--WHEN YOU’RE TOO DONE TO TAKE ANOTHER STEP, LIFT THAT LEG UP, REACH DOWN AND TAKE ANOTHER STEP

 

                                       Night Sweats

You are having a difficult time.  A difficult time cumming, that is.

Your orgasm is a peach pit stuck in the throat, an unclaimed suitcase spinning lonely on the baggage carousel.

But you’re not a quitter, never have been, so you play piano across your clitoris, “The Four Seasons,” “Bolero,” “Rhapsody in Blue.”  A rash breaks out over your mons area, popping up like the heads of fire ants.  It’s no use, your vagina is a dead sandwich, a cold cut without condiments.

You have sanitized aids on hand by your sweat-damp pillow and the bed stand.  Some are household items, a couple that aren’t are still in plastic containers sans batteries.  One by one they get put to work, inserted or rolled around like legless amphibians.  One by one each fails to spark arousal.  Nothing happens.  Nada.  Cero.  Nada de nada. 

And now you’re thinking in Spanish.  Nothing could be worse.  You remember that night in Cabo, you a recalcitrant teen, sparring with Mom.  You’d darted off to the beach, the surf so loud it sounded like God trying to talk with his mouth full.

They came out of the dark, as if born by the night air, in secret, eggless, evil already fully formed.  Your struggles were as useless as the vibrator resting against your thigh right now.

You’ve only told three people.  Three men, now all exes.  Each would have been fine with it, with you, if you hadn’t handled it like a noose around your neck every time they touched you with their appropriately hungry hands.

You need a breakthrough, is what you’re thinking.  Your therapist said as much, even gave you the idea.  “Try to make yourself see God.”  Such an odd expression, she’d used. 

But now it makes you titter, the giggling ticking up with each breath until you are a monsoon of laughter, convulsing in frustrated joy for no apparent reason.

When, at last, it recedes, you notice how soaked the sheets are.  Your legs and toes are wet and trembling.  Out the window the moon is blinking through a thin sheet of clouds.  Without thinking, you stand up, wave and feel yourself smile.