by Julia Kent
He sits and I straddle him, his hot hands everywhere.
“Remember the first time we kissed?” I look over at the door to his office closet and smile, pulling up until he’s barely in me, then slowly sliding down.
“How could I forget?” His voice is low and breathless, as if he’s in the middle of a run. “You groped me in the dark.”
“I most certainly did not! I fell on you.”
“And your hand happened to touch my hard-on while your mouth found mine.”
This is old territory. We’ve joked about it a thousand times.
I clench, my body completely encasing him. He throws his head back and groans, the sound delicious, his pulse racing against his tight neck. I kiss it, pressing my lips against the pounding beat.
My smile fades as he lifts up, pushing into me, holding my hips as we make love, the immediacy of it illicit and tantalizing. Outside the door, people are working, and here we are, half naked and flouting convention. The rules say you don’t have sex with your fiancé in the middle of the work day on the same couch where he holds meetings with SEC officials.
Screw the rules.
Quickies at work are hot and fun, a diversion that ends with me biting his shoulder, Andrew’s body breaking out in a light sweat that makes this feel more like foreplay than the real deal. He’s exuding pheromones that make me want him more, and thank goodness he’s home tonight.
While forbidden sex on his office couch is nice, having all night in bed is even better.
We know the drill. Laughing, I jump off him and run into the bathroom, taking care to put myself back together as he joins me, our eyes meeting in the mirror.
“That was nice,” I acknowledge.
“Better than nice. And I owe you more. We have all night.”
“I was just thinking the same thing. When is your last meeting?”
“I’ll be home by seven.”
“Morning meeting?”
“Ten.”
I let out a low whistle. “I get nearly fifteen hours alone with you? Whatever will we do?”
“Is there a Fitbit for orgasms?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We should look into product development.”
“You’d need some pretty open-minded beta testers.”
We’re both clean and reasonably put together at this point. His arm loops around my waist and pulls me in tight, a kiss full of joy following.
“Did you just have sex with me to distract me from the twenty-thousand-dollar allotment?”
He groans. “No. Hell, no. If I thought having sex would distract you from bringing up topics I don’t want to discuss, we’d be in bed nonstop.”
I pinch his ass. He holds me tighter.
“Besides,” he adds, “do you know what percentage of my annual income twenty thousand dollars is?”
I shake my head against his chest.
He whispers the number.
It’s a very small number and starts with a decimal point.
I bang my head against his chest.
“That’s not the point.”
“Actually, honey, it is. It is the point. On a percentage basis, it’s that simple. And I’m not going to let a fraction of a percent stand in the way of happiness.”
“My happiness isn’t wrapped up in money!”
“What about mine?”
“Your what?”
“My happiness. Doesn’t it count, too?”
“What does your happiness have to do with my taking your money?”
“Our money.”
“Our money,” I repeat, a strange discomfort giving way to an even stranger sense of well-being. He’s right.
“Do whatever makes you happy.”
“I will. I promise.”
Chapter 12
“Did you say medi-spa? As in medical spa?” Josh looks like I asked him to eat a lemon-covered bug. “Please tell me this is a female-only mystery shopper gig.” He takes a finger and pretends to gag himself with it.
“The instructions are gender neutral. The spa has services for men, too.” I don’t tell him that I’m offering a spot on this mystery shopping evaluation to help him. A few weeks ago, Josh confided in me that he’s become a “tugger,” a man who stretches his foreskin to make it return to a longer length, covering everything uncovered by circumcision.
I see your face right now. I know. I made that face, too. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to view it as body modification. His body, his choice. So when the medi-spa service menu showed a certain something that could help him, I decided to act.
“Services for men? Like what? Manscaping? I already have the perfect tool for it.”
“I do not need to know about your trimmer recommendations.”
“His name is Raoul down at Trim Your Hedges. A great little metrosexual laundromat I adore.”
“Metrosexual laundromat?”
“Yes! Two-in-one men’s hair shop. Wash and dry while you get a shave and trim.”
“I’d hate to see the lint traps in those dryers,” Carol mutters as she reads her copy of the mystery shop instructions.
Josh makes a face at her. “Why would a man need a medi-spa anyhow?”
“Medical spas offer more invasive treatments. This one has Scrotox, for instance.” I peer at the list, scanning quickly, the word out of my mouth before my mind has time to catch up to its meaning.
“Scrotox?” Marie and Josh say the word in the exact same tone.
“Do I dare ask? Is that Botox for the boys?” Josh’s euphemism is adorable. And sickening. A little of both.
“It’s injections of Botox directly into the sac,” I explain.
“Like, it freezes their scrotums so they... what? Can’t smile?” Marie asks, long eyelashes batting against her cheeks as she tries to understand. Marie signed on to do the mystery shop with me when she heard some of the options were eyelash extensions and neck sculpting.
“Who smiles with their balls, Marie? That’s absurd.” Josh gives an involuntary shiver, his shirt falling open slightly, revealing another aspect of his, um...extracurricular activity. In order to stretch that which does not wish to be stretched, Josh wears a complex series of elastic and cone-shaped devices held together with wire and duct tape, under his clothing. We pretend not to notice.
But he knows we know.
“Well, Botox freezes your brow so you can’t smile. What are they freezing down there on a man?”
Josh and Marie turn to me as if I have the answer.
Before I can read from the description, Carol interrupts, holding her phone.
“I googled. You get Botox in your nuts so they’ll hang lower.”
“Why would I want the boys down around my knees?” Josh reels back. “No one gets a spa treatment to look older.”
“I assumed they’d make ’em high and tight,” Marie muses. “Old man balls are saggy. Who wants them to hang lower?”
“TMI, Mom.” Carol says this in a blasé tone, as if she’s said it a thousand times before.
Because she has.
“Can we move on?” Josh grabs the paperwork from me and reads quietly for a few seconds. Suddenly, his expression changes to sheer joy and he shouts, “Foreskin restoration services!”
“Fourscore and what?” Marie asks.
“Foreskin restoration! They offer medical techniques to stretch your foreskin! They help you tug!”
“Tug?”
Josh lets out a long sigh, clearly fighting with himself over whether to say something. “I’m a tugger.” His eyes catch mine. “I already told Amanda a while ago, after that unfortunate wardrobe malfunction incident.”
“Wardrobe malfunction?” Carol asks me.
I just shake my head.
“Oh, honey, that’s nothing special. All men are tuggers! Masturbation is nothing to be embarrassed about.” Marie looks at his package.
“Or to talk about at work,” I add through gritted teeth.
“Tugging,” J
osh says, raising his voice as if giving a lecture, “is the art of do-it-yourself foreskin restoration.”
I’ve never seen Marie go so silent, so fast.
Carol speaks first. “Do they surgically attach one to you? Like organ donation? Does someone die in a car accident and they cut off his foreskin so you can...have one?”
“You think I would let a surgeon attach a piece of cadaver penis to me? What kind of person do you think I am?” Josh is offended.
“You’ve just described yourself as a tugger in a room full of co-workers, Josh. We know exactly what kind of person you are.”
“‘Tugging’ is the technical term for using various techniques and devices to stretch your foreskin back to its original shape,” he informs us.
“Devices?” Marie perks up. “Like sex toys?”
“No! We use rings and constrictors to stretch the skin.”
“You’re...serious.” Josh isn’t pulling our legs.
He’s pulling something else.
Er...tugging it, that is.
“I am serious.” His chin raises and he cocks one eyebrow. “I am an intactivist.”
“Oh, I fully support breastfeeding too, sweetie,” Marie says, patting his hand.
“That’s a lactivist, Mom,” Carol corrects her. “Josh is an intactivist.”
“I don’t believe in routine male circumcision,” he explains. “I’m already cut, but I believe in bringing back what was taken from me.”
Carol gives him a once-over. “I’d say you’re in decent shape, but you’re not ‘cut.’”
“I don’t mean cut, as in ripped, with muscles. I mean cut, as in my penis.”
We all grimace.
“And I can’t do anything about what happened when I was an infant -- ”
“Hold on,” Marie says. “You’re trying to stretch something that doesn’t exist.”
“Like Grandma Celeste’s sense of empathy.” Carol nods in sympathy.
“It exists!” He says in a mixture of indignity and triumph. “I have taken myself from a C2 to a C3 in just two months.”
I am afraid to ask. Carol, on the other hand, isn’t.
“What’s a C2?”
“There is a rating system.”
“For penises?” Marie waves her hand. “Everyone knows that.”
“For foreskin restoration. C1 to C10.”
“And you’re a C...3?”
“P O.” I can’t help myself. I can’t.
Carol starts giggling helplessly. “And when you get to a C4, does that mean you have explosives in your pants?”
“Make all the fun you want,” Josh replies, “but my efforts are working. The guys at my NORM forums are really encouraging.”
“NORM?”
“National Organization for Restoring Men.”
“There’s an organization devoted to this?”
“It’s serious,” he says, nodding. “I told you. We share tips, follow each others’ journals, buy and sell used devices – you name it.”
“Share ‘tips,’” Carol snickers.
“It’s our own little subculture,” he elaborates, pointedly ignoring her.
“Of penis stretching,” I clarify. Is the room getting a little spinny, or is it just me?
“You keep a journal?” Carol asks.
“Everyone does. It’s how we measure progress.”
I giggle.
“And you include pictures?”
“Yes. But it’s all anonymous. I don’t use my real name!”
“You’re a model of discretion.”
“Back up. Did you say you buy and sell used devices? Devices men put on their penis to turn their remaining foreskins into taffy?”
“Yes. Everything from cones to tuba mouthpieces.”
Marie gently sets her paperwork down and gives her full attention to Josh.
“Did you just say tuba mouthpieces? As in the musical instrument, the tuba?”
“It’s a major homemade system for protecting the glans while you stretch the foreskin over the metal bell.”
“I am trying to envision this and I just can’t wrap my head around it.”
“You don’t wrap your head around it, silly.”
“You buy someone’s used tuba mouthpiece and put it on your penis.”
“I boil it to sterilize it first, of course!”
There is a very fine line between function and fetish. I do believe we’ve crossed it.
“Do you have a tuba mouthpiece in your pants right now?” Marie asks.
Josh blushes.
“I’ve heard it called ‘low brass,’ but damn.” I can’t help myself from making a sound like an injured animal.
“How?” Marie asks, still eyeing Josh.
“How what?”
“How do you tug your chicken to give it more skin?”
Josh’s cheeks turn pink, eyes cutting away from her to the mystery shopping instruction sheet. “How about I do this mystery shop with you at the medi-spa and you can ask them?”
“How did you learn about this tugging thing?” Marie asks, skeptical.
“On reddit.”
Carol and I groan. Of course. You can find anything on reddit.
“You just searched for ‘how to regrow your foreskin’ randomly one day? Like looking for a new chili recipe?” Carol asks. “Gee, today I think I’ll try something with black beans and oh! while I’m at it, I’ll torture my penis a little.”
“No. Not at all. It started because Geordi and I were Facetiming one night.” Geordi is Josh’s long-distance boyfriend. They met last year in Vegas when we almost married each other. Don’t ask.
“Geordi wants you to tug your foreskin? That’s where the idea came from?” Marie asks.
“No, but he is one hundred percent supportive,” Josh explains.
“Is he a tugger, too?”
“No. He’s intact.”
“That’s how you got the idea! From an intact boyfriend.”
“Not quite. It all started when we were both looking at the ‘critique my dick pic’ tumblr one night on a Facetime date -- ”
Carol’s palm flies up in the air, right in Josh’s face. “Stop! There is too much dysfunction in that sentence for me to absorb without a pause.”
“Oh, please,” he counters. “You’ve lived with Marie for your entire life. You’ve heard way worse than that.”
“The man has a point,” Marie agrees. She appears to think she’s in on the joke.
And not the butt of it.
“Back up,” I insist. “You were on a website called ‘critique my dick pic’?”
“Yes.”
“On tumblr?” Carol’s searching furiously on her phone. “Found it!” she calls out.
“It’s not safe for work,” Josh warns.
“Seriously?” I stare him down. “You are talking about a website that involves evaluating penises and you’re giving us an NSFW warning? You’ve been promoted from Captain Obvious to Colonel Obvious.”
“Just saying!”
“Oh, my GOD!” Carol shoves her phone screen within an inch of her eyes. “It really is a tumblr devoted to nothing but penises. And the woman who runs it charges the men!”
“And women,” Josh points out. “Look at number three today. Someone sent in a picture of her girlfriend wearing a strap-on.”
Timing really is everything, because at that exact moment, Andrew and his trainer, Vince, walk past us, the words “girlfriend wearing a strap-on” hanging in the air as they walk by.
“Looking at pictures of your sex life, Andrew?” Vince asks him.
I am the recipient of Andrew’s glare. Why me?
“What the hell are you all talking about?” Andrew asks, coming to a stop outside our doorway.
We go dead silent.
He looks at me. I shrug.
“Do I want to know?”
“No.”
“We’re talking about women who get paid to evaluate penises,” Josh blurts out.
“An
d this is...work related?” Andrew can’t help himself.
We all nod.
“Okay, then. Carry on.”
“Wait!” Vince stops Andrew from fleeing. “I have some questions.”
“You really don’t, Vince. Trust me on this, man,” Andrew tells him.
“There are women who get paid to evaluate penises?”
We nod.
“Like, hookers?”
I shake my head.
“Like, doctors?”
“No. A woman who got tired of being sent free dick pics. She decided that if guys are going to hit on her all the time by sending unsolicited dick pics, she might as well make some money off it. Now she tells people that for about $25 each, she’ll review their dicks.”
“Review them? Like on Yelp? Stars and everything?”
“Yes,” says Josh, voice dripping with sarcasm. “There’s even an option for checking off whether your penis is gluten-free or vegan.”
“I’m in the wrong field, man,” Vince mutters as they disappear down a stairwell.
“That was awkward,” Carol mutters.
“You think? The CEO of the company finds us looking at pictures of penises on a site devoted to monetizing dick pics and we claim it’s a work project?”
“I’ve been caught doing worse,” Carol says with a shrug.
Everyone nods and grudgingly admits that she’s right.
We’re not really here to mystery shop, but I can’t tell Marie and Josh the truth. They can’t keep a secret. Anterdec is considering adding some of the more popular medi-spa treatments to the menu at the O Spa, one of our properties, and we need to covertly check out the competition.
When Anterdec acquired Consolidated Evalu-shop from Greg, I assumed it was Andrew being a controlling ass. Turns out, he really valued the company as a good investment. My ego took a slight bruising, but as we assimilate and my role broadens at Anterdec, part of my job involves using Greg’s old company – and by extension, Carol, Josh, and all the mystery shoppers who come along with the shopper base – to spy on our competitors.
Which is pretty brilliant.
The medi-spa we’re investigating is housed in a metrowest suburb that starts with a W, which might as well stand for Wealthy, given the money that drips from the street signs here. The spa itself is nondescript, in a lovely three-story saltbox building that looks like any other house on a side street off the town’s main drag. We pull into the parking lot and sit in the car for a minute, rehearsing our parts.
