrors, I blush. “Not exactly,” I mutter.
“Kat.” Shannon looks astounded.
“It’s too weird!” I shriek. “Okay? It’s bizarre. We’d kind of hit that comfortable relationship place where there wasn’t like, a ton of making out and stuff, so it felt too random to do that stuff knowing how it wouldn’t end.” I realize Ryan and I never discussed it, but somewhere along the line, we definitely stopped doing anything in the sex category in a mutual way. “That’s why this is so important! I don’t know how it all got so messed up, but I have to fix it. Now. This is not how relationships are supposed to go, and this is on me.”
While Shannon and Butter consider my stance, Liz swallows hard. “Is it possible it just...fixed itself?”
I stare at her, dumbfounded that I haven’t considered this possibility sooner. “Um. I don’t think so? I’m not sure. Can that happen?” A tiny flicker
