The other weekend I met my friends Violet and Eleanor at the Museum of Sex in New York to check out the condom exhibit.

I told my editor here at SexIs about the trip, as I figured I would return with lots of fun, but useless facts about condoms that I could use as fodder for a column. And useless facts I did indeed find. Like, did you know that early condoms were made from sheep’s intestines? Or that women once inserted crocodile dung into their vaginas and used it as a spermicidal? Or, how about this: You can sew a bunch of condoms together to create a dress that does not look like a bunch of condoms sewn together.

Yeah, I could regale you with stuff like that all day long, but, as it turns out, the most interesting parts of the Sex Museum were the porn room (if I’d lingered in that room for about three minutes longer, I would have become a part of the exhibit) and the gift shop.

It was at the gift shop that I saw and bought a pair of Smart Balls (a.k.a. PC muscle exercisers). I didn’t truly know what the dang things were or what I was supposed to do with them. I just thought they looked cute and I liked the idea of being able to say that I bought a pair of balls at the sex museum. I also bought some furry red handcuffs, a book about sexual positions, and some lollipop condoms, as you just never know when those sorts of things are going to come in handy.

Eleanor and Violet bought some balls, too.

Then we went to lunch.

Then we dared each other to put in our balls.

So I took my little bag of sex toys and sauntered up to the bathroom as if I were carrying nothing more interesting than a bag of cotton balls. I slipped inside the bathroom, dropped trou and looked inside the ball box for instructions.

There were none.

That was a problem.

To understand my predicament, you really ought to see a pair of balls. That’s all I can say about that. Was I supposed to put both balls inside my vagina? Or should one hang out? And if both balls, would they both fit? Was my vagina really that big?

I decided to stick one ball inside and see what happened.

Um. Pressure.

Yum. Pressure.

Wow. Pressure.

Now the first ball was in, but the second ball was out, just hanging there like a lone testicle.

It didn’t feel remotely right having that second ball just hanging between my legs like that. Honestly, it felt as if I were about to take a crap through my vagina. I don’t know how men walk around like that all day long.

I put my index finger on the end of the second ball and I gave it a shove. It went inside. Then it slid back out. I shoved again. Finally I shoved so hard that I worried that the balls were going to end up in my ovaries.

I pulled up my pants.

And that’s when the first tremor hit. Um, that was nice.

As I walked back to the table, I got a few more tremors. Then my nipples started tingling.

“How do they feel?” Violet asked.

“Like they want me to get laid,” I said.

I felt downright naughty. I mean, here I was, in the middle of a restaurant, and I was in this blissful nirvana-like state—the kind of state that I usually only enter when I am home alone and there is a vibrator between my thighs. I was quite sure that if my girlfriends would just stop talking to me already and let me concentrate for a second or two, I could have three orgasms right there, in the middle of the restaurant, and only me and my balls would be the wiser.

I decided to call them Bert and Ernie.

And I took Bert and Ernie for a stroll around the Village. About an hour later, three things were clear:
1. My panties were soaked with my womanliness.
2. I wanted to bed every penis in the city.
3. The only thing I could possibly think about was my vagina.

This vagina mind was so bad that my girlfriends were getting frustrated with me.

“Pay attention!” one said.

“What happened to you? You used to be smart!” said the other.

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I can’t stop thinking with my vagina! Now I know what it feels like to be a man.”

We went to a restaurant. I was too distracted to even begin to think about ordering. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, telling my girlfriends that things might take a wee bit longer than usual because I was not feeling remotely like the master of my own domain.

Almost as soon as I locked the bathroom door, though, someone started knocking on it.

Bastards! I thought.

I decided to ignore the knocking. I had important business to conduct, and, by the way my vagina felt, I didn’t expect that business to take long at all.

I sat on the potty. I went to work on my clit with my right hand. Oh, that was nice.

There was that knocking again.

“Just a minute!” I yelled.

More knocking.

“Dang it!”

I removed Bert and Ernie, washed them, and wrapped them in a towel. Then I walked back to the table and extinguished my desire with multiple glasses of wine. The following night, however, I let Bert and Ernie have their way with me. The next day, I did the same.

Don’t tell my husband, okay? He might get jealous.

After going to a strip club and getting a lap dance, I had big plans for my sex life…

Oh, I was going to teach my husband all about my G-spot. I was going to experiment with S&M. And I was going to take my husband back to that strip club, and I was going to buy a lap dance with a very specific stripper and I was going to have him watch.

But then I had sex.

The sex part of it was nothing to write home about. It’s what happened afterward that ruined everything.

The next day, things didn’t feel quite comfortable in the pissing department. I’ve had many urinary tract infections in the past year, but I didn’t have time to have one that morning. I was headed to the airport that day for a business trip. So I told myself that the burning sensation had all been in my head.

I went to the airport. I got on a plane. You know the 10 or so minutes during take off when you are not supposed to get out of your seat? I almost peed my pants. I blamed it on a Diet Coke.

Later in the day, my pee felt more like warm soup than liquid fire. It’s not a UTI, I told myself. “I just have a sore urethra. His penis must have bruised it.”
Yeah, I bet that happens to women all the time, the whole penis bruising the urethra problem.

Two days later I was peeing blood. I took a taxi to the ER. By the looks of things, my doctor thought I was passing a kidney stone the size of Mt. Rushmore. He ordered a CT scan. It was normal.

But my urine test was not.

He shook his head. And then he prescribed antibiotics.

Back in my hotel room, I Googled “urinary tract infections induced by sex.” I learned that some women are particularly prone to them. Some get one every single time.
Every. Single. Time.

Let me tell you something about me: If there’s a slight chance that something dire will happen to one woman, I will be that one woman. For instance, when I was pregnant, I’d read that fewer than 3 percent of mothers have breech babies. Do you want to know who had a breech baby? That’s right. Me.

When I arrived home, I told my husband, “My vagina has a ‘Do Not Enter!’ sign on it.”

And, just in case he didn’t think I was serious, I started wearing the same unflattering fleece outfit every day. And I stopped trimming my nethers.

A week later I was at the gynecologist. I told her that something was obviously wrong with my womanly bits. I told her that I didn’t want to give up sex for the rest of my life. “But what other option do I have?” I asked.

She put my feet in the stirrups, peaked under the hood, and said, “Honey, your vagina is just beautiful. It’s just beautiful.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with it?” I asked.

“No honey,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

Then she told me about her Florida boyfriend. When visits him, she seduces him several times a day. After each hump, she pops a couple cranberry tablets.
“And I never get UTIs,” she said.

She wrote “cranberry tablets” on a prescription pad and handed it to me. Then she placed her palms on either side of my chin and said, “Don’t stop having sex. It prevents cancer.”

What could I do? I bought a bottle of cranberry tablets. Then I scheduled a nooner.
I showered, re-sculpted my unruly womanly bits back into a work of perfection, and I popped a cranberry tablet.

I was definitely feeling it, you know? But I was scared out of my mind, too. I crawled into bed with my husband. I looked at his member, and the first thought that crossed my mind had something to do with red blood in the toilet. It wasn’t exactly a turn on.
I took a deep breath. I told myself, You have to do this. You have to get past this.
So I got on top of him.

Eventually, my pleasure built, and, as it did, my fear ebbed.

But, as soon as I climaxed, it was as if a dam burst and a river of fear invaded my brain all over again. I popped another cranberry tablet.

And then, for the rest of the week, I obsessed over every sensation I might possibly be experiencing every single time I peed: That felt normal, right? Or was there the faintest hint of a burning sensation? Or maybe it was all in my head? Maybe I should pop another tablet, just to be safe.

It was like that. And because I drink about 16 cups of black tea a day, it was like that a lot.

By the end of the week, though, one thing was clear. I didn’t have a UTI. More important, I no longer associated the sight of my husband’s member with blood in the toilet. So I put him finding my G-spot, the strip club, and S&M back on my to-do list. Stay tuned.

Alisa Bowman also writes about marriage at ProjectHappilyEverAfter.com.

When I was trying to learn how to do a strip tease, I’d contemplated going to a strip club to see how the professionals put on a show.

Although I wasn’t able to get to a club before my strip tease, I still wanted to go. I was curious about strip clubs in the same way that I’m curious about what happens during a fraternity initiation. What is a lap dance? Do all of the girls have fake boobies? How do the girls groom their nethers? Why do the girls do it?

Would all of their perky breasts and tiny waists make me feel like less than a woman?

Would any of my girlfriends agree to go with me?

As it turned out, four of my girlfriends were just as curious as I was.

The problem with this plan, though, was that I’d never once done a strip tease before. So, almost as soon as I came up with the idea, I became paralyzed with the pre-strip jitters. What if I suck at this? What if I look like the dork that I am? What are the right moves and do I have it in me to master them?

I turned to my ProjectHappilyEverAfter.com blog fans for help. They delivered, suggesting I read a post about how to give a strip tease. I memorized it. They suggested I purchase Carmen Electra’s aerobic strip tease DVDs. I bought all four. They recommended I get sexy lingerie that could be removed in layers. I went to EdenFantasys.com and ordered a G-string, pasties, and a velvety red number.

They also suggested that I go to a strip club to see how the pros put on a good show. So I asked my husband to take me to one on a Friday night when we had a sitter.

“Why do you want to go to a strip club?” he asked.

“Because I think it would be fun.”

“What-ever,” he said.

“Oh, come on. It will be sexy. I’m curious. I’ve never been to one. Take me!”

“The clubs around here are sleazy. If we go to a strip club, we’re going to one in Philadelphia,” he said.

“But Philadelphia is an hour away. We don’t have enough time to go tonight,” I said.

“Maybe another time,” he said.