“No, no, no!” Jenny said covering her ears and causing the plastic penises and condoms to rattle around her hair. “That has to be false!”
“Is it?” Clarissa asked cocking one perfectly plucked eyebrow and waiting for a reaction. I hastily stuffed a piece of bruschetta into my mouth, chunks of salsa jumping from the bread like passengers on a sinking ship trying to escape death. I then scooped up the escapee tomato pieces with the tortilla chips, the sound of crunching doing a lousy job of drowning out my own thoughts. I looked over at Mahjong with my mouth stuffed and feebly smiled accidentally spewing small bits of tortilla dust and tomato in her direction. As close as we were, my sex life was something I managed to avoid talking to her about. How could I tell her that I had never had an orgasm? What difference did it make anyway? Sex with Manny was nice; it was pleasant. There is nothing wrong with pleasant. It’s not like I hadn’t thought it was odd before that I had never had an orgasm, it just didn’t seem to be that pressing of an issue.
At my marriage ceremony, my Aunt Jumma took me aside to give me a sex talk providing me with the same advice she had been given on her wedding night. “Listen to me Leena. I tell you vat to do na? Sex is wery simple dimple. You just let him do vat he need do and you count to forty in your head.” She looked me square in the eye with a seriousness that chilled me. “Heyna? When it be ower, den you make dahl.” There was no talk about love, no talk about emotional connections or technique, just the basic understanding that sex is the man’s domain, and mine was the dahl.
“It’s true that approximately 50% of the female population has never had an orgasm,” Clarissa said. She sounded stern, the playful glint in her eyes momentarily gone. I thought she was staring directly at me. I felt the heat in my body rise. Even a mocha-skinned person like me could turn pink with the right provocation. Before she could catch me blushing, I looked away, stuffed two mushroom caps in my mouth and chased them with a large swig of rum.
I was sure every woman in that room owned a vibrator, had multiple orgasms and open communication with their partner. I had never masturbated in my life, never had an orgasm and the only thing Manny and I really communicated about before I left the house was whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher. It was mine.
“That means statistically, there is probably someone here who has never had an orgasm. And if you think you’ve had one, I can definitely guarantee you haven’t. The good news is that if you have never had an orgasm, don’t worry, you will. Today’s your birthday!” Peals of laughter exploded all around me. I was only half-aware of Mahjong muttering: “Now that’s what I call a happy birthday” under her breath as she doodled pictures of penises on her order form.
If it was true, who else fell into that category besides me? I longed to look around, to catch someone’s eye, to feel a certain kinship with another woman but I was too afraid.
“Here’s another question,” Clarissa said. “True or false, the clitoris retracts under the hood just before the point of orgasm?” Suddenly it was silent save the sound of ice clinking in someone’s glass. I fidgeted with the pillow under me. The vinyl cover made a rude farting sound against Isabelle’s hard wood floor.
No one would have noticed if I hadn’t snorted out a laugh through my nose trying to cover it up which only echoed the sound and made it worse.
Clarissa repeated the question before she finally revealed the answer. “That is true.” She pointed to a large fake diamond ring on her right hand. “See this ring? Okay, for the rest of the night we are going to pretend that this ring is my clitoris. We’re just pretending.” There was a bit of nervous laughter but for the most part all the women stared at the large bauble. She dropped the ring down to the front of her pubic area. “Now let’s pretend I’m getting some loving.” She wiggled the big diamond up and down. “This is the hood that protects the clitoris.” She cupped the fingers of her left hand over the top of the diamond. “So here I am getting my loving, and just at the point of orgasm, the clitoris retracts.” She pulled the diamond ring toward her hiding it under the cup of her left hand. “At this point, the clitoris is so over-stimulated that it hides. It then needs to be gently coaxed back out.” She curled the diamond ring slowly out from where it was hidden by her other hand, blowing gently down on the large stone. “Then Blam! There’s your orgasm!”
So all I had to do to have an orgasm was get a big diamond ring like hers? Nothing made sense. I felt more lost and unsure with every word.
Clarissa looked confident without a hint of smugness to her. She had at least eighteen women fixated on her pubic area and yet she didn’t seem at all fazed. She was a heavy set woman, close to the size of my mother and most of my Aunties with large round hips, a wide belly and robust breasts squeezed into a white lace top. I marvelled at how comfortable she looked.
Clarissa surveyed the women in the room. I must not have been the only one with a daft expression on my face. “You see ladies, you all know what I’m talking about without actually knowing it. This point, where the clitoris is hiding under the hood,” she emphasized by hiding the diamond under her hand, “this is the moment that you have all experienced at one point or another. It’s the moment during sex that you are lying there thinking…hmmm…it’s not going to happen tonight…so….what should we eat for dinner tomorrow? Maybe chicken? Or you’re thinking I should probably get to the laundry. And my point is?” She waited but no one said a word. I started to get anxious sure that she was about to impart the most important piece of wisdom of the night on us. “My point is, your orgasm is where ladies?”
No one spoke. Surely someone knew the answer? I sure as hell didn’t.
Finally one woman in the corner said, “Under the hood?”
I wanted to laugh as I felt the second wave of rum hit my bloodstream but felt too self-conscious.
Clarissa shook her head. She waited and when no one produced an answer, she slowly drew her finger to her head and pointed. “Your orgasm is up here,” she said tapping her temple for emphasis. “It doesn’t really matter what you have going on down here,” she pointed to her pubic area again. “You have to be up here.” She moved her hand up toward her head. “Or there’s no orgasm. Your orgasm is in your brain.”
Some women started to whisper among themselves. I yearned for Mahjong to make eye contact because as the rum started to tear down my barriers one by one, I was eager for my secret to finally be revealed. When I looked over at her she was drawing pictures of gaping mouths with long curling tongues hovering over the penises she had doodled on her order form.
“Again, I reiterate,” Clarissa said, “if you’ve never had an orgasm, today is your birthday!” Several of the women in the room laughed. I took a deep breath and polished off the stein trying to make eye contact with Mahjong again.
“Mahjong,” I whispered. “Are you paying attention?”
She looked up at me through her red eyelashes. “I have two of everything she has on that table.”
Mahjong could talk about sex anytime, anywhere. She was frank and honest when it came to everything in life, often to my embarrassment or social discomfort. She was born Mae Wong but at some point during our time in high school she said her name to someone who didn’t quite catch the correct pronunciation and responded, “Mahjong? Like the game?” The name has stuck ever since.
I still remember the day we met. It was on the fifth anniversary of my father’s death, which was also my 17th birthday. A boy from school named Glen asked me to go to the movies with him. My mother said that dating was something only the besharam did. It was a conspiracy brought on by condom companies to sell their products and make Westerners more promiscuous than they already were.
When I told Glen I wasn’t allowed to