Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [58]
“Have I ever what?” I asked her. “Had sex?” I’d let Kimmie talk me into a glass of cold white wine. After the week I’d put in at Steinman Cox, a few sips were enough to get me feeling loose-limbed and a little loopy.
“No, no. Have you ever orgasmed?”
“Orgasmed?” I giggled. Kimmie looked at me sharply.
“Am I saying it wrong?”
“No. Well, I guess most people say ‘had an orgasm.’ And yes, I have. I figured out how to do that by myself when I was thirteen.” Kimmie looked impressed. I shrugged modestly. “We didn’t have cable TV.” I didn’t mention that I’d never had an orgasm during intercourse with any of the three guys I’d been with. I’d never been relaxed enough, and, honestly, I’d always felt a little revolted at the sight of each of them with their clothes off, with their strange, drippy protuberances and unexpected clumps of hair.
“Can you show me?”
“Can I...” I looked at her. She was staring at me seriously.
“I can’t figure out how. It’s very frustrating.” She pointed at her computer, set up underneath the window on the smallest desk IKEA sold. “I went on YouTube to watch, but it didn’t work. I get close, I think . . . but then...” She pursed her lips and blew a small, disappointed raspberry. “Nothing.”
My tongue felt heavy, and my cheeks were burning. “You went on YouTube?”
“You can learn lots of things on YouTube,” Kimmie said, unperturbed. “The Times had a story about makeup tutorials.”
“Well, okay, eyeliner, that’s one thing. But masturbation . . .” I shuddered, imagining what horrors Kimmie’s computer had disgorged when she’d typed her keywords into Google.
“If you’d show me, then I’d know how.” Her eyes were shining. “I read on a sex-positive blog that women need to take responsibility for their own orgasms.”
“That’s true,” I said, gulping the rest of my wine. “Hey, Kimmie, you’re not looking at sex-positive blogs at school, are you?”
She looked at me disdainfully. “I’m not stupid!”
“No,” I said. I was getting the giggles again. “Just orgasm-challenged.”
She got stiffly to her feet. “Never mind.”
I felt bad. “No, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“So you’ll show me?”
I picked up my glass again. In college, I knew people who’d done, or at least claimed to have done, all manner of wild sex-things. Same-sex experimentation, particularly among the members of certain eating clubs, was practically a graduation requirement. The two girls down the hall from me junior year had let it be known that they were in a polyamorous relationship with a guy who lived in the vegetarian co-op and wore skirts to his visual-arts seminars. And, I liked Kimmie. She was the best friend I’d had in a long, long time . . . and going through life, or even just the rest of her twenties, not knowing how to have an orgasm was a significant handicap. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
“Excellent!” She waved me off the futon, which she quickly shifted from its upright to its reclining position, then turned down the lamp and lit a vanilla-scented candle, which she set on the coffee table, next to the jade elephant.
“Romantic,” I said, starting to giggle again. Kimmie ignored me.
“Where should I sit? Right here?” She lowered herself and sat cross-legged on the edge of the futon, fully dressed except for her shoes. All she needed was a pen and a notebook and she could have been attending a lecture.
“Wherever you want.” I thought for a minute, then lay on my back on the futon, squeezed my eyes shut, and pulled my jeans and my panties off over my hips. If I’d been by myself, I would have just unzipped my jeans and slid my hand down the front . . . but Kimmie wouldn’t be able to see anything that way. I lifted my head, squinting through the half light.
“Can you see okay?” I felt strangely out of breath, giggly and awkward and surprisingly aroused. The whole thing was so weird, by far the strangest sexual situation I’d ever been in, a world away from my grapplings