As almost always, there were four of the guys from Third Street hanging there, smoking, and watching the prostitutes down the corner in their skimpy outfits that must have been hell to wear in this weather.
"Oh, look who it is," one of them said, looking me up and down. "The bitch in apartment eighteen."
"Yep. That's me," I agreed, squeezing smaller so I didn't brush any of them as I moved past.
"I got a cure for that bitchiness, babe," he offered, hand going down to grab his crotch. You know, because that was totally sexy to women.
"I have an appointment with my vibrator. He doesn't talk so fucking much," I countered, grabbing the door, and moving inside to the chorus of laughs and ribbing of the guy's friends.
And, well, it wasn't even a lie.
I stripped out of my gross gym clothes, took a hot shower to warm the chill out of my bones, then grabbed my vibrator to try to take the edge off, fully knowing that was all it would do - take the edge off.
There came a point when you were in a long enough dry spell when no amount of finger fucking or vibrator-using would do more than just make you be able to function. It didn't take the clawing need away because it wasn't just an orgasm your body was craving. It was the hormones, the pheromones, the feel of hands on your skin, in your hair, the intoxicating sensation of lips and tongue on your nipples, inner thighs, pussy. It was the weight of a man on you, the hiss of his breath as he slid inside you, the way the orgasm was a journey, not just a quick release so you could think clearly again.
I had fallen squarely into the 'this isn't cutting it' phase a good seven months before. But life had taken a turn that I never could have seen coming, making the very idea of trying to go out and get laid a completely laughable concept that I didn't even entertain in quiet, needy moments when the world slipped away and I was just myself again, just a person with wants and needs instead of some woman on a mission.
There would be time for that again someday.
If I didn't go to jail, of course.
But even if I did, it would be worth it.My alarm went off at eight, making me climb out of bed to shut it off, having realized many years before that the only way for me not to sleep through it was to put it clear across the apartment so I couldn't just reach over and turn it off when I was still too asleep to realize it was a terrible idea.
I had been at work until four, Monday night/Tuesday morning being the one day of the week that we got a delivery of new booze and smokes and meant I not only had to meet the delivery guy and deal with his eye-fucking that made my skin crawl, but also stock the storage room before I could finally count out my register and go home for the night.
I went to the sink to get a glass of water, giving my coffee pot a longing look, but knowing that that was a bad idea if I was going to have someone doing pressure points on me that could cause any kind of pain level. Pain made you throw up way too easily. I didn't need anything sloshing around in my stomach to come back up.
So I took a sip of my water, got into black yoga pants and a black wifebeater, threw on my shoes, and made my way out toward my car, letting the cold morning air wake me up fully by the time I reached it, turning it in the direction of the gym, the cash stashed in a weird zipper compartment on the belly band of my yoga pants.
I handed it over to the surly woman at the front desk, Cary, whose personality I appreciated because no one wanted chipper at fucking ten AM after being up until around five.
"Should I just wait here?" I asked, looking around at the not-weight-training-guys and the duo of women grappling in the corner.
"He's already in the room," Cary said, dismissing me by walking away.
There was no reason whatsoever for it, but my belly did this weird as hell fluttering thing as my feet shuffled across the floor toward the private lesson room, a place I had been in well over a dozen times before, but it somehow felt nerve-racking and new as I closed in on the door.
Inside, I found what I expected.
There was one whole wall of mirrors so you could watch your form. The other three walls were lined with thick black padding in case you got thrown against them. Which I had. Many times. So many in fact that it no longer hurt when it happened. The floor was padded as well, but not nearly as thickly, wanting you to really feel the impact of hitting it, of how disorienting that pain could be in real life, teaching you to be able to focus past it in case you needed to do so in a real life type of situation.