The Night Shift Lesson

I got off my shift at six, went home to shower and eat, and drove to the clinic at nine. Sat in the truck in the parking lot for ten minutes first. My hands were sweating on the wheel and I kept thinking this is stupid, this is stupid, go home.

But I went in anyway.

The waiting room was dark except for a light in the back. Sean came through the door before I even knocked twice. He was thirty-two, taller than his pictures, wearing scrubs with a dog print on them. He smiled and I felt a little better right away.

"You came," he said. "I was half sure you'd bail."

"I almost did. Sat out there a while."

"Well, come on back. It's freezing out here."

The back office was small and cluttered. Filing cabinets, a desk with papers pushed to one side, and a cot along the wall with a blanket folded on it. A space heater hummed in the corner. It smelled like antiseptic, mostly. Sean set a duffel bag down next to the cot.

"So this is the famous cot," I said.

"This is it. Glamorous, I know. Best first date spot in the county."

I'm fifty-four, by the way. I was with the same man for twenty years and we broke up last spring, and since then I'd been doing things I never did before, in small steps. Sean was the latest step. We matched on an app two weeks ago and talked every night. When he found out I'd never used a toy, not once in my whole life, he got this look on his face, he told me later, like he'd been given a job.

He sat on the cot and patted the spot next to him. I sat. The duffel bag sat between us like it was another person.

"Okay, so let me explain how I want to do this," he said. "You're in charge the whole time. Anything you don't want, you say stop, and we stop. Not just for tonight. For good, that thing is off the table."

"Okay."

"And I'm not going to touch you tonight unless you ask me to. That's the rule. Tonight is you. I'm just the guide."

"That seems backwards. Usually the guy is the one who..."

"Yeah, well. I've done this before. Not teaching, exactly, but toys. My last partner got me into it when I was twenty-four and I never went back. I know what they can do. You don't, yet. So we go slow."

I told him then, out loud, the thing I'd only half admitted in our messages. "I've always been curious. For years, honestly. I just never bought anything. I'd stand in the store and then walk out. Twenty years with one man who thought anything like that was weird, and I guess it just stuck."

"That's not weird. That's normal. Most people your age never got shown."

"Don't say 'people your age' like it's a country you're visiting."

He laughed. "Fair. Sorry."

He unzipped the bag. There was a lot in there, more than I expected. He took out one thing and left the rest. It was a silicone dildo, plain, medium size, a purple color.

"Start here. Hold it."

I took it. It was soft and it had some weight to it. I turned it over in my hands.

"That's it? I built up all this dread and it's just... nice."

"That's the good ones. No smells, no weird seams. Clean it right and it lasts forever." He watched me turn it over. "How does it feel in your hand?"

"Honest answer? Kind of exciting. Just holding it."

"Good. That's the right start."

He got a bottle of lube out of the bag and set it on the desk. "Now here's the part where I tell you to take your shirt and bra off. Top half only. If that's too much tonight, we do this another way."

I thought about it for maybe three seconds. "No, I'm here. I came all the way here."

I pulled my shirt over my head and reached back and undid the bra, and there I was, fifty-four years old and bare chested in a vet clinic office. Sean didn't stare or make a thing of it, which I appreciated more than he probably knew.

"Those are great, by the way," he said, casual, like complimenting my truck.

"Thank you. They've been on this earth a while."

"They wear it well."

He squeezed lube onto the toy and spread it with his hand, slow, covering the whole shaft. Then he handed it back to me warm.

"Go slow. You're not trying to get anywhere. Just get used to it. Start on the outside."

I sat back on the cot against the wall and he kneeled on the floor in front of me, not touching, just watching my face. I ran the tip down my stomach and over the inside of my thigh first, because that felt less scary, and the lube was slick and cool and then warm from my skin.

"There," Sean said quietly. "Now wherever you want. Inside the lips, around, up top. Let it say hello."

I pressed the head between my lips and slid it up and down, slow. I was already wet, which surprised me. I hadn't been touched by anybody in over a year and here I was soaking with a stranger kneeling two feet away.

"Feel how it catches at the opening?" he said. "You're ready, whether you believe it or not. Ease it in just a little. Just the head. There's no rush."

I eased it in. Oh. Oh, that was different. That was a fullness I had never felt in my life, twenty years of one man and I had never felt this exact thing.

"That's the head," Sean said. "Breathe. Let it sit there. Don't push."

I was breathing hard. "It's... okay. Okay, wow!"