“Hide,hide,hide,”Iwhisper-yell to Becca as we both sit at our table Thursday night.
I throw myself under the table, a pro at awkwardly hiding anytime Jaxon stops by. Which has been at least twice a day since I accidentally dropped my non-man-made orgasm bomb on Saturday.
I’m mortified, and the thought of looking him in the eye—especially after he offered to help me with it—is truly terrifying. I might never reach the level of maturity needed to stop hiding from him.
Which is to say, I know my behavior is ridiculous, but I’m unable to stop it.
“No,” Becca says, staying firmly planted in her seat. “This has gone on too long. He can’t even see us from the front door.”
I peek from under the table to confirm her assessment of the situation. She’s right. Though, if he walks around to the side ofthe house, he’ll be able to see me, with or without the table. Hopefully, he doesn’t go full-blown peeper.
“This has to stop,” Becca says, the annoyance in her tone having grown from slight hints a couple of days ago to full-blown irritation. “You’ve stopped coming into the office. You didn’t go to your workout class yesterday. I gave you your privacy at first, but this is too much. It’s time you told me the truth. Why are you avoiding him?”
“Me?” I ask innocently as I climb out from under the table. “Avoiding someone?”
Becca glares at me. “I will murder you.”
“Ugh, fine. I may have gotten into an argument with him, and in the heat of the moment, dropped some embarrassing information.”
Becca watches me as I dust myself off and slump in the chair across from here. “And that information was…?”
“The thing about no man giving me an orgasm before,” I mumble.
“No,” Becca says, and honestly, her slight gasp doesn’t feel dramatic enough. This is level-ten embarrassment. I’d rather have shown up to work and found out I had to do a spur-of-the-moment presentation for an entire group of people I’d never met before.In my underwear.
“How did that accidentally slip out?” she asks.
I rehash the argument, and at the end, Becca is doubled over laughing, tears of mirth dribbling out of her eyes.
“We’re not friends anymore,” I say.
“Come on, Iz. Even you have to admit that’s funny. If it had happened to me, wouldn’t you be laughing and telling me it wasn’t that big of a deal?”
“He offered to fake date meandhelp me with my ‘other problem’! It doesn’t matter if we were starting to feel like friends again. I’m mortified.”
Becca looks at me like she has something more to say, but instead, she just shakes her head. “I think you’re making way too big of a deal of this. So he knows you haven’t had an orgasm before, who cares?”
“I care,” I say, feeling my cheeks heat. “It’s fucking embarrassing.”
“For your boyfriends. You dated Guy for three years, Iz!” Becca says, as if I need a reminder of the most vanilla man in the world. To be fair to him, he was kind and dependable. Unfortunately, sex with him did…very little for me. And he wasn’t particularly interested in exploring anything new.
“And he tried hard, for at least the first year. It’s not his fault that I’m broken.”
“You’re not broken, Izzy.”
Totally. And if I were her, I’d say the same thing, but the difference is that I know I am.
Here’s the thing. I know a number of women who can’t get off with penetrative sex: the lie that we’ve been told since we watched our first movie where a couple did it in missionary position while covered by a white bedsheet and everyone ended up fully satisfied. Sex ed taught us having intercourse is putting a penis in a vagina. Completion is achieved that way. Babies are made that way.
Unfortunately for those of us with vaginas, that’s not how orgasms work. At least, not usually. So growing up means unlearning the nonsense, figuring out what actually feels good, and—bonus round—educating whatever guy you’re dating about female anatomy.
I, however, haven’t gotten past stage two. Maybe even stage one. Hard to say if my ingrained societal expectations are the reason why, even though I’ve dated three really nice guys since college, I’ve gotten off exactly…one time? Maybe half. And thatwas in my own room with a very expensive vibrator that I’ve since thrown away.
My OB/GYN informed me that if I wasn’t sure if it was an orgasm or not, that it probably wasn’t, but I’m still counting it.
So, yeah, I’m pretty sure I am broken.
Chapter sixteen
