all you need is one

It is New Year’s Eve and unseasonably warm, and I am out to begin celebrating with some close friends. My girlfriends and I, we are all grad students and we are all in that special hell that’s populated exclusively with the smart, the miserable, and the not particularly self-aware.

We start off our evening with a heavyish meal, as our plans for later involve more whiskey than I like to remember. We are at a greasy sandwich shop, enjoying falafel and hummus wraps coupled with fries covered in jalapeños, with a side of champagne for my girlfriends and a diet coke with Jim Beam from my flask for me. We laugh, not realizing that this moment is one of those perfect times that I can look back at now and see how beautiful our friendships were in the midst of a sea of more professional bullshit than I had ever imagined. We toast all the horrible things that are finally ending with 2010: problems with our exes, problems with our families, problems with our schooling, problems with our credit card bills, and to the glimmer of hope that’s promised ever year on this day in the few hours before midnight. We inhale our meal and hail a cab to a party in the northern part of our fair city that we like to joke will be populated with about two hundred women, seven hundred gay men, and maybe 5 straight(ish) ones, and more sequins than you could find in the costumes for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. We are ultimately very correct in our assessment.

Over dinner, I have been telling Siobhán just how badly I want to fuck someone else to get the bitter taste of Adam out of my mouth. She teases me about the words I use, she teases me about my sex drive, she teases me about going to the gayest new year’s party in the city if what I really want is to fuck a man.  I take it in stride and return the jokes to her.

“All I need is one dude who’s willing to take my pants off,” I tell her, “and then it really doesn’t matter just how little the rest of them care about my junk.”

“Fair,” she says. “After all, if the incidence of something is 1 in 1,000 in the real world, but it happens to you, the incidence for you is 1 in 1.”

“Siobhán, that’s the nerdiest way I’ve ever heard a hookup described. Ever.”

“You’re welcome.”

We snag a cab and arrive just in time to beat a mass of fashionably late types to our new year’s event. We shed our coats. We get drinks. We strengthen them from my flask that’s tucked into the top of my boot.  We assess the crowd and find a blank spot for dancing.

My friends and I take sweaty, smiling pictures of each other all night. My outfit for the evening (black tanktop, black tights, black boots, black leather miniskirt, and a poorly-thought-out, visible through my shirt only in a camera flash, turquoise bra) is well documented next to my friends’ flashy party dresses and broad grins. There are photos of women embracing whose relationships—romantic or otherwise—have since dissolved, and photos of new friendships in their awkward beginnings before a deeper, more intimate connection is later forged.

I love these photos. I hate these photos.

After 45 minutes or so, I see a tall, boyish-faced man from the corner of my eye.

He looks at me, smiles, and looks away; he tells something to one of his friends.

I look at Siobhán: “All I need is one,” I remind her. She laughs and continues her dancing, which is a charming mix of voguing and gyrations over a beatific smile that never fails to attract a suitor.

I look up and see that stranger’s grin, this time with a wink. I look him in the face, raise an eyebrow in his direction, and keep up my dancing.

This tango goes on for longer than I anticipate.

I feel a tap on my shoulder.

I turn around to see someone other than who I expect, who happens to be standing about 3 feet away and talking to some other friend. The stranger I want to see is completely oblivious to this exchange.

This suitor is not a beautiful man, wearing not a beautiful hat, using not exactly eloquent words and covered in not particularly alluring sweat, and I think he might be hitting on me.

I may only need one to meet my goal for the evening, but just because an opportunity presents itself does not mean I am obligated to take it.

In equal parts desperation and irritation, I swing around to the tall, boyish man that I was hoping was seeking my attention. I tap his shoulder, square my shoulders and squeeze my breasts together with my upper arms, and when he turns to me I ask him, very bluntly:

“Would you like to dance with me?”

“Yes.”

The other suitor is completely crestfallen. I really don’t care.

His arm slides around my waist and I place my hands on his shoulders. We are far enough apart to be acceptable for a middle school party.

“What’s your name?”

“Margot. You?”

“I’m Louis.”

We dance for the next hour between now and midnight. He tells me what he does for a living. I tell him what I do. He tells me that he is from my fair city, I tell him that my hometown is several hundred miles away and I am surprised to discover that he used to work there. He is smart and charming and a little bit grabbier than I expect.

When midnight rolls around he pulls me in and kisses me with one hand exploring the texture of my woven tights under the short hemline of my leather miniskirt.

For the next 45 minutes we continue this dance. He kisses me and gropes me, he tells me that he expects me to slap him at any minute and is surprised when I don’t. I see my friends over his shoulder and they are keeping a watchful, yet encouraging, eye on my activities. Siobhán has wandered off somewhere with one of Louis’s group and I don’t hear from her until the next day.

When he tries to cup my pussy under my skirt on the dance floor, I draw a line.

“For that,” I inform him, “you better just take me home.”

“Ok.”

We leave. We scamper out of the club like we’re getting away with something. We get a cab driven by a dry old man who could not care less about our excitement as long as we don’t destroy his backseat.

“Unicorn Lane and la Ravaudeuse Road,” I yelp, crashing into the cab and on top of my newfound paramour.

“Ok.” The cab driver has clearly been a witness to this scene several times over in just this one evening.

In the relative privacy of the backseat, Louis bites my earlobes and my neck, he pulls down the tops of my tights and his aggressive hand is immediately exploring my anatomy.

“Margot, when we get to your house I am going to eat your pussy for at least an hour.”

I spread my thighs and stifle a moan, I tell him not to make me come in the cab because the driver would probably hate it. He laughs. I unzip his pants and wrap my free hand around the base of his cock.

Many months later, Louis tells me that the comment that I make, that he is thicker than I anticipate, was so unexpected to him that he struggled not to come into my palm at that moment.

We put ourselves together when the cab careens to a halt at the designated corner. Louis flings some money at the driver as we tumble out. I lead him halfway down the block to the front door of my building. His hands are up my skirt as he follows me up the stairs to my apartment’s front door. I let us in and shed all my clothes on the walk back to my room. I hear astonished comments from behind me.

We arrive at the back of the apartment. Louis is naked too, he presses against me in a heated, urgent kiss. I drop to my knees and take his cock into my mouth as he grabs my hair, in part to steady his bulk and in part from the thrill of dominating a relatively unknown woman. This only last a minute before he pulls me up by the underarms and presses me towards the bed. I land on my back.

It is his turn to drop to his knees. He makes good on the promise he made me in the cab: while it isn’t anywhere approaching an hour, it is plenty of time for me to come with my pussy squeezing the three fingers he has shoved inside me while I arch my back and pant.

I breathlessly tell him that the condoms are, of course, in the bedside drawer. He grabs one and rolls it on. As soon as he is done, I am on top of him and riding him while he squeezes my ass. He pulls me forward by the waist and lands his face between my breasts. He pinches and bites my nipples when I ask him to. I pull his hair when he asks me to. I come in a flood across his pelvis.

He rolls me over on my back without missing a beat and bends me in half to put my legs over his shoulders. He bites me and sucks my earlobes, his nails scratch into my waist and hips as deeply as mine do into his back. When he comes he lets out a guttural sound that shakes my diaphragm.

We are silent except for our heavy breath.

After, we talk. I discover that Louis is a good person, or at least he passes for one on what I expect is a one-night stand. He tells me more intimate details about his life that night than he will ever be comfortable telling me later, because I am a perfect stranger to him. I tell him fewer of my own and am generally cooler than I ever could normally be, because he is a perfect stranger to me. He is older than he looks, and more complex than he likes to be.

“Happy new year,” he mutters to me before we fall asleep. It is 4am.

The next morning, a thick hand parting my labia and exploring my clit coupled with a hard dick pressing into my back awakens me, and I am exactly on the edge of orgasm. When another hand finds my now-sore breast and stimulates an aching nipple, I moan and shudder into consciousness.

When I am a thinking person again, I roll over onto my belly and place myself between this stranger’s thighs. He is hard again. I take him into my mouth, with one hand gripping the base of his cock and the other fondling his balls. Louis is not yet friendly enough to call me names, so instead he grabs my hair and complements my skills before he orgasms down my throat.

After a few minutes we are both calm. We are both finding out more about each other, these two relative unknowns who will, we find out later, be perfectly unmatched.

I offer him a shower, and ask if he wants to get brunch. He politely declines, saying that he has to meet his friends from last night. I check my phone to find about ten texts from last night, ranging from friends reminding me to be safe and careful to complimenting me, to Siobhán asking if I want to get our customary New Year’s meal of lo mein, which is an invitation that I accept.

Louis reassembles himself in his sweaty clothes. I put on some pajamas and make coffee. He kisses me on the cheek in the kitchen before we trade phone numbers. As I see him out the door, my roommate wanders out of her room and looks at Louis, then back at me, and then promptly goes back to bed.

I wrongly expect to never see him again.

in media res

Grant is tall and has hazel eyes, which when we are alone he embellishes with glasses, but in public he uses contacts. He wears a beard to make me happy, and his hair is unruly and brown. He is the smartest person I’ve ever met, and also one of the most reserved. He holds my hand in public and nuzzles his face into my pillow when he sleeps. He likes to take me to museums, and we watch sci-fi from the 1960s and 70s on a semi-regular basis. He suffers my horrible schedule and obliges my need for human contact.

Some number of weeks ago, I dragged Grant out of the house for a reconstruction of our first date: Indian food from the wrong side of the western river in our fair city—all the really good places are in some other neighborhood, except for the one—followed by wandering through a picturesque park and stopping by a bookstore. I am wearing a full skirt with a long jacket, with some stockings that are entirely more elaborate than necessary. It is a little too cool out for my attire.

The restaurant has a perfect wine list, and we are tottering through the park. We laugh, we make jokes, and as we walk arm in arm our hands explored more than would have comfortable in more revealing light. As we walk down the street and back to my house, the stockings grip the tops of my thighs exactly where my legs slide past each other as I walk. I am wearing red lace panties over the garters that suspend my hosiery. This costume is a secret known to the two of us alone as we stride down the street to my two-story home.

Grant and I arrive at my front door. I let us in. I am delighted that the lights are off and the house is silent: nobody is home but us. I head up the stairs ahead of him. The bend of my waist is mildly exaggerated by the angle; I imagine that the tops of my stockings may be just visible to my partner as he follows me up the incline. At the next hallway, I turn left to the bedroom. He excuses himself to brush his teeth. I debate how much to undress, and I have gotten as far as my skirt by the time he returns. He returns to find me in a black t-shirt, black stockings, a black garter belt, the aforementioned red lace panties, and black boots. Grant laughs and gives me a half-smile. He sits on the bed as I bend over to unzip my footwear. I feel his eyes on my ass before I feel his hand.

“Grant,” I say, raising my head and putting my face in close approximation with his, “What do you mean by that?”

He kisses me and licks my lower lip; he tugs at the hem of my shirt to suggest that I remove it. I comply.

“Margot,” he replies, “I think tonight I would really love to go down on you.”

This is not so rare an occurrence that it requires any kind of fanfare or announcement.

Grant pushes me onto the bed by my shoulders. He lands on top of me, and bites my lip while pulling my hair. His palm is against my skull and the pads of his fingers massage scalp. He pulls my head to one side and kisses and bites my neck and shoulders while traveling south to my breasts. He bites my nipples through my bra, then he pinches and twists them through the thin fabric. My hips press into his chest in response.  His attentions linger on my bust. My pussy aches. The smell of his head and chest overwhelm me. I am panting.

He pulls my panties off. His mouth wanders down to my mons. His hands continue to manipulate my breasts. His tongue starts to trace the outline of the union of my labia through the thin, red lace that encases it. I am making guttural, primitive sounds. His mouth traces from my pussy to the top of my stockings: he licks from my thighs to behind my knees and back up again. During this motion, his hands press into my flesh, and in sliding over my skin they remove my inconvenient panties. My hands run through his hair and press his face into my pelvis.

Grant’s tongue glides over my clit while his hands travel back to my breasts to roll my nipples. My thighs internally rotate and my feet flex, my belly tightens and my neck extends. I am making sounds without meaning and my partner echoes them into my body.

My mind is more peacefully blank than it has been in ages.  Grant arises from the cleft between my thighs. He is still fully clothed. He pulls his sweater over his head and unbuckles his belt; his clothing is shed in short order. There is no pretense. He picks up my left leg and throws it over his right shoulder; he kisses and licks the arch of my foot through my stocking as his perfectly curved dick pushes into my still-tight cunt.

Grant exhales and groans. He pulls on my hair. He presses his torso into mine. His tongue fills my mouth and he sighs into me. When he approaches orgasm, his mouth starts making words that are clearly divorced from his conscious thought. He begs me to choke him. His neck is in my hand. I avoid the trachea while I gently press the external carotids. His face is red from exertion. My free hand scratches his back. His right hand grips and kneads my ass. My name escapes his mouth as his cock pulsates inside me.

The weight of Grant’s torso as it presses into mine, when he is covered in sweat and exhausted from the work of fucking me, is overwhelming. My face is pressed into his chest hair, I breathe in his scent and run my hands over the expanse of his back. I study the three freckles in his right iris; he returns my gaze and we kiss.

We sleep naked next to each other. His head works onto my pillow in his sleep, his arm is thrown across my hips and his breath is a soft exhale on the nape of my neck. When he sleeps his face is softened, and if I wake before him he wraps his body around mine when I stir.  The serenity that the morning offers is the perfect counterpart to our evening before, but even in a more tranquil atmosphere the sentiments that governed our previous activities persists. 

how to end a dry spell.

Louis meets me at the southwest corner of the block where I am at a supreme-court-themed party (my friends are VERY specific people), because I insisted that he walk me home because my skirt is too short, it is too late, and I am too drunk. We walk arm in arm, catching up with each other about the events of the past few weeks: his huge work upgrade, my finally finishing the most challenging year of my academic existence. His hand slides across my waist to rest on the curve of my ass.

He tells me he wants to bend me over a car parked on the street.

He asks me if I can tell how hard he is from where I am, pulled to his right as we briskly march down a cobblestone sidewalk.

I feel my pussy tingling, waking up from a hiatus. I lick his earlobe and tell him to walk faster.

We are at my front door. I fumble with the keys. We enter. I walk up the stairs in front of him, my impossibly short skirt riding up my hips and showing my thong-clad pussy through my tights. His hands are running up my thighs, helping my skirt on its way north.

We are at my apartment door. He presses behind me as I search for the key. My skirt is at my waist, he finds the top of my tights and pulls them down, his breath is breezing through the hairs on the back of my neck and tickling my ears. His hand spreads my thighs and fucks my pussy on the landing.

I cannot find my keys.

I press back against him. I go from the beginnings of sexual response to the edge of orgasm in approximately ten seconds.

There is a zipping sound, and the ripping of a condom wrapper. I am momentarily empty, and then his hands are on my hips again, his cock is parting my labia and entering me, I am standing on my tiptoes with my face pressed against my front door. It is 2:00am, I barely consider that my neighbors might be awake to enjoy the show. The pane of glass in my front door rattles with our thrusting.

His right hand pulls the front of my tights down and finds my engorged clit. He brings me to orgasm and I stifle my cries as best I can, hoping not to wake my roommate whose bed is approximately 8 feet away through two doors from where we screw.

He pulls out of me and pulls off the condom. I find my key in an unfamiliar pocket of the jacket I only rarely wear. I open the door. We make our way through the darkness to my bedroom, shedding clothing as we go. I turn on the light. I take his latex-tasting cock into my mouth, he moans deeply and holds my hair in fistfuls. I am kneeling on uneven hardwood. Saliva rolls out of my mouth, onto my hand, onto my thigh, down the slant of my thigh to the floor. He hardens more. He moans, pulls my head off his erection, and puts his hands under my arms as he tells me to get on the bed with my legs in the air.

His face is buried in my pussy, one hand is inside me and one is pressing apart my thigh. I am dissolving in my own orgasm.

Another condom. He stands as he penetrates me.  My legs are over his shoulders, then spread apart by his hands, then wrapped around his waist as he pushes me back on the bed. We roll over and I am on top, his face in my breasts. I slow us down. I am savoring this, the cock that stretches me out and presses against my swollen tissues, the hands that spank and spread the globes of my ass, the mouth and teeth that bite my nipples while calling me a whore.

I am lost. I try not to leave marks as I kiss him, kiss his neck, cry into his ears and come, my snatch wrapping and seizing around him.

I ask him to fuck me from behind. He is thrilled to comply. We roll over; he grabs my vibrator off my nightstand and gives it to me immediately before lunging in.  The fronts of his thighs slap against the backs of mine. His hand leaves large red marks on hips. I press the vibrator against my clit, I pant, I hold off as best I can and so does he, until he doesn’t anymore and thrusts aggressively against me while making purely primitive, purely male sounds.

He pulls out. I fall onto my stomach. My breath is rapid. His head is in the small of my back. He kisses both of the dimples on the back of waist. My hands are in his. We are like this for a minute, until we rearrange ourselves under covers, with him on his back and my head in the hollow of his arm. We sleep.

The next morning, we are on our sides, my stomach to his back and my arm around his waist. We mutter morning pleasantries to each other. He rolls on his back. We kiss, small light kisses on cheeks and noses, then heavier, more purposeful ones on mouths. I straddle him. I kiss him. I slip down between his legs.

I take him into my mouth. I feel him stiffen; I wrap a hand around his shaft and one around his balls. I alternate running my hand with my mouth and using just my hand while licking each testicle. I feel him get impossibly hard, and I back off. I feel him soften, and I apply more pressure, with my lips and tongue to the parts of his dick that make him instantly harden, with the knuckle of my hand cradling his scrotum to his perineum and indirectly to his prostate.

I bring him to an edge, and then I bring him back. I repeat.

My pussy swells and drips. I moan against his cock. His hand reaches between my legs and he half-laughs, half moans to find how wet I am. He asks me to stop sucking him off, he begs to eat my pussy, and I comply.

Sucking cock brings me close to orgasm on its own. Being flipped over and feeling a light, then slightly more substantial, tonguing, accompanied by hands that spread apart my labia and penetrate my cunt sends me over the edge much more quickly than I expect.

The climaxes that I reach with Louis’s face between my thighs are of heights that I cannot attain by myself. With him, my mind empties, my body opens and my spine enflames, every nerve from every part of me firing off. Muscles in my pelvis that are otherwise quiescent make their existence known, my throat makes sounds that come from some more basal part of my organism. The sensation from Louis’s lips and his own moans of satisfaction reverberate against my flesh.

He arises. He kisses me, his mouth tastes like my body. He puts on a condom, puts my legs around his neck and thrusts into me without preamble. I am squeaking, squealing with pleasure and oversensitivity as he fucks me and my post-orgasm pussy tightens even more around him. I move my legs down, I wrap them around his waist, he holds my arms over my head, he thrusts into me and sweats.

He pulls out. He pulls off the condom. I lift my torso, and with him straddling my thighs I take him into my mouth while cradling his balls and stroking his shaft.

“Margot, you can squeeze me harder than that.”

I accept the challenge.

His breathing changes. He thrusts against my face.  I feel him orgasm before he makes a sound, his ejaculate shooting straight to the back of my throat in a high-pressure stream. His voice is guttural, his orgasm continues. What I can’t swallow leaks out from my lips onto my hand, and falls on my stomach.

He stops. I pull my mouth off. I smile broadly. We flop over and sleep for another hour. We wake up. We make coffee. I am calmer than I have been in weeks. He seems happier than I have ever known him to be. In my kitchen, we hug like friends and kiss each other on the forehead. He leaves to meet his brother for lunch.

I go back to bed. The left side—the side he slept on—smells of man. I have no obligations today aside from enjoying anything that I want to. I smile, and run my hands across my body, thinking of all the things my lover can make me feel.

wildlife preserve

Simon and I were driving through fields in the rural area near where he used to live. It was July. We chattered away, a hand on each others' thigh. I wore a short black wrap dress. Everything was new, and everything about Simon excited me: his tall, slim build; auburn hair, and frank but gentle demeanor. He was immensely talented at reading other people, probably the best I've ever known, and combined with his background trait of honesty, being near him was often a discovery of what things you could learn about people if you just pay attention. He made no effort to hide his raw sexuality, and it was percolating just below the surface in all of our interactions when everything was new.

He always drove with a hand on my thigh, and I normally hand mine folded on top of his. Today, we were driving through the countryside, over fields filled with nothing and through tree-covered hills. The part of the world that he was from wasn't that far from the city where I lived in terms of distance, but in terms of geography and culture it was a separate world. It was beautiful and slow, and a place where you could go to be alone, outside, for miles.

Our conversation turned from whatever it was about before to what it always became: our fantasies. His hand crept up my thigh to the edge of my panties as I told him that I always wanted to fuck outside in broad daylight, and that I had never done it and was sad that I probably never would. As he traced the crease between my vulva and my inner thigh, I moved my hand over to his lap to discover a growing hardness.

“Margot, you know there's nobody here for miles, we're driving through a wildlife preserve.” I looked out the window: we were driving through a field with gently rolling hills, sun everywhere, and far enough out that I couldn't actually see another road. Simon pinched my thigh, and ran his hand under my wet panties. I rubbed his cock through his jeans. “Why don't we stop here?” I pulled my panties down and off my ankles and over my sandal-covered feet.

Simon pulled over, and we both hopped out of his green sedan. We looked and listened: nothing. Nobody. He kissed me, pushed me over the hood of his car, and untied my dress as I undid his belt. The metal of the hood of the car burned the backs of my thighs until he pulled my ankles up to his shoulders and penetrated me. He did not start off slowly or gently: our conversation in the car turned us both on to the point that this sex was the culmination of a fantasy.

We were instantly sweating in the mid-July sun. I was wearing a bra that closed in the front: I snapped it open, pressed my tits together, and played with my nipples while Simon fucked me, lifting my ass up off of the car with the force of his pelvis and forcing me to be almost completely bent in half while his hands squeezed my hips. We were grunting and rutting like animals.

Wildlife preserve, indeed.

When Simon fucked me like this: him on top of me or standing, my knees to my chest with my legs fully extended in a feat of flexibility that I'm not sure I could do without training up to it, I always came quickly and hard. Today was no exception, and I was quickly panting and crying out, with my pussy squeezing him harder and leaking all over our hips. Simon stepped back and pulled out of me, and promptly came in ropes from my pubis to my sternum. He leaned over me for an instant; panting, sweating, and glowing.

He looked up.

“Oh shit, Margot!” he shouted, and quickly threw the halves of my dress over my nakedness before shoving his still half-erect cock back into his jeans, just as not one, but two, totally full minivans drove by. They had decals on them from one of the larger summer camps in the area. They drove past, pulled over 50 feet away, and stopped. Simon and I had thrown our clothes back on and jumped in the car and drove off as quickly as possible as I reined in my breasts and tried to clean myself off with tissues from the glove box while keeping myself covered as we drove past these two vans, full of staff from the camps. If they weren't staff, they were the most twentysomething-looking campers I have ever seen. They were staring at us as we drove past. I was trying not to get ejaculate all over my dress, the car, or the seatbelt, and had pretty much given up. I tied up my dress, and looked at my partner.

Simon was laughing hysterically. My shocked feelings turned to giggles, and turned to belly laughs with him. This was not the end I fantasized about—my exhibitionist streak did not include fantasizing about accidental minivans full of observers—but it's definitely a much better end than anything I could ever make up.  

The Unicorn

I was two months out of a serious relationship. It was September, grad school was back in full swing, and I was categorically undersexed and overextended. My skin felt tight around my viscera, and when I thought about sex, or love, or Simon and how things ended, it felt a little bit like pulling the scab off of a wound that wasn't nearly as healed as I thought it was. I was wound so tightly that the smallest stimulus would make me spring into pieces. It was unsustainable. My roommate told me, as I sat on the radiator in our kitchen, bouncing my knees up and down with nervous energy and drinking a beer, that I obviously just needed to get laid. I decided she was right.

A friend of mine is a DJ here, and that night he was performing at a cramped basement venue. After feeding them sufficient amounts of whiskey, I dragged three friends (Including the delightful Liplicker) with me for a night of overpriced drinks and the very best of 1970s funk-soul and 1990-2000s hip hop in a room with horrible acoustics and murals on the stone walls. I wore my tightest jeans, black riding boots, and a cream-colored shirt with a low-plunging front and back. I wore a purple ribbon in my short blond hair to keep it out of my face.

When we walked into the bar, it was not particularly crowded. The room itself is maybe 12 feet wide by about 20 feet long, with a bar at one end, the DJ booth at the other, and everything else in between for dancing. There are a few tables near the entrance, but they mostly get used as a coat rack. My friends and I shed our outer layers and started dancing. There were some young men who tried to impress us with well-executed but categorically ridiculous dance moves, and the four of us soundly ignored them.

About 45 minutes in, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, he asked me to dance, I said yes. He was tall and slim, little bit of an accent, very plain in the face, with dark curly chest hair creeping over the edge of his shirt. He put his arms on my waist and pulled me close.

“My name is Buddy Holly,” he told me.

“Is it really, or is it actually Brian and you're just trying to get in my pants?”

“No, I'm from Texas,” he said.*

We danced together some more. His hands spread firmly up and down my back, searching to get under my belt and rub the flesh of my ass, and I rebuffed him. I had never slept with a stranger before, and I was wary of this man who pulled me in, felt me up, and whose face was so close to mine I could nearly taste his breath.

After dancing like this for a time, he told me the greatest pickup line I have ever heard, before or since: “You are visually delicious.” I laughed in his face and danced closer, shocked that someone would try that on me and even moreso that I didn't hate it.

There was lots of small talk. I discovered that he worked at a local large university in their political science department, putting the brand name MBA he had earned at a young age to work figuring out how nonprofits should spend their money. I told him my name, and my desire to work in a research-heavy field of healthcare. He was unphased. People who spend all their time at Big Name University in my city expect nothing less from their dance partners than a bachelor's degree and a large vocabulary.

We danced. We chatted. Our faces were close, our lips were close, our breathing was labored. I didn't know his last name. I was rubbing his back under his shirt and letting him squeeze my body. My friends winked at me from across the room. I leaned forward half a centimeter and Buddy Holly and I were suddenly kissing deeply, pulling each other in, while I slipped out a small, surprised moan. Our hips had long ago skipped over these pleasantries, and twenty minutes later my pussy was totally slick, and I could feel him pressing insistently against me. He was a stranger. He was exciting. This was exciting. This was terrifying. This was a bad idea, and such a good one.

“Margot,” he said, “I feel a connection with you. I would love to take you home and drink a bottle of wine with you and get to know you better.”

“You can buy me a drink, but I'm not going home with you.” I was firm. I believed it. I had never gone home with anyone before and I was nervous about taking my chances, since I believed pretty strongly that there was a good chance that he was, in fact, actually an axe murderer who preyed on the large-busted and recently single.

He acquiesced and bought me a drink. He said he wanted to know everything about me. I was cagey and told him very little, except that if he had met me six months ago I would have told him that I was getting ready to marry Simon. That was true.

As he and I finished our beers, he pulled his arm around my waist, and asked if I wouldn't mind leaving with him to grab something to eat. If I was uncomfortable at any point, I could back out, and leave, and he would respect it. I agreed. We ran out of the bar, his friends giving him high fives and mine frantically texting me that I can call them if things went sour.

The next half hour or so was a blur. He pressed me against an SUV in the street and kissed me like he was going to fuck me right then. I pressed back. We stumbled down the sidewalks. He told me all about nonprofits. I impressed him with my French, and I discovered that while his English is nearly impeccable, that accent was authentic and he was not a native speaker. We ate pizza and talked about feminism. This is truly the way into my heart/pants.

When we crossed the threshold of his apartment, he offered me mescal: “I have the normal kind, and I have something a little bit more fancy. You can have whichever you like.” I took some of the nicer one. I sat next to him on his white couch, on the white rug, next to the black coffee table: his apartment was clean and minimalist; the living space of a young person with not a lot of money but enough taste to know what to do with it.

On the couch, he leaned into me. My drunken mind was racing: will I or won't I? Will he or won't he? Do I want to? Why? Why not? What am I going to do? Is it so bad? It could be SO good. Will I or won't I? He was saying words and I was not paying attention. And then we were kissing like teenagers, with his hand around my waist and his chest pressing into me. He asked me to come back to his room.

“I want to make you feel good,” he said. “I want to make you forget about all the bullshit that troubles you. I just want you to feel good.” Buddy Holly fed me lines about sex and feminism that I am, even now, completely sure that he meant with all honesty.

Then we were naked, him running his hands all over my body. He smelled sweaty and masculine and hot. His chest and abdomen were covered in dense hair, his body was lean and muscular and far stronger than he looked, and he was on top of me, kissing my breasts and squeezing my ass. The light was on. I wrapped my legs around his waist. His penis pressed against the inside of my thigh, he kissed down my stomach to my mons, then to my clit. He licked it indelicately, and I moaned.

In about 30 seconds I asked him to get a condom; he agreed. I finally saw his dick: it was impressive. Probably about eight inches fully hard, not particularly thick but slightly curved. He rolled on the condom, threw my ankles over his shoulder, bit my neck and slid into me fully. I arched my back and moaned, he felt amazing inside me and I felt like I was waking up.

We fucked like this for about a minute and a half, and he asked me to roll over onto my stomach, which I was happy to oblige. That slight curve made this perfect: he grabbed the space between my ribs and my waist and entered me while I was on my stomach, pushing my hips into the air at a sharp angle. We were like this for approximately a minute before I came, hard, with him inside me and in a flood all over his (white) sheets. I was shaking. He sounded a little sad as he asked me if I was done for the night.

I told him no, don't be ridiculous, give me a minute.

He held me to him. I was quivering. I told him—truthfully--that he was the first man I had come with like that since I left Simon. He stroked my hair and kissed me, he pulled off the condom, and whispered kind words in my ear. He laid me on my back, and we made out in his bed while his still-hard penis pressed against me. I was still wet, I still wanted him, I was grinding my hips against his thigh like we had done on the dance floor, and he held my arms down over my head. He rolled on another condom.

When I have already come once, my vagina is much tighter afterwards. I am not sure if it's like this for other women, but my lover seemed to appreciate it. He fucked me slowly, through another orgasm and another, and he put me on top of him and I rode him while I came. I was shocked by how well he fit into me. We were at it for hours: he stared intensely into my eyes, we tried every position I know, I lost track of orgasms. It was wonderful.

I asked him if I could make him come.

He hesitated.

“I can't.”

“I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel.”

“I can't, unless I know this is real, that this is a real connection.”

“This connection is absurd. I've never felt anything like it. You've made me feel so good, it would mean so much to me if you would let me make you come.”

“Ok.”

I slid down to the foot of the bed. I parted his legs. I kissed the insides of his thighs, and licked one of his balls, before I took him into my mouth. He sighed. He started to mutter, and he wasn't speaking English while he played with my hair and raised and lowered his pelvis to the rhythm of my mouth. I played with his scrotum with one hand and ran my other in a fist up and down his shaft with the other.

He collected himself, and sputtered out, “I want your pussy on my face, I want to taste you, please.”

I was happy to oblige. We 69'd for a good while: he moaned into me and I took as much of him in my mouth as I could. After a few minutes, he switched from eating my pussy to licking my perineum, and then to rimming me. I had only done that with Simon, it felt wonderful with him and it was stunning now. I was having a hard time sucking his cock with any skill from how good it felt, until he pressed his hips to my face and thrusted harder, and ejaculated into my mouth. He tasted like a man who had spent the past several hours drinking and dancing with a strange woman that he had fucked senseless a half hour earlier.

I dismounted. He was in a daze.

“Margot, you are an excellent cocksucker.”

He asked if he could hold me while I slept. I fell into his arms, he spooned me. I believe him that he fully intended to sleep with me this way, but I felt his cock harden again when I pressed my ass against his pelvis. He reached between my legs, kissed the back of my neck, and asked if he could get a condom. I agreed.

We were awake until about 5:00, and we collapsed into a sweaty sleep after: he held me tightly just as he said he wanted to. We awoke some hours later, and repeated the previous night's events. All told, we used maybe eight condoms, I sucked him off three times, and I have absolutely no idea how many times I came. In the morning he kissed me gently and saw me out the door.

He and I texted back and forth briefly. I never saw him again. He's my Unicorn: the man I slept with, who was exactly what I needed at the time and who I don't know if I'll ever see again. He was absolutely the best sex I've ever had—and I've had a decent amount of sex—and he was extraordinarily kind. I don't need to ever sleep with him again, because the memory I have of the man who, essentially, fucked the memory of my ex-love, my ex-almost-fiancé, right out of me with skill and aplomb, is perfect.

EPILOGUE:

Buddy Holly belongs to a very small population of people of a certain ethnicity in my fair city, and he works at one of its largest employers. Some number of months later, Liplicker told her girlfriend, in jest, that she was “Visually delicious.” In between fits of laughter, the girlfriend asked where on earth my friend had heard this.

“Buddy, Margot's unicorn, said it to her!”

“Buddy HOLLY?!” she replied.

As it turns out, this girlfriend knew my unicorn through a series of other friends. She told me later that he has a girlfriend (or two?) now, and that he is, in fact, a prodigy at work and a feminist in real life, and that he never takes home women from bars. When she asked him about me, he said:

“Margot? Margot la Ravaudeuse? Yes, I know her. I took her home, and we had epic, marathonic, earth-shattering sex.”

As it turns out, I'm his Unicorn, too.

*In truth, Buddy Holly's real name is very distinctive and also the name of a pop song, so this story is considerably less funny when the names are changed to avoid any kind of detection, ever. Trust me, it was awesome.