I think I am seeing visions, Sera mused dreamily a short while later, cheek sticky with sweat and dirt. But it wasn’t some animal guide come to take her to the brink—either sexually or otherwise. Instead, what Sera saw was a nice tidy recap of her failures over the past two weeks.

Thanks, brain. I needed another reminder of how hopeless I am.

Pauline had called upon the BRBs for assistance, and they’d been more than glad to help—especially after they heard about Sera’s upcoming date with Asher. “Honey, you don’t wanna hook up with the Wolf until you’ve sorted out your hoo-ha hiccups,” Janice had advised, and the rest of the women had nodded wisely. They’d compiled a list of “orgasm encouragers” a mile long, and they’d been determined to guide Sera through each and every one of their dubious schemes. Sera, equal parts touched, intrigued, and skeptical, had agreed to play along. What’s the worst that could happen? she’d figured.

She’d found out the hard way.

First, there’d been the “sensual hiking.” According to the Back Room Babes, nothing was guaranteed to boost one’s confidence—as well as bring blood to the extremities—like a nice, brisk walk in the woods. After gasping and wheezing her way up a trail whose undeniable beauty Sera might have appreciated more had she been able to breathe, Sera had joined Pauline and the others on a ridge to spend an uncomfortable half hour rhapsodizing about how connected to their physical bodies the exertion made them feel, how the trees and the earth and the sunshine brought them closer to nature and their own natural urges. Sera, a Manhattan girl to the core, had spent the time scanning the underbrush for mountain lions, squealing every time a bee buzzed by, and wondering if she was going to be able to make it down to the parking lot without needing a medic. Orgasm had been the farthest thing from her mind.

After the hiking, there’d been the sensual bread baking—Pauline’s idea, naturally.

“C’mon, kiddo. If you can get a loaf to rise, you can get a rise out of anything—including your libido.” They’d come together in Bliss’s half-completed kitchen, the scent of fresh plaster in their nostrils and identical wads of basic hearth bread dough on the counter before them. It was just the two of them, as it had been when Sera was a teen and her aunt was teaching her to love the alchemy of baking in Pauline’s cramped Washington Square kitchen. “Have you never noticed how baking bread and making love are very similar skills?” Pauline had continued, in her happy place as she mused about her favorite topic. “It’s all just kneading and fondling, coaxing and rising…” She demonstrated, shaping her dough into a long, thick loaf with deft strokes of her floury hands. She even gave it a nice, bulbous head so no one could mistake what she was crafting. “Just close your eyes, imagine you’re in bed with Asher, and let the feelings flow…”

All those years she was teaching me to bake, she was really preparing me for this… Instead of “flowing,” Sera found herself squishing her loaf into a pasty splat on her end of the stainless steel counter. She, whose utterly perfect boules, baguettes, and bâtards were the envy of half of Manhattan’s French bakeries! She loved the feel of living dough under her hands, the tender give, the saucy resistance… yet none of it made her feel horny. In fact, to Sera, the whole exercise felt vaguely as though they were profaning her still-unfinished kitchen. She sighed. “Sure, there’s fondling and coaxing. There’s also punching, and slapping, and slashing… and pinching and deflating… Come on, Aunt Paulie, it’s not the same thing at all.”

Pauline heaved a huge sigh, setting her perfect loaf to rise again under a damp towel and wiping her floury hands on her apron. “Maybe not exactly the same, kid. But you can’t tell me baking bread isn’t about the most sensuous thing you can do outside of the boudoir.”

Sera sighed and chucked her own mangled wad of dough into the waste bin. “Enough already,” she’d said. “Not to hurt your feelings, Auntie, but I don’t want to be battling visions of your penis-shaped hoagies every time I use my own kitchen.” She’d let Pauline bake up her cock-shaped loaf, mainly to test out whether Malcolm’s ovens were as good as promised (they were), but she’d refused her aunt’s offer of a hot, steamy slice slathered in butter and dripping with honey. “Bread and bootie just don’t mix,” she said firmly, and nothing Pauline said was going to change her mind.

After the bread, there’d been the hula hooping. Aruni had been responsible for that travesty, inviting all of the BRBs out to her studio one evening after regular classes and passing out plastic hoops to the women. In full teaching mode, she’d called out suggestions for them to improve their form through her headset, demonstrating technique and urging them all to feel the sexual vibes in their pelvic regions.

Janice and Crystal had gotten into a competition to see who could keep their hoops spinning the longest while Hortencia cursed up a storm, claiming her “dang hooie-hoop” must be defective since she couldn’t get it higher than her knees. River Wind had done respectably, until she’d pulled her back out and had to call it quits. Pauline, naturally, maintained perfect rhythm, whizzing her hoop about her old hips with proficiency and an occasional exclamation of gutsy delight.

Sera, somehow, had given herself a fat lip. Which hadn’t been much of a turn-on.

About the midnight moonlit drum circle, the less said the better. With unerring skill, they’d managed to cop a squat right on a red anthill, and then, once they’d managed to sort that stinging situation out, the BRBs had woken every dog in the neighborhood with their bongo slapping and drum whapping. It was a wonder no one had called the police, what with all the ruckus. Sera, who had the well-developed aversion for drum circles of someone who had oft attempted to relax in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, had not changed her mind about the milieu.

And she hadn’t come a whit closer to climax.

The next week, Crystal, that evil wench, had dared them all to a chile-eating contest. She and the others swore by the aphrodisiac properties of the local hot peppers, so they’d tromped out to a famously sadistic dive called the Horseman’s Haven for some burgers smothered in nuclear meltdown chile, washed down with kombucha they’d snuck in themselves. There’d been a fair amount of gasping and wailing with that activity, but most of it had been Sera bemoaning the loss of her taste buds and the time it would take to regrow them.

The worst part, for Sera, had been disappointing her new friends. They took such joy in their excursions, be they silly, sweet, or utterly unhinged. These women just let it all hang out, whooping with laughter and living in the moment, even when it made them look goofy or exposed their weak spots. But Sera just… couldn’t. The harder she tried to let go, the tighter she got wound up. And the more she saw the crestfallen expressions on the BRBs’ faces after each failure, the more conspicuously “broken” Sera felt. But she couldn’t bear to disappoint her aunt, and so she’d pasted on a smile and sworn to keep on trying.

Yet her lack of progress was straining even Pauline’s vast reserves of optimism.

In the end, Pauline had clapped a stern hand on Sera’s shoulder and marched her into Bliss’s back room, which Malcolm, true to his word, had not touched. “Look, kiddo,” she’d said rather grimly. “I know you’re kind of a prude. So I tried to think outside the cocks. I thought maybe we could find a gentle way to ease you into things. But maybe the ‘hard’ way is the only way.” She’d ordered Sera to pick out a selection of machinery, imagery, and “facilitating lotions,” then take her loot back to the house. Then she and Hortencia had taken themselves off, loudly announcing their intention to take in a new German art-house film at the Lensic—a three-hour German film.

Sera was embarrassed to admit, she’d actually given it a whirl. Yet no matter what aids she employed, nor what pleasant memories of Asher’s embrace she conjured, the result was… disappointing. She kept picturing her aunt tiptoeing up to the window to see how she was doing, or pressing a glass to the door… or worse, offering a tutorial on the proper usage of her “tools.” In the end, almost without conscious design, Sera had found herself in her aunt’s kitchen, baking up a half-dozen almond galettes she had no good home for. She hadn’t been able to look either woman in the eye after they’d returned from the theater, merely serving them up the delicious dessert with a side of crème fraîche before retiring to her room to nurse her shame.

Now, melting to death in the ever-increasing heat of the sweat lodge, Sera knew she could never tell Pauline that the real reason she couldn’t achieve orgasm was Pauline herself. Her aunt would be devastated. Maybe I should just fake it, she thought. It’s worked for me before… and it would get me the hell out of this convection oven. But Serafina believed in rigorous honesty—it was one of the tenets of her recovery program. And so she sweated it out.

At least the lighting was nice and low, Sera thought hazily. And the sage was actually quite pleasant, once her nostrils got accustomed to it. The rosy glow from the brazier was… hypnotizing. The heat curled around her, lulling her, though she fought to stay alert. This isn’t so bad, she told herself. It’s just like a sauna.

A very steamy sauna.

Curtains of white condensation swirled about the hut, obscuring Sera’s vision. Somehow, as the mists parted, Sera wasn’t surprised to see the sweat lodge had admitted another guest. A very ugly, odd-looking guest, about a foot tall and walking on all fours. It trotted right up next to her in the hut, bold as it pleased. The other women had faded from Sera’s awareness, banked in clouds of steam, and it was just her and the wrinkly, vaguely phallic-looking beast.