Summer Heacock - The Awkward Path To Getting Lucky

“You guys are the best friends a vagina could have.” I smile. “This is also the weirdest thing I’ve ever been a part of. You had sex toys overnighted to our bakery. Why’d you have them delivered here?”

“Because I couldn’t carry all of this on my walk to work,” Butter says as she starts loading my arms up with fleshy implements.

Shannon hands me a bottle of all-natural lubricant. “And if they came to my house, my kids would have thought they were early birthday presents. Back when I was in this scene, they were both too little to notice, but now they wouldn’t think twice before tearing the boxes open. And that would be hard to explain to Child Protective Services.”

“Fair enough.”

“And!” Shannon continues like a demented game show host. “I forgot to tell you, what with the Ryan news, but last night I printed off a whole bunch of instructions on the different techniques for you.” She reaches under the prep table and pulls out what can only be described as a home-printed encyclopedia of vaginal information.

I flip through some of the pages. There are diagrams, full-color schematics of anatomy and pages upon pages of different therapy tools, which could also be confused with a sex-toy police lineup. The devices are all assorted by length, girth and so on—and presented in a clinical manner that’s both hilarious and a bit unsettling.

“The next time any of you has an even slightly embarrassing condition, you just wait,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s so on.”

“Now we just need to get you a date!” Butter adds.

I drop a dildo. “Excuse me?”

“A date! Come on, we just talked about this! So when your noonie is at full capacity, you’ve got someone ready to test it out with!”

Shannon jabs a dilator through the air. “I’m coming around on that, actually. Things were definitely easier for me since I had Joe to practice with, so what if we set you up with someone? Because I know this guy Richard from City Planning, and I have always thought he’d be perfect for you.”

Butter chokes on a laugh, and her hands, still full of flesh-colored rubber penises, fly to her mouth. I shake my head. “Shannon.”

“What?”

“Richard? You want to set me up with a guy named Dick? Come on.”

Her face goes still as she processes, and then she doubles over laughing, her ponytail of golden curls flying by my face as she cackles toward the floor. “I swear I didn’t think of that,” she gasps without looking up. “But, oh my god, that’s amazing.”

Letting her own guffaw loose, Butter adds, “I knew a Willy in college. I bet he’s still single. Want me to give him a call?”

Liz giggles over the boxes. “One of our groomsmen is named Peter.”

Jerking up to a standing position, Shannon has tears streaming down her face. “What about Rod who does deliveries on Thursdays? Or, okay, there’s a guy who works at the butcher shop by my house, and cross my heart, his name is Lance Johnson.”

She flops over onto the prep table, completely taken by hysterics. Butter is making strangled sounds as she tries to pull in air through her laughter, and even Liz has lost it.

“Hardy-har, yes, it’s hilarious, they all have names like penises,” I say, shaking my head. My coworkers are all in various states of collapse, clutching sex toys, laughing like ten-year-old boys, and while sure, Lance Johnson is actually pretty hilarious, I’m not feeling very chuckly at the moment.

It really has been forever since I’ve even been out with a guy who wasn’t Ryan. Even worse, it’s been forever since I’ve been out with Ryan himself. I can’t remember the last time he and I went out on what would be considered a date. We hit that too-comfortable stage even before my giblets went on strike, and half the time we spend together is ordering in and eating from take-out containers on the couch because neither of us wants to bother with dishes later.

We’ve hit the boring part of being an old married couple without ever doing the marriage bit.

As determined as I am to make this break a short and singular one, there’s no love lost for the weird, distant aching that comes from sitting next to someone you love because you’ve been together forever and wondering if you’re maybe just there out of habit.

You order your chow mei fun and routinely ask who wants the last dumpling because you’ve always done it. And in the early days of being together, you really cared that the other person got that dumpling, because you had all the feelings for them and wanted to see them happy. But after a certain point, you’re secretly thinking, “Fuck you, that’s my dumpling.”

It’s never even occurred to me until now that we’ve reached the “Fuck you, dumpling” phase of our relationship. And I can’t help but feel like this is mostly my doing. I don’t know what caused my vaginismus, but I do know I haven’t made it any sort of priority to fix the situation over the last two years.

It’s breaking my heart. Ryan deserves better than someone who hoards her dumplings.

It’s only now, standing here with my friends and our hands full of sex toys, that I realize I miss that early stuff in a relationship. Well, not just the early stuff, I suppose. The good stuff.

I want to want to give away my dumplings.

Shit. I feel lonely. And a little pathetic.

Wiping the tears off her cheeks, Shannon tries to regain some adult composure. “Oh, we’re just messing with you, Kat,” she says. “I promise. We will only set you up with people with non-phallic names, okay?”

I look down at the dildo in my hand and feel unexpectedly sad. “No, you guys are fine,” I assure her. “I don’t know if the dating thing is a good idea, but I’ve only got thirty-three days left to make this happen.”

“So let us set you up!” Butter insists.

I sigh. “I think you’re putting the cart before the horse there, Butter.”

“No way! Besides, who cares what comes first, the chicken or the dick!”

From the front of the store comes the muffled sound of a crash, and we all freeze. Like the guilty people we probably are, we scurry around the prep table, through the door, back behind the customer counter. Ben Cleary is standing by the register, biting his lip, fighting a laugh and feverishly attempting to wipe up the coffee we served him no less than fifteen minutes ago.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, without looking up, his voice cracking from the laugh he’s trying to contain. “I came back because I forgot I needed to change my order for next week. I dropped this. I’m sorry.” He finally glances up at us, and all hope for composure is lost. He bursts out laughing—full-on, leaning-on-the-counter, unable-to-breathe laughter.

It’s only then that I realize every single one of us has some manner of sex toy in our hands. Some of us multiple. Oh my damn.

Liz screams. She actually screams. She turns tail and flees back into the kitchen, scurrying so fast I can hear her crash into the prep table. Shannon, Butter and I calmly try to fling the contraband behind our heads and back into the kitchen, but someone flings a bit too hard, and there is a spectacular metallic crash as a stack of mixing bowls comes tumbling down. Liz screams again.

Ben Cleary is trying his very hardest to get a grip, but it’s just not happening. We all straighten up and try to look as professional as we can, but there’s really not a lot we can do to save this. Ben has coffee dripping from his fingers, and there’s a puddle spilling over onto our side of the counter. Shannon and Butter are just staring at him, blinking. And just when I think he’s got a handle on himself, he splutters into laughter again. I fear he may rupture something.

Motherhood may have robbed Shannon of shame, but I don’t think anything could have prepared her for this.