Bliss

by Hilary Fields

  Which was how Sera found herself spending the next two weeks on a bona fide Orgasm Quest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, you guys. I hate sweating.”

  The four women sat around a brazier in the dim light of a mud-brick Navajo torture chamber. Pan flute music was being piped in from some unseen corner. Clouds of sage incense wafted to their nostrils, while waves of heat billowed from the brazier, like cushioned fists thudding against their overheated skin.

  You better believe you’re in New Mexico now, girl.

  Sera felt as though the walls of the sweat lodge were closing in on them.

  “Just relax, Baby-Bliss,” Pauline advised. “Try to focus.”

  “I can’t focus, Pauline,” she snapped. “I’m naked here.”

  “Naked is natural, dear,” put in Hortencia. “Look at me. I’m perfectly at ease with it.” She gestured languidly. Her plump, seventy-year-old frame was nearly boneless with relaxation, parked against the log-and-mud-brick wall of the lodge like she’d grown from it. Her white hair had gone a bit limp, but soft tendrils curled charmingly about her apple cheeks, which were rosier than ever. She’d brought along a home-knitted throw cushion for her bum, Sera saw, protecting her from the ground.

  Beside her, Aruni settled her well-toned legs more comfortably into lotus position in her own corner of the hut. Her back was ramrod straight, but her curls were kinkier than Hugh Hefner. “Me, too,” she piped up.

  Sera fought the urge to stick her tongue out at her friend. Sure, she had no problem being naked, because she had a perfect, years-of-yoga-toned body. And she had nothing to stress about—Aruni already had an orgasm totem. A fox, she’d said. A nice, fluffy red fox.

  What am I gonna get? Sera wondered. A beaver?

  Aunt Pauline had been adamant they attempt this adventure. “We’re going on a vision quest, kiddo,” she’d said that morning after rousting Sera out of bed and tossing her a towel. “Nothing else has worked, and Asher will be back any day. Forget all that other stuff we tried. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before! What you’ve got to do, Bliss, is find your orgasm totem. And there’s no better way to invite a visit from your orgasm animal than a nice, naked sweat ceremony. Once you find it, I’m sure it’ll show you the way. God knows I’ve tried,” she’d muttered. “But you, my darling niece, are one tough nut to crack.”

  So here they were, two weeks into the great “quest for the holy wail,” as Janice had laughingly dubbed it, and no closer to climax (at least in Sera’s case) than they’d been a fortnight ago. Aruni, Hortencia, and Pauline were her fellow pilgrims today—the others had wanted to come, but the only time Pauline could reserve the sweat house up at Ghost Ranch had unfortunately conflicted with most of their work schedules.

  Ghost Ranch, Sera had learned as they drove, had been expatriate New York artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s spiritual home. And as they’d arrived at the vast, empty space north of Abiquiu, she’d thought she understood why. Red sandstone cliffs rose out of the desert floor, painting the land with stunning color. Swaths of flat terrain were broken by mesas and rock formations that seemed carved by a capricious hand, bold and fierce. There was a hush surrounding the place, as if the very earth knew it was sacred. Here, O’Keeffe had let her creativity spread wide as the horizons, fearlessly exploring her artistic limits as well as her frank sensuality. If ever she was going to find hidden depths of passion within herself, Sera had thought, it would be in a place like this.

  She’d continued to think so up until they’d arrived at the hexagonal hut they’d reserved on the back end of the sprawling property. Looking at the squat, crumbling structure with its weather-beaten door and bare-earth base, she’d begun to have second thoughts.

  Now she was having third and fourth thoughts—most of them about how she could escape without upsetting her aunt and her well-meaning friends. Sera dug a stone out from under her butt, trying to shift in such a way that she could conceal as much of her nakedness as possible. Even among other women, all this bareness was giving her the heebie-jeebies. And the heat! She’d baked bread in cooler ovens.

  Oblivious to Sera’s distress, Hortencia ladled water from a bucket by the brazier onto the hot stones it was warming. Immediately, the heat in the hut intensified, and with a sizzle, more clouds of steam erupted.

  “Seriously, guys, is it supposed to be this hot?”

  “No sweat, no sex life,” Pauline said peaceably.

  Sera moaned.

  Aruni giggled. “I’m so resisting the urge to make a joke about chefs not being able to stand the heat in their own kitchens.”

  “Try harder,” Sera advised, panting. She’d broiled steaks under cooler conditions than this. And she hadn’t been nude. “You probably do that hot-lava yoga all the time, don’t you?” she accused.

  Aruni fluffed her hair, which had curled so tightly in the humid air that it resembled uncombed sheep’s wool. “Of course. Bikram is about the most cleansing feeling you can experience without a colonic. I’ll reserve you a spot in our next class if you want, Sera,” she offered.

  “I don’t think I’m going to survive that long,” Sera gasped. She curled up on her side, laying her cheek against the packed earth floor. The ground was mercifully, if only minimally, cooler, and she’d take what she could get. Besides, fetal, she felt slightly less naked.

  “Try to envision your totem, Bliss,” Pauline encouraged. She was sprawled indecorously across the dirt floor, wearing nothing but a string of marigolds around her neck and a serene smile. “Just imagine yourself inviting the spirit to join you, with kindness and love, asking for its guidance but demanding nothing in return. Remember,” she teased, aware of her niece’s discomfort, “the sooner you see your orgasm spirit, the sooner you can put your clothes back on.”

  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 the
m. 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.

  “What are you supposed to be?” Sera, somehow unsurprised, asked the creature.

  “Can’t you tell? I’m an armadillo,” the armadillo said proudly.

  “Sorry,” Sera apologized. “I’m more used to subway rats and pigeons. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an armadillo in real life before.”

  “And you ain’t seeing one in real life now, hon,” said the armadillo, which for some reason was now sporting a cowboy hat. And chewing a hayseed. “I’m not supposed to be purple. And my tail is a lot longer than this in real life. Plus, mostly I live in Texas, not so much New Mexico. Watch a nature show once in a while, won’t you?”

&nbs
p; “Sorry,” Sera said again. “So, are you, like…” She couldn’t say it.

  “Your orgasm totem? Your cum-critter? Your arma-dildo? Nah. I’m just a hallucination. But if you like, I could give you some advice.”

  The armadillo trundled up closer to Sera, and she noticed that it was thick-skinned, yet naked, as she was, with a soft underbelly. Its eyes, half-buried in armor, were sharp and bright, its nose long and twitchy. It looked at her as if she were infinitely amusing, but also perhaps a tad pitiable.

  “Sure,” said Sera, who at this point wasn’t above taking advice from purple fantasy animals. “Lay it on me.”

  The armadillo pushed its rhinestone-spangled hat back on its tiny head. “My advice?” the beast mused. “Don’t worry about what these dopey broads tell you. When the moment comes, it’s just like sneezing. You know what I mean?”

  “Um, not really,” said Sera, who appeared to be floating about six inches above the floor of the hut now. “Sneezing?”

  “Ever tried to hold back a sneeze?” her not-totem asked.

  “I guess,” said Sera, who had never thought about it before.

  “How’d that work out for you?”

  Sera considered it. Her mind was strangely languid. “Um, I sneezed anyway, but it was kind of bunged up. Not very nice.”

  “Uh-huh. And ever tried to make yourself sneeze?” The armadillo didn’t wait for an answer. “Can’t do it, can you? It’s not something you can force, and it’s not something you can fake—not properly. You can’t stop it and you can’t control the timing. Just like climax. Also,” it paused and said thoughtfully, “I’m pretty sure you can’t do either with your eyes open.” The armadillo gathered itself, settling its hat more firmly over its brow with one tiny claw. It patted its nonexistent pockets. “Anyway, lady, that’s about all I got on the subject.” It started to walk away, toward a little hole Sera hadn’t noticed before in the mud-brick walls. Then it stopped and turned back for a final word. “Oh, yeah—one more thing. You may never have sneezed before, but I have a feeling you’re gonna be developing some severe allergies pretty soon. Anyhow, take it easy!”