“This is the King!” Clarissa’s dark eyes flashed like green electricity. “Now ladies, let me show you something about this toy. Not only will he light you up, but he lights up himself!” She flicked a switch at the base and the white shaft came to life flashing bright green, then pink then blue. She went on to extol the virtues of how the toy was made but more specifically how it was designed to please the female form. “Ladies as women we can often justify getting something for someone else before we treat ourselves to anything special. Too often we don’t assume responsibility for our own sexuality. We rely on someone else to figure us out. Bring home a toy and you bring home personal satisfaction. Because it’s like I said earlier. If you can’t enjoy sex with yourself, how can you expect anyone else to enjoy it with you?”
There it was again.
So simple and true and for some reason resounding even more clearly to me than it had when I first heard it.
“Hallelujah!” Mahjong said saluting Clarissa.
“Johnny who?” Jenny slurred to the delight of the women around her.
I looked up at Clarissa and was surprised to see her looking back at me. Was it the alcohol that made me think she could see right through my soul? Like somewhere deep in those dark green eyes she could see past my facades and fears. Everything she had said resonated like crystal chimes above the growing murky fog of liquor sloshing around my brain. Could she know what a deeply profound impact her presentation was having on me?
“And with that dazzling light show ladies, I end my presentation for the night. I’ll be in the bedroom down the hall to take your orders.” Clarissa bowed gently then turned her back to the clapping mass of drunken women. Within minutes she had loaded up her display bag and slipped off to Isabelle’s bedroom.
Isabelle handed out pieces of paper with a number on it to everyone. I held on to my piece of paper flipping it from 6 to 9 and giggling at my own idiocy until the buxom blonde friend of Jenny’s came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Are you an Indian? Jenny said there was an Indian coming to her wedding.”
I didn’t know whether to correct her and tell her the term was South Asian or to tell her I was as North American as she was.
“I guess that’s me,” I said, hiding my numbered piece of paper in my palm.
“She said you were going to wear some kind of traditional Indian clothes at the wedding. I think that’s so cool!”
Where the hell was Mahjong?
“I’m not planning on it. I have a nice blue dress I can wear.”
It was the only one that fit.
She leaned her massive chest toward me and twirled her pig tails. “So I guess that you know all about the Kama Sutra right?”
“Oh no,” I said tipping against her in my own drunken numbness, “my people may have written the Kama Sutra but we forgot to read it.” I saw the momentary pause for comprehension in her eyes and then marveled at how large her mouth was when she threw it open to laugh out loud.
“So you must know about tantra too. Do you do tantra sex?” Her eyes were wide, her anticipation as big as her heaving breasts.
“Tantra? It’s my mantra!” I lied. “But I can’t-ra tell you or I’ll have to kill you.” She laughed so hard I thought I saw her teeth rattling in her head.
“There you are!” Mahjong said pulling me away from the blonde. “Do you want to go home?”
“But I’m number 9. Which is also number 6. Look! Which could also be 69.” I laughed so hard I snorted through my nose.
“So you’re ready to go home then.” Mahjong smirked at me.
“No!” I said with more urgent insistence than I intended. “My people wrote the Kama Sutra dammit! I should go in there and reclaim my place in the sexual history of my ancestors.”
“What the fuck are you talking about Lee? Your people are suburbanites that drive SUV’s. You can’t twist like those people in the Kama Sutra. You’re not some bendy brownie. You don’t have to prove anything.”
Then why did I feel like I did have something to prove? There was a hint of a challenge in Mahjong’s eyes that made me instinctively want to rise up to it. It wasn’t just the liquor talking. It was years of suppression and personal angst bursting out. In under two hours, I felt the seams of my entire existence begin to unravel.
Your people wrote the Kama Sutra.
You’re not some bendy brownie.
If I wasn’t those things then what was I?
I heard number 9 called out.
I removed Mahjong’s hand from my arm and grabbed my purse. As I crossed the threshold into Isabelle’s bedroom, the sight of the consultant’s bag spilling open with product was almost enough to send me screaming back to my safety blanket. It looked like the carnage of a sex store being beaten to death; vibrators and bottles of lubricant strewn everywhere where blood and guts would be.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized as I closed the door behind me. “I’m very nervous. It’s my first time.”
“I won’t bite,” Clarissa said with a smile flipping a fresh bill of sale open.
“I think the last brave thing I did before tonight was pick the bold coffee in the cafeteria instead of the light blend.”
“You have a good sense of humor,” Clarissa said and smiled.
“You haven’t met my mother. You need one to survive living with her.”
“What’s your name?”
I hesitated. I could just imagine that somehow word of my presence at this party would get back to my mother. Quick! Think of another name! Polly – no I don’t look perky enough to be a Polly. Maria – I don’t look Italian enough. Sushmita – I wasn’t even sure how to spell it.
“My name is Leena,” I said.
“That’s a very pretty name. Do you know what you want to buy Leena?”
“Everything!” I blurted out. I dropped my gaze. “I’m embarrassed to say I think I have never had an orgasm before.” The sentence tumbled from my mouth with surprising ease. When the words were finally out of me, I felt an overwhelming feeling of release.
“Then today’s your birthday!” Clarissa wrote down my name in the bill book in front of her.
“It’s in December actually.” The edge of my drunken buzz had worn off and I realized what she meant. “Oh, I get it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Leena. Take your time. When you’re ready, you can buy a toy and have another kind of birthday. For now, take baby steps.”
I looked down at the check marks and tiny notes I had scribbled on my paper menu. I had made them small enough so that no one else could read them but in the dim light of the room the joke was on me. I couldn’t make out any of the markings either. Just as I tried to decipher my own handwriting I noticed the words battery operated boyfriend that Mahjong had written on the back page, the first letters of each word suddenly making it clear to me why vibrators were referred to as B.O.B. I laughed out loud in a delayed reaction to the joke that had taken place nearly two hours ago. I squirmed when I saw Clarissa patiently smiling at me.
“The bunny seemed good,” I said, with a bit of hesitation. “I don’t think I’m ready for the King.”
“Absolutely. That’s a great choice.” Clarissa’s warm green eyes looked even more endearing in the soft lights of Isabelle’s bedroom.
“I want to live!” I suddenly yelped