Being of sound mind and ill will, I, Karen Miller-Strauss, execute this document dated March 19, 2022, to replace all prior wills and codicils from me or my beloved late husband, Arthur Strauss for whom I am next of kin, a blood relative, having given blood to sustain him during his final surgery. Disbursements will be reduced by the line item amounts for reasons stated.

I lie back on the table, naked, draped in paper, awaiting my exam. I assume the position, heels in stirrups, exposing my privates to an air conditioned gust. Time crawls by and I’m thinking, “Why didn’t they let me read magazines in the lobby where the light’s so much more flattering?” I hate being alone in this room so prone to ruminating.

My ten year try at true love had turned loveless two years before. Then, I’d rushed into a frantic romance, which ended soon as the guy recognized it as a rebound. This was followed by the realization that my last period had put the period on my menses, and probably put the period on men. Menopause? More like Men-o-stop. My allotment of orgasms had apparently expired with my eggs.

n 2003, I accidentally dated an alcoholic. He came as an accessory on my Prius. I got to know handsome Johnny O. (not his whole name) while I awaited the delivery he promised in four days. And during the four weeks I was dropping in on the dealership to check on my anticipated Prius, he began courting me in a car man kind of way, demonstrating how his smart key could open my vehicle without even touching it, showing me how to change the oil, change a tire, hot wire a car, skills I’d never use, but I liked the way he was teaching me. He would worry, he said, if I were abandoned along a roadside somewhere: fearful, cheerless, Johnny O.-less. This man rolled the odometer back on my feminism thirty years. Single and celibate, I suddenly got hormonal, helpless and girly.