I am obsessed with his body, desperate for the muscles beneath the skin, curious and hungry to run my tongue and fingers and everything else over the peaks and valleys. The bend of his collarbone, the soft part behind his ear, the marble of his strong legs.

I am engulfed in the smell of salt and wood and rainwater and fry oil in his hair, a combination that makes me nostalgic for something I can’t place. It’s so good it makes me dizzy.

I should not be surprised that he has a great dick. And maybe I’m not. I mean really, look at him. I never thought I cared about that kind of thing, for real, until that moment. And maybe it isn’t the size so much as how truly perfect it is. The Platonic ideal. His anatomy plugs so perfectly into mine, so satisfyingly correct. Every part of him manages to touch every part of me.

I feel like we are discovering or inventing sex for the first time. It’s suddenly so clear that yes, the motion of thrusting in and out is so that—ohhhh, right yes, it’s for both of us. When he throbs in me or puts my breast in his mouth, I feel myself heaving and thinking, Yes, they should write about this, there should be a whole genre about this.

I always felt like I was doing something wrong in the past when my mind would wander, and now I know I wasn’t. My mind wasn’t wandering far enough. While I lay in some Echo Park bedroom letting an okay-looking Loyola alum who met Jerry Seinfeld once go down on me, I was thinking about the meter outside. When Grayson and I had sex, I thought about whether or not the hot tub heater was turned on and if my Kindle was charged so I could go out and read after. But now, my mind has found what it couldn’t in meditation; I am thinking in colors and feelings and music and abstract imagery. I’m not awake or asleep. I’m experiencing something new.

And while my mind is in space, my body is fully present. Every nerve, every urge. I am following my desire like stage direction in a script. I want to, so I move on top of him. I bend over him, my hair falling in a curtain around our faces.

It’s. Fucking. Hot.

It’s not awkward when it’s over. We lie upside down on the bed, limbs entangled, the heat of the fire warming us from behind. I stare up at the print above the bed for a long while, both of us catching our breath.

“Have I told you about that? Why I have it?” I gesture at it.

He shakes his head. “No, actually. You haven’t.”