On Cucumbers

Ah, the apocryphal cucumber!  

At least, that's how we'd thought of it back when I was a teenager: the idea that the cucumber was actually at times employed by women to satisfy their unmet sexual needs. I'm not sure where any of us had, as teens, gotten the idea that women (or girls) actually masturbated with cucumbers, but I can pretty much guarantee that every teenage guy in the '70s or '80s had at some point imagined, if not presumed, that some of them, at least, did so. (While at the same time, or course, keeping mum about the variety of things into which we'd inserted ourselves out of curiosity or our desperate need for release.)

And for some reason, this idea - this image - of a woman bringing herself to climax with this otherwise ordinary dietary staple, seems to have a particular hold on the male mind. I don't think I'm off base is stating that this is an idea still lurking in guys' heads today, 40-50 years later. 

And now Guinevere has recently, in her endearing disclosure, reminded us that the use of this easily obtainable and conveniently shaped member of the Cucumis genus was not merely the product of our hormone-addled male teenage brains, but is rather, perhaps unsurprisingly, a practice that has been substantiated as a not uncommon means by which to simulate the penetration of intercourse. A point on which I will now take liberty to comment further. 

When I was, I think 18 or 19, I'm not sure which summer it was, I had returned home from college and resumed my summer job that I'd held through high-school. My immediate supervisor was then an attractive woman 4 or 5 years older than me with whom I had become friendly and upon whom I'd actually had quite a crush since day one. In my absence that past school year, she had acquired a boyfriend, also some 5 years my senior, and while I cannot say I felt any jealousy, having no illusions that a mid-20's woman would have interest in a guy barely out of high school, having feelings for her while suffering from what I had then deemed to be a case of terminal virginity, I cannot say that I was not discouraged by this development, that it hadn't changed the tenor of my crush on her and that it had not adversely affected the joy I'd experienced in pretty regularly masturbating to her.

Toward the end of that summer, though, their relationship ended not entirely smoothly and in the immediate aftermath I was invited to join her and some other colleagues (mostly female, I think there was one other guy there) from work, for a Friday night, after work "good riddance!" round or two of drinks at the bar / restaurant we frequented. As I was by far the youngest person who'd be in attendance and underage, I'd be drinking Coke and would not be joining the rest of my older colleagues in any festivities afterwards.

What I then had to do before the end of that week was find her an "appropriately inappropriate" gift. Now, a reminder. I had a crush on her. I was masturbating to her. And, oh yeah... she was my boss. I was for a bit at a loss as to what to get for a woman in her situation (and our situation.) More by luck than anything else, I ran across what I thought would be either the perfect gift for the occasion or something so offensive it would get me fired. F--k it, I thought. Fortune favors the brave, right?

What I'd found was a short, illustrated, humorous little book. I think it's still available. Titled "Why Cucumbers are Better than Men." You can pretty much imagine what it discussed, and you'd be right. I though it was funny and cute. I hoped she would as well. We had never, ever, even mentioned masturbation (or sex) between us, so I really didn't know how it would go over. It certainly met the "inappropriate" (for the workplace) standard. I was so sure about the "appropriate" for the break-up standard.

Friday came. We all went out after work, had drinks and dinner and then I helped her carry the as yet unopened gifts to her car. She was going to have another little get together with her roommates & girlfriends over the weekend to celebrate the departure of "s--thead" and because the gifts we'd gotten were supposed to be at least "R" rated (apparently, mine was pretty tame) they hadn't been opened in the restaurant and she was going to open them either with her friends or on her own. Of course, I wasn't really sure how this sort of thing was supposed to work.

I hadn't actually given it any thought over the weekend. Not until I was walking into the lab on Monday did I wonder whether I'd done good or screwed the pooch. We were friendly and all and joked around but I was a bit concerned that maybe ... this hadn't really been the right kind of humor for the occasion.

Apparently, it had been exactly the right kind of humor.

"Hey, c'mere!" she'd said just as I came through the door. I walked to her, she walked to me. "Thank you.." Then she had her arms around my neck and was kissing me (on the lips!) for more than a couple of seconds and telling me how funny my book was and that her girlfriends that weekend had all thought it was "perfect"! We were still sort of standing there holding each other, me not quite believing what had just taken place. I made some comment to the effect that while I'd thought the book was funny and sufficiently raunchy, I couldn't actually vouch for the efficacy of the cucumber in the role described therein.

"Oh, they work," she'd said, matter-of-factly, giving me a little grin.

OK. Best Monday morning, ever. My boss, on whom I'm crushing, kissed me. We're still standing there, hands on each other's hips, almost pressed together. And... she just told me she'd f--ked herself with a cucumber!(?)

I then said something to the effect that I guessed it made sense: women would find something to insert into themselves, and guys, we'd find something to insert ourselves into. She'd asked me "... yeah, like what?" and suddenly realizing that my efforts in that regard had actually been mostly unsuccessful, until then having found virtually all potential orifices either too loose or too tight, I'd admitted to, in the past of course, having put a lotion - filled plastic baggie between the mattress and box spring and then, down on my knees, beside it, f--cking my bed. (Omitting the act that I was STILL doing it that way, sometimes.)

This didn't seem to have surprised her at all and she'd asked me if it had worked well and I said it had and she'd gone on to say that she'd used a cucumber a few times in high school before she'd gotten a vibrator and a dildo when she was a little older. Again, so matter-of-factly. Like saying, "I rode my bike until I got my car."

The most surprising thing to me then was not that she's used either, or admitted to it (though THAT, and the whole conversation WAS surprising), but that it was, I'm pretty sure, the first time I'd ever heard anyone actually utter the word "dildo."

We were still standing there holding each other and one of us was starting to say something I don't remember who, when we heard the door open and the head of the department came in, looked at us, started to say something as we disengaged and our moment or whatever it was was over and we were just back at work on Monday morning as usual.

Except, for the rest of the day, I couldn't stop myself imagining her naked, on her back in bed, using a cucumber.