I fire off an email asking her if she’s kidding, only to get an instant autoreply reiterating her plans to become a nun.
If I tell Ava, she’ll die of laughter at my expense. Dominika the Nun will have a forked tongue and will be covered from head to toe in tattoos, some of which depict sexual acts prohibited by the sacred texts.
Entering my apartment, I feed Monkey, my guinea pig. Originally, she was a gift to my ex, but he didn’t want her, so I ended up with her in the reverse of a custody battle.
“What do I do now?” I ask her when she’s done with her chow.
The little rodent hops up and down as though she’s dancing.
“You’re no help,” I say, then refresh her water and pace the apartment as I ponder my situation.
I thought I’d gotten a lucky break with Dominika. She’s an expert with toys, lives impressively far away, and was willing. I guess the far away part isn’t a big deal—I can use a proxy server to simulate that with someone local if I want. But the willingness to shove toys into holes is harder to find.
I meet Monkey’s pink eyes. “Do you think I should hire a prostitute?”
She scurries into the little house she usually sleeps in.
Judgmental much?
I resume my pacing and think further about prostitution.
The biggest problem is that it’s illegal in New York. More importantly, I have no clue where to find one. Or a pimp. Do they still use pimps?
Either way, I doubt you can just place an ad for a hooker on a freelancer site.
Damn Giuliani—or whoever it was that cleaned up 42nd Street. Back in the day, you could hire a sex worker there.
Maybe I could put an ad on Craigslist?
A quick search later, I learn that they got rid of the relevant section of the site, and some other similar services, like Backpage, got shut down completely.
As I read up on the topic, I realize that by hiring a sex worker, I could inadvertently end up supporting the evil that is human trafficking.
So that’s a no-go.
Would women working in a local strip club be interested in this? Or some escort service, perhaps?
Are traffickers involved with that?
Unlikely, but not sure I want to risk it. With hindsight, even Dominika could’ve been a victim of exploitation. Maybe it’s for the best that she backed out.
So where does that leave me?
A silly idea crosses my mind.
Sandra said to let her know if there’s anything she can do to help.
I picture myself approaching my boss for this and preemptively die of mortified laughter. Apart from the obvious, what if she has a weak heart and dies on me? I’d be infamous as the weirdest murderer in the history of crime.
But asking a woman I know is a promising direction.
Would Ava help?
She swears by her vibrator.
Obviously, she’d never let me live this down, but at least I’d keep my job.
The phone rings.
Speak of the devil.
“Hi, Ava,” I say, snatching up Precious. “Are you having a slow day at the hospital?”
“How did your meeting go?” she asks. “Any impaling I should be aware of?”
I tell her everything but tone down my reactions to my boss’s boss because… well, because.
Sure enough, she’s choking on laughter when I get to the part where I lost my sex toy tester to a convent.
“So,” I say at the end, “there’s a pretty big favor I want to ask you.”
“Noooo,” she squeezes out in between hysterical giggles. “I’m not having cybersex with you.”
“That wasn’t the favor,” I lie. “I was wondering if—”
“Dude,” Ava says. “You don’t have a problem.”
“I don’t?”
“You should test it on yourself,” she says with a giggle. “It’ll be fun, and you haven’t had an orgasm since what’s-his-name before Bob.”
“But—”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to loosen up a little?”
I squeeze Precious tighter, the mention of my ex and the phrase “loosen up” tempting me to say something very unkind to my bestie.
The reason He Who Shouldn’t Have Been Named broke up with me was that I wasn’t “adventurous enough, sexually.”
Those words sting to this very day, especially because there might’ve been a kernel of truth in them. Not that Bob was any kind of wizard in bed… not even a Hufflepuff.
Ava’s tone turns serious. “I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. I just stuck my big foot in my mouth.”
“More like your whole butt.” The grumpiness in my voice is only partially faked.
“Look,” she says with a sigh. “If you really insist, I’ll think about being your tester.”
“No, it’s okay.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You might have a point. I shouldn’t ask you to do something I’m not willing to do myself. The problem is, even if I do it, I still need a guy for the male toys.”
She snorts. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Crook your finger at the first male you see, preferably of legal age, and he’ll test whatever you want.”
“Uh-huh. It might work like that for you.”
“It would work like that for pretty much anyone with a uterus. But let’s say it doesn’t. You can still get on Tinder or something like that. Tell the guys who match with you that you want cybersex before your dates and see how enthused they’ll get.”
That actually does sound more plausible, though when I try to picture it, I feel deeply uneasy. Also, for some reason, the only image that forms in my mind is of lapis lazuli eyes and—
“Ooh, sorry,” Ava says. “They’re paging me.”
“Wait, I—”
The phone goes dead.
Paging. Still. Leave it to the medical profession to live in the Stone Age. I wonder if they also have dialup modems at the hospital, or cassette tapes.
Hey, at least they no longer use leeches, so that’s progress.
Unless they still do?
A quick search on Precious later, I learn that they do indeed still utilize the little blood-sucking monsters, and that the FDA somehow managed to classify leeches as a “living medical device to clear localized blood clots.”
The article mentions that maggots are used too, and I stop reading there, because gross.
Monkey peeks out of her cage and squeaks.
I give her half of a grape. “I know, I’m procrastinating.”
Snatching the grape, Monkey hides in her little house.
Fine. I can figure this out on my own.
Jumping on my laptop, I open a fresh spreadsheet, name it “testing on myself,” and fill out two columns: pro and con.
Under “con” are things like: “might be hard to face my coworkers afterward, especially the Impaler” and “it’s a less realistic test than if there were a second person involved.”
In the “pro” column are tidbits such as: “keep my job,” “Ava might be right and this could be fun,” and “prove ex wrong.”
Since the pro column ends up longer, I reluctantly accept the inevitable.
“I’ll be my own guinea pig,” I say out loud. “No offense, Monkey.”
Precious pings.