It’s 1:54 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. I have three houseguests: one Jamaican gay boy, one bisexual, platonic, genius friend who doesn’t yet know she’s a genius and a guitarist I have never seen. Usually, New York living is hard for the perpetual masturbator. Even in Brooklyn, the rents run too high for most people to afford their own apartment. So masturbation is usually a stolen, furtive activity that must be carefully scheduled and executed with some discretion. But luck, or divine design, has granted me a well-lit, one-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, and numerous days off to buck and arch and bruise myself to spacious orgasms. This is more often than not aided along quite efficiently with the trusty dependency of the Hitachi Magic Wand. On any given Sunday or Monday or Thursday I buzz myself to nirvana all day long. And if I am being completely candid, I have to confess that on many of the afore-mentioned occasions, I have jack-hammered my clit to numbness with that thing.

However, on this holy Sabbath I am locked in concert. And though there have been times when I have been able to bury the loud buzz under blankets, this week has been brutal and I have a need to be volcanic. I want to leave the bedroom door open and scream so the neighbors will wonder what trauma has my cat howling so piercingly in my apartment. (Note to Hitachi virgins: the Wand often elicits sounds more frequently given over to animals than people.)

Monday is no better. Deadlines and interviews and the respectability of delivered laundry and more writing deadlines eat away at the day. By nightfall, I am crawling the walls for a finger, a tongue, a brushing of my own labia against my palm — anything to make the tick in the back of my neck go away. But as Murphy would have it, as I slip into bed, a friend goes into break-up crisis. Phone to my ear, I fall asleep to the boring rendition of, “How could she leave me like this? Everything was going so well! When we made love it was so tender and filled with love…”

Cut to Tuesday morning. Dawn. I am finally alone. All my guests have flown the coop. My friend has blubbered herself into the comatose oblivion of after-break-up sleep. All that remains is my need for an orgasm and the sound of my own anticipation. The apartment is tumbleweed-still, except for the snoring dogs and my purring cat — if you’ll pardon the cheap pun. But here I am, Magic Wand in hand, when the doorbell rings. Jesus! Is there no rest for the weary? No release for the tightly wound? I pay my own rent. On time-ish. I am kind to strangers. I do good fucking work in the fucking world! Why can’t I just have a moment to fuck myself? Not wanting to separate from my intentions, I yank the Hitachi from the outlet and roll out of bed.

Hitachi in my left hand, I open the door with my right. It’s the duo of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I calmly tell them I would love to talk, but there is the small matter of an orgasm I need to tend to. They both stare blankly. One lady, wearing a large feathered hat, looks like she has never heard the word orgasm spoken out loud. But the younger woman understands me. I know this because she seems to be trying to swallow her tongue.

Tongue under control, she quips, “Pardon me?”

“I’m sorry ma’am, I cannot talk to you just now, because God is calling me to a baser act this morning.”

“A baser act?” queries the feather hat.

“Never mind,” interjects the tongue swallower. “We’ll just come back another time.”

“No. No. No. I cannot take another refusal to enter the Kingdom of God! I refuse to! There is no better time than the present to bring your troubles to the Father. Whatever is the matter, we can lay it before the Lord and He will hold it in His mighty hands. Tell me what is on your heart, child.”

“I really think it is better to come back another time,” I say, tapping the tip of my Hiatchi repeatedly in my palm.

“Child,” the feather hat takes the Hitachi from me, “I know you think we cannot help, but we do not come to you as ourselves. We come with the power of God behind us. Whatever it is, God will hear you. Come now, speak of it. He can make it right.”

I am so overwhelmed by her compassion that I begin to speak. “I have wanted to masturbate for days now. But I had a bisexual woman, a guitarist and a homosexual man in my house — so there was no privacy. Then I had writing deadlines yesterday. All night last night I was tied up with a lesbian break-up drama thing. This morning is the first moment I have had to really deal with this pent-up sexual energy.”

Both women step back. Feather hat is disgusted. Tongue swallower looks like she is about to cry. When feather hat opens her mouth, her words are coated with venom, “You people are why the world is in the predicament it is in right now. You are the reason God is taking so long to come back for us. It is not right for you to do those things to yourself. Sex is a duty given over to married people! A man and a woman! Jesus Christ is waiting for you to set your ways to right, so he can come and rule again! You have to repent, child. You have to set yourself to right and repent!”

It takes me about two seconds to come back to myself. Anger, fierce and full, rises up in me. I take a breath to steady my voice. My words are steel and gravel in the air.

“As I was saying ladies — and you should take a good look at that machine in your hand. When I plug it into the outlet beside my bed and flip this switch, it buzzes — if you want you can come in and I will demonstrate. No? Okay. So when it vibrates — and some people call it a vibrator because it vibrates — when it vibrates, I place it on my clitoris, or near it — because this Hitachi is no joke — it makes me have a loud, toe-curling, neck-cracking, back-arching orgasm. That means my vagina explodes and I instantly feel better about the quality of my life. Such moments of pure ecstasy make it possible for me to happily advocate for abortion rights, and the right for you to choose any life you want — including the one where you ring my fucking doorbell at dawn to tell me I cannot fuck myself in my own fucking home. Forget the fact that you are inviting me to lay my everything at the feet of a male God who says I cannot bury my face in the cunt of a woman I adore, or that you should not enjoy the thumb of a lover in your anus unless he decides to marry you — but all of that is an aside to the fact that I just want to rest that buzzing machine against my clit — and maybe insert a finger or two inside myself — i.e., I wanted to have sex with myself, since it is apparent that neither of you is going to join me.”

Both of them just stand there. Holding on to each other. I can’t tell if they are excited or shocked. Or shocked and excited. We stand there in the doorway for what seems like an eternity.

Then the feather hat finds her voice, “Well, Jehovah knows best. God sees everything. And the meek shall inherit the earth.” She hands me my beloved Hitachi and mutters, “The Lord sees everything, and everything is in his order.” With that, she pulls at the arm of the tongue swallower and they both shuffle away.

I take those final words to mean that God has given his blessing over to me and Hitachi. Three hours later, clitoral numbness aside, I am in heaven, calling fervently out to God, feather hat’s parting comments echoing in all my heads, “The Lord sees everything, and everything is in His order.” Hallelujah. Amen.