Small Group Session
I had been wrong. We weren’t a few minutes late. The session was off to a slow start and we arrived just in time. Arthur Coates was back at the lectern. He spoke briefly, it was clear that ConPharmaMax was out of jargon, today would be a little different. He spoke for a little while about monitoring that would be happening in the next few months, local meetings near big cities where the company would catch up with patients. He also alluded to some sort of cash payment in exchange for this participation. Essentially, they were explicitly promising to pay us in exchange for keeping things quiet and letting them keep tabs on us. I was going to college soon, it sounded fine to me. Anyway, that appeared to be the end of his spiel, now it was time for something new.
“Today, we thought that it might be helpful to break into small groups,” he explained, “We thought that maybe you all would benefit by discussing your issues together in a confidential environment. No one from the pharmaceutical company will be present. It is just a chance to know that you are not in this by yourself and maybe learn coping strategies from other people.” He explained. So they were kind of saying, we don’t have any other ideas. This convention was just to buy you off, we didn’t really have enough material for two days. Entertain yourselves. But, at the same time, it didn’t sound like a horrible idea.
So we waited while ConPharmaMax representatives walked around and handed out little slips of paper to everyone, telling us of the randomly assigned meeting groups we were supposed to be with. They broke us up in 30 groups of ten women. Most groups were supposed to meet in specific hotel rooms. I was in Group 26. Apparently, by the time they got to that high of a number, they’d run out of rooms. We were told to meet in Conference Room B. Along the way I thought about what had happened that day. I was still confused, but I was feeling better. Unlike when I’d first grown my penis, I didn’t feel any regret. Not after Angie. Not after Cassie and Brittany. Suddenly all the guilt and everything that I felt about my penis was gone. What did I have to feel guilty about? There was just a little voice in the back of my mind asking if I was deluding myself.
So I went to Room B, it was a little windowless room with a long rectangular table. I didn’t have much time to think, soon I arrived at the conference room. It was sort of ugly in its decor and the table looked pretty cheap. But it was fine for what we needed to do. There was just enough room for 10 people and I arrived last. I took the seat at the head of the table because it was the only one left and everyone else seemed to want to avoid it.
The ten women in my group ranged in age from 18 (me, the youngest person) to around 40. They were generally good looking women. Most were apparently mothers. Seven were white, two were black, and one was Asian. One of the white women was some sort of computer nerd chick with long pink hair and zany clothes. But generally we seemed pretty normal. And we were all sitting together, with nothing but our dicks in our hands, so to speak. The tension in the room was thick, and no one wanted to be the one to break the silence. I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it. We talked generally, just little conversations about stupid things. Time passed and we felt ever more awkward. Finally, after nearly ten minutes, a woman spoke. It was one of the black women, a short woman in her mid-thirties with short hair and large breasts.
“I had to cancel a vacation. We were going to the beach and I’d been working out so I’d fit in this bikini. But I couldn’t imagine going now, wearing something so tight and revealing,” she said to no one in particular. That broke the dam. Soon there were stories about feeling awkward while being in public, about difficult conversations with friends and doctors, and an entire chronicle of embarrassment and alienation. And I realized that less than 24-hours ago I would be having this same sort of conversation. All of my regrets and everything else. But I didn’t know that I felt that way anymore, I knew I didn’t want to. Finally, the Asian woman, in her late twenties, broke through the final barrier in our conversation, and spoke about sex.
“My husband hasn’t touched me since it happened,” she said and I looked around and saw nodding heads, “I don’t blame him though. I mean I wouldn’t want to sleep with him if he spontaneously grew a vagina. But the problem is…” she started. And everyone knew what was hanging on her lip, but no one wanted to speak. I decided to take the plunge, to say the last thing that needed to be said.
“But you want it more than ever?” I asked. And there was a sort of pandemonium in the room. Women were talking about their uncontrollable sexual desires and the sort of the strange situations that it had led them to.
“I have to… masturbate ten times a day, at least, to keep from doing something really stupid,” one mother of four said.
“I find that I don’t even want my husband,” another woman said, “All I can think about it women.”
“I had sex with a woman,” the pink haired girl said, “I’d never had any urge to do it before, but all of the sudden it was all I could think of. And once I did it, I couldn’t get her to leave me alone. She drove me to the airport when I came here to the conference.”
“I slept with my daughter’s teacher,” another woman said, “It was a parent teacher conference, I didn’t even know how it was happening until it happened.”
“I had sex with my husband’s sisters. Both of them,” another woman said, “It was a family reunion. I can’t explain it. I was talking with one and then it happened. I was dazed and walked across the way and started talking to another sister and it happened again.” More and more stories like this. And all of them, expressing surprise and more importantly guilt. Everyone felt they’d done something wrong.
“Did you all masturbate before these encounters?” I asked, suddenly realizing what was happening. There was nodding, “Did you wash your hands or just lick your fingers afterwards?” There was some uncomfortable hemming and hawing, but then it was clear they had not washed their hands.
“So what?” the pink haired girl asked.
“So, you know what they said about our cum, it causes a reaction in women. You touched your sisters-in-law,” I said to the woman who’d confessed to that transgression, “Maybe just touched their hand with yours and then they couldn’t control themselves. And you weren’t really in a position to stop them.” There was a dawning of understanding in the group and they all seemed to recognize the power they had over women, and they seemed a little nervous about it. We were quiet again for a moment. We weren’t talking about any of the stuff ConPharmaMax wanted us to talk about. But everyone felt good bitching. And finding out that we all suffered from the same stuff.