It was a dreary February morning, and I was interacting with Hank’s penis when the phone rang. It was Sue, the Northwest regional sales manager, calling in with the monthly sales figures. I made a mental note to quietly phase out these tedious calls, then asked Sue’s permission to put her on speaker phone. I switched the phone over, and Sue didn’t skip a beat, launching right in with the Vancouver and Battleground numbers, in a monotone at once robotic and soothing.

Hank’s poor little hard-on, timid even at the best of times, wilted further as Sue’s narration quickened. She was now hotfooting it through the North Portland and Gresham numbers at full tilt, turning Hank’s noncompliant member into a sheepish, pale extremity at rest ‘twixt his thighs. By the time we got to the East side, the poor little fella had faded into memory.

I had to do something.

But what?

This is where my “stuff” comes up. Oh, I know, this meeting was about Hank, and if I’d read the agenda for the meeting, I might have kept things on track. How much work can it possibly be to service a penis? It’s not an art form for cryin out loud, and documentation abounds on the subject. Okay, sure, I had skimped, and was getting by with version 2.0 of the manual, but it was common knowledge that versions 3.0 and up were really just remakes of the classic 2.0, known in our little circle as the “K&R” of sex.

No, the problem was definitely not the outdated documentation. It was a problem of will, of intention. My head was there, but my heart just couldn’t get down with the idea of servicing Hank’s head. And then there was the matter of my own needs, hunkered down in the corner out of sight, lest Hank should get some fool notion and try to pleasure me again. Oh, it happened a few times, when I first took the position. Hank actually fancied himself a ladies’ man, and told me over a nice meal at Sauro’s that he knew quite a bit about things down under. This accompanied by a nervous wink and then a quick scanning of the room to see if anyone had overheard. Of course they overheard you, Hank, you have a hearing problem, and your volume control is seriously damaged. Two hot lesbians looked over at me from the adjacent table, both with identical we feel your pain…we’ve been there expressions which pushed me so instantaneously down in the dumps that I had to look away.

But I looked back, not once, but many times during the course of the evening. The darker-haired woman, mid-40’s, seemed to be celebrating something that evening. She wore a simple, elegant, understated black dress, and a gold necklace with an amethyst or similar stone in a very elegant setting. Every so often, it seems her emotions could no longer be contained, and at these times she would lean forward to her girlfriend—a gorgeous young woman, with short blond hair cut pixie-style, and impish dimples—she would lean forward, grab her hands, and then take each one into her own, and kiss them, and then laugh, and force me to look away for fear of being caught.

I kid you not, it was as Sue was wrapping up her report, with the traditional action items for the week segment, that I put two and two together, for the very first time. It was those hot lesbians at Sauro’s who had aroused me!

Anyone with a single iota of Sapphic knowledge would have gotten that—at Sauro’s—not here in Hank’s basement at quarter to 10 one year later.

The lesbians had done it! Sue’s speakerphone voice was now taking on the most honey-dewed, lyrical quality, as I had this breakthrough moment. I can still recall the qualit of that misty February light as it bounced off Hank’s gray coverlet, to his laptop computer, and from there to the pile of socks in the corner, a ghoulish play of light in a dreary Bermuda triangle.

I thought Hank had actually aroused me that night at Sauro’s…so I took a chance with him. We dropped by Kinko’s after dinner that night, to pick up the transparencies for my talk the next day, and while standing in line, I playfully grabbed his crotch, giving him the signal that I might just be ready for some down under play.

* * for later * *

(geeze, I love that catch-all word for all that ails womankind).

I knew I didn’t want to bring in the district sales manager, Novela …

… but a memory. By the time we got to the east side, it lay there like a