The Power of Nurture: Synopsis & Author’s Note
Synopsis “The Power of Nurture” is a powerful exploration of self-discovery, intimacy, and healing. When Kate, a young woman with an unfortunate spinal injury complication,…
Sort by category
Synopsis “The Power of Nurture” is a powerful exploration of self-discovery, intimacy, and healing. When Kate, a young woman with an unfortunate spinal injury complication,…
1. It was 3:00 on a Friday afternoon in late May. James spent all afternoon writing a single proposal for a new client at Thompson…
It was 3:00 on a Friday afternoon in late May.
James spent all afternoon writing a single proposal for a new client at Thompson Managerial Consulting Group, a task that normally took a little less than an hour. James was an upper-level supervisor at Thompson Managerial Consulting Group, shortened to TMCG by employees and clients, having been employed there for twelve years. He worked his way up the ranks from a new hire fresh out of college to the supervisorial position he currently held, a position that paid very well for the amount of work he is tasked with daily.
Focusing on work had become difficult through the mental fog of apprehension, nervous adrenaline, and guarded fantasy that had overtaken his attention. Sitting over his barely-touched brown bag lunch of a single ham-and-swiss sandwich on honey wheat bread, cheddar Baked Lays, and Oreo cookies, he had read, and re-read, the email conversation spawned from an online singles ad he had, in a moment of weakness, clicked the “contact” button on. The ad had caught his eye, not for it’s wild sexual appeal but its simplicity. It described something so strange and unusual, yet so natural and beautiful, that he knew instantly it was something he wanted. It would a void he had no idea existed in his life before reading that ad.
It was a single’s ad that not only showed him the problem he unknowingly had but also provided him the solution.
His initial reaction to the post, which he thought about later, was something he assumed most people probably would have had shared. A mixture of disbelief, disgust, and wondering, “Is this even a thing?!”
James lived in the trendy neighborhood of West Asheville, known for its bohemian atmosphere, artsy vagabonds, and pride in the giant “Stay Weird” mural painted on the side of the old ironworks clock tower – the clock tower being the only thing remaining of the old ironworks plant that shuttered its doors in the late 1970s. He was a divorced father of two kids, fraternal twins – a boy and a girl, 9 years old.
On the outside, he lived a happy life. He and his ex-wife Amanda maintained a great relationship despite the divorce. Their marriage was a case of two people bonding over a shared traumatic experience, their romantic love fading along with the scars of their trauma. They were two people who loved one another greatly, but being in love had faded away. They never made passionate love. They never fought, either – not even during the divorce. Their feelings had flatlined while maintaining cordiality.
They were two roommates living under a single roof, a relationship equally as functional as it was unfulfilling to either of them.
James was active in the community, performing in community theater and volunteering weekly at the food bank. He played in the adult softball league (“Softballs and Big Beers” was their motto). Every Wednesday evening, he worked at the neighborhood brewery. Asheville is known for its incredible number of breweries – some say it’s more per-capita than anywhere else in the world – and every neighborhood in Asheville seemed to have at least one, if not several, breweries.
James didn’t work there for the paycheck. His value wasn’t the money that mostly came from modest tips. Instead, he loved the conversations he would have with all of the regulars. He enjoyed talking to the occasional tourist who found their way into this out-of-the-way brewpub. Most of the tourists who found this hidden spot had sought it out, beer aficionados on a mission to drink a beer from every brewery in Western North Carolina. He was happy to get out of his house and step into a world so much different than his regular day job and talk to people outside of his usual circles.
The regulars enjoyed his Wednesday night shifts as well. Though nobody ever took a poll, if they did most would consider him a jovial, friendly guy. James was someone who had had enough experience or had read enough books to be able to keep up with most any conversation that would come up. While wiping down the bar, he was just as comfortable talking about the timeline of World War I as he was discussing the science of curling in the Olympics. He was seen as smart, but not a know-it-all.
The only topic James couldn’t keep up with was sports. James reserved time for washing and sanitizing glasses whenever sports would come up.
James was no different than anyone else. He had an external presentation to the world that everyone saw, and he kept hidden the internal struggles that plague everyone.
He ached on the inside. The dull, constant, slow, torturous pain of emotional trauma one doesn’t even know is there, but it affects every aspect of you. A gnawing emptiness, his emotions had withered without the knowledge to acknowledge it or the wherewithal to restore them. Sometimes, at night when lying in bed, he would allow himself to feel it. Sometimes he would even contemplate therapy. “I’m functioning well,” he’d think. “I’m sure everyone feels this way.” He would recall the first episode of The Drew Carey Show where Drew comments that “There’s a support group for people who are struggling. It’s called everybody, and we meet at the bar.” That would never fail to give him enough of a smile to close his eyes to take on the next day.
He had always wanted children, but after getting married to Amanda, it hadn’t seemed possible. They’d tried for a couple of years to get pregnant and finally sought medical advice. After trying various fertility treatments, they finally found success on their very first course of IVF. Nine months later, a baby boy and baby girl entered their lives, and, for a while, James felt like his life had a reason, a purpose. The emptiness had evaporated.
It was when the twins were four, and they started going to pre-school, that those old familiar pangs began to return. Empty. Invisible. Unacknowledged. Overused.
There was more to his need to feel fulfilled, but he didn’t understand it or even pursue it. Some people just get used to chronic pain without even thinking about it most days. It’s always there, an unwelcome but constant companion. Acknowledging it just feeds it and makes it stronger.
It wasn’t uncommon for James to look at singles ads. He liked seeing the various types of people. How some are unrestrained in the vulnerability of their cries of companionship. Some young women looked similar to girls he had dated when he was 20-something, allowing him to relive long-forgotten sexual trysts 20+ years prior.
Those days were mostly over. Middle-aged men and middle-aged women don’t often have booty calls. Losing sleep for sex is a bad trade-off at the midlife mark. Uncomfortable, unfamiliar beds take days to overcome.
Though he often looked at ads, he had never felt a whisper of temptation to respond to one. Not before today.
Something about this particular one caught his eye. It was under the category of “Casual Encounters,” people casting a wide net for no-strings-attached, booty-call sex. These were usually the most entertaining.
People of this younger generation are so much more open with their wants and kinks, freedom he never got to enjoy in his late teens and early twenties due to the very conservative Southern town he grew up in. He had partaken in a few nights of no-strings-attached sex, but it was all wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am fucking, a shared cigarette, and a “see ya around” sendoff both parties hoped would never happen.
The kids these days? They want to experiment. They don’t just want sex, they want specific sex with intricate directions. They leave nothing to chance.
While this particular ad was under Casual Encounters, the headline is what intrigued him.
Sex Not Wanted, But… (20F)
But what, he thought? This is casual encounters, for people wanting easy sex. To say sex isn’t wanted was… well, weird enough to catch his eye.
This will be good. I bet it’s scat. Or something fucked up like that he thought as he clicked on the headline.
The ad opened up with a thumbnail picture at the bottom. He liked to not peek at the pictures until he read the entire ad. He would usually read the ad, imagine how screwed up someone would have to be to want that, and only then look at the pictures. “Yep,” he’d whisper quietly to himself. “You’re fucked up.”
Though occasionally, he’d see a young woman who wouldn’t be out of place in the middle of a Southern Baptist choir ensemble, wanting someone to do things to her ass that even proctologists would charge extra for.
The first sentence of the ad mirrored the headline. “Sex isn’t wanted, but,” it continued, “there’s something I read about recently that I have a strong urge to try. If you’ve heard of or done anything close to what I’m looking for, please contact me.”
Immediately above her thumbnail was a link to a website, which he immediately clicked on. A long article appeared with a crudely drawn picture of a woman holding a man close to her chest. It was from Rolling Stone magazine, with the headline taking you “inside the misunderstood world of adult breastfeeding.”
Intrigued, James read. At first, it was about an older couple – a hippy couple, James imagined. She induced lactation, and he drank from her breasts. It made James’s face scrunch in disgust. He remembered when Amanda was heavily pregnant and started leaking milk during sex. He had gotten strangely turned on from a deep place, where his caveman-lizard brain lived, but he hadn’t thought about it since then.
When the twins were born, he would watch, fighting an erection that seemed to originate deep within his pelvis, while the breast pump would make Amanda’s nipples swell and subside, thick creamy milk shooting out and into the bottles. It wasn’t the milk that aroused him. Her nipples would swell to fill up the plastic funnels at the top of the bottles each time the machine would apply suction, and that aroused him in a way he had never quite felt before.
Again, though, he had never thought of it since then.
He had read of epicurean outliers making human breastmilk cheese, a disgusting idea that would turn his stomach sour. Never did he have the urge to drink the milk that liberally showered from Amanda’s nipples. Not once did he go in for a taste from her dark, leaking nipples while her pregnant body partook of his.
But the words in the Rolling Stone article sent his mind racing. What if he was depressed? What if this was what he was needing? Not actual milk for nourishment, no, that’s not it. It was the selfless maternal instinct of providing comfort, care, and love. That was the yearning desire that sent his mind reeling.
He can’t remember the last time he was held for the sole reason of being comforted. That’s not something many men get regularly. Amanda would snuggle up to him at night, his strong bicep and forearm wrapped around her, a hand caressing the curves of her hip and the line of her spine up her back. He would kiss her forehead. He would whisper in her ear wishes of sweet sleep. If she had a bad day, he’d tell her everything would be alright.
That road didn’t go both ways.
Which hadn’t been a problem. Before reading this article, he had never even thought about it. It’s not a societal norm to hold a man who had a bad day in order to comfort him. Many men probably wouldn’t want that anyway, he thought. It felt good to sit on the couch in silence, to sip on some rum, and mope. To be held in that way would mean not only admitting vulnerability but to personify it. To crave it almost feminine.
James wasn’t what you would call a man’s man. Sure, he played adult league sports, but he was terrible at them. He hadn’t only been put in the far-right field, he was put behind another guy who was merely bad, who also got put in the far right field. But, James liked the beer. He liked being outside. He liked hanging out.
He was the family chef and took great pride in his homemade loaves of bread and hand-cut pastas he made several times per week. He taught himself how to sew when his twins were born so he could make cloth diapers. He had a garden and made jams and jellies all summer long.
He would try to stretch his woodworking muscle from time to time, but that would almost always end with a pledge to never try something like that ever again.
Sometimes, programmed masculine and feminine expectations run so deep you don’t know they are there until you run across them. Being held against your lover’s chest, being told everything will be alright, is not something he even thought about needing. But there it was, staring him right in the face.
“This is…” he thought, his head morphing from a shake of disbelief and disgust to one that slowly began to nod. “Yes.”
He went back to the ad, a two-sentence ad. A link. A thumbnail.
And a “contact” button.
He opened the thumbnails. Though the picture didn’t show a face, he assumed she was younger than him. The picture was mostly of her hair, brown as molasses, tight curls that wove between themselves. The only other obvious feature of the picture was her hands, held together and relaxed. Though the blue sweater she was wearing was out of focus, he could see it resting on the cleavage that pushed out from her chest. The sweater didn’t give up any secrets about her size, but he could tell she wasn’t flat and skinny.
It was a picture that told more about the subject’s broody nature than what they looked like.
It was a moment where adrenaline meets weakness when he clicked the “contact” button. An email form popped up. He filled in his name and personal email address.
He typed a few lines, then deleted them. He wrote some more, then closed the window without sending. He got up and filled his water bottle. He finished his ham sandwich and went to the men’s room. He sat down at his desk and looked at his watch, not even remembering the time once he put his arm down. Without any protest to counter the voice of temptation in his head, he opened the ad and looked at the picture again. Once again, he clicked “contact.” He wrote only a few short sentences and hit send, instantly regretting his decision.
Kate had graduated high school the previous May, nearly a year ago. Though she wasn’t any of her class’s graduation speakers, she graduated in the top six spot in her class’s rankings. Her intelligence matched only her innocence, having never dated anyone, nor really wanting to, during her entire high school career.
For prom in her junior and senior years, she went with two different top-level students, guys whose smarts matched her, their awkwardness a solid match for her own. Her dates were future engineers who probably wouldn’t marry until their 40s, if ever. They were nice enough boys, but neither was interested in kissing or touching Kate.
The thought of touching or kissing them was a disgusting image she didn’t want to entertain. That was an image you couldn’t scrub away.
Kate turned 18 a couple of weeks before graduating. Her gift from her parents was in the form of a long, stiff cardboard document tube with a bow on top, given to her with great flair by her father, a man known for his endless excitement for even the simplest of joys in life. If you wanted someone to be excited to run to the store for eggs and milk, Joe Aiken was your man.
Not quite sure what was waiting for her discovery, she opened the tube with slow anticipation. Inside was a three-foot by five-foot computer rendering of an overhead apartment plan. It showed a full bedroom, a bathroom, a small kitchen, and a comfortable living room. Confused, she looked up, unsure of what she was looking at.
“It’s our basement!” Joe blurted out, barely able to contain his own excitement. “I have the contractors starting tomorrow! I know you weren’t wanting to move away, but you’re now 18. You deserve your own place.”
Kate looked at the plans wide-eyed, then slowly looked at her parents who had nervous grins on their faces in anticipation of her reaction.
“This is…” Kate paused and looked back at the large printout in front of her. “This is amazing!” Fantastical movies instantly flashed into her mind of her sitting in her own living room. Sleeping in a large bedroom. Having dinner at her own table. All without the stress and anxiety of moving away.
She got up from the table, tears filling her eyes and a lump in her throat, and hugged her parents. “Thank you,” she said through sniffles.
Joe was right. She didn’t want to leave home. The thought of moving into an apartment across town filled her with worry and anxiety. The list of responsibilities that accompanied such a milestone was overwhelming: a job to afford it, insurance, buying food, cooking the food, constant cleaning, neighbors she may or may not like, and the silence of living alone. Freedom always comes with a price, and that was a cost she wasn’t quite ready for.
She had outgrown her childhood bedroom years ago. It was perfect for an 8-year old. It sufficed for a 12-year old. At 18, it was as comfortable as a size 5 pair of heels when you are a size 6.
After cutting the cake and getting some small cups of coffee, Joe pointed back at the tube leaning on the table. “With this gift comes freedoms, but also some responsibilities. As far as I’m concerned, this is your new home. I won’t walk down there without your permission. But you are expected to keep it clean and safe. It won’t have an outside door, so you’ll have to come inside normally and go down to the basement as you would now. That being said, we are getting a few windows installed for some light.
“But you are eighteen years old now,” Joe said, his voice cracking. “I don’t want you to leave. I love my baby girl. But I know how important it is for an adult to have their own space. Besides,” he said, wiping his nose and winking, “this adds a significant amount of value to our home.”
It took the contractors three months to turn the damp, cold, pitch-black basement into her new home. Even after long days of hammering and sawing, or of days the fumes of fresh carpet and paint filled the entire house, she refrained from peeking at the progress all summer. It was one week before her freshman college year started at the University of North Carolina’s Asheville campus when she was given a tour of her new apartment. Brand new furniture – grown-up furniture that she helped pick out over the summer – filled her new apartment.
She waited at the top of her stairs for Joe to call her to come down. He had his iPhone held up at chin level, the video recording to capture her very own HGTV transformation reaction. Like many men who get excited over trivial things, Joe’s emotions never stayed in check. His eyes filled with heavy tears as she came down and put her hands over her mouth in disbelief and excitement at what she was seeing.
In contrast with the cold, gray cinder blocks that once lined the basement, Kate’s walls were finished sheetrock painted a light gray with charcoal-colored molding. Her floors were light brown, shiny hardwood. Her living room, though small, was cozy with a dark fabric couch with plenty of bright throw pillows. It sat on a white, fuzzy rug. Her 55″ television had been moved from her old bedroom and attached to the wall opposite of her couch. Under it was a faux, shallow fireplace and mantel to add to the atmosphere (and hide the cords from the TV).
Her bedroom now had a queen-sized bed – more room to stretch out and sleep than she had ever experienced outside of hotels or friends’ guest bedrooms. A large, full-length archway pedestal mirror sat in the corner. A desk from IKEA was installed directly onto the wall and easily folded up when not in use so as to stay out of the way when not needed. Another window, high and narrow on her wall, pointed north.
Her bathroom was larger than most apartments, but still quite modest compared to her mom’s and dad’s. Plenty of drawers and lights for the many storage needs of an adult woman. A typical shower which, her dad pointed out, had lots of water pressure and her own on-demand hot water heater. “You can shower for a week here and not run out of hot water!” he said proudly. Kate looked at her mom and smiled, her mom thankful Kate would no longer take all of the hot water from her.
Kate wasn’t much of a chef, so her kitchen was mostly bare. An induction portable stovetop on the counter and a microwave that doubled as a convection oven were all she had for cooking. Her cabinets held a beginner’s collection of stainless steel pots, also from IKEA.
“Well?” Joe asked.
“I love it,” Kate answered through sniffles. “I just can’t believe this is mine yet.”
Joe wrapped his arm around the waist of Kate’s mother and kissed her on her cheek, smiling the proud smile of a man who has given the perfect gift. “I’m so happy,” he said, his chin shaking. “I love you so much!” He released his arm from his wife and hugged Kate with a warm, tight hug.
Joe released his embrace, wiped his nose, pulled out his phone, and swiped around. “Well, I guess your mother and I should be going. Traffic looks like it’ll be crazy on our way home.” He laughed, proud of his joke, looking around for reactions.
Kate’s mom hugged her. “Call us if you need anything.” Even though Kate would be just a few steps away downstairs, it genuinely felt like they were going home, where home was some other place.
Her parents closed the new apartment door, and she heard them walk up the stairs and shut that top door behind them. She suddenly felt very small and alone, her apartment uncomfortably quiet. She knew it would take her a while to adjust. Every new thing seemed to take Kate much longer to adjust to.
She walked into her new living room and sat on her new couch. Looking around at her new home, closing her eyes and breathing in the scents that come with a brand new apartment, she turned on her TV and laid back on her couch.
She clicked to highlight Netflix, and then she clicked the “ok” button.
Two months after moving into her new apartment, Kate had mentioned to her father that some of the moldings in her living room had begun to separate from the walls and ceiling.
“Hm,” Joe grunted with a frown. “Must be the humidity down there.”
On the following Saturday, they brought down a ladder to make some repairs using wood filler. After two months of living in her basement apartment, Kate had adjusted to her surroundings and truly felt at home there.
“I kind of want to do this,” she told her father. “I should make repairs to my own home, right?”
Her father, eternally excited about anything, opened his eyes wide and patted his hand on her upper back a few times. “A-ha! I think you’re right, my girl! Here’s what you need to do…” He gave her a very brief synopsis of the procedure – it wasn’t much work, or even difficult work. Perfect for a beginner.
Kate went up the ladder and used a combination of a putty knife and her fingers to fill in cracks. With a great level of attention to detail that had always been a feature of Kate’s work, she made sure the wood filler blended in perfectly with the molding and the wall. Once it dried – only a matter of an hour with this brand of wood putty – she would only need to sand it lightly and repaint it.
Happy with her work, she was about to step back down the ladder when she knocked the putty knife off the top step of the ladder. Instinctively, she reached for it. In a flash, she lost her balance. The ladder rocked, and her footing kicked the ladder hard against the wall, denting it. She went down to the floor flat on her back, the thud a sound of a heavy rock hitting dry ground.
The entire incident lasted less than a second. It wasn’t even very far to fall – merely a couple of feet. It was over before she even knew it had begun. One heart beat, she was reaching for a falling puddy knife. The next heart beat, she was staring at the ceiling of her apartment. Her ears were ringing, but she could hear her dad scream, “Baby!” Her thoughts were in a fog.
She tried to push her palms firmly on her forehead to squash the burning pain that was growing in her temples. Only then did she realize she couldn’t move her arms. Instead of the sharp pain of injuring a shoulder or an ankle, she felt sharp, bright bolts of lighting from her chest to her feet. Instructions her brain sent to wiggle her toes or raise her arm went unanswered other than electric jolts of twitching muscles.
Instant fear filled her very soul, and tears began to stream down her face. “I can’t move!” she said through tears to her father.
“What can’t you move, baby?”
“Anything!”
“Oh… Oh my god,” her father said in a tone Kate had never heard before coming from her father. A mixture of fear and deep sorrow – a contrast to his normal personality so stark that just the tone sent her panic reeling. “Hold on, baby. Just hold on. I’ll go get help.”
The ambulance took Kate to Mission Hospital, just a few miles from the Biltmore Estate, which she could see from the room she was moved to several days later. Doctors and nurses enveloped her as she arrived, asking questions, hooking her up to wires, and starting lines of IV liquids. Though Kate hated needles, she couldn’t feel a single thing they did to her. They secured her neck in a thick, heavy, uncomfortable brace and rushed her off to radiology.
That first sleepless night was spent in the ICU. Kate could breathe on her own, but her heart had begun beating with an arrhythmia that worried her team of doctors.
It would take another three nights in the ICU for Kate to stabilize enough to go to another floor’s room – the room where she could see the Biltmore if her bed was angled towards the window.
The prognosis was positive. While the fall knocked her spine slightly out of alignment and bruised the tangle of vital nerves that ran up the middle and into her brain stem, it didn’t cause permanent damage. Surgery was needed to correct the dislodged spinal disc, and she’d go through painful but necessary physical therapy. The doctors considered her very lucky for how she fell.
Kate, however, didn’t feel so lucky. She could barely sit up without sharp pains bad enough to make her dizzy and nauseous. Lifting her head off of the pillow took great effort. She could scarcely eat because everything tasted like cardboard and smelled worse.
It would take two months for her sense of taste and smell to return to normal. Another month after that to walk with plenty of help, and three months later to be at the same level of independent living she enjoyed before her fall.
Through it all, she not only remained enrolled at UNCA, but she maintained a 3.69 GPA – the lowest GPA she had ever had, but amazing despite what had happened to her. Her professors allowed her to work remotely as long as she kept her grades up, an easy distraction from her injury and pain.
It was five months after the fall that nearly handicapped her for life that she went on a follow-up visit and presented her doctor with a very strange symptom. One she had discovered only five days earlier after a long, hot shower that would have, a year earlier, sucked every ounce of hot water from their Frankfurt Mountain Drive home.
When she got out of the shower, Kate recalled to her doctor, she dried off and put on her robe. She sat down on her bed, phone in hand, and was mindlessly scrolling Facebook. She felt water run down her stomach but didn’t think much about it. A woman’s body can hide errant water in many places. She rubbed her skin through her robe, using the soft fabric to dry off further.
Then, water ran down her stomach again. Then another drop, this time landing on her foot that was tucked under her. Thinking how strange it was that she was still dripping wet, she opened her robe to see where she had missed when drying off.
That’s when she saw it, a very light, constant stream of liquid shooting from her right nipple. On her foot, a white drop rested. She jumped out of bed and went to the corner of her room where the large mirror stood. There was no doubt about it; something had started leaking from her breast. The next morning, she woke up with painfully sore and slightly swollen breasts, her nipples painfully erect. She had felt breast soreness many times before, but that was almost always in the 3-4 days preceding her period. She wasn’t due to start her next period for another two weeks, she calculated, and cupped her hands on her breasts to give them a light squeeze – normally something she would do for a quick jolt of relief when they are tender from monthly hormones.
Warm milk immediately oozed out from between her fingers when she did. Feeling completely out of control of her body once again, tears filled her eyes. Due partly to embarassment, and due partly to a feeling that resembled shame, she didn’t tell anyone until her doctor visit that day. Not even her mother.
After a brief examination where her doctor verified that, yes, it was milk coming from her breast, he gave her a breast pump and showed her how to use it.
“I need you to empty your breasts,” he said. “We’ll run some tests on the liquid and send you for a mammogram. Empty as much as you can, then leave the bottles on the counter here.” He pointed to the counter next to the room’s sink. He continued, “When you’re finished, come on out, and we’ll have the nurse take you to radiology for a mammogram.”
Kate, eighteen years old and never even having had a steady boyfriend, felt alone and strange hooked up to a machine that robotically sucked on her breasts, filling both bottles about 3/4 full of creamy liquid. As directed, she left the bottles on the table and adjusted her bra and shirt. Her breasts felt better than they had since that shower, the pressure and tightness gone. Kate walked out to a nurse who was writing in a chart. “Are you done?”
Kate nodded.
“Just follow me,” said the nurse and walked Kate down a maze of halls and corridors before handing her off to another nurse, a large, older black woman who gave off a motherly vibe.
“You ever had one of these before, baby?” the black woman asked. Kate shook her head no, her eyes still showing the apprehension of not knowing what was going on with her own body.
The nurse walked her through the entire process. It was uncomfortable physically. Kate had never shown her breasts to anyone, much less a number of people in one day – complete strangers. Her discomfort as a dignified woman felt worse than the machine that squished her breasts flat. She found solace by slipping into her emotionless scientific mind – the same one that got her through biology pig fetus dissections without so much as a lost appetite. That helped, though not without a lingering feeling that she had given up a piece of herself.
It took over an hour for the doctor to come back in and talk to her – thank god for wifi and Netflix.
“It’s not cancer,” the doctor said stoically, Kate relieved but taken aback that cancer was even one of the possibilities.
“All of the tests came back normal. Based on your spinal injury a few months ago, I believe you have a condition called galactorrhea. It’s a complication from your injury. It’s, well… it’s exactly what is going on with your body. The nerves in your spine got pretty banged up. This sent all kinds of false messages all over your body. One false message, for some reason or another, was interpreted by your body that it needs to begin producing milk. Physiologically, it’s,” he paused, “no different than had you just given birth. At least in your breasts.”
“Okayyy,” Kate contemplated. “Is it going to be like this forever, or…?”
“It’s not very common,” the doctor continued. “Most people who have this complication report it lasting between a couple of months to up to two years. So, while you may have to deal with it for a while, it won’t last forever. You should be able to live your life normally. You can treat breast soreness with some heating pads. You can also buy absorbent pads to keep in your bra to prevent leakage onto your clothes. For pressure discomfort, I can prescribe you a breast pump.”
“The good news is,” he continued, “is that I think I can release you from my care. All of your other tests are normal. Your blood work is great. You seem to be walking fine. If any more complications show up, call me immediately. Do you have any questions?”
Kate sat still. Still digesting the realization that she would be, for a while, producing enough milk to feed more than a couple of babies, she barely heard what else the doctor had told her.
“Is there anything I can do to–” pointing at her chest, drawing a circle in the air around her breasts “speed this along?”
The doctor thought for a beat, staring at her breasts non-sexually, as a doctor does. “Avoiding nipple stimulation is the best I can tell you. Lactation is definitely a use-it-or-lose-it condition of the body. The less you stimulate your breasts, the faster the milk will dry up.”
Kate’s freshman year was quickly coming to an end. The most exciting part of the second semester was being able to meet her classmates – something she wasn’t able to do during the remote first semester after her fall.
She had met, and became close to, people in a way she was never able to during high school.
It’s not easy being the smartest girl in school. You are seen as a museum piece, a thing to watch and ponder, but never to take home with you. She had found a group of friends that accepted her for who she was and loved her for it. There were some smart kids, the types going into pre-law, engineering, or medicine. But she got to know some amazing, colorful people who were pursuing careers in journalism, broadcasting, and even one guy who was a theater major.
They all talked to her as if they were genuinely interested in her. Before this second semester in her freshman year, she had always been treated like “The Smart Girl,” the girl who could answer any question you didn’t understand from your homework. Never before had anyone seemed so interested in her thoughts and her points of view about the most trivial things. The best Pop-Tart seemed to be a hot point of contention at least once a week, and she firmly believed the classic strawberry was the best one.
“Classics are classics for a reason,” she’d argue. “Strawberry is the ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ or ‘Huckleberry Finn’ of the Pop-Tart world, but without all of the racism.”
In the spring, there were basketball games – a sport she knew absolutely nothing about. She was invited to go to a game with a group of people who were all journalism majors. Then another game. And another. Soon, she found herself attending more than half of the women’s basketball team’s games.
She attended with her journalism friends, who introduced her to people in other areas of study. Some weekend nights, she would hang out with her new friends, actual friends, so late that she would fall asleep on some random person’s couch in some random dorm rooms. One night, she fell asleep on the bed of a friend named Jay. A tall, wire-framed sophomore who was also a wunderkind in his high school days who now spent his time practicing guitar and falling further and further behind in his programming classes. She woke up the next morning, with him on the floor beside her, guitar laying on his chest, his mouth wide open, as if he fell asleep mid-song.
She valued this new concept of friendship, a friendship based on how well you can keep up, how much you can contribute, and how you treat others. Who cares if you’re the smartest kid in the room if you can’t even tell a joke – or take one. It was a lot of fun getting to know people outside the classroom setting. It gave her a chance to be a real person to them, and them to her, people with hopes and dreams, fears, and aspirations. It was satisfying for someone to ask her about her fears and worries. She loved that these people would genuinely feel those fears when she talked about them. Her dreams would be met with smiles, her fears met with silent contemplation that said to her, “Yes. That is scary. I understand you.”
Kate didn’t tell every secret, though.
Amy, Kate’s closest female friend, and Mike – the sophomore guitarist who falls asleep singing instead of studying programming – and others all agreed, without even talking openly about it, that Kate had a certain energy of calm and authority about her.
She was, in general, a quiet person, but when she spoke everyone listened. Kate had a sense of humor that made her laugh easily, and she had an innocent smile that was contagious. She was beautiful – not just based on looks, but more importantly, because of the way she carried herself.
She was seen as kind of the cool parental figure of the group. Some of the kids even had crushes on her from time to time, none of them acting on it. Kate was adored in her group of friends in an understated way that didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. It was as if she had been brought into their family, and they wanted to protect her from harm in a world that could be cruel while doing everything they could to get a look at that smile she gave or earn a hug from her.
As summer approached, she began to realize that summer in college is a lonely time, though, as many of her new extended family lived far away. They’d all get right back to where they left off come next September, but three full months without them would be painful in a way that exceeded the pain of rehab many months ago.
The last day of finals ended, and she visited the four friends’ dorm rooms who still hadn’t finished moving out for the summer. There were hugs, tears, and promises to stay in touch. It was bittersweet, knowing that once again, she wouldn’t be seeing them until the following autumn.
That evening, tests taken and materials turned in, she went to her favorite place on campus – a small coffee shop in the student union. The large building was the social center of her campus, a place where students met to grab a coffee or a burger, buy textbooks, shop for university sweatshirts, and watch students play acoustic music in one of the corners. You would always see students studying over their paper-bag dinners, while occasionally some pimply-faced freshman guy, who was flat broke but didn’t have the experience yet to know how to impress a date with little money, would have a very awkward attempt at romance for half the school to witness and snicker at.
The student union was mostly empty on the last Thursday evening of the semester except for a spattering of students with the same lonely mindset as Kate, and one or two people staring into space, perhaps wondering what they would do once their bombed final exam grade hit the Dean’s desk. A few workers were sweeping and cleaning the bookstore, preparing for a summer of little traffic.
Kate was feeling the pangs of loneliness that come for the first time after your freshman year ends when all of your college friends – the people who became your chosen family for so long – go home for the summer. It’s a homesickness that is similar, but oh so different, than the feelings you had as a kid going away to camp and missing the comfort of your parents, your soft bed, and the regular routine.
She needed the comfort that comes from a book and a hot mug of coffee. She needed a break from the cerebral, her brain sick from scholastic journals, technical descriptions, and equations. She wanted something to help her relax and escape reality for a bit. Something that would allow her to forget about the stress of finals and focus on the meaningless world of pop culture or fiction. She looked around the coffee shop for a seat with good lighting and decided on a table near the windows overlooking the quad.
A young man with short hair, wearing a blue plaid shirt with jeans and sneakers walked up to her table and smiled.
“Just a…” Kate looked at the blackboard menu, the various offered coffee drinks and pastries written in chalk. “I’ll have a decaf latte, please.”
“One decaf latte, coming right–“
“Oh! And one of those big chocolate chip cookies.” Why not, she thought. Tonight’s a bit of a celebration.
“Sure thing,” he said flatly. “I’ll have that right out.”
“Am I still able to pay with my flex pay account?” Kate asked the server with a smile – a muscular guy with a mop of light brown hair, parted over to the side, who looked to be about a sophomore or junior. With her smile, his mind escaped the routine, bringing him into the present.
“Today’s the last day! You just made it,” he said with a flirty smile back at her. She handed him her student ID so he could process the payment, and she held her smile as he turned away.
Kate was deeply introspective that Thursday evening. She had grown over this semester at school. Her self-image of being a museum oddity had faded slightly, replaced by the first hints of confidence and healthy self-esteem that she would only fully realize ten years later.
For the first time in her life, she felt desirable, but not in a cheap, sexual way. She liked the social attention she received from her friends and fellow students while still enjoying being admired for her intellect. Despite a chronic ache between her shoulders from her fall, she felt better than she ever had in her entire life. Tonight was a celebration, a celebration of self. She found the beginnings of inner happiness she never knew existed, and she felt she deserved it because she earned every ounce of it.
Her drink came, and she sipped it slowly. The warm, fresh-baked cookie was delicious. The coffee was strong and mildly roasty-sweet. The memories flowed easily as she remembered stories of her friends, their lives and experiences this year. Less enjoyable memories of previous years, which had slowly aged towards sepia in her mind, seemed to only resurface as a means of comparison to how great this year had been.
While chewing on an especially large chunk of chocolate from her cookie, the mixture of happiness and loneliness swirled around her chest, creating an emotion she wasn’t quite sure how to identify – a very happy sadness. Tears began to pool in her lower eyelids.
She lived in that emotion for a few brief moments, happy to feel something so painfully beautiful and new, before wiping tears away and taking a deep breath. She looked around to see if anyone was watching her feel, but nobody was. The cute waiter’s back was to her, wiping down tables and adjusting chairs.
Two tables over from her sat a folded newspaper and a magazine. The newspaper was yesterday’s sports section, of no interest to Kate.
The magazine, however, caught her eye. An older copy of Rolling Stone magazine, it’s cover ripped on the lower right corner – probably removing an address label. It had Paul McCartney on the cover. Mike – the nocturnal guitarist – adored Paul McCartney. Thinking a little light reading would allow her to impress Mike with new Paul McCartney knowledge wouldn’t hurt, she opened the magazine up and flipped through the pages to find the cover story.
She never got to Paul McCartney’s feature article. Only a few pages in, after letters to the editor and a Style section about new watches, was the Sexuality section. The article’s image is what caught her attention: a crudely drawn – and crudely colored – image of a blonde woman in an open blue robe, her breasts bare, and a man’s face studded with thick stubble pushed against her bare chest, his lips puckered where her nipple should be. The headline on the page read, “Inside the Misunderstood World of Adult Breastfeeding: From comfort to connection, there are plenty of reasons adults choose to drink their partner’s milk.”
Her stomach turned sour, the warm, creamy latte suddenly not what she was in the mood for. With disgusting morbid curiosity, she was drawn to read.
The author wrote about a couple that started adult breastfeeding and how it helped them connect emotionally. They were happily married, but they weren’t connecting sexually anymore. The article also discussed women who took hormones and pumped their breasts multiple times daily to start their milk flowing.
This puzzled Kate. She couldn’t understand why women would willingly choose her spinal injury complication.
Some did it, the article said, for their own reasons, perhaps feeling more connected to their femininity or providing some kind of emotional satisfaction for themselves and their partner. Others had monogamous relationships where they would induce lactation so that both partners could share in this experience together. Others would offer their bodies to many as a form of therapy. The consensus amongst all of them, though, was that the bond between two people participating in this strange dynamic was intense, and the deep level of connection it makes is unique to this practice.
Finishing the article, the image that immediately soured her stomach had dissolved. She first imagined a grown man pretending to be a baby, wearing a diaper, and acting like he was crying. That revolting idea was replaced with a concept that, though she hated to admit it, appealed to her deeply: holding someone, comforting someone, providing someone with an experience they certainly can’t do for themselves. Not sexually. Therapeutically.
She had been the calming companion of her friends. She was known as the person who could help someone who was upset, stressed, and emotional calm down and find peace. This trait of hers had become a part of her personality, and she treasured it.
The possibility that her full, sore, annoying, tender breasts could be used as a force of good, a source of human comfort and healing was exciting.
The more she thought of that article, the more she realized that caring and comforting another human was attractive to her on a very deep level. Though Kate was considered quite attractive – she attracted (unwanted) glares from men everywhere she went – sex was never a desire she yearned for.
At least not yet. She figured she would one day, but she was in no rush to see what all of the fuss was about.
She had, though, always been drawn to men who were sensitive and caring. Functional and nice, but still vulnerable in some undefined way. She felt safe with those kinds of guys, secure in how she could behave around them and how they would behave around her.
New understanding and knowledge gnawed at her. She found the article online when she got home that evening, and she read it again. Three times, actually, studying each word as if she would be tested on it. Between her second and third reading, deep in thought, Kate showered and put on comfy, loose pajamas. She sat down on her couch and pulled her laptop onto her lap. She pressed the space bar, and the screen woke back up once again to the Rolling Stone article.
She reached down the low v-cut neckline of her pajamas and pulled her right breast out. Between the knuckle of her forefinger and thumb, she pushed her nipple towards her, giving a light squeeze and then a gentle tug. Milk shot out, spraying the screen on her laptop. The slight release of pressure felt good. She imagined a man’s head resting where her computer sat, her nipples exposed in front of him, and him putting one in his mouth.
The imaginary movie playing in her head made her feel at the same time vulnerable, bare, and shameful; but it awoke in her another feeling she had never quite had before – at least not to this extent. Was it horniness? Maybe, though, she understood being horny. That wasn’t a new feeling. This went beyond what having sex with someone would satisfy. It felt more like hunger. An actual need.
Kate closed the computer lid and set it aside. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and let her hand drift to her chest, caressing her left breast. She ran her fingers across her skin, gently pinching her erect nipple. “Beware the thoughts that come in the night,” a voice spoke in her mind, repeating the opening lines of a book she read once. “They come in askew, free of sense and restriction.”
Her mind wandered dangerous and free, her heart beating. Kate opened her eyes and reopened her laptop. She typed a web address in the search bar for a website that had been the source of quite a few jokes amongst her friends. She picked a category – she wasn’t wanting a boyfriend, or even sex, but simply an experience.
She typed a few lines, copied and pasted a URL, included a picture, hit “submit”, and then stared at her computer screen, unsure whether what she just did was wise. What if one of her friends recognized her? What if one of her parents’ friends saw this?
She opened the laptop to delete the entry but stopped herself. “What the hell,” she thought.
She closed the laptop and went to bed.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
There was a problem reporting this post.
Please confirm you want to block this member.
You will no longer be able to:
Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.