The side effects of a less-than-social vagina are particularly noticeable when you’re constantly surrounded by three of the most disgustingly happy couples around. My roommate, Lola, and her two best friends, Harlow and Mia, met their significant others in a totally insane, it-never-happens-in-real-life weekend of debauchery in Las Vegas. Mia and Ansel are married and barely come up for air. Harlow and Finn seem to have mastered sex via eye contact. And Lola and her boyfriend, Oliver, are at that stage in a new relationship where touching is constant and sex seems to happen almost spontaneously. Cooking turns into sex. Watching The Walking Dead? Obviously arousing. Time for sex. Sometimes they’ll just walk in the door, chatting casually, and then stop, look at each other, and here we go again.

TMI alert? Oliver is loud, and I had no idea the c-word was used quite so readily in Australia. It’s a good thing I love them both so much.

And Lord, I do. I met Lola in the art program at UCSD, and although we didn’t really start hanging out regularly until she moved in as my roommate last summer, I feel like I’ve known her my entire life.

Hearing her feet dragging down the hall, I smile. She emerges, hair a mess and face still flushed.

“Oliver just left,” I tell her around a spoonful of Raisin Bran. He’d stumbled out less than ten minutes ago, sporting a dazed grin and a similar level of dishevelment. “I gave him a high five and a bottle of Gatorade for the road because he has to be dehydrated after all that. Seriously, Lola, I’m impressed.”

I wouldn’t have thought it possible for Lola’s cheeks to get any pinker. I would have lost that bet.

“Sorry,” she says, offering me a sheepish smile from behind the cupboard door. “You’ve got to be sick to death of us, but I’m about to leave for L.A. and—”

“You are not apologizing because you’ve got a gorgeous, sweet Australian guy banging you senseless,” I tell her, and stand to rinse out my bowl. “I’d give you more shit if you weren’t hitting that daily.”

“Sometimes it feels like driving all the way to his place takes forever.” Lola closes the cupboard door and stares off, contemplating. “That is insane. We are insane.”

“I tried to convince him to stay,” I tell her. “I’m leaving for the day and have work tonight. You two could have had the place to yourselves.”

“You’re working again tonight?” Lola fills her glass and props a hip against the counter. “You’ve closed every night this week.”

I shrug. “Fred needed someone and the extra hours don’t hurt.” I dry my bowl and reach to put it away. “Don’t you have panels to finish, anyway?”