Make Lemonade

Got lemons? Make lemonade! And let me tell you, it was damn good lemonade. Once we landed on the other side of the smell test, the evening was nothing short of fun. He was attentive and aware. In other words, he was just as eager to please as he was to be pleased and, more importantly, he didn’t need a map and a compass to locate my rhymes-with-fit. With small pauses to sip some water and adjust positioning, we went at it for around two hours before finally collapsing onto one another.

“You know, you don’t have to stay. I mean. If you want to just get up and go, I won’t stop you.”

We had now assumed my most favorite post-coital position. He was lying naked on his back with his head slightly propped against a pillow. One arm was bent and tucked behind his head. I was lying naked on my side with my head and a hand resting on his chest. I loosely draped my leg over his. A sheet was pulled up over part of us.

“No. I like this too. I’ll stay for a little bit.”

As much as I love the safety and warmth found in the comfort of a man’s chest and his arm pulling me into it, I sort of wanted him to just get his things together and go. I had a really important business meeting in the morning. I also didn’t want to have to attempt a conversation with Fling. We had nothing in common and neither of us was interested in pursuing something beyond oh-baby-right-there-don’t-stop. In other words, conversation wasn’t high on my to-do list.

Luckily he remained silent. Around twenty minutes later, he slipped out of bed and headed to the bathroom where the remnants of safe sex were discreetly discarded. He washed up, dressed up and checked to make sure he wasn’t leaving any evidence behind. I stayed in bed. Before departing, he returned to my bedroom, pulled the sheet up, tucked it in around me, kissed me on the forehead and told me to sleep well. For a moment I feared he might steal something on the way out. My Prada bag was sitting by the front door with my wallet in plain view and my jewelry worn earlier in the day was on the table next to my keys. Paranoia must have lasted only a few moments because I remained awake only long enough to hear the door close behind him.

I awoke in the morning well rested with an imprint of sheet wrinkles on my face and legs. I showered and dressed, though was a little tired from the previous night’s activities. As I descended the steps of the stairwell leading to my car parked out back, I started to notice stiff muscles I didn’t know I even had and they weren’t stiff from me being on my treadmill. Within a few minutes of arriving at the office, I phoned one of the two people with whom I always share everything. Leslie and Allison are two confidantes who know my deepest darkest secrets and never make me concerned I’ve shared them.

“Oh my God, you little trampy ho-bag! Spill the beans so your married sister can live vicariously through you!”

“It started off rocky but ended grand.”

“Rocky? As in ‘yo, Adrienne’ running through South Philly?”

“Fuck no! Do you really think I would invite a guy like that into my bed?”

For the next ten minutes, I relayed the ups (orgasms, yes plural) and downs (sniff a whiff amongst other things – yes, other things). Leslie contributed to the conversation with comments like “shut up” and “no he dih-ent.” Eventually it was time to get back to work. Before hanging up the phone, my older and wiser sister offered a piece of advice.

“Listen. Remember those killer stilettos I passed off to you? Helmut Lang? Black leather?”

“Totally. They’re fucking hot! Whenever I’m wearing them and look down and see them, even I want to fuck myself.”

“Classy, Paige. But seriously. Promise me the next time he comes over you wear them.”

“Oh my god, you’re dressing me up for my trysts???? This is so disturbing.”

“And don’t take them off because if he has one of those going-to-the-dark-side moments, you might need a sharp object to spear him with.”

“Point taken, Ms. Worry Wart.”

“And one more thing, my little hussy. I expect full details the next time you tap this one. Seriously. This is damn good entertainment.”

I Smell A Lemon

I took slow and steady steps toward the door. I couldn’t exactly remember what he looked like. You know how that goes. You’re smitten and for a few minutes after parting ways, his image is filling your mind. The dark brown eyes with a tempting twinkle. The firm hand that gently and playfully touched my forearm during a moment of the conversation. The cute way his mouth curled more to the right than the left when he smiled a devilish grin. But after a few days, characteristics melded together and suddenly I was stuck with a faceless man, hoping and praying I hadn’t had one too many cocktails the first time we mingled and accidentally found an unattractive person erroneously attractive.

“Hey there,” he said as I opened the door and welcomed the handsome stranger into my superficially clean place.

I stammered out an apology for my appearance, suddenly feeling awkward and self conscious.

“Sorry about the glasses. Had to take my contacts out. Oh, and the ponytail. I look so Debbie Gibso…”

My reference to the 1980’s teen queen was gobbled up mid-sentence by his mouth pressing up against mine. I found myself backed up against the wall with my front door wide open. It was late so my neighbors, half of which are deaf anyway, were probably sleeping. Nonetheless, I fumbled mid-kiss to kick the door with a flip-flop clad foot. If Mrs. Rosenberg two doors down had a heart attack, it wasn’t going to be from seeing the hussy in unit 201 going at it in her doorway.

“Do you want some strawberries?” I asked ten minutes into the first kiss.

“Huh?”

And there it was. The past stepping on the present. Ex loved when I cut up strawberries and made whipped cream from scratch. We never introduced either in the bedroom, so I’m not sure how or why I thought it was relevant to prepare them for Fling. But I did.

“I just thought you might be hungry,” I lamely offered. He passed on the dessert spread and led me out of the kitchen.

Before making our way to my bedroom, I decided to check the bottom line. I got down on my knees and with him standing in front of me I started to undo his belt. Correction, I struggled to undo his belt. Who the fuck puts a belt on at 11:30pm on a weeknight to run over to some girl’s house where the only intentions are to have sex? Okay, I would but I’m a girl. Oh my god. He’s gay. Only gay men accessorize after sunset. While I struggled to figure out if I was about to bag my second gay man, Fling reached down to help me, explaining the belt had a temperament of its own. I suddenly felt like a novice.

With the belt finally unbuckled, I resumed my actions. I undid his button and slowly lowered the zipper, my eyes gazing up at his. He was anxious and excited. I know he found the pace of my zipper pulling to be a tease but I was just scared I’d accidentally injure him if I, well, just think of that scene in Something About Mary. I’d rather take my time than have to drop a guy off at the ER with his pecker jammed in between the teeth of a zipper.

Two seconds later, his pants fell to the floor and there in front of me was everything in plain view. No tighty whities. No boxers. Nothing. Okay, let me get this straight, he took the time to belt up but passed on the underwear? It didn’t make sense. Then again, I was sporting a scrunchy. Who was I to start passing judgment?

I looked up at him and smiled a big devilish smile. This was good. Very good. In a Goldilocks evaluation, it was big but not too big, thick but not too thick and well landscaped. Now God, I beg of you, please let him know what to do with it!

“Can you smell that?” he asked.

“I’m sorry?” I replied. Was my candle setting the place on fire? Did I just unknowingly fart and get busted?

He took my head and pushed it between his legs and repeated the words, this time adding pheromones at the end. With my nose firmly pressed up against the penis I'd moments earlier adored, the only thing I could smell was yet another lemon. I started to pull my head back when he arrogantly said, “What, you can’t handle it?”

“Can you handle showing yourself to the door?” I inquired.

Suddenly his hands dropped off my head and the color drained from his face. It took him two seconds to recover from my offer to show him out. Then he apologized. He was caught up in the moment, muddling his past with the present. Now he was the one stammering. Yes, shoving a woman's face against your private parts and telling her to take a whiff is more offensive than my gesture of offering strawberries. Nonetheless, I wanted to salvage the chemistry that remained.

I got up off my knees, adjusted my glasses, delicately kissed him on the lips and then suggested we start over.

Casual Sex

I haven’t been the biggest fan of casual sex. The few times I took it out for a test drive, I landed a lemon. You never know what you’re going to find tucked away in those boxers. The one thing I concluded was that bad kissers always turned out to be bad lays. Maybe it has to do with poor rhythm or not being aware of what qualifies as pleasurable. A stiff tongue is a stiff tongue and doesn’t work no matter where it's poking around. Either way, those encounters were terrible. If the first thing I reach for when I return home from a tryst is a toy, things have gone horribly wrong. I decided to bypass future fling offers during those in-between-boyfriend times and rely instead on my trusty supply of Duracell.

Things can change. I met a guy I’d never in a million years want to date but seriously wanted to bed, and fast. There are so many things wrong with him. It isn’t even worth making a list. Nonetheless, I stood across from him having a meaningless conversation about President Bush and all I wanted to do was press up against him and run my hand up the front of his thigh. And as my fingertips gently graze over his leg, I’d lean in and take a little nibble of his earlobe. I’d pull my mouth back long enough to let him know in a breathy, warm whisper how badly I wanted…. You get my point. I’m pretty sure my side of the presidential conversation made absolutely no sense.

I kept the I-want-to-throw-you-down-right-here-right-now thoughts to myself. It’s always dangerous for a woman to be so forthright about sex. Men might want a freak in the bedroom a la porn flicks but that doesn't mean they know how to respond to advances from said freak. Especially when she wears Burberry headbands and pearl earrings. Cards were exchanged but I didn’t think he’d call and I had no intention of dialing his number. In fact, I lost his business card in the shuffle of my handbag. It must have disappeared to the same black hole where my favorite Chanel lipstick now resides.

He called.

“Do you want me to come over?” he asked five minutes into the initial chitchat. To be honest, it was the first thing to come from his bumbling mouth worth responding to.

“Um, no,” I replied. Flashbacks of failed flings cluttered my head. I just couldn’t erase the long ago memory of saliva dripping down my chin as a hardened tongue performed a tonsillectomy.

A few days later, I found myself in Wholefoods buying stuff for dinner. As I strolled past the dairy section, I grabbed a small container of whipping cream. I wasn’t sure I’d invite him over. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to break out the hand mixer buried behind the coffee maker in my cabinet of kitchen essentials rarely touched. But I didn’t want to be left stranded without whipped cream. I put it in the basket right next to a container of strawberries, a piece of filet mignon and a zucchini for sautéing. I bypassed asparagus for fear of stinky pee.

After dinner, I got on my treadmill and sweated away an hour. By the time I was done working out, it was 11 o’clock. I jumped into the shower to rinse my body clean and as I stood under the steady stream of hot water, I made my decision. In a loosely knotted and freshly damp towel, I rang him and simply said, “I think you should come over.” He agreed.

In the time that separated the end of our conversation and the knock on my door, I lotioned my clean shaven legs, whipped the cream, cut some strawberries and did other things to make my messy condo less unsightly. Shopping bags filled with returns were hidden in the closet, girly magazines letting you know how to dress sexy and what men really like in the bedroom were tossed in a basket next to my sofa and the shoes cluttering my entranceway were thrown under my bed. I dimmed the lights, lit a candle and turned on some music. Then I sat there.

What if he’s a terrible kisser? What if he thinks I’m a terrible kisser? What if I start to sweat out of nervousness? Sweating from sex can be sexy but sweating before you even get your clothes off isn’t. What if the candles I lit aren’t dim enough to hide my thighs and he sees my cellulite? What if in the throws of things, I forget about the candles and accidentally burn down my complex? What if no matter how much time I spent in the shower, my down there smells? It doesn't smell to me but let's be honest, I'm not flexible enough to get my nose within sniffing range. What if he has a teensy tiny pecker, and worse yet, what if he has no idea what to do with it? I can’t handle another lemon.

My phone rang.

“Ms. Paige? A gentleman is on his way up to visit you.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

I think.

The Shape of Things

My dad was diagnosed with MS when I was eight. My parents sat me and my sister down two years later and broke the news. I was a savvy 10 year old but the disease meant nothing to me. I went back to my fifth grade life.

Over the next few years, I struggled with my dad’s illness. Not because it was hard seeing my father’s physical ability waiver but because he was identifiably different. He had a cane and a license plate with one of those wheelchair logos. It might have been hanging off a snazzy Audi but it flagged him as unique in a not so publicly welcomed way. No one made fun of me or of him but I felt different.

Classmates would spend winters skiing with their dads. I spent mine helping my mon shovel the driveway and offering an arm to assist my wobbling dad navigate snowy sidewalks. When I got my license, I stepped in as the car-parker. Drop my dad at the curb and swing the car around to a nearby space. I hated when people, complete strangers, would awkwardly extend a hand. They’d hold the door open and I’d sprint through the parking lot to swap places and halt others from taking notice. If I let others help with the burden, that meant others were able to see the disease.

When I left home for college, a transition occurred. I no longer cared what people thought. My dad’s illness was as unchangeable as the freckle permanently dotting the upper corner of my right eye. It just is. I didn’t care that he called the dean at Smith to personally request reserved seats at my graduation. I didn’t care that he couldn’t make a trip up the stairs to any of my dorm rooms to see where or how I lived. He showed up the best he could. At least he was there, I’d say.

My dad’s been sick for the better part of my life now. I don’t know him any other way than dependent on me to fetch his lunch, to carry his briefcase out to the car, to load and unload the scooter he uses when his legs are unable to carry his body more than a few yards. He maintains a great sense of humor, finding laughter where others might only see sadness. He even says that of all the diseases he could have landed in the Russian Roulette of health, he’d take his over any other.

So my family made adjustments. Now we anticipate my dad’s needs without having to think. It’s like breathing or blinking. You don’t need any trigger, you just do it. My family travels according to the accommodations for my dad. We celebrate special occasions at restaurants that are truly accessible. It’s all so routine.

I’m starting to notice that my friends are catching up to me in the world of parents with deteriorating health. One friend’s dad had major heart problems, forcing an early retirement amongst other life changes. Another friend’s dad has an inoperable brain tumor. It's benign in the sense it isn’t cancer but it's pressing up against the brain stem and causing some serious problems.

It’s awkward listening to my peers struggle with something I resolved a long time ago. I’ve acclimated to the clusterfuck unexpectedly knotting up the ideal life whereas they’re still attempting to undo it, too involved to relent and realize there isn’t anything that can repair the problem.

I try to relay my experiences, acting as proof that you can come out the other end even when it seems impossible. There are surely residual characteristics I’ve adopted as a result of my dad being sick. I’m always falling into the role of caretaker when dating and I’m overly independent, making it difficult for me to ever ask for help. Though I haven’t personally lived with a debilitating disease eating away at my own body, MS has shaped me into the person I am; a caring and stubbornly self reliant person. I’m not sure who I’d be if I had grown up with two healthy parents. Not that I think about this. Ever. I wouldn't want to be any other way.

In My Head

Over time, I’ve become rather confident about what I have to offer at the dating table. I’m smart, witty and sophisticated. I know my way around the kitchen, enjoy doing little things to make someone else happy and understand that compromise isn’t necessarily sacrifice. I'm not needy, demanding or unreasonable. I'm more than competent and comfortable in the bedroom, or any other place where one dabbles in physical intimacy. So with all of the knowledge and confidence I’ve gained over the years, why is it that no matter what, I sell myself short. When Hope asked me the other day about a man in my mix, I told her the line had been quiet for around a week. And without a second thought, I shared my reasoning.

“It’s my appearance. He got one look at me from behind and decided there was no way in hell he could live the rest of his life with my ass. I knew I should have insisted he walk in front of me on the way to the table.” Hope almost choked on her granola.

I’m not exactly sure at what point in my life my physical appearance became the bane of my dating existence. Nonetheless, there it is. When I look at a picture of myself, all I see are the things I detest. My thighs are too big. My eyes get squinty when I smile big. My too front teeth belong on a woodchuck. I am my worst critic which sometimes makes me equally the worst salesman.

Two therapists ago, I sat across a woman Barbara Bush looking woman and I admitted disliking my appearance. She cut me off in the middle of my list of flaws and gave me homework. I was supposed to go home, stand in front of a mirror and repeat “I’m beautiful” ten times over. I wanted to poke her in the eye. Daily affirmations a la Christina Aguilera were not the answer to poor body image. For the first time ever, my dog ate my homework.

In recent years, I’ve spent more effort and time trying to override my crazy head. When I think I look fat, another voice pipes up and compliments my eyes. It sounds so Sybil. I’m standing at a bar, sipping my cocktail and batting my eyelashes and in my head there’s a battle of wills.

“You’re ass is huge.”

“Shut up!”

“No you shut up, bitch.”

I can only imagine what the heck my expression is as I’m internally arguing with myself. It takes a lot of energy to keep the old critic mum. That voice has had many more years to perfect its efforts, knowing exactly what words hit my insecurity jugular. But with some effort, my stand-tall voice has had an impact. It isn’t the shy voice it once was, intimidated or hushed easily. No longer does stand-tall retreat out of fear.

“Who are you calling bitch, you little twit? Let’s get something straight. Paige brings a shitload to the table. And if you want me to whip out the list and start rattling off each item, one by one, I will!”

“Whatever. A fat ass is a fat ass and that is the only thing men, or any man she'll ever want to date, care about at the end of the day.”

“Brilliant and no fear to show it!”

“El junk-oh in el trunk-oh!’

“Sexy with a capital S!”

“Beep! Beep! Beep! Back it up!”

“Funnier than funny!”

“Fuck it. Fine. I’ll let you win this time but don’t think I won’t be back the next time something silly happens and Paige needs her ass as the explanation!”

Love, Love, Love

My senior year of college, a good friend went home for her sister’s bat mitzvah. Two of us attended the event to keep her company. We hopped in my jeep early in the morning, changed into appropriate attire in the synagogue parking lot and set off for a day filled with lots of Hebrew and lots more food. After spending 40 years hungrily traipsing through the desert, my people have a habit of going overboard with food.

At the luncheon afterwards, waiters waltzed around the room with smoked salmon topped crostini and pigs-in-blankets while couples waltzed around the dance floor. My friend’s sister did a superb job reading from the torah so there was good reason for friends and family to come together and celebrate her success. I contributed to the joy by crying.

I didn’t cry out of elation or pride. In fact, at the moment, I wasn’t all that certain what was making salty tears release out of the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks. My startled and confused friend turned to me and asked if I was okay. I answered her, my sentences interrupted with gasps for air.

“It’s just that….(gasp)….I’m watching this….(gasp)….couple dance and….(gasp)….they look so….(gasp)….in love.”

“That’s a good thing. Especially considering they’re, like, fifty something.”

“I know....(gasp)....but what if….(gasp)….I never find….(gasp)….that?”

The friend nodded a code red signal across the dance floor to the other friend and escorted me out to a side room that had been previously used for the cocktail hour. Servers ran around tidying up emptied goblets stained with Manischweitz and crumpled napkins tainted with greasy fingerprints. It took me a few minutes to calm down and a little longer for my support group to convince me I'd find love. I was only twenty-one, after all, and had more than enough time to experience true love. With my two friends now on mental breakdown watch, I rejoined the rest of the celebration.

I can honestly say that while I have loved all of my ex’s in one capacity or another, I’ve probably only been in love with one of them. It was a whirlwind romance that ended with him back in the arms of the woman who preceded me. Perhaps it was more lust than love but I was crushed either way. I haven’t felt that hardcore I-could-die-without-you affection in almost ten years now and I’m starting to get concerned.

After things ended with Ex, I went back to seeing a therapist. I agreed with my friends that I didn’t actually need counseling but it felt like the right thing to do. I shared the issues cluttering my head. One of them was whether I could find love as is. Or did I perhaps need to consider changing my caretaker ways in order to avoid always taking care of someone who rarely takes care of me. Dr. P gracefully sidestepped that landmine and steered the conversation elsewhere.

“Tell me,” Dr. P said. “Is there a couple you envy to the point you wish you could emulate them?”

I sat silent.

“Paige?”

“I’m thinking….”

“Okay. Well, we know that immediate examples aren't the best. How about parents of friends? ....Paige?”

“Still thinking…..”

In a world where divorce is more expected than a successful marriage and where at thirty-three, I have more single friends than married ones, I struggled to come up with a couple I envied. Finally I found one and I identified the pair to Dr. P. She exhaled a sigh of relief, noting that a solidly functioning couple has become more extinct than the bald eagle. True words but not necessarily what this gal needed to hear at that very moment. I know I'll fall in love one day, marry a man I can't imagine a life without and we'll do our darnedest to see it through to the end, Depends and all. But those silly statistics that a woman is more likely to die in a plane crash than wed after age 35 doesn't help me remain confident.

I got home late the other night and while settling in and calming down from a long day, I flipped through the channels. I ultimately stopped at HBO which was airing a documentary about the Rosie O’Donnell cruise through the Caribbean for families with gay parents. A few couples had commitment ceremonies while at sea, providing interviews along the way. I would have never intentionally selected this documentary as my entertainment but somehow I got sucked in the way I do with infomercials for Winsor Pilates and that crappy bullet thing that you can use to make pesto sauce, guacamole and margaritas. I know you know the product I'm talking about. And if you bought it, I'm curious, is it as great as that annoying Australian bloke claims?

In one segment of the documentary, two men talked about their family. When the state of New Jersey made it legal for gays to be foster parents and adopt, they were at the front of the line taking in two foster children. They soon learned that one of them had two sisters also in the system, so they took them in too. Just prior to adopting the four children, a social worker notified the men that the non-sibling child’s mother was pregnant again and would they be interested in adopting her yet-to-be born child. Without a second thought, they said yes. So here is a family of two white men, together for ten years, having a commitment ceremony on a ship, surrounded by five adopted kids they love as their own. It looked like the UN. And I cried. Not because I was sad and not because I was happy. Just because. Because even in the most untraditional sense of family, I see something I so want and something I’m not so sure how to get.

Going Home

Still a work in progess (like me)....nonetheless, here is the piece I submitted for my writing class.

Story is found here

Sleep Walking

When I was younger, my sister and I spent family vacations sharing the hotel bed. She accused me of talking in my sleep and I claimed innocence even though I had no evidence to prove her wrong. I can sleep through just about anything. Put me in the backseat of a car and I’m out before we hit the onramp. Neither the blaring fog horn of the Nantucket bound ferry nor a 70 mph collision with a pothole the size of Arkansas can interrupt one of my naps.

Then one morning, over silver dollar pancakes at a hotel restaurant, my sister reminded me of a conversation about a lamp. I had no idea what she was talking about. According to her, I supposedly wanted her opinion on the hotel's bedside lighting. I also wanted her to turn it on. There wasn’t any part of this chat I could recall but she sounded so convincing, I finally accepted the fact that I’m a talkative sleeper. After spending summers away at camp, more and more people confirmed my worst fear. I’m capable of having a coherent conversation while 100% asleep.

As I got older, stranger sleepy time things started to happen. First of all, I found myself moving about. I’d go to bed in a t-shirt and awake in a t-shirt and some running shorts. I also started to occassionally recall my actions. One time, I got up in the middle of the night and stood at the sink brushing my teeth. The mirror in front of me reflected back what I was doing and I knew it made no sense. I’d brushed my teeth a few hours earlier. No matter how ridiculous my actions, I just couldn’t stop myself from pushing the bristles back and forth against my molars. The awake part of my brain told me to put the toothbrush down and go to bed but the sleepy side of my brain kept me locked in the moment. I spit, rinsed, turned off the light and only then crawled back into bed.

When I went off to college, my mom asked me to tie a string with a bell around my ankle whenever I went to sleep. She was concerned I’d wander off into the quad, half asleep and half dressed, for the entire world to see and/or violate. She adamantly believed that a little bell would work like an alarm and I’d be awake well before getting my dorm room door open. Speaking of an alarm, my mom also reconfigured the motion detectors at home, removing them all from my end of the house for fear I’d trip the alarm on a regular basis. I never wore a bell anklet and I never slept walk through an armed motion detector. Nonetheless, my mother was convinced the worst was right around the corner.

The last couple of years, I’ve found myself up and about in the middle of the night for one reason in particular. There’s a fear my jewelry has gone missing. It isn’t like I’m stowing the Hope Diamond from thieves. In fact, other than some David Yurman and my nice watch, there isn’t much luxury to steal. Nonetheless, I awake in a tizzy and start rummaging to confirm nothing’s gone missing. Sometimes I’m asleep the whole way through and other times I come to while clasping my wheat-link chain in my right hand. My heart is racing and I have a general sense of fear. And then I realize how ridiculous I’m being, sigh, and get back into bed.

A few Saturday’s ago, I got home in a tailspin. I had exactly one hour to morph from hairy and dirty to smooth and gala ready elegant. As I slipped the delicately beaded straps onto my shoulder and my pedicured feet into open toed heels, I turned to put away one necklace and retrieve another. My jewelry box was gone. It sits on my dresser in the same spot day in and day out and at that moment in time, the spot was empty.

Workmen had been in my condo all week long trying to repair a temperamental shower faucet. Losing track of who was coming and going when, I forgot to hide my valuables on Friday. Did John the plumber stumble across the answer to his debt problems? If I loaded eBay, would my Yurman, pearl earrings be listed? In panic mode, I did what made sense in a Paige Jennifer world and questioned where I would have hidden my jewelry box in a sleepy state. When awake, I put it behind my pillows or in my dirty laundry basket. Nope and nope. Shit.

With my floor length gown dragging across the parquet tiles, I ran all around my one bedroom residence. I looked under the bed, in my pantry, in the oven, behind my sofa, under my bathroom sink. Nowhere. I even looked in some places twice thinking I might have overlooked the obvious out of stress. Still, I came up empty handed.

I live in a small town that neighbors Philadelphia. The worst crime we have is under aged kids buying cigarettes at the local WaWa. Murder and theft is left for the big cty next door. The last time I spoke to a cop about my handbag going missing, they were convinced it was me being blonde and not me being robbed. As much as I was starting to believe my jewelry just might have been stolen, I wasn’t yet ready to rule out my nighttime activity as the culprit.

Fearful of wrongfully accusing someone, I sat down on my sofa and pondered where the heck I could have stowed my jewelry box. I needed to rationally decipher my irrational behavior. For the third time, I approached my bed. Maybe I put it between the folds of my fluffy down comforter. With one outstretched hand, I reached underneath the bedding. My freshly polished nails bumped up against something. I closed my eyes and pulled back the sheets. There, tucked into the corner of my queen sized bed was one jewelry box, one stuffed animal and one vibrator. Turned out to be a busier night than originally thought.