Ellen's vaginal dilator set

Ellen turns to you as you approach the door to Widley's sexual health clinic. "Before we go any further," she says. "I want to know if this is real or if I'm just making it up. Do you really want to have sex with me?"

You nod earnestly. "Yes, Ellen. I dream about you, you know," you say with complete sincerity.

"OK, then this visit will be very important. And I guess I should tell you what Amy found in my drawer," Ellen says.

The two of you lean on the railing to the basement stairs, and Ellen continues.

"I know maybe you thought of me as a party girl, but I was actually a virgin, I mean, technically, until right before I came to Widley," she says. "So I didn't find out till then I have a little problem with sex."

You look at Ellen in confusion.

"No, no, not that way," Ellen says. "It's that, you know, it's hard, um, putting A into B. My vagina is too tight. About half the time it just doesn't work."

You raise an eyebrow. You've never heard of that.

"The boys here hate that."

You nearly **** yourself trying to hold back your laughter, but it bursts out anyway and you're red-faced and teary-eyed from the effort.

"No really," Ellen says. "With the girls outnumbering them like four to one, they just go down their dance card. So the health center prescribed, you know, some exercises. And some equipment. And Amy, when she was snooping, she... she found my vaginal dilators. She thought she'd found a whole set of dildoes!" Ellen laughs.

You laugh with Ellen. But it sounds like that was precisely what Amy found. Prescription dildoes! Who would have thought?

"So spontaneous romance is just off the list," Ellen says. "So, you know, I've been thinking about you. I could always talk to you, and you, well, you helped keep my secrets."

"Mum's the word," you say, and put a finger to your lips. Yes, Ellen's senior year of high school featured some escapades that she was happy her family never found out about.

"And I always thought you really liked me, I mean, even if we were always going out with someone else at the time," she says.

"You've always been the most beautiful girl I know," you say. You hope that doesn't sound too shallow. Amy's satin hair ribbon tugs at the base of your penis again. You're acutely conscious that you may need to quickly get rid of it.

Ellen beams at you. She takes your hand. "Let's go in," she says.

Ellen checks in at the clinic front desk, and you take your seats in a small waiting room. The furniture is scuffed old wood and faded upholstery, like antiques that never saw a day out of use. She holds your hand while you wait.

In a couple of minutes, you hear Ellen's name called. A plump, smiling African-American woman stands at the inner door holding a clipboard. She has a pair of glasses on a gold chain around her neck, resting on top of her very excellent cleavage, which her plain white button-front blouse does nothing to conceal.

Ellen stands and brings you over.

The woman's nametag reads DINAH LEWIS, NP.

"Good to see you again, Ellen," Ms. Lewis says in a deep, friendly voice. Ellen introduces you. "Good to meet you too." She holds out her hand and you clasp it. She has a warm, firm grasp as she shakes your hand. "Will you be taking the STD screen?"

You look blank for a second.

Ellen nods.

"Um, yes," you affirm.

"Very good," Ms. Lewis says. She hands you a plastic cup with a screw top. "You can give us a urine sample. The restroom there has a little door where you put it when you're done," she says. "While you're waiting for us, it could help if you read through this." She hands you a thick pamphlet. There's a sticky tag marking one section, and it falls open to a chapter on "Vaginismus". "We'll be a few minutes," she concludes.

"Thanks," you say. You relax a bit. You'll be able to take off Amy's ribbon.

Ms. Lewis leads Ellen back through the inner door. "So you've been using the Number Four for a few weeks now..." you hear her say to Ellen before the door swings shut.

You enter the single restroom. It's full of health posters with slogans like "Good Sexual Health Is Your Responsibility" and "Pleasure Is Your Responsibility" as well as "How To Insert The Female Condom". You pull down your pants, untie the bow holding Amy's blue satin hair ribbon, roll it up and stuff it in your pocket. After a few deep breaths to let your penis soften, you collect the urine sample and put it on a little shelf behind a sliding door.

In the waiting room, you read the marked chapter. Ellen's problem seems real all right. You manage to avoid laughing at the sketch of the man's penis bending painfully when it hits the woman's clenched vaginal muscles. Treatment means the woman does exercises to relax her muscles while inserting progressively bigger, um, dilators, until she can accept a penis. And then, starting out needs patience and gentleness. Okay.

They still haven't called you. You flip curiously around the pamphlet. There's a whole section on "Anal Intercourse". You chuckle quietly at the even-handed treatment. The text and especially the pictures are at pains to make it clear that the penetrator could as easily be a man or a woman wearing a dildo, and the receiver could equally be male or female. It's all "insertive partner" and "receptive partner" when describing the do's and dont's, with sketches of four different couples showing positions. The girl with the dildo is doing her boyfriend from the front, lifting and spreading his legs. The two guys have one lying down and the other sitting on his cock, face to face. The two girls are spooned on their sides, and the other boy-girl couple has him doing her doggie style. You realize the couples are all drawn as interracial, with the lighter-toned partner as the receiver, and you smirk. Looking at the cover, you see it was prepared at Widley, and Dinah Lewis is one of the authors.

A thought strikes you. You flip to the front and read through the illustration credits. Ellen's roommate Amy shows up in the list, and you smile.

Ms. Lewis's resonant voice calls your name. You rise and follow her into the back, watching her butt sway under her slacks.

She opens the door of an examination room. "To the right, please," she says. The left half of the room is partitioned off with a portable privacy screen. To the right are a couple of small chairs and some cabinets of medical supplies. "Your urine screen came back clear," she said. "We'll need a quick physical exam." She raises her glasses to her eyes and turns around to the cabinets.

You look blankly at her back. Well, not so blankly, it's a nice shape, especially toward the bottom.

Ms. Lewis turns, her hands covered in fresh blue latex gloves. "If you would lower your pants and underwear, please?"

"Um, okay," you say. They're pretty brisk here at the clinic, maybe they do a lot of these. You open your pants and lower everything to your knees.

"I'll be doing a quick palpation and physical scan," she says. She sits down in a rolling chair and eases up to where you're standing. She looks through her glasses at your semi-relaxed penis. With her gloved hands, she takes it in hand and moves it left, right, up, squeezing gently on the head and up the shaft, pausing at the base. She touches lightly along the line where Amy's ribbon was tied around the base of your penis. You stiffen slightly, hoping she's not seeing anything amiss. She examines your balls, gently touching each with her fingertips. As you look down to watch what she's doing, your field of view shows a woman looking intently at your penis while she manipulates it, and what's more, you're looking straight down at the top of her breasts, which are showing cleavage that in simple magnitude clearly exceed Ellen's. Your penis quickly swells into erection.