"Where do the batteries go?"

I went to a baseball game on Tuesday night with Anastasia and Lauren. Because it's fairly difficult to catch a cab once the game is over, we joked about flirting with the cab driver on the way there so he'd pick us up on the way back.

When we were setting out for the ballpark, I said to Lauren, "I told Anastasia that we were going to pimp you out and make you take off your shirt in the cab, since you've already done that before."

Lauren laughed and said, "No problem!"

Anastasia looked confused. "What do you mean you've done that before? I need to hear this story!"

Lauren said, "If anything should have warned Almost not to get married, it was what happened on our way to the wedding. It wasn't, uh, the most auspicious of starts."

When we got in the cab, Lauren and I took turns telling Anastasia the story of our antics on the way to my wedding. I had a small destination wedding, during which there was a virtual hurricane, but more about that other harbinger later. Ex flew there the day before I was to arrive and since Lauren and I were on the same flight, we decided to go out for one last wild night together. After several cocktails and staying out way too late, we decided to head back to her house. The cab was coming at 5:30 in the morning and we needed at least a little sleep before we went to the airport.

"Almost, I don't feel too well. I think you should drive."

"That's fine. Do you need a plastic bag or something?"

"No, let's just go."

We weren't too far from her house, so I figured she could make it. I was wrong. Halfway home, she rolled down the window and began throwing up. We all know where vomiting in a moving vehicle ends up, so I pulled over in the first parking lot I could find and yanked her out so she could vomit on the ground instead of in her hair, on the car, in the car, etc. After a few minutes, she seemed OK, so we once again climbed back in, where I found a plastic bag for her, and drove home.

We went up to her bedroom to sleep when we arrived, only in a very un-Lauren-like fashion, she hadn't packed yet. She said, "Almost, I haven't even begun to pack my suitcase. I think I'll take a shower now and pack when I get up in the morning."

"OK, I'm going to sleep now. And by the way, it is morning."

"Don't remind me," she groaned.

I lay down on the bed and heard Lauren start the water. Then I heard her gagging in the shower. I admit it, I thought it was funny that she was still puking until I heard an enormous crash. I ran to the bathroom, flung open the door, and found her lying on the floor, feet still in the shower, laughing hysterically.

"Are you ok?" I asked as I rushed to help her up.

She waved her hand in the air in a Miss USA fashion. "I'm fine, I was just taking a little rest!"

This resulted in peals of laughter from both of us, after which she finally finished up in the bathroom and went to sleep. The next thing I remember is Double D yelling at us that the cab was there and, "Who puked all over the side of your car, Lauren?" Lauren woke up, looked at the clock evilly displaying 5:40 am, and freaked.

"I haven't packed!" she shrieked.

"Just throw some stuff in a bag! All you need is a bathing suit, some shorts, and a dress! Oh, and shoes, you need shoes!" I said, as I scrambled to get in my own clothes, makeup running down my face like Alice Cooper.

Ten minutes later, we were in the cab, headed to the airport.

"Wow, we are two hot messes," I laughed.

Lauren looked at me and grinned, "I know! Your mascara is all over the place, and I'm..." She looked down and rolled her eyes. "Damn, my shirt's inside out."

As I rifled in my handbag in vain to find some magical fix to my black eyes, Lauren pulled her shirt off in one fell swoop, at which time I saw that she wasn't wearing a bra. I looked up at the cab driver, who was intently peering in the rear-view mirror with eyes as big as plates. I was having a hard time stifling my laughter, despite the fact that he almost drove us off the road. These may have been the first boobs he'd ever seen because I don't think he even blinked until she once again put on her shirt.

The cabbie finally delivered us safely to the airport and we laughed all the way onto the plane about how he almost killed us, until Lauren suddenly became serious and looked at me with the same sized eyes as the cab driver when she had performed her impromptu striptease.

"Oh no. Almost, I forgot to pack any bottoms."

"You what?" I asked.

"I forgot to pack any bottoms! I packed tops, but I didn't bring any pants, skirts, or shorts. I only have the ones I have on!"

"Don't worry about it! Just go shopping when we're on the island. They have great shopping there," I assured her.

When we arrived at our destination (still looking like we'd been out partying all night, I'm sure), Lauren set off to find some much needed bottoms. In one store, she tried on a pair of pants with a very flattering fit and asked the salesperson how much they cost. After being told that they were $650.00, Lauren didn't miss a beat.

"But I can't find where you put the batteries in these pants," she said.

The salesperson looked flummoxed. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"Where do the batteries go?"

"I don't understand the question," the salesperson replied, suspicious and clearly perplexed.

"Well, for $650.00, these pants better have a vibrating crotch, so where do the batteries go?"

A good omen for my wedding? Certainly not considering I looked like a washed-up 70s rocker and Lauren was facing a naked-from-the-waist-down weekend, but it still provides me with laughter to this day.

As for the cab driver on the way to the game? He was as unamused as the salesperson when Lauren asked about the batteries. I'm fairly certain he was offended, because he didn't even offer so much as a grunt when we asked him to pick us up. But thankfully cabs are like relationships. After the game was over there was another one that came along when we were ready to go.

I wasn't going to talk about this but....

A couple of weeks ago I spent the evening at Lauren's house. It was Girls' Night, but the other girls were busy and Lauren's mom, Double D, was in town visiting and staying with her daughter. I love Double D so it was the perfect opportunity to catch up with her on a low-key evening and hang with Lauren's son TC, whom I adore.

After TC went to bed, the conversation eventually turned to (put on your big surprise face) sex. It all started because Lauren and I were rehashing a recent conversation we'd had with Anastasia for Double D.

"D, Anastasia still hasn't had the sex talk with her kids and she's freaking out," I said.

"How old are her kids?" Double D asked.

"Fourteen and twelve," Lauren answered.

"And Anastasia asked us to have the birds and the bees talk for her," I added, gesturing between Lauren and myself, "because she's afraid that she's going to be too, 'It's all about YOU, not the other person, so make sure YOUR needs are taken care of,' and she doesn't want to give them the wrong idea."

"Uh, Mom," Lauren announced. Loudly. I knew something was coming. "Speaking of which, you never gave me the birds and the bees talk. Almost, did you get that talk from your parents?"

I almost spit out a mouthful of wine as I looked at Double D's eyes widen with each passing moment. "Oh, geez, my Dad would never have talked about that, but my mom gave me that talk when I was 5 because I asked where babies came from. It was pretty clinical. She even went and got a book from the library. I remember the first page had a dot on it and said, 'You started out smaller than this pencil dot.' Then it detailed the procreation process with clothed stick figures lying in bed together. I swear, I thought I'd get pregnant lying fully clothed next to a guy until I was in college."

"Well," Lauren said dryly, taking a sip of wine and arranging her face into the I'm-about-to-drop-a-Lauren-line-on-you-bitches face. "Thanks to neither of my parents giving me The Talk, I didn't have my first orgasm until I was 35, MOM!!! Thanks a lot."

Double D hooted with laughter while she delivered a line right back, "Well, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW??"

Poor Double D.... although her line cracked me up, I do know her plight. You see, sex with Ex was not that great. Frankly, most of the time it was downright lame. It wasn't that bad before the wedding (it might have actually been good then, but I shudder to think about it as I choke back some bile), but starting Day 2 of the honeymoon, the tracks shifted, directing the bedroom compartment of the marital train through Dullsville with a layover in Rarely City, final destination: Nevertown.

There are specific reasons for this, which I'll discuss soon, but at the time I was simply shocked that a man would reject his new wife for such (to me) insignificant reasons. To be brutally honest (and totally TMI, so Mom, if you're reading this, you can skip over the rest of the paragraph), in our first year of marriage I once went into his office in the house specifically to give him *ahem* uh, non-reciprocated pleasure, and he actually pushed me off of his lap. With force. I landed unceremoniously on my ass and I can only imagine the look of shock on my face. Reliving the memory now makes me giggle, but frankly, at the time it was a tad humiliating.

I had a health scare one year to the day after we were married and that picked things up a bit since he was grateful that I wasn't ill, but the sex dropped off again shortly thereafter and I was once again left to ponder what was wrong with me. (As I said in my first post, did I grow a third nipple? No!)

The evening with Lauren and Double D ended up with D proclaiming that she'd just had a very informative education. This was after the detailed description of what my friend Sarah calls "the battery operated boyfriend." D's face was priceless as we detailed the different models, functions, prices, and places in which you could obtain such "boyfriends."

But the conversation left me wondering about the importance of sex in a relationship. Perhaps in our parents' time it didn't assume the role it does now, for whatever reason. But at this point it's certainly of primary importance. I can say with clarity that deprivation on either party's part is the beginning of the slippery slope. After that transpired, at least in my case (and I'm not assigning directionality, i.e., did the deprivation lead to the dissolve or did the dissolve lead to the deprivation?), the end was nigh.

Well, at least I know what I'm getting Double D for Christmas this year. It's easy to pick out, since I know personally all too well.