What is it about resident loud mouthed heifers, in spite of all their public, blowhard grandstanding of "I am woman, hear me roar" usually wind up being the ones with an aversion talking about sex in straightforward terms? Tristan Taormino, I'm surely not, but I'm able to at least mouth the words, "what flavors of lubricant do you carry?" without flushing bright crimson most of the time. Enter an acquaintance we'll call for the sake of avoiding an angry phone call filled with F-bombs later... Felicia*.

Now Felicia is the kind of girl who rolls her neck for emphasis. The type who will approach a guy in a bar with little prodding or persuasion. Of the brutally honest ilk who make you feel like an idiot 9 times out of 10 when you ask her opinion because the mouthful given is just way more than you bargained for. She's brash, forward to a fault and a natural-born go-getter. In many ways, the polar opposite of me. So I wasn't quite sure what to make of the e-mail forwarded when I logged Tuesday morning and saw a potentially harmless new message awaiting me among the avalanche of "I needed this yesterday" and "how quickly do you think the turnaround will be?"

Subject title just left at one word... toys. During working hours I'm resigned to playing the role of Monty Spamalot since my inbox is flooded with an onslaught of pointless chain letters, I've lost count at how many times I've hit the delete button on reflex alone. So I figured this would be more of the same. Innocuous enough, you'd think... right?

Wrong.

The type of toys in question weren't the kind bought for ages 3 and up at Kay-Bee with some assembly required. I wondered briefly why in the world she was coming to me for a referral on where to buy one, but after backtracking my brain for clues, it hit me soon after. I remembered a couple of us had dished some details during a balmy, summer night get-together over a round of caipirinhas in July. You can't even mention the slightest thing in passing without being christened the duchess of dildos as a mental note for future reference. Ay dios mio.

I figured just giving her the names and addresses for her pilgrimage to the Pathmarks of porn would be sufficient, but nope... she needed a backup chaperone. Once we arrived at the land of teenagers in tiaras and last season's Urban Outfitters ensembles (better known as Christopher St. for the out-of-townies), I headed in the direction of the Pink Pussycat so she could break her battery-operated usage cherry, but I suppose the overeager cashier in front of the multitude of bondage restraints didn't ease her tension, so I settled on The Pleasure Chest. Low sleaze factor and the exterior doesn't exude seedy stripper's saloon at full voltage. Baby steps, one handcuff at a time...

Talk about Alice-in-a-kinked-out-wonderland. She had still retreated from her normal ball buster stance into a longtime relic at the Choirgirl Hotel. Cowering behind the penis pasta and dirty greeting cards, I nearly had to slap this heifer out of her comatose state just to move past the doorway. It was perfectly okay for her to morph into the Janet Maslin of "back massagers" at Brookstone, yet she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown here. Those crazy faux-Christians... but then again, in a country that's so uptight fundamentalists still define sexual aides through the narrow window of solely disorders and disease, it's not really surprising. Thanks to some gentle prodding (pun totally intended) from the multi-pierced and super helpful salesgirl there to walk her through the vast variety, Fifi Dearest was beginning to see things for what they were. Good, old-fashioned cheeky fun. We were finally able to laugh at the absurdity of the different sizes and colors all on display. And of course once the floodgates were opened, the bible thumper was on a roll. Pocket rocket, check. Flavored condoms, check. Blindfolds, check. I think the short Hispanic guy restocking the DVD's almost shed a tear for such an about face. It was a transformation truly worth of exultation. Praise the Lord and pass the Duracells.