Ski Lodge Test Run

The drive up to Eagle Crest took me two hours and most of my nerve. I had been over the whole thing in my head about forty times by the time I pulled into the lodge parking lot, and none of those run-throughs had made me feel less like a woman about to do something ridiculous. I am twenty-three years old, a veterinary technician, and I spend my days telling anxious people that their dogs are going to be fine. You would think I could apply some of that bedside manner to myself.

I checked in, got the key, and hauled my bag up to the room Juan had booked. It was nice in the way places are nice when someone with actual taste picks them. Wood stove already ticking away, big windows facing the slopes, a king bed with cream linen that looked like it had been ironed by hand. I set my bag down on the bench at the foot of the bed and just stood there for a minute, feeling the knot in my stomach do its usual work.

Here is the background, since you need it to make sense of what I brought. Three years ago, back in college, I went on a ski trip and met Juan. We had exactly one date, coffee and a walk, nothing came of it, and I spent the next three years occasionally thinking about him in a fond, wistful sort of way. Last month a mutual friend threw a party, he texted me the week after, and somehow that turned into the two of us agreeing to meet up here and test a toy together. Not intercourse. Just the toy, the remote, and the two of us. I had dated around since graduation, a few decent guys, a couple of forgettable ones, and the whole time I carried this low-grade worry about my body, about whether I looked right, moved right, sounded right. The idea of a controlled experiment, with rules and an exit ramp, appealed to me the way a calm patient appeals to a nervous tech. Structure. I could work with structure.

So I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the box. The vibrator inside was a slim silicone thing, egg-shaped at the business end, wireless, remote controlled, with seven settings I had memorized from the instruction pamphlet like a student cramming for an exam. I turned it over in my hands. It was small. I had ordered it small on purpose, because the whole point was to start gentle, and because a giant appliance would have made the evening feel like a dare instead of an experiment. Still, holding it in a rented room in the mountains, knowing what I intended to do with it and who would be holding the remote, my hands had a slight tremor. I am not a thin woman. I have never been a thin woman. I have strong arms from restraining large dogs and soft places everywhere else, and every mirror in that room seemed to be taking notes.

A knock. Juan came in carrying two paper cups of something hot and a paper bag that smelled like cinnamon, and he stopped when he saw me sitting there with the open box in my lap. He is twenty-four, works freelance as a graphic designer, and has one of those calm faces that makes you want to tell him things. He set the cups on the little table by the window and pulled the chair around to face the bed, unhurried, like we were about to review a design draft instead of my dignity.

We went over the rules first, out loud, both of us. The toy only, nothing beyond that, no penetration of any kind, and either of us could say stop at any moment for any reason and the whole thing would shut down without discussion. He repeated the terms back to me in his own words to make sure we matched, which I appreciated more than I could say. Money was already settled, he had booked the room and I had covered dinner on the drive up, so nobody owed anybody anything before we started. That mattered to me. I did not want this evening to be a transaction in any direction.

Then I held up the toy and explained it. I told him it had seven intensity settings, that the remote worked from across the room, that the lowest setting was barely a hum and the highest was, in my clinical opinion, excessive. I mentioned battery life. I may have used the word stimulus. He laughed, not at me exactly but at the delivery, and said something about how most people just hand over the remote and say have fun. I told him most people were not running a trial. He raised his cup to that, and I felt some of the knot in my stomach loosen, because he was not looking at my body the way I feared people looked at it. He was looking at me like a collaborator.

I took off my boots and my sweater and lay back on the bed in my bra and jeans, which felt absurd for about ten seconds and then felt fine, because the ceiling was handsome wood and Juan was busy plugging in the charger and reading the pamphlet over his glasses like an engineer verifying a spec sheet. I had thought I would feel exposed. Mostly I felt observed in a friendly, careful way, the way I observe a patient before I do anything to them. Check the chart. Ask permission. Proceed slowly.

He sat on the edge of the bed and asked me if I was ready, plainly, waiting for my answer. I said yes. He turned the toy on to the first setting and tucked it into the front waistband of my jeans, against the fabric, nothing under clothes yet, and that small logistical choice of his made me trust him enormously.

The first setting was a low buzz, more rumor than event. I felt it as a vague warmth through the denim and thought, well, this is nothing, I could nap through this. Then he moved it a half inch and the buzz found a different patch of me and my breath did something involuntary. Not much. A shortening. He noticed anyway, because he was watching me the way he watches things, patient and total.

The second setting had an actual pulse to it, a slow throb like a heartbeat with opinions, and I closed my eyes so I could pay proper attention. The warmth spread. My hips made a small