The EA

She isn't attractive except for her personality. And she hasn't exactly got a bombshell body so she has to be aggressive to get laid, I knew that and I knew how aggressive she could get.

We talked about Brad for awhile, I was as happy to unload every detail I knew about him as I was to unload him.

She was playing with herself as I talked and at one stage reached down to the floor and got my panties which she fingered and smelled and washed her face with as if that was actually done ... and that kind of thing was by her, I was used to it.

This reminded me of a lingering question from the trip. "Do you use the word panty or do you use underwear?"

"We've talked about this."

I looked over at her. "When?"

"Jennifer Allen brought it up, she asked us that." Jennifer Allen was a girl we knew in first year college.

"What did we say?"

"You didn't, you blushed, I said panty, she freaked ... something about man dominance and fantasies, I never understood anything that girl said. Why?"

"This strikes me as weird." I told her about bringing my boss to my room to go over my notes. "The next day she mentioned the word panties three time ... mine were on the floor, I hadn't yet cleaned up my room ... well, maybe she wasn't referring to my panties, but panties, she used the word three different times ..."

"Maybe she wants to get into them," she chuckled.

"Don't you think that's weird?"

"It's a fetish — if you talk about it, you're thinking about it. I bet she wears really expensive stuff ... just split from her husband ... the woman is adrift, sailing with the currents and the currents are her own proclivities."

I laughed. "Proclivities."

"It's a word," she sounded offended.

"Can you imagine you adrift with your own proclivities?" I laughed. "Those wouldn't be currents, they'd be rip-tides."

"I'll be fucking your boyfriend this time tomorrow."

"You'll have fucked him four times by now."

"Jealous?"

"Not now," I laughed, "but I might be in a couple of days."

"I'll buy you some batteries."

"The least you could do ... home wrecker."

Gloria

I felt about Friday's the way most people feel about Monday's — they put me in a bad mood — soon, I would have to endure the weekend. But not today. Amazon Prime understands my urgency.

I noticed the box on my doorstep as I was backing out this morning. When I spotted it I felt the same jolt of joy I got when I ripped open the bag on my bed and the two toys fell out and the lube, nit the lubricant, that's what the girl called it ... as if she used the word so often she had to shorten it.

Everything about me wanted to tear that carton open but I didn't, I just placed it gently in the hallway and imagined the panties inside, three, all in light pastels, all grannies, all would be soft and cool on the back of my hand, all weekend, all in front of my computer, always with the reassuring buzz or would the electric one be soundless?

So why do women do it, lie there on the internet naked? For the money, sure, but how much is your reputation worth, surely a lot more than you'd get to let some guy, and it had to be a guy, snap away at you as you stretched and strained for his money shot. They had to want to do it. That's what excited me: the confidence, the fuck-it-ness, the fun, the mischievousness, the who-really-gives-a-shit, because who really does? Not the generations coming up.

I did, I was taught to give a shit by a mother who must have known next to nothing about sex, certainly nothing about masturbation except to warn me about it, scare me.

It was just after midnight last night when I was standing nude in front of the full length mirror in his bedroom, the camera angled at me like they did it on the net, casually, no big deal ... sometimes with a look of surprise, sometimes with funny grins or an out-stuck tongue but most often with a pleasant smile as if the picture was going to be a present.

I shot my back, too, zeroed in on my bum and, having shattered the taboo, I got onto my bed and stretched and strained to take pudenda pictures. All the women I saw were so different, what did I look like? Four, five, six shots and a couple to see if I could see a little of what was buzzing inside me.

When I loaded all the pictures onto my computer I was looking at foreign objects. I didn't know me physically, I've never paid any attention to me ... why would I? I've never cared about bodies, any bodies, my own included.

But it was there, filling my screen from every conceivable angle, me, the embodiment of me, mine. What did I look like in my hey day? I wondered, I actually wondered: firmer breasts, less loose skin, fewer wrinkles — never pretty though, I don't think I was ever actually pretty.

I should have been exhausted, I usually am when I get home from a trip but even the orgasms didn't tire me out. I was awake half the night toying ... with an idea.

Most of life is seen as binary, the black and whites, the yes and nos of our routines. But it isn't, its more often like a spectrum of choices: I don't actually have to close every deal, I can fail, that occurred to me with the buzz bomb in my bum and my fingers caressing my panties. And I don't have to be a shrivelled ageing spinster I can porn my way into a new awareness and maybe into action. Looking at the ceiling, I had given myself a deadline of 5 o'clock today to phone the geeky guy from my office to ask him out for a drink. I had given myself the target of 5 o'clock to step on the spectrum, to start finding out what, in my now porn-addled imagination, I could turn into reality.

But I cancelled that. Nothing about the guy excited me as much as what would be in that box in my hallway.

Her concentration was deep into her screen, her fingers appeared busy on the keys. I was about to look away when I realized with shock that she was wearing the exact same top as yesterday and, as I got closer, I could see the same pants, too and no doubt the same shoes. The same underwear?

She must have read my critique. She grimaced. "He was still there when I got home; I went to a friend's place."

"Oh." I tried to say it to suggest I didn't know what she was talking about, then quickly added, "I didn't see you at the airport. I wanted to complement you on your work. You did a very good job. Thank you."

She has a very pleasant smile, smiling something about hotel reservations; we both laughed.

Some people are scatter-brains, some are compartmentalizers, some are wonderfully focused, which has always been me; things can swirl around me but I have the ability to lock on to an issue and tune out all extraneous detritus. That detritus today was, alas, my office work, all I could think about was what was in that box and what it would mean to my weekend.

Not true, I was also thinking about the Shock concept Gemma had told me about; the consequences of the shock of banishing my husband ... that the shock could be looked at as opportunity. I grasped the concept almost immediately and as I did I sexualized myself.

I pulled my phone from my purse and went to the dozen pictures I saved ... of me in the mirror, one of them on my hands and knees like a submissive tart, complete with dangling breasts and self-debasing leer.

"Pictures?"

Talk about shock, my head snapped up as I quickly dropped the phone to my lap below the desk ... and immediately felt stupid. "I have been thinking of your Shock thing," I quickly recovered. "I went home to an empty house last night. It's the first time I've been totally alone, ever."

"Be good for you. Find yourself, reach out to people you haven't seen for awhile, do things you've never done before," she grinned and held up some pages, "like me making a stab at the trip report the procedure manual says I must do. I looked at Andrea's ... I can do them her way but I've tried to make mine a little more ... I don't know, useful." She shook the four pages. "Do you want to see it or do I just put it in the file?"

I waved for it, she handed it to me. I found myself looking at her bottom on the way out and speculated if they were the black ones from the floor.

Gemma

Changes inspired by shock don't just happen. My ex-boyfriend explained that the shock creates both the opportunity and the impetus for change; the change itself is calculated and introduced under the cover of the shock ... in the case of Katrina, the floods created an opportunity to rebuild the city; that gave the more devious city fathers an excuse to get rid of the run-down neighbourhoods and the unwanted poor.

So the changes from the shock of my new job weren't just going to happen, I had to make them happen and they had to be big changes, jump-shift kind of changes, changes that would take me out of my comfort zone or they wouldn't be real changes at all.

Gloria read my report. After lunch she told me she liked my approach, to go with it and then asked me, with something like admiration in her eyes, where I planned to be in ten years. I laughed, I had nothing, never thought about it, I don't think about next week. I said "In here," meaning occupying her office.

She got suddenly serious. "Do you really want that? Do you know that you want that? Do you know what you'll have to do to make that happen?"

I backed down and away, out of the office. To talk about it is to think about it and to think about it is way too serious for my current frame of mind ... I was more interested in scrubbing my apartment of the last of him than I was getting a drink after work.

But the goddam question was lodged in my brain like an unwanted bullet. Where did I want to be in ten years? Where?

I run when I'm bothered, it has always helped me to settle the things bouncing around in my brain; the exercise seems to sweat away all the extraneous details leaving what is bothering me the only focus.

So I eschewed the drink and went directly home ... knowing Brad would be gone — Brenda's text had cutely confirmed it: Brenda+Brad = bliss. Five minutes after changing I was enjoying the wind on my face.

What did I want? I had asked myself that question hundreds of times, we all do, it's just that I never did any of the work to find an answer, never mind developing a plan to get there. And you don't become a Gloria Walker without a plan.

Who is she? Middle age, decent shape, divorcing, upper middle class, powerful, no kids. No kids ...

Did I want kids? Not really. Did I want a husband? It took me two miles to answer that, two miles of bouncing the question around so I could look at it from various angles, various objective angles.

I had stopped and was sitting on a stump not because I was tired, I wasn't, I never get tired; because I marvelled at what was just beginning to dawn on me. No, I didn't want kids; no I didn't want a husband; didn't want anything to do with the whole nuclear family thing. There was a profound relief in understanding that — nowhere near like the joy there must be in discovering that the nuclear family is in fact precisely what you DO want, sure, but I felt a deep relief that was profoundly enlightening because I just realized I would have a gazzilion hours a week to fill with other things and I knew instantly what those other things would be, at least the main thing: a plan, a flexible plan, a plan that might get me to her office ... if that's really what I wanted: I'd go after that Commerce degree — I've always been a good student; I've always loved to study. Why the fuck not?

If it took me the better part of an hour to get this far on the trail, with my new-found excitement it took me about half the time to get home. In front of my computer I wiped most of the sweat off my fingers on my shirt and was on the site; an hour later I was in the bath, a glass of wine in hand, the bottle in the soap dish and my plan in place, or a lot of it. You want change from shock? I'll give you fucking change.

But the change would be to my working life and my academic/avocationally life, what about my social life?

I've never felt more alone. I'm a remote type anyway — never call anyone; never network; never been one of the girls, now I've even left the gossipy comforts of the office pool to become a lonely Horatio outside an office on the 34th floor. And now my best friend is shacked with my ex; how much am I going to see of her? And the night classes which begin in two weeks; they aren't exactly going to be social. So what change can I make to my social life to make it a full sweep?

I had one foot propped up on the other on the rim of the tub. They are remarkably narrow feet I notice for the first time, narrow enough to have a touch of elegance to them, the only thing about me that is elegant. I don't want to be alone, I know that, the fact scared me. I hate being alone. I've only ever been alone for about two months after college and I never expected to be alone again ... and basically haven't been, all but over-lapping four live-in guys over four years. Now I needed another one and was scanning my recent history for candidates when I realized, no, I didn't want to go through that again, the thought of it all but repulsed me. Better to ...

Why not? I will be away a lot, I knew I'd need to find some one to take notes for me for the classes I'd miss — it probably had to be a girl, I'd only ever trust a girl to take proper notes for me: why can't she be a live-in? Students were always looking for a place to stay. Get someone to share a little rent, take the notes, get a little company and maybe even share a bedroom, I was ready to try that.

I quickly got out of the bath, dried in a half-ass hurry and was on my computer finding where to post my advertisement: 'wanted, female roommate, share rent in comfortable two-bed apart, and provide notes in year 1 Comm (I travel). Good neighbourhood, close to uni.' I left a contact email then spent the rest of the evening going through photos looking for the kind of woman I'd like to recruit. I brought out my Hitachi when I was looking at the 20 pictures I saved, a little amazed that the women had pretty much nothing in common — like I really didn't care what my roommate looked like as long as she took good notes and maybe put out, and I wasn't all that sure I wanted that.

Gloria

You're never supposed to make drastic decisions when you've had a shocking change in your life ... unless you've made that shocking change for the very purpose of making drastic decisions.

I hid my vibrators and pushed my well-used underwear to the bottom of my hamper ... a burglar didn't have to know how horny I've become.

I had phoned the realtor to ask what kinds of spaces were available for middle age lonely women who wanted to sell their family home and become a modern women. She had laughed, told me she'd think about it and meet me for lunch.

We met in a sunny courtyard. The shock doctrine thing came up almost immediately: the dumped husband, the desire to sell, the need for a new place, new opportunities. The realtor, Jan, suggested immediately that a move would help but she was absolutely insistent that exercise ... exercise was the key and all but demanded that I join her walking group. "There are about 20 of us ... about half get together at any given time ... evenings, longer walks on weekends ... trips to good walking destinations ... even holiday walks in foreign lands." I blanched at the thought of it, then demurred as she pressed, then eventually accepted and after lunch we went to an outdoors shop she knew and she helped me pick out all the gear I'd need. Then we went off to what looked like a stacked complex of condos, a commune-type place as she called it, of people like me ... money, middle age, single and social. She wanted to take me through the show house but I was too discombobulated by the shock of it all; I said I'd see it another day. They were going fast she warned.

It was about the fourth time I stood naked in front of his mirror, this time so horny that if Harold was here, and I half-wished he was, I would have taken him.

You get restless when you've discovered you're committed to change. You want the change to happen immediately. I had walked around the house a dozen times, naked except for my grannies ... that's the way I recovered from the orgasms and the way I start to build myself up again ... no real task, a walk, a video or a few pics, the hum of the Hitachi, the feel of the panties on the back of my hand ... the image of the ones on the floor in her hotel room, looking like she had just pushed them down and stepped out of them.

Change. But what did I want? What did I fucking want? Not to be alone, that I knew, but that's all I knew. A condo commune? Really?

Amazon does Sundays, I found that out when I met the guy on my doorstep, me rubbing the sleep from my eyes, he handing me the box that could have floated away it was so light.

Lingerie. A lot of it; hours of on-line search. I broke a nail opening the box and laughed when I dumped it all onto my bed. I would want a guy who would enjoy it with me, who would want me to model it, maybe photograph me in it ... fun but serious, too. Some of it was elegant, I'd want to pose in it like a sophisticate. And some of it was slutty ... for the fun girl who was lurking inside me, the fun girl slowly emerging in me, a girl who I hoped, I prayed liked to play.

Gemma

"What's wrong?" Gloria looked a wreck.

She leaned on my desk for support. "It's that fucking change you insisted I make. I joined a walking club ... of Olympic athletes."

I laughed. It looked like she had; it looked like she was sore all over. She limped into her office not seeming to mind my giggle. She told me from the doorway that we would be going to Chicago on Wednesday, one night, two short meetings, be back late Thursday. I wondered if this was the way it was supposed to work: she just springs trips on me like I'm always available to her beck and call.

I got my first hit mid-morning, a woman who was "desperately" interested in my room; who was a great note taker; she could come over any time; she had references. I got two more before lunch so was in a great mood as the clock approached 12: change, I'm loving change.

"You know that change you insisted I get from my shock?"

She was leaning against her door, still uncomfortable. I corrected her. "It was change I insisted I get from my shock."

She waved my correction away with a slight grin. "I have to get out of my house: too big, him, change ... what you called a jump-shift, that's what I need. I went to a condo complex on Saturday. It looked good but I wasn't up to checking it out. Would you go with me ... moral support ... well, emotional support anyway. I need a second pair of eyes; I don't trust myself."

I had agreed to meet the first girl who contacted me to show her my apartment but I cancelled that until after 5 and was soon in her car, telling her about my new plan.

She was "shocked" to learn I was taking a commerce degree, we both laughed at the word shock but I could tell she was impressed. She asked me about it. I gave her my rational, basically that I wanted to study and commerce seemed like a good subject. She asked me about my ambitions; I assured her I didn't have any, just to try to do new interesting things, including meeting new interesting people ... at the university for one.

She told me that was the main reason she joined the walking club and the main reason she was thinking about the condo complex, she didn't deal well with loneliness. I admitted I didn't either.

"I was walking on Sunday with a group of women I had just met. They all seemed to talk non-stop as they walked. One of them was encountering what she called a terminal problem with her marriage. Her husband was getting fat, sex was crappy, he had a small penis anyway, now it was becoming useless. She admitted she had started an affair. They all had comments, usually consoling comments, I tried to hide my shock ... that word again. People actually talk openly about those things, did you know that?"