Hunter

She reminds me of the hunter at dinner. Not a hunter, the hunter, from Homogenic. There's no particular physical resemblance beyond the dark hair and eyes. She is six feet tall, Björk is tiny, but there is a shared hunger just below the surface, a confidence that she will get what she wants. I am tired, jetlagged, when I'm tired my brain surfaces vivid free associations, I have to work to suppress them and frequently I can't even figure out what the relationship is. She smiles as our oysters arrive, somewhere between coy and rapacious, and my brain cues up those skittering snares loud and I understand why. Not that I'm the prey here, I'm probably overconfident but not delusional, I'm not what she's after. Life is her prey. But for tonight, I can be an adequate surrogate, a diversion on the road to loftier destinations.

With effort I put the auditory hallucination to the side and return to the task at hand, being in this conversation. We'd briefly exchanged book recommendations a couple days previously while coordinating over email, and I've brought two presents: first a copy of one of my picks, who knows though, I don't know her well enough to be that confident in its success. For the second, I've spent four hours on the flight over reading the book she recommended. There's the potential for awkwardness when I tell her and she reveals that she brought a copy for me, some real O. Henry shit, but she understands the compliment of time and that smile lights up and now there's a topic we can sink our teeth into. Does she like talking about books as much as I do? No one does, but it works to get us out of the normal chitchat and into sex and death and philosophy, where I quickly learn I'm outmatched.

From there the topic ricochets and the discursions pile, we never quite finish one subject before the next and I am stacking a long list of follow-ups for later, if there's a later. I can tell I'm talking too much, I'm not exactly nervous but I'm definitely excited. She sees a callback or reference and volleys it back with spin. I use a double negative and ask if Dutch has that construction and she uses it at every opportunity for the rest of the night. I want to savor the meal and laugh with her and be in this moment and also put my thumb on her full red lips and slide it inside her mouth and push that short skirt over her thighs and fuck her on the table and again I have to force myself back to the present. Can she tell where my mind was? I don't think I'm in control of my expression at all, I've had a quarter glass of wine but am flushed and my eyes must be huge cartoon eyes.

We agree to skip dessert and it's clear what's coming next, hands touching across the table, knees underneath, sharing her glass of port back and forth. I'm getting more of that hunter smile and again the music is loud in my head, she tilts her head forward to look up at me, one dark eye fluttering as she laughs. We're almost to the check and I have one foot out the door mentally and the waiter offers coffee and she lights up even more, the hunter wants her oat milk latte and she knows she can have it and me too. I fix my face and nurse my espresso and I don't mind, she makes it look like the best fucking oat milk latte anyone has ever drunk.

We're out of the restaurant, I've been too hot for hours and the cold air is a sharp relief contrasted with her warm tall body next to mine. The car's not here and there's only a moment's pause and she turns and kisses me, fiercely for a first kiss, face crushed to mine. I've never kissed anyone taller than me, I wasn't expecting it to be so different and it isn't; the mere novelty of height is now the last thing on my mind. There is so much of her, so much to her. I am trying to learn the kiss, how she responds, mirroring roughly is never bad but my cacophonous metacognition ceases as our tongues touch. Some basal part of me tracks the gravel parking lot we're in. She's in heels and I'm the one teetering. We separate, again the cool air a reprieve. I don't know where to look, where to put my hands, and then the car comes. I know how to open a car door, at least.

I execute the steps of getting us through the lobby and up to the room, maybe we're both a bit nervous, I definitely am and for the first time the conversation is small talk. I'm moving around too much, hanging coats, pouring water, pointing out obvious facts about the view like this is my city, when it's hers. She goes to freshen up and tells me to put on some music. I'm ambivalent about music during sex, my brain will usually provide the same unrequested information, analysis, narration it always does, it's weird to thrust on the beat but if I'm not on it I will be reminded continually. I don't need the distraction. But silence can be a lot too. I consider the classics, Portishead, Moon Safari. But Hunter is still in my ears and so I play it, I'm not going to explain the association, the shape is clear in my mind but I won't be able to put it into words for weeks. I skip through the tracks in my head, it's unclear if the album works, I'm a fountain of blood is too intense a metaphor, Unravel is unbearably romantic... but Pluto's screams could be ok depending on timing. At least it won't distract me, I've lived inside this album for thirty years, I don't have anything else teed up and I am not trusting an algorithm. She comes out in a complicated forest green lingerie set and is like oh is this Björk and I stop thinking about the music for once in my life.

She is a marvel. Her body is slender but muscled, lithe. The longest legs, the lingerie accentuates her full hips, her delicate shoulders. I want to do about seven things at once and am paralyzed and she takes charge and we're kissing again, she's still in heels and I'm barefoot and now I really am kissing up and her skin burns against me and I'm wearing too many clothes. The lingerie does exactly what it's supposed to, entices as it covers, but there's a thick band across her nipples, I am impatient to see her bare but the clasp is beyond me, no way I can one-hand it.

In a blur she gets me naked and we're making out with her on top, I've been hard for what feels like forever already and she takes me in her mouth and the visual is almost too much, she's elegant and refined but desire is there in her eyes and I feel like I'm being devoured. I want her teeth on my chest, on my neck, my fingertips. There's overwhelming sensation focused on my cock and also she's all the way down there and I need to touch her, to have her body next to mine.

We kiss some more, I'm getting the hang of it, and then I'm leaning back and she is admiring my cock, wrapping her hands around it, stroking me in different combinations. It's just so... solid, she says. I got lucky here, it is a nice cock, seven inches and thick. Once, late at a wedding reception with very drunk college friends, it came out that a lover had told girlfriends about it a decade previously and it was just a known fact about me, everyone was like yeah we all know you have a big dick, that's why you're confident and unflappable, dumbass. I felt such a confusing mix of pride and shame, is this a small taste of what it's like to be beautiful? I'd always been more proud of my mind than my body, but what if my quick wit and incredibly charming personality were just natural byproducts of being moderately hung?

All this goes by in a second, I want this inside me she says. What I want most is for her to move up and straddle my head and put my tongue wherever she wants it and shut off my brain. But I'm pretty sure fucking will also achieve that goal and letting her take the lead has worked this far.

She lowers herself delicately and takes it easily, I'm not that big but already we're fitting well, and her hips push against mine as she bottoms out. I let her take its measure with some strokes on her own but it's not long before I need to start pushing against her, and now everything is easy and natural. I'm not any kind of sex genius but I know how to fuck and she does too, who is doing more of the work is naturally ebbing and flowing without coordination and my mind is blissfully blank other than the myriad sources of pleasure and the thought that good sex is goddamn fun.

Eventually I realize that somehow she still has the fucking top on, and I pause to insist it comes off, the first time I really take the lead. I knew her breasts would be amazing, they are small in absolute terms, soft and supple and they fit her frame exactly. But my imagination did not anticipate her nipples. They're dark brown-red against her pale skin, the areola is small but the tip is hard and full and burning and I need them against my chest and in my hand and on my tongue. She folds down and crushes against me, sweet breath panting into my mouth and now I'm doing all the work, my knees up and she's holding herself steady so I can push up hard from below. It hasn't been long, and she says oh god I'm gonna... and sits back up and reaches for her clit and at first I'm like there is no way, I don't expect to make a woman come the first time we fuck at all, much less just from penetration. But it's absurd timing, and also shut the fuck up and fuck. I keep my thrusts even and steady, I am not a total moron, and she shudders and her chest flushes and her weight crashes down. Not a huge one in the continuum but I barely keep from losing it myself, were there no condom it would be hopeless and I want to fuck her forever.

She settles and I take some time with her nipples, usually one doesn't bite on a first date but I push her nipple with my tongue against my top teeth and her breath catches. My other hand pressing her entire breast so she can control how much pressure she likes, she is warm and alive and I roll her onto her side and then her back, still inside and I can use my whole body to one purpose, she is a wonder underneath me, at last I put my thumb in her mouth and she sucks and I feel her teeth and almost lose it again. Her legs are folded and her knees go past my shoulder, she has gloriously sheer stockings on that look perfect, but at the cost of feeling all of her soft smooth skin against me. I can't stop to take the time to get them off and that is the only regret I will have. So many slight variations to missionary, it's not like I have a checklist but again there's a natural cycle as one set of muscles fatigues, now deep and close and short, pubic bones grinding and our eyes locked and tongues entwined, then pulling back and letting her roll her hips up into me, now full long strokes spread wide, so open but still tight. She is taking it hard, harder than I've fucked anyone, wet slaps and her breath starts to go again and again I'm like there is no way, not the easiest position to hold steady, I don't do hip thrusts every week solely for opportunities like this... but I don't not do them for that reason either. The work pays off and for a second time she is over. It feels like she's fucking as hard as I am.

We settle on our sides and pause briefly, I feel like an animal and I pull her top leg up and roll her over and under me, hard to do without falling out but it works, and her ass is pushing into my hips, I had barely gotten a chance to feel it earlier, it's firm and round and I rock into her gently for a minute enjoying the smooth pressure into my pelvis and belly. Greedy now, I pull her by her hips onto her knees, and her long back is before me, muscles rippling along her spine and she looks back, eyes half-lidded and I pull her up, her torso the right length to turn her head and take my tongue into her mouth, how can I get deeper inside this woman, hard and short or long and slow, chest to back so I can reach around and put pressure on her clit and feel my size sawing out of her and she starts to fuck herself back in earnest and her breathing shortens and now I'm learning the pattern. I am aware of the music after a period of obliviousness and the timing is right, Pluto is here and it's perfect, I just have to explode this body off me...

Finally I roll onto my back and bring her with me, still inside. She thinks I'm going for reverse cowgirl so I can savor the view, the curve of her neck, my cock splitting her labia and her incredible ass right there. And I do savor the view. But that wasn't quite my intention. I pull her down with her back against my chest, this is maybe my favorite position, her full weight on my body and her skin against mine except those cursed stockings and I can reach her mouth breasts clit with my hands or just wrap her up and squeeze her close to me... my lips on her neck the pulse thrumming and I feel bigger than ever. Her legs are together and she's tighter now and sure enough she comes again, the waves through her torso in my arms.

Without thinking I start moving again and she laughs and says she needs a break and suddenly I'm aware of how long we've been fucking. The album is over, the room is silent but for the sound of our panting. She slides in next to me and we catch our breath, I'm sheepish, I don't know that I've ever fucked for that long continuously. I feel like I've come, wrung out, blissed out, but my cock is still straining against the condom five minutes later and she takes it off and sucks me with purpose, as before, the pleasure is intense, but it's been too much stimulation for too long. I barely care about coming at this point, I'd rather ride this high but it's hard to explain so I finish myself with her on top of me and her breath against mine one last time.

Almost immediately I lose the plot. I want her to stay, words are powerful, words are my friends but the words to keep her here tonight don't exist. She's not rushing off, we're lounging and going to take a shower but then she is going to leave and I will likely never see her again. My brain recoils against this fact and I am inside my head explaining the script, how the scene ends, a treasured experience and fond memory but no more. I am not holding down coherent conversation. She asks me about threesomes, she's bi, and I'm aware that I want her to like me, I want to say something cool and flirty and I get a paralyzing kaleidoscope of possible responses, stories about awkward college moments and near misses and partial successes but they all involve exposition and I'm not sure any of them are cool, or even interesting.

I rally enough to bumble through the denouement, a brief farce where I play the role of someone who has never before adjusted shower temperature. I partially salvage the threesome question by mentioning the robot-Björk-on-robot-Björk action in the All Is Full of Love video, but it doesn't really open a conversation. I ask her what her favorite idioms are, a lost topic from dinner, and then can't think of a single one to respond with. And then she is out the door and gone.

Removed from the acute desire to impress her, I recover quickly and drift back towards the script. I'm not not wistful, but I am appreciating my new treasured experience and fond memory as I fall asleep. I also already know I am going to try to pen a second chapter. I'll be brand new tomorrow. A little bit tired. But brand new.