They live in the drawer beside my bed,
a cabinet of curiosities,
each one a promise in silicone and steel,
a key to doors I didn't know I had.
You gave me the first one, remember?
A small thing, unassuming,
wrapped in tissue paper like a gift
from a Victorian gentleman caller.
"You should know yourself," you said,
"before I presume to know you."
And so I began my education.
That first one was purple,
a gentle curve, a modest hum,
nothing to frighten a maiden aunt.
I waited until you were gone,
until the apartment was mine and mine alone,
until the dark made bravery possible.
I held it like a foreign object,
which it was,
which I was,
a stranger to my own geography.
When I turned it on,
the vibration startled me,
a bee trapped in a jar,
a small engine revving.
I touched it to my arm first,
testing, always testing,
as if it might bite.
It didn't bite.
It buzzed, insistent,
a question repeated:
Here? Here? Show me where.
I showed it.
I guided it to the place
my fingers knew by heart,
and when it touched,
I gasped.
This was not my fingers.
This was not anything I knew.
This was a new language,
spoken directly to the nerves,
bypassing thought entirely.
I came in minutes,
surprised by my own capacity,
and lay in the dark
laughing at how easy
it had been to teach myself
to want in a new way.
You gave me the glass one next,
clear as water, heavy as a secret,
its curve designed by someone
who understood that cold
could be its own kind of heat.
I held it under the tap,
warm or cool depending on my mood,
and learned that temperature
is a flavour,
that the body tastes heat and cold
with the same tongue
that knows pleasure.
The first time I used it cold,
I cried out,
not from pain,
but from the shock
of being so suddenly known.
It slid into me like winter,
like the first breath of January air,
and I felt every millimetre
of its passage,
a glacier carving a canyon,
slow and certain and eternal.
When it warmed inside me,
absorbing my heat,
it became part of me,
a glass organ I'd grown
just for this purpose.
You watched sometimes,
those early days,
your eyes dark with wanting
to witness my self-discovery.
You said it was the sexiest thing,
watching me learn myself,
as if I were a country
you'd visit later
but wanted first to see mapped.
And when I came,
glass deep inside me,
you held me after,
your body warm against my flushed skin,
and whispered, "Now I know you better."
Then came the rabbit,
oh, the rabbit,
with its famous name,
its starring role in stories
women tell each other over wine.
It arrived in a box
that promised nothing less
than the reinvention of pleasure,
and I was skeptical,
because how could one device
deliver on such ambition?
It delivered.
The first time, I didn't understand
the engineering,
two motors, two targets,
a coordination problem
my body had to solve.
I moved it wrong, then right,
then wrong again,
until suddenly
the alignment happened,
the stars shifted,
and I was being pulled apart
and together
in two directions at once.
The clitoral stem pressed
just there,
while the internal curve
found that spot,
the one that makes me
forget my own name,
and I was suspended
between two pleasures,
each demanding attention,
each refusing to yield.
The orgasm, when it came,
was not a single event
but a cascade,
a chain reaction,
each wave triggering the next
until I lost count,
until I lost myself entirely,
until I was nothing but
a vessel for sensation,
a bell being rung
by an invisible hand.
I called you after,
still breathless,
and tried to describe it.
You laughed, delighted,
and said you'd always known
I was capable of such multiplicity.
"You contain multitudes," you quoted,
and I said, "Apparently
they all want to come at once."
The vibrating egg was next,
small enough to hold in my palm,
innocent as a breath mint,
designed for public secrets.
You gave it to me with a wink
and a challenge:
wear it out, let me control it,
let the world know
only we know what you're feeling.
I wore it to dinner,
nestled inside me,
its whisper of vibration
a private conversation
between my body and yours.
You held the remote in your pocket,
and through the meal,
through the wine,
through the normal conversation
with friends who didn't know,
you would press the button
and I would lose my sentence,
my fork pausing mid-air,
my eyes finding yours across the table.
The pleasure was not in the vibration
but in the secret,
in the knowledge
that beneath my composed exterior,
beneath the polite laughter
and the appropriate responses,
I was humming with you,
a tuning fork tuned to your frequency.
When we finally left,
when the door closed behind us,
I was already wet,
already ready,
already yours.
You didn't even make it to the bedroom.
The strap-on was for you,
or for me,
or for us,
depending on how you look at it.
Harness and silicone,
a second self I could wear
like a new language on my body.
You asked if I wanted to try,
your voice careful,
not wanting to presume,
not wanting to push.
I said yes because I trusted you,
because I trusted us,
because the body is a country
with many borders
and I wanted to visit them all.
The first time, I felt absurd,
a woman wearing a cock,
as if I'd stepped into a dream
where physics rewrote itself.
But then you knelt before me,
your eyes looking up,
your mouth opening,
and the absurdity became power
became pleasure
became something I can't name.
I entered you slowly,
learning the angle,
learning the rhythm,
learning what made you gasp
and what made you beg.
My body, extended,
became a question I could ask
with every thrust:
Here? Like this? More?
And your body answered
in the only language
that mattered.
When you came,
my name on your lips,
I felt something shift,
a new room opening
in the house of my desire,
a room I hadn't known was there,
furnished now with this memory
of being inside you
while still being inside myself.
The anal beads taught me patience,
graduated pearls of pleasure,
a string of promises
from small to large,
from tentative to certain.
You applied the lube yourself,
your fingers cool and sure,
preparing me for what would come.
The first bead was easy,
a greeting,
a hello.
The second, a reminder
of where we were going.
The third, a stretch,
a welcome difficulty.
By the fourth, I was breathing hard,
my body learning to accept,
to open,
to want what it had feared.
You pulled them slowly,
one by one,
each withdrawal a new sensation,
a reverse arrival,
and when you pulled the last,
the largest,
I came with a sound
I didn't recognise,
a voice I'd never used,
a language I'd never spoken.
The wand is the final thing,
the largest, the loudest,
the one that doesn't pretend
to be anything but what it is,
a tool for serious work.
It plugs into the wall,
no batteries,
no pretence of portability,
because some pleasures
require commitment.
The first time I used it,
I held it against myself
and felt the vibration
in my teeth,
in my bones,
in places I didn't know
could feel.
It was too much
and not enough
and exactly right.
I came in waves,
each one erasing
another layer of holding back,
until I was nothing but
the space where pleasure
had been and was and would be.
You found me afterward,
sprawled and laughing,
the wand still humming beside me,
and you lay down in the wet spot
without complaint,
without hesitation,
and held me while I trembled
back into my body.
So this is what lives in my drawer,
this cabinet of curiosities,
each one a chapter
in the education of my skin.
They are not replacements for you,
not competitors,
not secrets.
They are my teachers,
my explorers,
my reminders
that pleasure is a landscape
with no borders,
that the body is a country
always discovering
new territory.
And you,
you are the cartographer
who gave me the tools
to map myself,
who never feared
that knowing myself
would mean needing you less.
You understood
what I'm still learning,
that the more I know
my own geography,
the more I have
to offer you
when you come to visit.
So open the drawer.
Look at them,
these silicone dreams,
these glass desires,
these buzzing ambassadors
of a pleasure
that has no end.
They are not rivals.
They are witnesses
to everything I've learned
about wanting,
about being,
about the infinite,
beautiful,
endlessly surprising
capacity of this body
to feel.
And when you close the drawer,
come to bed.
I have something
to show you.
I've been practicing.
