Page 7 of Bedroom Therapy

My boyfriend says that making love with me is no fun. He says that my vagina is so big that he might as well wave his penis out the window as put it inside me. I don’t want to lose him. Is there something I can do to make myself tighter?

“Jesus!” he said aloud.

She’d been standing in back of him where he couldn’t see her. Now she came charging across the room like he was about to pocket the damn letter. Before he could take a breath, she snatched it out of his hand.

Looking down at the words on the page, she slid her thumb over the signature. “That’s confidential! You can’t just go around reading what people have written to Esther.”

It didn’t matter to him who had written the letter, as long as it wasn’t to Dr. O’Neal personally. However, he came up with, “Sorry. But that woman’s boyfriend sounds like a jerk.”

“Yes.”

She stepped around him and laid the notepaper face down on the stack.

He should probably drop the subject, but he found himself asking, “Is there something she can do about her physical problem?”

“The Kegel exercises. The same exercises that are used for incontinence. They’ll tighten her vaginal muscles if she does them regularly.”

“And if the exercises don’t work?”

“She might need surgery. Or a guy with a bigger penis.” The last part was uttered almost under her breath. But he heard it.

“You think penis size has something to do with it?”

“It could. I don’t know the woman or her boyfriend.”

Yeah, and what would you do if you met him, ask him to drop his pants? Instead of coming out with that sarcastic comment, he asked, “Then how can you answer her question?”

She sailed into her reply. “I have to make judgments when I answer questions. I have to try and write a response that will be helpful to that particular reader and also to other readers.”

“Like how?”

“I’ve looked back at Esther’s columns. One thing she’s tried to get across is that sex should be in the context of a relationship.”

“Oh. And what are you trying to get across?”

“Well, the message about relationships is important. I also want to help people feel comfortable with their own sexual functioning.”

Right, he thought. Suppose he told her the problem he’d been having for the past year. Could she make him feel comfortable about that? Yeah, sure.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to lecture,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.

“No. I mean, that’s okay. It’s interesting,” he managed to say, thinking that he was probably holding the most sexually explicit conversation he’d had since his marriage had crashed and burned. Maybe the most sexually explicit ever. He’d never been good at talking about what went on behind closed bedroom doors, although he’d always thought he was pretty good at doing it. Until recently—anyway.

Now the circumstances had given him permission to engage in secondhand intimacy. As long as he could say just about anything he wanted to a woman who didn’t mind giving answers, he asked, “Can you give me an example?”

She thought for a moment. “Well, a common . . . circumstance with women is that they can’t climax during intercourse. They need more direct stimulation. That’s likely to make them feel like they’re doing it wrong. I want them to know that’s perfectly all right.”

He found that information startling. And pretty close to home. For a fantasy moment he thought about asking her what she thought about a man who couldn’t climax during intercourse. Was that okay, too? And exactly how many men suffered from the problem? And what could they do about it? Before he could ask something too revealing, he suppressed the questions. He wasn’t here to get personal sexual advice.

Changing the direction of the interview, he asked, “How do you get to be a sex therapist?”

It looked like the question had hit a nerve. She squared her shoulders. “I’m not strictly a sex therapist.”

“What are you?”

“A psychologist.”

“So how did you get this job?” he asked, although he already knew the answer to the question. He simply wanted to find out how honest she would be.

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