fraction, but sometimes a fraction is all it takes to slip the whole world sideways.
Suddenly I was awakened to the heat coming from between her legs, pressing into my thigh. I felt her lips resting against my neck, her eyelashes fluttering across my skin like a paintbrush every time she blinked.
All my senses were alive, and I didn’t want to think anymore; I only wanted to feel. I reached up and put my hands in October’s hair, and it was fur too. I lifted her face, pressed my forehead into hers, closed my eyes, and in that darkness I saw us connected by thin, fuzzy strings of light that kept wrapping around us in big, electric circles, binding us together. I wasn’t completely on psychedelic autopilot though, because I remember struggling not to kiss her. And I remember thinking I don’t have to kiss her, because I was positive it would be just as satisfying to stand there and inhale her. My eyes were still closed, and I took long, deep breaths through my nose. And then I thought, How do I get inside of her? I need to be inside of her. But I didn’t mean fucking. I wanted all of me inside all of her, and I had a notion there might be a zipper somewhere on her body, and if I found it I could climb in and live there for the rest of the night.
When I opened my eyes, I saw thousands of little gnats flying around us. Real ones, not hallucinations. I wanted to shoo them away, but my hands wouldn’t move from October’s hair.
She rubbed harder against my leg and then caught herself and tried to pull away, but I didn’t let her go.
“Joe—”
Gently, I tilted her head up so that I could see her eyes. I didn’t think I would be able to hear her talking if I wasn’t looking into her eyes.
Her glassy pupils met mine and she said, “Let’s go back to the cottage.”
I took her hand and we floated up the hill.
Inside, I was paranoid that the gnats from outside were all over us and said, “We need to take a shower.”
She nodded, and we dropped our jackets and shirts on the floor by the table, and our jeans and underwear on the bathroom tile. I turned on the shower and we waited by the tub until the water got warm. Once we got in, our hands had minds of their own.
The water didn’t feel strange like I thought it would, but October’s wet skin did. She was slippery and unctuous like mercury. Her breasts felt bigger in my palms. Her hands on my dick felt like a warm mouth. The stream from the showerhead above us was a waterfall; the soap on our bodies smelled like the wild fennel that grew all over the trails on Mount Tam, and I was sure I had never wanted to fuck a woman more than I wanted to fuck October then.
“We can’t,” she kept saying.
“I know.”
But when we stepped out of the shower, we didn’t towel off, we went straight to the living room. October tore the comforter to the floor because she said it was covered in germs, and then she fell across the bed. I pulled her to the edge, got on my knees, and went down on her. And that wasn’t something I ever did without being pressured or prompted. It wasn’t something I’d ever been comfortable doing. I didn’t think I was good at it, and it made me feel feeble and awkward. But in that room I was free, and I still wanted to open October up and crawl inside of her, and I think I figured that was my way in. I swore she tasted like cake batter, and part of me thought it would be a beautiful dream to stay down there all night. But right before she came, she pulled me up so that I was on top of her, took my face in her hands, and said, “Joe, gravity makes perfect sense to me now. I can feel the pull of the Earth on my body. I can feel the weight of my spirit inside my body. And it weighs so much more than my physical body. I understand now. Gravity is Earth’s way of keeping our spirits on the ground.”
I kissed her then for first time all night, certain there was nothing else happening in the entire world but that kiss. I