The Awkward Path To Getting Lucky

All in all, this was a weird day.

Back in my apartment, I set the two ridiculously large boxes of sexual therapy devices on my coffee table.

It’s incredibly late, and I have to be up at dawn to be at the shop, but I’ve got only twenty-nine days to beat this deadline. Shannon’s right; this is never going to work if I keep finding reasons to put it off. It’s my deadline, and I need to bloody well stick with it.

I open the boxes and start laying out the bounty. Damn, the gals really spared no expense. I think they’ve overestimated the actual number of vaginas I have.

Flipping through the Encyclopedia Vaginica Shannon printed off for me, I realize that I remember most of these instructions from my doctor. Start slowly, be gentle, go small, work your way up. The vagina is a muscle, I need to retrain it, yada yada.

Okay, so this isn’t so bad. Shannon managed to get through this in three months, and that was with two tiny humans at home demanding all her attention, so I can totally do this in four weeks. It’s like if I tore my rotator cuff or something. I’d have to do all these stretching exercises to get it back into fighting shape. Not that I want my special to be fighting anyone.

Special. Damn it, Liz.

“Make this a calm and relaxing experience. Play soothing music, burn scented candles, take calming breaths.”

I don’t have any scented candles, and I wonder if Netflix would count in place of calming music?

I take a deep breath. I can do this. It says this should be a twice-daily routine, but I’m wondering if I can work it in at bedtime and before work. Brush teeth, wash face, train special.

I grab an armful of the therapy gear from the boxes and walk them into my bedroom. Tossing them on my bed, I start changing for sleep.

I had a good time with Ben. While I feel like an absolute monster of a person for not being more open about the realities of my life right now, I’ve justified the omissions by reminding myself that most people don’t unload their entire life stories on the first date.

Jammies on, I head to the bathroom to scrub my face and teeth. I think back to Ben’s smile. He really does have nice teeth. And that jaw, though. Seriously. It’s criminally defined.

As I give my molars a good once-over, I can’t help but wonder what I’ve been thinking by ignoring such a huge part of my life for two years. While it’s great that my militant drive to succeed has gotten the shop into pretty solid shape, doing so at the complete expense of my romantic life seems a little extreme.

I don’t remember the last time Ryan and I went out for drinks just to go. Sometimes we go for dinner out, and maybe even a movie on Saturdays, but for the most part, we have been in stuck in the deepest rut ever. Like, natural sunlight can’t reach the depths of this rut.

And it’s been nearly four years. Two of which have been wonky as hell and entirely without physical intimacy. Four years in a relationship is an eternity in your twenties.

But I’m about to dance out of my twenties. And two years of special solitude is more than long enough, damn it. So I’m getting my nethers in line, and then things will get back to awesome with Ryan, and we are about to land a high-check contract. I’m going to be one of those women who has it all.

But right now, all I want is some Doctor Who—and to figure out what the hell a dilator actually is, so I can go to sleep.

Okay. This thing says five to ten minutes—depending on my comfort level—lots of lubricant, then yay sleep.

I’m trying really hard to not think about how odd this all is. But it’s medicinal. Medicinal sex toys. That’s something I could totally explain to my landlady if she came strolling in.

The thing I bought at the shop with Butter was too, uh, sizable, so I’ll have to start smaller. Looking at the pile of items, I feel like I’m in the middle of a hidden camera show. Any minute now, my mom will come bursting in with a camera crew and the pope.

Those must be the calming thoughts the instructions talked about.

Relaxing environment. I grab my remote and queue up an episode of the Tenth Doctor. I shut the lights off and take a deep breath, pushing all thoughts of Ryan and Alice and contracts out of my mind. I ignore the fact that I’m pawing at the protective wrap on a bottle of water-based lubricant my oldest friend and coworkers had overnight delivered to our bakery.

I choose the smallest rubber device, which is innocuously flesh-colored, and take a breath. Here we go.

This isn’t so bad. The papers said to try thirty seconds at first. I start counting in my head.

I’m not a prude by any means, but something about this feels impossibly awkward with the good Doctor allons-y-ing across my TV.

I don’t think I made it to thirty seconds, but I go ahead and stop anyway. I put the suddenly less innocuous-looking thing on a tissue on my nightstand and shut off my TV. So, maybe no Netflix. Quiet therapy. Time alone with some Zen-like thoughts. That will be good. I can focus more.

And that was pretty easy, so maybe I’ll try something a little larger in scale.

This one is inexplicably purple and sparkly. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to represent something or if it’s just supposed to be festive, but, hey, whatever floats your special.

I take another deep breath.

This isn’t working quite as well. I’m startled to meet instant resistance, and my mind flashes with the image of an eyelid slamming shut at the sight of a giant purple glittering finger poking at it.

Ow. OW.

“Fucking ouch!” As a reflex, my hand jerks away from my body, and the sparkly purple faux-penis goes flying across my bedroom. I regret it immediately. “What the hell? It wasn’t that much bigger!” I say this to no one, and I really super hope the pope isn’t coming.

I look down at my bed, comforter covered in naughty implements, and a feeling of dread settles in.

I’m never having sex again.

9 (#uab22ad16-deff-5c50-a72b-43434ffdf7d5)

Any morning that starts with me in a backless gown and my bare ass on a tissue-paper-covered exam table is not a good day.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, yes, I do. I thought I’d dive right into therapy, and it would be all rainbows and lollipops, and my vagina and I would go skipping off into the sunset together.

Instead, the therapy was kind of awful. It was actually quite painful, but I kept trying, and I was up half the night battling my lady bits. Now I’m exhausted and my goddamn special hurts.

And I’ll admit, I’m panicking a little.

I just had to go and give Ryan this stupid deadline. I thought for sure I’d stroll through this whole thing and be ready for nookie and anniversaries with weeks to spare.

Add in the pressure of getting things ready for our presentation to the Coopertown Ravens concessions committee, and I am about two seconds from completely flipping my shit on everything.

There’s a knock at the door, and I say, “Come in!” in an annoyingly happy voice. Why is it so hard to sound normal when you’re not wearing pants?

Dr. Snow comes in and gives me a friendly hello. “Kat, it’s been a long time. How are you?”

“I’ve had better days,” I say, shifting my weight and regretting it as the tissue paper crinkles loudly under my ass. “Look Doc, I’m going to level with you here. My junk is broken, and I need you to fix it, okay?”

She freezes halfway through sitting down on her rolling doctor’s chair. “I’m sorry?”

“Two years ago, you told me I had vaginismus. Well, I still have it. There has to be a pill by now, right? They have, like, fifty different kinds of Viagra. Tell me someone has stepped up to help ladykind out on this one.”

Dr. Snow finally sits all the way down and looks down at her high-tech tablet medical chart. “Okay, give me a minute to catch up here.”

She starts scrolling through my medical history, and I swing my legs nervously on the exam table. I look around the room, desperate for a distraction. On the wall is a large full-color poster of a uterus with a full-term baby lodged inside. I’m probably overreacting, but I feel like that baby is judging me a little bit.

“Okay,” she says finally. “Yes, two years ago I diagnosed you with secondary vaginismus. And—”