Instead I lay on the floor, hidden behind the chairs, snuffling, shaking, tears streaming. I did think of all these things to say, and also of the vanity and ignorance of a certain class of male. Since then, numerous books and articles have bombarded men with the truth—surely by now they must know. But in those days they all seemed to think that women needed some apparatus to masturbate. “Coke bottles!” “I couldn’t figure out why she was so wild about zucchini.…” A thousand snickers, jokus interruptus, the despairing female entering the room just in time for the punch line and flushing red or going pale—not with embarrassment, but rage. Men fancied that, since we lack our own, women must require a mock substitute for their equipment. “Not true,” we could have said. “We do it just like you do, by rubbing ourselves.”

They would have responded, “Rubbing what?”

Or else, they’d ignorantly bluff about the clitoris: “Oh, well, it’s just this little bump. Nothing much comes of it.”

But I didn’t say anything. To confess, admit, or announce seemed too dangerous, impossible, because I could see it would have given him an excuse to leave. It would have degraded me to tell the truth after all those months. And I see, from his perspective, how it would be disgusting to discover that this mooing, gyrating, strenuously passionate mammal on which you had been relieving yourself for some time had only been pretending to like it. Rather like emptying a very full bowel into an immaculate pot and discovering that it doesn’t flush, it blows back on you. Truth must begin on the first night, or a woman must forever hold her peace and rub herself to orgasm in the bathroom afterward—while he’s back in bed doing the same, probably.

One day I brought home two dozen donuts from the DoNut Shop, where I worked. He could not take one but watched, expressionless and still, as I ate them, ate them, and ate them. Soon after that I took to hiding them in waxy bags in the closet: in the suitcase, behind the laundry bag, beneath the sweaters piled on the shelf.