6 Things You Didn't Know About Vaginas

The corners of the rooms were in all the right places.

It was perfect, and perfect in more than just a sort of feng shui kind of way. It was home from the very first moment we laid eyes on it, which just so happens to have been ten years ago this very day.

Home. Like the place came with our memories already inside it. A familiar scent we’d never smelled before.

The perfect number of rooms. The correct amount of closet space. Close proximity to all the right schools. The proper distance from Dana’s work. And with newly installed energy-efficient appliances, to boot.

There was only one problem.

The price.

It was too low.

Slippery Slope People

And a voice said, “I know you don’t approve, but you’re going to need to just buck up.”

I blinked and I peered out around my monitor, trying to see who or what was speaking. Had I imagined the voice? What I finally said was, “Approve of what?” but what I was thinking was, “How long have I been sitting here? In this office? Looking at this porn? Have I always been here?”

And the voice said, “Darnell and Damien and me,” and it was my boss, Adri, who was saying it. Right there. Tapping the heel of her shoe on the floor in that annoying way she always did. That annoying way she always does.

What I said was, “Duh... Dar… Darnell?” but what I was thinking was, “Could I really have been looking at porn for five whole hours?”

I was thinking, “Is that even possible?”

Castle Katy and the Flying Buttresses

Better and better, then worse and worse. That is the way that it went. Maybe the way it always goes, I don’t know.

But still, everything, better and better, for years. I built the spiral staircase – finished it! –  I spun it right up through where my childhood bedroom had been. It blossomed up onto a landing above the old living room. I put a garden in up there. A trellis with trumpet vines. A telescope so I could look out across the harbor. Across the sky.

And of course by that time, the entire west end of the house was different. New and improved. Expanded. Remodeled. Remade in accordance with my dreams.

It was my life’s work, this house.

I mean, flying buttresses. I was going to have flying-fucking-buttresses! They were on back order, but I was going to have them. Soon. Flying buttresses and an indoor swimming pool. And a bowling alley. And a watch tower. And a mill tower. And a private theater for movies and something called an “upper bailey,” though I did not have a clue what an upper bailey even was.

Ellen the Blue-Eyed Cowgirl Knew She Was Gay

So how this whole shit started was that Martha from my office decided I needed to go out for the Fourth of July, that my drinking alcohol all alone had become a problem and that the solution to this problem was drinking alcohol around other people.

This seemed counter-intuitive to me as, in my experience, drinking alcohol all alone was the solution to my problems and not a problem in and of itself. But Martha from my office was very insistent so right away, I suspected she had ulterior motives.

The bar on the northwest side of town was built to look like some kind of a big boat and the band played Jimmy Buffett cover songs.

Badly.

I suppose there may be no other way of playing them.