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For all her promotional savvy, Lari herself isn't solely responsible for the rapid-fire spread of Niagara across town. For that, she has a kind of home-grown viral marketing to thank, one that's been in place long before Oprah's book club: it's known in Little Rock as a patio party, and it's where all relevant information about local life and love is exchanged, usually over fruit salad and catered chicken salad sandwiches.
It helped that fifty-two television stations picked up a local news story about the drink and aired it a day or two before Valentine's Day. But even before the Valentine's Day deluge, a certain upper middle-class community of women — the ones who might find themselves in the market for imported espresso beans and fifteen dollar fudge — had already latched on to Niagara and started spreading the word, at patio parties in their neighborhood, at the Little Rock Athletic Club between rounds of tennis or at the Pleasant Valley Country Club over cocktails.
Lari credits one such social creature in particular with talking it up, Sarah Jane Haley — not her real name, she's too genteel for that — the wife of one of Little Rock's most upscale retailers. Talking to me from behind the wheel of her silver Lexus, soft-spoken with a slow drawl, Sarah Jane hardly seems the type to "burn up the phone lines," which is what Lari's told me about her. But Lari would know; she's known Sarah Jane since 1978, when she was one of Lari's first hairdressing customers. Lari tells me that Sarah Jane threw at least fifty clients her way in the following months. It seems only fitting that Sarah Jane, who describes Lari as "cutting-edge Southern," was one of Niagara's first champions. "I said, I'll try this for my anniversary, you know, as a novelty," Sarah Jane tells me. I practically have to strain to hear her over the quiet hum of her Lexus, which is where I'm conducting the interview so no one would see her talking to me. In the car, I'm mostly struck by how dainty she is—even the way she holds the steering wheel is dainty, with her manicured ring fingers and pinkies outstretched, as if well-practiced from holding tea cups. "It was our twenty-fifth anniversary, and I thought it would be fun," she says. Her intuition was right: "I felt real relaxed and real romantic," she says. Her husband said it was great sex. The next day she bought three more bottles. Now, when she walks into the store, she just winks, and Lari slips a few bottles in her bag.
It's not easy to get her to talk about her sex life — I might as well ask her what she and her husband are worth — but she will concede that the drink has made sex better, maybe a bit freer. "Southern women are real feminine by nature," she says. "They tend to be more private about their personal lives. But they want to be pleasers to men, too." Sarah Jane started telling her friends about the drink at social events — "it's the talk of parties," she says — and now several of them, like her, purchase the drink discreetly. Even those of them who live a few blocks away from Wycoff have the drink shipped to them in an unmarked cardboard box, lest someone get the idea they have marital problems. Southern women may be eager to please, but they're also proud.
I'm in the supermarket line a few days later when I hear two women talking about Niagara. The one who seems to the more enthusiastic proponent is all made up, with a teased hairdo and a satin maroon track suit.
"Excuse me," I say, "does it really work?"
The woman with the teased hairdo — it's very Little Rock right now, kind of short but very styled — won't tell me her name, but she's happy to confide. "Oh, it works," she says. "It does. I feel much more ready for sex. Sometimes after you work all day, you just don't want to come home and have sex. You're too tired. But this made me feel . . . " She drifts off. I swear she gets a far-away look in her eyes. "Warm," she finally says. "It makes me feel warm."
It's hard to find anyone who's tried Niagara who doesn't think it works some kind of magic. If you're at all ambivalent about your sexuality — and I think it's safe to say, a lot of church-going women in Little Rock are — maybe it's easier to think of your desire as having an external source, rather than something that's seething within. I like to think of myself as comfortable with my sexuality, at least by Little Rock standards . . . What, I wondered, would a little blue drink do for me?
It's a Friday afternoon, and two bottles of Love Potion Number 9 chill in the refrigerator. My house is a mess. There are no candles or sexy lingerie. The music is the drone of MSNBC and news of a bad-and-turning worse stock market. My lover is running late as usual, and I am not exactly in the mood to swing from the wrought-iron chandelier in my dining room. But my mood usually changes when my boyfriend and I touch.
I wonder if it's possible the drink could actually have an adverse effect on our love-making tonight. Some of what I've heard from various women is also little off-putting. They say it makes them giggly,  almost childlike, weak in the knees. I pride myself on being, if not sexually assertive, then sexually confident — I'm not sure child-like is how I want to feel as I await my sweetheart's embrace.
Cameron arrives, beaming. "It's Niagara Friday! Woo-hoo!" He kisses me, and I already feel warm. Who needs Niagara, I think? But it's for the sake of science, so out come the blue bottles. I imagine people all across Arkansas, looking at each other with dreamy looks, holding a blue bottle from Sweden.
Cameron and I sit on my couch, swigging Niagara straight from the bottle.
"Cheers," we say. The blue looks vaguely nuclear to me; it leaves a strange, medicinal aftertaste.
"I hope this doesn't end up like the Jonestown massacre," I say. After a few sips and one big gulp, I notice that I do, in fact, feel tingly and giddy. I'm not sure whether it's the drink or the fact that I feel like a teenager sneaking a fuck before my parents come home — but I do feel something different.
Then the phone rings, jerking us out of our reverie. I carry my blue bottle with me as I glide to the phone, feeling like a soap opera diva holding a glass of Dom Perignon.
Holy shit, I say to myself as my minister identifies herself. I sit the Niagara on the desk as far away from me as I can. My minister has never called me in her two years at the church. I haven't been to church in a year, and the one day I try an aphrodisiac the voice of God calls to invite me to a new Sunday school class.
By the time I get back to the couch, Cameron has finished his drink. I tell him who called.
"That'll make you horny every time," he says. I laugh uncontrollably for a few seconds. He kisses me.
"I feel tingly," I say.
"All over?" he asks.
"No," I say, finishing off my bottle. "Just down there."
If this stuff is supposed to make you uninhibited, then why do I suddenly feel oddly shy with a man who's been hearing my intimate fantasies and crude talk for months?
We make out for a few minutes and then start giggling. Maybe there's something funny about feeling like a lab rat.
"I'll race you," he says as he starts stripping. He rips off his clothes instead of ripping off mine the way he usually does. "I win!"
Cameron literally jumps into bed and I follow.
"What do we do now?" he says from his side of the bed.
" I don't know," I say. "Kiss?"
"You know I don't feel turned on at all," he says. "I feel like we should be playing a board game or something."
"I know what you mean," I say. "Odd."
We actually talk about work for a few minutes. We snuggle. Then I notice that the pink lights and lime-green Mardi Gras beads attached to my headboard are casting a trippy glow on us. Then slowly, we get into each other, and I feel beyond wet.
Cameron slides into me, and I feel as if I am being turned inside out. I close my eyes and see groovy tie-dye circles bursting as Cameron feels deeper than he's ever been.
"You are wet," he groans, gripping the iron headboard.
We fuck hard. It's like this a lot of times when we have sex, but this time feels oddly wild. Then, I feel him going limp in me. Bam! He comes, hard, fast, unexpected.
He looks taken aback. "Damn, that was the strangest orgasm I have ever had," he says. "I came when I was soft, but I felt like I was going to come the whole time I was in. I felt like my orgasm was teetering — I felt like I was fucking in a disco."
Cameron goes down on me, twirling his tongue around my clit. For thirty minutes, as he consumes me, I want to come badly but can't. It's different, somehow, from the mental block I sometimes get when my manic thoughts run wild and I start making to-do lists in my head. I desperately want to come but physically cannot. I'm on edge the whole time but something is holding me back. And I don't like it.
Finally, just like he had described, I come harder than I have ever come in my life, I believe, and totally unexpectedly, leaving me gasping, screaming, sweating, almost crying.
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