After the divorce, Nina decides to become a sex addict. A nymphomaniac is what she calls it at first, remembering Danny Bronson calling her that in Bio after she asked a question about the biological role of the clitoris. Everyone laughed and she blushed and called him a pervert, then everyone laughed harder and started calling her "Nympho Nina" in the hall.

She used to catch Danny looking at her sometimes, though, which only now does she realize means he was thinking about wanting to find out if it was true.

At the time she thought maybe he felt bad about what he'd done. He wasn't really the bullying type, despite being on the varsity football team, and he even had a poem in the school literary magazine that year. About whales, if she remembers correctly. It was pretty bad. But poets generally didn't slut-shame. Even football-playing poets. So she figured he felt bad, or at least felt bad for her because she was so unfuckable.

Now she realizes how stupid that was. He was obviously thinking about her clit.

Nina married a poet. Not Danny Bronson, sadly. Because this poet had no interest in her clit at all. This poet was decidedly uninterested in anything outside the reverse cowgirl, an unfortunate position that required you to handle your own business. And what's the point of fucking a poet if you have to handle your own business? Not that she understood that at first. She fully believed the unfuckable part, appreciated that he was the one rare exception, had only ever had two accidental orgasms in her life and they'd scared her both times, like they were secret and terrible and potentially medical in nature.

It wasn't until later, peeing after a particularly rigorous night, that she felt the urge to finish what her poet husband had started. She touched herself and came immediately and realized what a fucking idiot she'd been all this time.

It was so exhausting, though, to attempt to add him to the mix. To prop yourself up and get yourself off and manage the inevitable thigh cramping and not think about how fat your ass must look from behind.

Sometimes Danny Bronson popped into her head while she reverse-cowgirled her poet husband, but it never did the job. He was just some guy who thought she had potential.

After the divorce, Nina tells her friend Elena that she might be a nympho, and Elena says, "That's so offensive. It's a real thing, an addiction." Nina blushes, apologizes, and says, "I'm just feeling lonely."

Elena rubs her arm. "That makes so much sense."

Three weeks later, Nina finds out Elena is fucking her poet ex-husband. She isn't even mad, feels sorry for her, if anything. Nobody should have to reverse-cowgirl her way through life and Nina is thrilled at the thought of never having to do it again, truth be told.

"I feel terrible. I should have told you," Elena says, when they accidentally run into each other at Starbucks.

"No, no. I'm happy for you," Nina says, and to her surprise, she means it.

Okay, Elena texts her the following week. Why didn't you tell me he was such a beast with oral? I'm throwing out my vibrator! The texts pause here, as if the phone itself is weighing its next words carefully.

No wonder you're all over the apps, looking for 🍆

This is a lot on a Tuesday morning, even for Elena. Now Nina's finally a little mad. Not because Elena is rubbing it in her face, but because she's rubbing it in her poet ex-husband's face and he apparently loves it. Why hadn't Nina ever straddled his hawk nose and thin, hard lips and demanded the beast?

I'm so glad we can still talk like this, bestie.

Elena's gloating interrupts Nina's second pass through matches on a new local site that focuses entirely on anonymous hookups. She'd thought it a wondrous thing, how the apps had changed so dramatically between her marriage and divorce. But she's struggled to develop her confidence in one-night stands when so many of the men look unbathed in their photos, their hair greasy, their teeth a deep yellow. And now she finds out that Elena is getting profoundly pounded, almost definitely in missionary style, by her poet ex-husband who has developed a newfound love of cunnilingus.

I'm looking to get profoundly pounded, in missionary style, she types in her bio, then deletes.



At the end of eleventh grade, after the nympho catcalls had finally begun to die down, Nina tripped over her untied shoelace just as she reached her locker. She fell, hard, directly into the metal door and gave herself a nosebleed. Wes, the very obviously gay theater kid who had the locker next to her, caught her before she hit the floor.

"Oh my god, are you all right?" He helped her to a seated position, then looked, horrified, at the blood on his sleeve. He sighed, gently pinched the bridge of her nose, and tilted her head back.

"Girl, that was crazy," he said. "You need to learn the boundaries of your own body."

The pain blossomed out, not from her nose, but somewhere deep inside her chest.

"It's okay. You can cry when something hurts."

She pinched her own nose and he let go, touching the spot between her brows with the tip of his finger. Soft like a breath. This boy who had never once spoken a word to her outside of 'Hey.'

She closed her eyes. She crossed her legs tightly.



I want my pussy eaten every day, she types. Her finger hovers over the delete button for a long time before pressing.

I want to feel something. I want someone to make me feel something again, she types.


.