The Cowgirl and Mr. Pickle: In which we are presented with far too much information Part I

"My reaction to porn films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. 

After the first 20 minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live." 

~Erica Jong, Playboy Magazine, September 1975

Prior to entering my career of providing intuitive guidance, my job history reads like a short list of haphazard forays all leading to dreary dead ends:

The restaurant years: snarky-but-lovable waitress (cocktails and food), inadequate prep cook, unfit banquet manager, clueless bakery manager, reluctant server at a dinner theater

The administrative years: unqualified secretary to the County Clerk, laggard event coordinator, ill-equipped manager of medical offices
The lost three months: misguided employment with a house cleaning service. Don't ask.

The fuck-working-for-other-people years: transcriber, pet/house sitter, crafter and baker

In thirteen years of conducting sessions, I have never been asked to list my qualifications, proudly point to a framed diploma on the wall or speak about courses I've graduated. Nobody appears to be concerned with my history, but I often find ways to shoehorn in the anecdote about my near-death experience as a child which altered the way my brain functions. I guess I offer this as some sort of explanation/mystical credential for how I know things.

When I first started giving readings, I felt as though I was fumbling around in a dark room, tripping over furniture while looking for doorways. All that was really clear was that people had questions, and by using the Remote Viewing technique, I could come up with answers. I bristled at the word "prediction" and corrected people on the spot, insisting that it was more of a forecast based on the way energy was moving for them at the moment. As time went on and these forecasts proved to be accurate, my client base grew so large, I joked that half the county had been to my house to cry on my couch. It wasn't unusual for me to have sessions with all three members of a love triangle without any of them knowing the others had spoken to me.

And there were a LOT of triangles.

Little did I know that this linear question and answer dance would soon work its way into heavy therapy sessions in which I was advising people on every topic imaginable. Up to that point, the only experience I'd had with counseling was tuning in to Dr. Ruth's Sexually Speaking radio show in the eighties and the one and only marriage counseling session my then-husband and I attended in which an exhausted therapist spoke with us for a few minutes, then turned to him and told him that we should divorce. As soon as possible.

The subjects that come up in my sessions most frequently are sex and bodily functions. On any given day, I am likely to spend at least a few hours discussing vaginal discharge, erectile dysfunction, best positions for conception, how to give oral sex to someone with a gigantic penis, the best way to have a secret affair with someone else's spouse, and nipple sensitivity. There are no psychic predictions during these excruciatingly frank consultations, and there are many days when I wonder how and when I morphed myself into an amateur sex therapist. Is there some kind of award for keeping a straight face during outrageously disturbing discussions? If so, I must be in the running for it by now.

For your reading pleasure, here are a few riveting highlights from past sessions:

~Seventy year old woman comes to our session with an impressive dildo collection in a Nike gym bag. Her favorite appliance is the hefty green vibrator she has named "Mr. Pickle", but she would like me to intuit which of these gadgets is "most in harmony with her aura" (bonus points when I manage to make it through the consultation and recommendations without actually handling any of the devices).

~Married male in the throes of an honest-to-God midlife crisis gives in to his compulsion to have an affair with a saucy Internet "friend" who happens to be a crack cocaine addict. After being cautioned against such risky behavior, he goes ahead and does it anyway. When panic sets in immediately following the encounter, he rushes home to soak his penis in a beer stein full of Listerine to "kill the germs".

~Same male decides to throw caution to the wind and continue hazardous escapades, this time inviting a male friend of the crack addict on board for a three-way. While it satisfied a secret desire to engage in uninhibited sex with a dude, his backside was sore and throbbing for a week (since the stakes were significantly higher this time, he decides to douche his rectal cavity with diluted chlorine bleach). Dejected comment at our next session: "It really wasn't anything like Brokeback Mountain at all."

~Fortyish woman comes to session wearing floral leggings and a tee shirt which announces, "It's only kinky the first time!". About ten minutes in to our conversation, she pulls a can of beer out of her purse, apologizing for not bringing one for me.  When I ask her to abstain during our session, she becomes agitated and gets right to the point which is wanting guidance about having sexual liaisons with her Standard Poodle (whose name, inexplicably, is Peter Marshall) and an economy-sized jar of peanut butter. Her questions are not so much in the vein of morality, ethics or common sense, but how she is ever going to be able to have sex with a man again after this. Also, she wants to know if Peter Marshall was her husband in some other lifetime because of the way he gazes lovingly into her eyes and really seems to care about her feelings.

You can't make this shit up, folks.

~Long-time client whose marriage has been on the rocks for several years reports that she has jumped into an affair with the brawny FedEx man who makes deliveries to the medical office where she works. At first it's all fun flirtation and meaningful glances, but the situation takes a salacious turn when he invites her to explore the back of his delivery truck one afternoon and they wind up screwing between some tall cardboard boxes and a wooden crate. Now that a precedent has been set, they begin a series of rendezvous at various points on his delivery route (which, she admits, is a fantastic turn-on to have rough and hurried encounters bent over a box in the back of an airless delivery vehicle in the August heat) and she has invested a significant amount of money in crotchless lingerie and short skirts in order to accommodate their hasty liaisons. Her request for guidance is not about the future of her marriage, but how many other women the FedEx guy is boinking on his route because, honestly, he's just really good at speedy sex which means (in her mind) that he must be getting a LOT of practice. She begins stalking him on the days he doesn't make deliveries to the office and becomes obsessed with his whereabouts which is severely impacting her performance at work (she is questioned by her boss repeatedly about why she is ordering so many unnecessary office and medical supplies). Pen poised over notebook, she pleads with me to "tune in" to see if I can come up with the names of the other bitches she's sure he must be nailing during office hours. I gently remind her that this is not the purpose of a session and she springs into action pulling twenty dollar bills out of her wallet and arranging them on the table, hoping that she will hit the magic number and I'll begin spewing information like a telepathic slot machine.

More-common-than-you'd-think complaints: discovering husband's pubic hair in the keyboard of the laptop while looking up recipes on the Internet. Trouble finding quiet places to masturbate at work. Having a hard time saving up enough money for that vaginal rejuvenation surgery everyone's talking about. Husband's penis is the size of a thumb. Wife hates morning sex (and are these inconveniences grounds for divorce or at the very least, an affair?). Husband only wants to do it doggy-style and/or in the ass. More than one woman winds up needing surgery to repair extensive damage to her back door. Horrific vaginal odors coming from co-workers sharing cubicles. After a bout of furious lovemaking, husband/boyfriend/casual hookup collapses and dies. Alarming addiction to coffee enemas.

Perplexing questions:  "Why do I fantasize about Prince Charles when I'm having sex with my boyfriend?" "Will my wife find out that I got a hand job from my secretary?" From both a man and a woman in unrelated sessions: "does masturbating during Keeping Up With The Kardashians mean I'm gay?" "Is Oprah Winfrey gay?" "Is it wrong to put a tracking device on my husband's car?" "Can I really go blind from masturbation?" "How can I get Keanu Reeves to notice me?" "Is it true that the FDA is going to approve a birth control pill that also helps you lose weight?" "Why do I become aroused by the smell of garlic?"

"Oh, I've heard everything. I'm going out to get some popcorn and pink lemonade. I've just seen a three-ring circus."

~Cary Grant in The Awful Truth 1937