Seven sexless months into my separation from Sam I found that the saying “necessity is the mother of invention” is more than a meaningless cliché. 

I’m at my friend Heidi’s and my daughter Lila is shadowing Heidi’s son, George. Lila adores George, who is 3. So George and Lila jump off chairs and laugh, George in his blond hair, Superman boxers, Buzz Light Year shades and nothing else.

Heidi and I are at the table, steam rising from our teacups. Heidi makes a mean cup of green tea. And she used to sell sex toys.

She was a rep with one of those companies that hosts in-house parties, like Tupperware, but with vibrators and nipple nibbler cream, instead of airtight leftover containers.

Somewhere in her house is this box of lonely, untouched sex toys, and I’m a separated single mom and I haven’t sex in seven months. I lean forward. I need that box.

I’ve been asking for months. Where is that box, girl? And, she’s stumped. She knows she put it somewhere... back of a closet, behind her husband’s guitars... but where?

Didn’t she see those capital letters forming over my head when I spoke: WHERE? (By “where” I was saying “urgent.”)

It was almost time to get Roxie on her way, but I was not leaving empty handed.

“You need to find the box,” I say, and now I say “the box” and we both know what I’m talking about. “I’m going to rip your house apart, girl. Seven Months. It’s been seven months,” I say. “Seriously, I’m going to rip the walls out to find that box.”

She says, “Oh my god, I forgot to tell you. I found it!.”

A pause.

“Oh my god. Seven months. I’m so sorry. That’s so long.”

In the back corner of the closet is a pretty pink case with white polka-dots, filled with black satin bags that are stuffed with vibrators.

I could choose my style: The Monarch.
The Rabbit.
The Jelly Osaka.
The bullet.
The Nubby G.
Girl, choose your size. Choose your features. Long. Stubby. Straight. Curved.

What do I care? Anything. Anything will do for now.

George is in the doorway, curious. “Mom, mommy, what are you looking at?” he says. I’m feeling around the bags but there is no way I’m pulling anything out.

Heidi says, “Go play with Lila. She came over to play with you.”

So many to choose from. But you know what? I’m an easily influenced consumer. A “Sex and the City” girl. So, it’s the Rabbit..

I leave with a black satin bag, a bottle of Slippery Kitty lube and – note how good my friends are to me – a two-cup coffee maker.

“There aren’t any batteries in it,” Heidi says as I’m sliding Lila’s shoes back onto her feet. “You need three C batteries.”

I put the bag in the car and think about it all day. That bag. But the kids are so whiney, there’s no way I’m taking them into a store, even for the three C batteries.

Pretty soon it’s dark outside. Dinnertime, baths, stories, bed.

By then it’s too late to get batteries, and I can’t leave the girls. The Rabbit will have to sleep alone in its satin bag.

Wait, I think. Isn’t this a house with two kids? Kid houses have kid toys. Kid toys – the talking, bleeping, blaring plastic kind I hate (thanks Mom) – have batteries.

I got the screw driver and started opening up the Winnie the Pooh talking phone, the Backyardagins radio, the Diego drawing board. AA, AA and more AA. Nothing in this house takes a C?

Let me tell you about necessity. There’s a little bit of MacGyver in all of us, even me. I discovered that three double As may be longer and thinner than Cs, but line them up, end to end, and viola, power.

The only problem is that they don’t fit the Rabbit right, and keep popping out. I need something to hold them in place.

Well, it’s still a kid house: Band-Aids!

I lay the three batteries end to end in the Rabbit, take a bright green Band-Aid, cross it with a blue one, reinforce them with another green one, and the Rabbit is up and running.

It’s amazing what a Band-Aid can fix.