CHAPTER 19
Really Good Sex
Leda had become used to the idea that sex was slightly painful and that that was just what it was. She’d still feel an urgent need to do it, but very often when she’d stop and think about it she’d wonder why exactly. The concept of feeling actual pleasure from sex seemed ambitious. No one she knew had orgasms during sex. Her friend Katrina admitted it to her at the library. The two of them were discussing the large penis of a guy she had just started seeing.
“It’s like this.” Katrina first motioned the length and then the girth. “No, wait, more like this.” She widened her hands. “Honestly, when I was blowing him I could hardly get my mouth around it. If it hurt my mouth, can you imagine what it would be like to have sex with him?”
Leda shook her head. “I would never. Are you sure this is worth it?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I want to have sex with him…I mean, shouldn’t I be able to have sex with him even if he has a really big penis?”
“I wouldn’t want it near me.”
Katrina pulled a book off the shelf absentmindedly. She leaned in close to Leda. “Can I tell you something?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never had an orgasm during sex.” She spoke as quietly as possible, as if Leda would somehow be appalled by the ineptitude of her vagina.
“I haven’t either,” Leda said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, never.”
“But doesn’t that make us weird? Are we weird?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s a huge relief. I thought I was some kind of freak.”
“I kind of think orgasming during sex is a myth,” Leda said.
“Do you think so?”
“Kind of…Yeah.”
“Why doesn’t anyone talk about it?”
“I don’t know. No one wants to be the only one.”
A few weeks later she and John went for a walk in the woods. The day was no different from any other day. She wore a green shirt and they got bagels after spending the night together. They drove outside the city and went for a walk through a state park. It was hot and she could smell the greenery thickly settled in the air. John told her a funny story about his brother buying a shimmery scarf, and they were lulled between each other as they walked holding hands. Somewhere, although it couldn’t be said where, they came to consider that they should have sex in the woods. The suggestion had been mutual really, but Leda would remember it as her own idea. They saw a clearing off the path and through the trees.
“We’re going to break our necks,” John said as they walked over roots and broken branches. Leda could hear each of their steps on the pine needles.
“Break our necks?”
“I meant our legs.”
She stepped carefully and thought about her flats and that she shouldn’t have really worn flats to have sex in the woods, but really none of her other shoes were appropriate either.
“Where are we going to do it?” she asked him.
“There.” He pointed to a large tree with bushes all around.
“In the bushes?”
“Against the tree.”
They walked over, and she could feel her heart speed up. There was a dull buzzing and somewhere far off in the quiet she thought she could hear traffic.
“Is this a good idea?” she asked him.
John looked boyish standing there. He had on a plaid shirt and jeans that had badly frayed on the cuffs.
“I don’t know. Do you not want to do it?”
“Do you think someone will see us?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, although he looked unsure. “We should hurry up, though. The sun is going down.”
He walked up beside her and kissed her neck.
She leaned against the tree. It smelled like waking up early and felt almost heated below her palms in the humid August air. She pulled her jeans down and helped guide his penis in. In that moment she anticipated the obligatory pain that she’d grown so accustomed to. Something that she imagined she’d have the burden to bear the rest of her life like some kind of sex goddess warrior battling penises and yeast infections. But it didn’t hurt. John came quickly and pulled out.
“It didn’t hurt at all,” she said.
They weren’t sure what to do with the used condom. It wasn’t feasible to carry it back to the car, so they dug a hole and buried it and decided that pinecone babies would grow out of it. They promised each other that they’d come back and visit those pinecone babies one day.
“Will we remember these woods? Would we recognize our pinecone babies?” she asked.
They walked back in dusk and got ice cream.
It wouldn’t be until well into their relationship that she would have her first orgasm during sex. Soon after, she’d orgasm regularly. She’d tell Katrina about it, but Katrina was single and still sleeping with strangers.
“I don’t think I’ll ever have one,” she’d say.
“You will when you meet someone you love and are comfortable enough with.” But even Leda knew as she said it that she was lucky and that some women would be battling their whole lives. And then you must really feel like the only one, she thought.
They never did go back to the woods.