I know this is an awful thing to admit, but one of the things I like about having been mercilessly dumped is how everyone phones you up to check you’re okay. It’s very handy and useful, it means you can have phone conversations with people without paying for the phone call yourself. German people phone you up and say stuff like: “Have you been to the housing department to apply for housing benefits yet?” or “Have you registered yourself on WG-Gesucht yet?” or “Have you joined the Berliner Mieterverein yet?” English people phone you up and say, “So, have you got a new fella?” and, “Are you eating properly?”
My old friend from high school phoned me up yesterday.
“Hey, Jacinta,” she said. “How are you? Have you got a new fella? Are you eating properly?”
I sigh sadly. “I’m totally eating properly,” I say, mournfully. “I thought the one good thing that would come out of this heartache and heartbreak and what-have-you is that at least I’d lose five kilos. But I fucking haven’t.”
A long discussion ensues in which neither of us is very sure about how much five kilos is in stones. After we establish, with the help of Google, that is the equivalent of 11 pounds, I ask her whether anyone has ever found her G-Spot. Like, specifically.
“Has anyone ever found your G-Spot?” I ask. “I mean, like, specifically.”
“Yeah,” she says. “That boy I was seeing last summer did. It’s this spongy bit at the front. It kind of tickles your tummy.”
“Hmmm,” I say.
“Has someone found your G-Spot?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Like, specifically. Very specifically. I mean, I kind of like, I knew about them and stuff. I knew you had a clitoris and that some girls had G-Spots and the boys had to find them and I kind of, like, had this vague idea that I probably had a G-Spot because whenever I had sex with a boy whose penis was, you know, over, say, six inches –”
She says: “I’m glad you still measure in inches and not centimetres, Jacinta.”
I say: “Only for penises, actually. I measure everything-else in centimetres now. Ryan was 50 centimetres when he was born, for example. And I just don’t measure in kilometres or miles at all. I’m, like, illiterate in wide distances. I just say: ‘One hour by car.’ It’s easier. So, I had this vague idea that I had a G-Spot because I basically always come if a boy has a penis above a certain size and can last over a certain length of time. I thought I probably had one. But nobody ever found it. Specifically.”
“Now that he’s found it, you can find it for yourself. And you can show other boys where it is and stuff.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says.
“The thing is,” I say. “I’m not sure I even want to. I’m not sure I even want to, like, feel like that every day of the week. You know? Like I had an orgasm, it was so strong, it was kind of like… terrible.”
“It was terrible?”
I’m trying to find a word powerful enough to describe the orgasm I had, and the best word I can find, is, I think, terrible.
“It was kind of like terrible. I thought I was going to vomit. My whole body was shaking. I thought my vagina was going to explode. Like through the clitoris. I felt like my ankles were shaking and my fingernails and my kidneys and everything. Like every part of me. It was kind of like terrible. I don’t know if I want to have an orgasm like that every day. I don’t know if I could take it. It was kind of unbearable. I felt like I was maybe gonna die if it carried on for one second longer. It was a bit… dark.”
“Did you scream?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “But not in this sexy, orgasmic, feminine ‘This is a lovely orgasm’ kind of way. I screamed in this ‘I am giving birth to an alien through my arsehole’ kind of way. I felt a bit embarrassed afterwards, to be honest.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Well, you shouldn’t, I’m sure he wouldn’t have been specifically looking for it if he wasn’t prepared to give you a really intense orgasm. You know what, Jacinta, some girls don’t have them. That’s what the boy I was seeing last summer told me. Some girls don’t have them. It’s not like they have them but when you touch them they don’t come. They literally don’t have that spongy bit.”
“I just feel like such an idiot for not having known about this before. I mean, I’m not a fucking teenager, I’m 33 years old and I feel like I haven’t been really having sex. All this time, I thought I was having sex – I thought I was having orgasms – but actually I was just fucking pretending. It’s like I was on Level 1 of a video game and all I needed to do was open a door and then I could’ve got into Level 2 to 10. And everyone else has known about this all along? I feel like a bit of a dickhead.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” she says soothingly. “It’s because you’re English and repressed and working-class and stuff. We just count ourselves lucky if the boy we’re fucking knows what a clitoris is, don’t we, half the time.”
I look at the kitchen clock. It’s almost midnight. It’s nice people phoning me up all the time – but it is a bit tiring, as well. I do have stuff to do.
“Actually, to be honest, darling, I’ve got to go,” I say. “We’re an hour a head over here and I have to get up early tomorrow and I want to register my flat on WG-Gesucht before I go to bed.”
“I don’t know what that is,” she says, “but okay, you do that. And Jacinta? Make sure you’re eating properly.”
“Okay,” I say. “I will.”
