A Professional Fix

Ella POV:

I turned thirty two weeks ago, and it’s official: my life is currently a dumpster fire fueled by hormones I didn't even know I possessed. Let’s start with the basics, shall we? My name is Ella, and for the vast majority of my existence, I was about as sexually stimulating as a freshly mopped floor.

I’m talking zero, zip, nada. Sex was a concept I filed away next to competitive gardening and the metric system—things I acknowledged existed but had absolutely no personal investment in. While my girlfriends were whispering about first kisses and college hookups, I was perfectly happy debating the various disposal methods used by famous serial killers in the 70s. That was my jam. Give me a good, gruesome, unsolved case, and I was hooked.

I was so uninterested in physical intimacy that I even managed to be married for ten years without causing too much alarm. Honestly, my former husband, Jason, seemed pretty fine with it. It meant less effort for him, and frankly, less awkward wiggling for me. I was always happy to let him get on with his business while I focused on, well, counting the seconds until I could resume my true passion: watching documentaries about how people hide bodies.

> Here’s the really embarrassing part, the one I keep tucked away in the dusty crawl space of my brain: In a decade of marriage, I never, ever achieved orgasm through penetrative sex. Not once. The closest I ever got was a sympathetic muscle twitch. It was like trying to start a generator with a feather duster. The truth is, my body just didn't register it.

And by the end? Oh, dear Lord, the end was grim. I was reduced to pathetically trying to negotiate my own pleasure. “Please, Jason? Just a minute? I really need this, and I’m about to fall asleep.” That’s right. I had to beg my husband to go down on me. The man who now looks permanently furious on the cover of my divorce papers. The man who saw me as an obligation, not a desire.

Our decade-long, blissfully boring union ended exactly one year ago when I walked into the utility closet at his office’s Christmas party and found him attempting a very un-festive tango with a paralegal named Brenda. I screamed, I cried, I threw a bread roll. I got the divorce, moved into a tiny apartment, and vowed to dedicate my life to the only things that had never betrayed me: my subscription to True Crime Monthly and my very comfortable pajamas.

But then, the unthinkable happened.

About a month ago, in a fit of post-divorce rage and loneliness, I decided to read one of those erotic novels my friend Sarah had been pushing. You know, the kind with the chiseled-jaw man on the cover who looks permanently furious? I picked it up mainly so I could mock the purple prose.

I started reading. I snorted. I rolled my eyes. I read a little more. And then, somewhere between Chapter Four and a gratuitous description of a hero’s “sinews,” something utterly ridiculous happened.

I felt it.

It was like a switch had been flipped on a massive, floodlit billboard inside my brain that just flashed: SEX!

And now? Now I'm a woman possessed. I went from being entirely asexual to having the mind of a slightly deranged cartoon wolf, eyes bugging out, steam pouring from my ears. I’m thirty years old and I’m having a sexual awakening that’s less "gentle sunrise" and more "nuclear explosion in a lingerie shop."

I can't look at a piece of fruit without wondering if it's "too suggestive." I’m supposed to be editing financial reports, but my thoughts are currently a highly organized, full-time brainstorming session on the logistics of a quickie in a broom cupboard. I went ten years barely thinking about sex, and now I think about it all the time. It’s genuinely irritating.

I've discovered the joy of masturbation, which is a relief, but it’s a bit like getting a gorgeous letter and then having to lick the stamp yourself. It's technically satisfying, but something is missing.

I want the skin-to-skin contact. I want the messiness, the breathing, the inconvenient elbows, the whole ridiculous shebang that I used to find so tedious. I want to replace Jason's betrayal with something loud, passionate, and preferably involving a man who doesn't look at my body and think, "I guess I'll make this quick."

I have absolutely no idea what to do with this new, terrifying, and unbelievably horny version of myself. It's too much, too fast, and I'm pretty sure I need an instruction manual.