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“Orgasms,” Didi nods excitedly. “Your doctor would give you an orgasm.”
“No way!” Hannah exclaims. “Like your doctor-doctor? Your real doctor would get you off?”
“Totally!” Didi answers. “In fact, that’s how vibrators were invented! They’re medical equipment!”
“Holy shit,” Desi marvels, shaking her head in disbelief. “I cannot imagine Dr. Epstein rubbing one out for me. I don’t think I would want him to even try. How would I look Mrs. Epstein in the face ever again?”
“It’s therapy,” Didi insists. “They really believed that women had to release all that pressure inside them, you know? And if you couldn’t do it yourself, or if your husband couldn’t do it for you… Well, somebody had to do it! Who better than the doctor?”
“That’s amazing,” Hannah sighs. “I wouldn’t have minded that. It took me three years to figure out how to come. It would’ve been nice to have some training.”
“It’s practically a public service,” Didi nods.
“It’s practically malpractice,” I observe into the top of my glass. I meant to say it quietly, or maybe in my head, but when I hear Didi’s intake of breath I know I said it out loud.
“Well, some of us beg to differ. And nobody’s complaining,” Didi shrugs.
“Yeah, is that legal?” Hannah asks.
“Who even knows?” I reply. “It’s just going to disappear in the next generation anyway. Just one of those small-town things that everybody learns how to live without.”
“Some of us live without it all the time,” Didi adds sarcastically. “Some of us could actually think about using those services. Maybe work out some of that blockage, don’t you think?”
I narrow my eyes and shoot her a warning look. “Some of us are just fine.”
“Seriously, you guys,” Desi drawls, “what is going on here? What are you even talking about?”
Didi turns away so she doesn’t see me silently begging her to shut up.
“Joe just doesn’t like anything about where we came from,” she answers, skating over the thing that she is threatening to say. I breathe a sigh of relief, acknowledging that she just let me off the hook.
“I just like Manhattan,” I explain. “If I wanted to stay in Florida, I would’ve. But I like it here.”
“You can’t outrun your roots, Joe,” she lectures me. “You’re still the same country control freak you always were, even if you like to pretend you aren’t. Look at you… You even dress like a country girl. You just pretend that it’s some kind of vintage pinup ideal.”
Automatically my fingers drift up toward my hair as if to push it back into place.
“I love the way you dress, Joe,” Hannah says, rushing to my defense.
“This isn’t a control-freak thing or a country thing,” I pout. “I just like to dress like this. Is that so wrong?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, is what I’m saying,” she replies. “You should just stop pretending that you’re something you’re not. Loosen up.”
“I’m fine!” I insist, finally starting to lose my patience. “Why are you even picking on me? Just leave me alone, Didi.”
“Yeah, you are a little bit of a control freak, though,” Desi sighs, her nose wrinkled. “But I do love the outfits.”
“Maybe you should just come with me back home?” Didi suggests. “Get Dr. Warner to give you a lady treatment. Loosen you right up!”
“You know what... it actually is getting really late,” I shrug, grinding my teeth and pushing my drink away from me. “I have to get to the gallery in the morning—”
“Because did you guys know that Joe has never had an orgasm? That’s probably it.”
Silence falls across the table. Somehow my heart seems to both stop and speed up at the same time.
“Like, that’s why you’re such a control freak. Or maybe being a control freak keeps you from being able to come? I don’t know. Kind of a chicken and egg thing.”
“Didi, I think you’re drunk,” Hannah mutters, her eyes downcast.
