all turn to Shannon, who looks perplexed. “Come on,” I say. “You’re the resident vagina expert, apparently. Can it?”
Shannon closes her eyes and makes a face that I am pretty sure I’ve seen her give her kids a few times. She calmly pulls her phone out of her apron pocket and starts typing. I know she’s hitting Google hard. We all squish over into her station to read over her shoulder.
“Okay,” Butter says, reading from medical websites as Shannon scrolls. “It’s like you said—there are therapists, and therapies you can do yourself. This is something that is almost one hundred percent treatable. So, wow. Like you said, the muscles just sort of...clenched up there, didn’t they?” I close my eyes and take a deep, calming breath as that flicker of hope poofs away, and Butter looks slightly hurt at my expression. “Well, sorry. I’m trying to catch up. And the disorder keeps you from letting anything, ahem, in, so that’s what the therapy does. You just keep training the muscles until they are used to, erm, the in things. It doesn’t say anything about it just going away, but I guess the only way to know would be to...check.”
“So,” Shannon says plainly, “grab Ryan tonight and go for it.”
I blink at her. “As much as I am in desperate need of getting some—and I definitely considered the grab-and-go option—I refuse to give it the old college try with him just to have it not work. Again. I can’t do that to either of us.” I wave my hand at the phone. “I’ll just have to go a different route.”
“How are you going to do that without your boyfriend?” Liz whispers.
I fight the urge to pat her head while Shannon stares at her. Butter is gaping.
Clearing my throat, I delicately say, “There are boyfriend substitutes, you see.”
It takes her a second, but she gets there. Her face turns bright red, and she takes a large drink of her coffee.
“You sweet summer child,” Butter says, shaking her head. “So, Kat, you do that, and then you’ll know!”
“Unfortunately,” I reply, “I’m lacking the appropriate stock for these experiments. That’s not exactly my style.”
I’m getting the side-eye from Shannon. “Really? You’ve been boinkless for that long and you don’t have any...gear?”
I scoff, “What? I’m more of a right-click-your-mouse than power-up-your-hard-drive kind of gal. So?”
Liz makes a noise, and I’m certain she’s going to faint.
“Sweetie,” Shannon says, putting her hand on Liz’s shoulder, “if you want to leave this conversation, I swear none of us will hold it against you in the slightest.”
“No!” Liz insists. “I’m okay! I just...my friends don’t normally talk about this stuff. But I’m fine, really! I want to help.”
Shannon pats her on the back. “Teamwork. I admire that.” She turns back to her phone. “When I was doing my own therapy at home, I had a stash of things I could use that weren’t that far off from what one might use to ‘power their hard drive,’ as you say, so maybe you can kill two birds with one dildo.”
Butter snorts into her coffee and starts choking spectacularly.
“You did not just say that.” I shake my head.
“Pumpkin, I’ve got two kids. More people have seen my vagina with a human being coming out of it than I care to admit. I haven’t peed alone in nine years. I have no shame. This stuff happens. When I had my gallbladder out last year, you were right there bringing us food and watching the kids and manning the shop and being the best damn friend in the world to me and mine. We don’t pick our challenges. You’re like family and I love you—you have a problem and I’m here to help. If that help involves dildos, bring it on. I’ve fucking got this.”
This is certainly our liveliest employee meeting to date.
After the shop closed for the night, Butter and I hit up the Naughty Market over on Fourth Street. Then I raced home and, with the help of a newly acquired phallic device, made the discovery that my lady bits were indeed still on the fritz.
This did not start my evening with Ryan under an umbrella of joy.
We have standing date nights on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. If we find some extra free time, we try to meet up more, but working eighty-ish hours a week at the shop doesn’t grant me a tremendous amount of time off. Having the together moments scheduled in advance helps make sure I put the piping bag down and remember to have a life. Well, on those three days of the week, anyway.
With a tiny gray storm cloud floating over my head, I carefully stow away all evidence of my experiment in my nightstand before I set to prepping for Ryan’s arrival.
I’m feeling uncomfortably electrified about seeing him tonight. For a moment, it reminds me of the jitters from the way back parts of our relationship. When we had a date and I was excited to get ready before he picked me up.
This isn’t that. There’s an anxiety brewing inside me, knowing it’s time to shout until we are both fully aware that the emperor has no clothes and a broken thang.
The more the determination churns in my stomach, the clearer it becomes to me how this has carried on for two years. There’s a comfort in our consistency. Our routine may not be dripping with platitudes and romance, but it’s ours, and it’s soothing.
I toss my flour-covered shirt and jeans into my hamper and change into a nearly identical outfit, sans flour. Taking a look at myself in the mirror, a wave of panic flashes through me.
I quickly yank off my T-shirt and toss it back into a drawer. I have to dig pretty far into the Narnia region of my closet, but I finally find something that’s more blouse than T-shirt. At the very least, the cut of the neckline implies I’m aware I have breasts, which is a big step up, really.
Walking up to the mirror in my bathroom, I pull my hair out of my uniform ponytail and grab a brush. Even my hair is efficient. I keep my chocolate-hued locks just long enough that I can whisk them into a ponytail at any height on my head, but not long enough that I have to put in the effort of actually styling them every day.
Plus, when I let my damp hair dry tied back, it finishes all smooth and shiny, if slightly dented. Otherwise I’d have to use blow-dryers and serums, and there’d be frizz to tackle, and I’d just rather spend that twenty minutes sleeping.
As I brush out my hair, a tiny part of my brain wonders when it was that I stopped putting forth any effort in the looks department. I’m expecting some sort of vagina miracle, but I can’t even be bothered to make an effort to look nice for our nights together?
Maybe that’s what’s missing. My vagina misses the joy of getting all dolled up for a night out.
A slightly louder part says it was probably right around the time sex started feeling like a below-the-belt root canal sans anesthetic.
When did Ryan give up?
Did he, though? Is he still putting forth all
