‘Okay, yes, but can I just ask: what is the deal with making those pee cups so damn tiny? It’s sexist. Like the scientist guys who designed it said to themselves, oh look we all have a dick wow so let’s make a cup with a tiny mouth that we can point-and-shoot at with our dicks yay what fun. I always think I’m going to pee all over my hand every time. I don’t need a cup, I need a jug. Or like a bucket.’

Eram thanked the doctor, whose smile was beginning to look frozen in place, and hustled Gehna out.

‘“Dicks”,’ he said as soon as they were alone. ‘Really?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m allowed to change my mind, no?’

Gehna had been of the firm opinion that the proper name for male junk was penis, and that of female junk was vagina. Eram knew this because they had debated the matter more than once.

What’s wrong with ‘vagina’? she had argued. I like it.

I like it, too, but it’s a little clinical. I mean, in some contexts it just doesn’t work.

What contexts?

Like sexting. It doesn’t work in sexting, he had said.

How do you know? Have you tried it?

No, but I’ve read some porn. LitErotica they call it when it’s in words. For example, I could be like ohh Gehna you’re so hot I want to touch your vagina and then you’d be like yes, yes Eram, I want your big penis inside me. You see? Doesn’t work.

Gehna had got the giggles at that point. How come it’s always a big penis in porn? She had asked once she had caught her breath. What about all the other, like, normal penises? I mean, everyone can’t have a huge one, can they?

It’s called fantasy for a reason, I guess.

I think, Gehna had said, that we should try it. To see if your theory checks out. Tonight.

And so they had. Gehna’s first experience of sexting had mirrored the thrill and awkwardness of the real thing. She loved it. She loved the suspense of it, wondering what Eram would type next and whether it would match the images running through her mind. She loved how you could say when you liked something and, especially, when you didn’t. In actual sex, you sometimes just went along with things because you didn’t want to hurt your partner’s feelings, but here in fantasy land you could easily stop someone from violently groping your breast and have them kiss you instead. This had the added bonus of letting them know what sort of thing you liked, sex-wise. She loved having a say in the story. She loved how punctuation and grammar slowly disintegrated as things heated up, until their texts were basically a string of ‘ooh’s’ and ‘mmm’s’ and ‘ohh fuck’s’. But most of all, she loved the freedom of it. To her own great surprise, Gehna found that she had a penchant for dirty talk. On text, she could lick-kiss-suck-bite-fuck in a way that she wasn’t bold enough to do out loud, not even when drunk. And Eram, it turned out, had been right. ‘Vagina’ didn’t work, but since ‘cunt’ was too raw, too powerful, she usually went with ‘between my legs’.