by Kris Radish
She cried quietly, a steady stream of lovely tears that fell from her face onto her firm breasts and into the water that poured down her body. Jessica realized that her tears were like her shower—a cleansing—an awakening that collided with her sorrow for having put something so valuable, so real, so important, on a shelf for such a long, long time.
When she stepped out of the shower, dried herself off and looked once again into the mirror, Jessica saw someone new. She saw a 30-something woman who was sexy, hot, alluring, powerful, beautiful. She felt the way she did when Romney had held her, talked to her, simply looked at her, and she felt a surge of energy that seemed to change the color of her skin, the way she stood, how she knew she was going to attack the day and its multiple problems, how she moved and stood and even looked out the damn window.
Jessica Franklin Nixon was indeed in heat and she intended to stay that way the rest of her life. In heat and needing so much to tell her mother she loves her, that she is sorry, and that she gets the message she has been working so hard to share.
“So,” Jessica says, smiling in a way that is unfamiliar to Geneva. “What happened to your friend?”
“Everyone started hitting on her,” Geneva replies. “She put down that damn book, which we should probably sell at the store, and she took in a breath and she was a changed woman, a woman who embraced her sexuality, who knew she had it, who wanted it and so did everyone else who looked at her or came within a one-block radius of her sexually charged self.”
Jessica throws back her head and laughs and Geneva says out loud, “Oh, yes, baby, just like that,” and Jessica laughs again, heartily, and parrots her words, “just like that,” and then she tells Geneva that she knows exactly what she is talking about, what her friend Elaine had discovered.
“Truth be told, baby, men and women have been hitting on me for a while now,” Jessica admits. “If you stay long enough, and we don’t switch back to our business discussion, you’ll hit on me too.”
“In your dreams, honey,” Geneva shoots back, laughing. “I’ve got my hands and mouth and pretty much everything else full at my house. Besides that, you saucy straight girls are too slow, and you are definitely too short for me.”
“Hey, Geneva,” Jessica asks, scooting her chair forward just a bit and totally disrupting her business meeting seating chart, not to mention her usually business-driven, anal life, “Can you tell, really?”
Geneva likes the new Jessica so much she wants to dance around the bathroom. The two women have worked so closely for such a long time that there isn’t much they don’t know about each other. Jessica has been the mastermind planner and she’s had fun driving to this Diva place, but Geneva knows more than Jessica does about balance, about keeping your pie plate full all of the time, about making certain all the corners of the world are filled.
“I can tell and so can every man who walks past you, darling,” Geneva whispers seductively. “I told you—you are in heat—and I know there’s a better way to say it but it’s me and you here, baby. You are spicy, girl. Very spicy these days. It sort of coincides with the arrival of your mother now that I think about it, and I just hope you can keep it and, especially, use it. And your mom, Jessica—well, she’s smart and sexy and when she’s in the store, in case you haven’t noticed, she sells more than anyone.”
“My mom and I have collided in a good way. It’s not over, but we are both trying like hell to make it work. Thanks for caring, Geneva. I needed a slap upside the head.”
“Care, my ass. I’ve always cared. Let’s just see what the hell you do with it. And just so you know, baby—your mother is hot but you still don’t have a clue.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have no idea?”
“What?” Jessica asks, totally mystified.
“Baby, women and men hit on you, and I heard you and you claim to be physically attracted to men. Am I right so far?”
Jessica nods. She’s thinking. She’s hot, but she can still think.
“The best sex you’ve ever had, the greatest love of your life up to this moment right here, has been with a woman, right?”
“Right.”
“Which brings me right back to the clueless part.”
“Maybe I want everyone. Maybe I’m into that polyamory gig where people have several lovers. Men. Women. Whatever.”
Geneva loves Jessica. She cannot imagine her not in her life, in her world, living too far away. She’d throw herself in front of a New York bus for her and at this very moment she knows a hell of a lot more than Jessica knows.
“Jessica, why do you have to decide?”
Jessica shrugs and says it seems as if it would be easier.
“It’s not like we’re playing dodge ball and you’re picking teams,” Geneva advises. “Just go with it. Just flaunt your sexual self and see what happens. You’ve let go this far—why not just take off the entire shell and see where the hell you go?”
Jessica pauses. She wonders if Geneva is right. Wonders if she, for just the second time in her life, should let things simply happen. If she cuts back a bit on the use of the duct tape she’s been using to keep her life in place, what might happen? Who might happen? When might it all happen?
“I’ll try,” she finally says, surrendering the last piece of camouflage that she has used to keep herself away from the wild dogs of the world.
Geneva applauds her, throws open her bag of folders and spreadsheets and numbers and the two women plunge back into the world of business as if they have been discussing what to make for the gang at the employee appreciation dinner.
And there is much to discuss and not every discussion has an answer that can be as simple as the word “sex.”
By 3:55 P.M., Connie Nixon Franklin believes she has become a senior citizen sexpot. She has her AARP card and is wondering, as she occasionally runs into the back room to look at the notes she made during her crash course in the use and care of sex toys, if she is supposed to be having this much fun.
“Quick, hey, Meredith, what did you say again about batteries and plug-in vibrators and the differences in sensation?” she asks as she races into the back room while a woman waits by the counter.
Meredith tells her and wants to jump up and scream. She’s created a monster. Connie is not only fun but she’s also smart and she cares and the customers—at least the last 15 who have come in since Connie’s mini–sex training class—seem to adore her.
And Connie is flirting with both the men and the women. She’s flirting and she’s selling sex toys and occasionally she’ll rush past Kinsey or Meredith, who cannot stop smiling at her, and say something like, “How are you planning on sneaking me across the border?” or “”I want a raise” or “I had no idea” as she maneuvers past them holding a sexual device that looks as if it belongs in a baby’s playpen.
And in a moment when she stops, pauses to regroup in between customers, Connie is not at all convinced that she is doing more than just filling in at her daughter’s store for a few days. She’s not at all sure she knows what in the hell she is doing. She is not at all sure that she should have left Indiana, kissed Burt, temporarily abandoned her list of dreams, forgiven her daughter for living in a world that she never even knew existed, and helped throw her entire life into a tailspin that has her parading around a city she was so scared of just days ago as if she knows what in the hell she is really doing.
Connie is afraid to look in a mirror because she may not recognize herself but she’s also hanging on to #37 on her list so tightly that she tells herself she cannot afford to change directions—especially if it means going backwards. But pausing just around the corner from the desk-door, from the eyes of her co-workers, and with her hand resting on a long purple feather that is attached to a finely woven black leather handle, Connie Nixon Franklin doubts herself. She doubts her ability to sell like this, to keep up with the kids she works with, to rotate her life so quickly without even calling O’Brien, for crissakes. What c
ould she be thinking? Has one kiss caused her to go mad? What if Jessica fires the whole damn bunch of them when she finds out about her whip-toting mama?
Then, as if someone has sent out an emergency call for a career/sex counselor, Mattie, the lively hairdresser, bursts into the store, not so much walking as floating. She’s looking for Connie in the middle of a late afternoon coffee break, takes one look at her standing with her hands on her hips, at her perfect hair, her eyes focused on the billowing material against the far wall, and she thinks she’s helped create her own Diva.
“Connie, you look fabulous!” Mattie exclaims as she moves in for a hug. “Actually, you’re glowing.”
“I got kissed.”
“It’s the hair,” Mattie yells, pumping her fist into the air. “Actually, I have someone else for you to kiss. I came in to see how you feel about blind dates.”
Connie cannot speak. If she said the word “fuck” as often as other people did, as often as her own daughter or most of the women she worked with back at the hospital, that is what she would say right now. But instead she says nothing. Nurse Nixon looks at Mattie as if she too has lost her mind and cannot find it.
“Connie, you are sort of shimmering here while you stand under the shadows of the lovely sex toys. I’m serious. There’s this guy who comes in to my salon all the time and I told him all about you and he wants to take you for a drink or dinner and I already checked him out. He’s not a serial killer or anything.”
“Honey,” Connie stammers. “Hold on. I just left Indiana, plowed into the sex-toy business, kissed Burt Reynolds, found out my oldest daughter’s deepest secrets and now this?”
“Burt Reynolds?”
“Well, he looked like Burt Reynolds and let me tell you, if Burt Reynolds kisses like that you can call me a stalker,” Connie shares. “But…”
“But what, baby?”
“Shit, Mattie, I just spent the last few hours learning about sex toys because Meredith confided in me that Jessica is on overload, and they have some kind of festival they might need me to go to and I just thought, ‘What the hell?’ and now I’m thinking for real, ‘What the hell am I thinking?’” Connie says, not waiting for an answer, or a breath, or anything from her new friend.
Mattie grabs her and pulls her into the back room while holding up her right hand as a moving stop sign so that Kinsey and Meredith know to leave them alone.
“Sit,” she orders.
Connie sits.
“Now listen, woman.”
Connie listens.
She listens as Mattie drops her sex bomb. It is a bomb filled with years of sexual heartache from all of her clients. It is a bomb that coincides with every ounce of scientific and medical research—research that supports Jessica and Geneva and Mattie’s contention that way more women are sexually dissatisfied than satisfied. It is a bomb that explodes with the reality that so many women, even now, even after all these years of education and experimentation and liberation, still do not know their bodies. It is a bomb that explodes with the very real and extremely sad news that many women still buy into the sexual and historical stereotypes that blast the world with the idea that men like and need sex and women do not.
Woman do not need it.
Women do not like it.
Women do not want it.
And the bomb explodes in Connie’s brain as if she had been holding it in her own hand.
“You know this is true because this has been your life and the life of many of your friends,” Mattie tells her softly, but forcefully, as if it was something she knew Connie had already thought about and held close but needed to hear from someone else. “I bet you have talked about this now and then with your friends, but I bet it’s even hard for you, a woman of the world, a nurse who has seen and heard and felt and witnessed everything.”
Connie wants to know how a hairstylist can be so smart but she is afraid to speak. Because every single word Mattie is saying is true.
“Do you know how many of my clients I send right here to Diva’s after I warm them up with a shampoo and a neck massage and they begin to cry and tell me something like, ‘I’ve never had an orgasm’?”
Hundreds, Connie imagines, but she knows Mattie does not want her to speak and she also knows she probably could not speak even if she was allowed to at this moment.
“My God,” Mattie continues, putting her hands against her face. “It’s so damn sad, Connie. So sad to see these beautiful, seemingly smart women trapped in this arcade of a life, and to know that they have never experienced sexual pleasure in a way that can set them free. Jesus. I’m tempted to quit and come over here to Diva’s myself. I’m serious. I know Jessica wants to open more stores and I feel like it’s saving womankind to offer services and classes and sex toys and a place to allow women to let go and learn.”
Connie has a sudden urge to get up and run through the streets with a vibrator in her hand. She has heard the stories, some of the same stories that Mattie has heard. Women cradled in her arms who are sick and boozy with medication telling her their deepest secrets. Women holding Connie’s hands tighter and tighter when their husbands come into the hospital or ER room and do not bother to touch them or kiss them or offer any words of love. Women, some of them her own close friends, who have been raped and abused, who have yet to cross over that very long bridge back through sexual recovery to their own selves.
“Connie, look at yourself, look at who you are, and how you’ve lived, and what you could bring to a place like this,” Mattie urges her. “You are sexy and you are not a kid and you have all those years of administrative poise and tact just burning a hole in your pocket. Jesus, Connie, besides that, can you imagine anything more fun at this particular moment in your life than being your age, selling sex toys, and hanging out with really cool hairstylists? If you were coming in here, wouldn’t you like to talk to you?”
Connie doesn’t hesitate this time. She stands up and she grabs her friend Mattie and she hugs her and as she hugs her she thinks about Mrs. Cradow. Mrs. Cradow who, back in 1983, was in bed 12 on the surgery ward following a hysterectomy. Mrs. Cradow, who had given birth to nine children. Mrs. Cradow, who had lost five children during the third to sixth months of pregnancy. Mrs. Cradow, who was only 39 years old but who looked like a grandmother. Mrs. Cradow, who had already taken her 16-year-old daughter to Planned Parenthood when her husband wasn’t looking. Mrs. Cradow, who had grabbed Nurse Nixon just below her elbow and pulled her with such force onto the bed and who then wept in her arms and said over and over again for 15 solid minutes, “This is the happiest day of my life because I will never have to worry about having another baby. Who needs a womb anyway? I have never once, not once, had sex for pleasure.”
Connie Franklin Nixon turns her head just a tiny bit while she is standing in the stockroom of her daughter’s sex-toy store and thinks she sees her old white nurse’s cap drop to the floor and vanish under a shelf right under the stacked boxes of the new blue vibrators.
Then she turns her head back towards Mattie’s ear and says, “No, Mattie, I cannot think of one thing more fun than being right here, right now. But what about Jessica?”
“Oh, Connie, all you have to do is let her know you love her! Just tell her, for crying out loud,” Mattie answers. “Jessica needs you here and in all places of her life just as much as you need her. Just tell her.”
“I will,” Connie promises, to her own astonishment. “The second she walks in here, that is exactly what I will do.”
And then they both giggle as an entire carton of strawberry lubricant falls off the shelf when Connie leans in to hug Mattie and dozens of tiny red bottles roll against each other and sound as if they are clapping at the edge of a vast and endlessly enchanting stage.
17. Another camping trip. Don’t call me crazy. I loved camping when I was a kid. I want to resurrect the old tent and do it. Fires every night. Burnt hamburgers. Cold mornings. Whiskey in my coffee cup.
10. Buy a convertible. Some
thing flashy, red or blue. Put the top down and drive someplace without thinking. Just get in the car and take off.
36. Enough. Stop writing—Connie—Stop writing and start doing something.
It could be a movie.
This same thought is rocketing through three minds at the exact same moment. Connie, Meredith, and a last-minute recruit who appeared as if by chance, Sara Hanson, a lanky 22-year-old casual acquaintance of Kinsey’s who happens to be free for the days needed to drive a trailer loaded with sex toys, a tent, an assortment of camping gear, and three women all the way from Times Square to Michigan, attend the big festival, and drive back again.
Connie is the designated mother. The woman in charge. The official organizer, keeper of sanity, harmony, and the religious conductor of a schedule that appears by the time the fascinating group of traveling women reach the Ohio-Michigan border to be an insane impossibility. She has not even bothered to write down the glorious #26—the mixing of friends—and here she is in the middle of it so thick it may be impossible to travel in the proper direction.
“I cannot believe we are doing this,” Connie says from the co-pilot seat as she sips from her seemingly perpetual cup of gas-station coffee. “How did this happen to us? I can’t believe my daughter hired me.”
A laugh from Sara—a dark-haired misplaced ’60s flower child look-alike who wears long skirts and tank tops and the requisite Birkenstocks, and who is sprawled in the backseat of a van that is filled from top to bottom with Diva products—has everyone say in reply, “This would be a great movie!”