Silicone Dildo in a Calgary Cabin, Three Days Snowed In
home_private · afternoon
Three days snowed into a Calgary Airbnb cabin with no WiFi and nothing but a silicone dildo bought as a joke at a bachelorette party six months ago, still in its packaging — I open it finally,...
#flannel_pajamas#home_private#tasting#winter
It has been on the nightstand since I unpacked. I put it there as a joke to myself — look how prepared I am, look how funny — and then I stopped looking at it, which is its own kind of looking. Three days. The snow doesn't care. The wind hits the window in...
Silicone Dildo in a Vancouver Condo, Post-Surgery Morning
home_private · morning
Eight months since the surgery and she is learning the geography of her rebuilt body the way a surveyor learns new land — she presses the dildo in at a different angle than before, takes a slow...
#home_private#hospital_cotton_shorts#spring
The light through the curtains was the particular grey that Vancouver does in April — not dark, not bright, the kind of light that doesn't ask anything of you. It came through the linen panels in a diffuse, even wash and lay across the bed without drama. She...
Fingers at a Vanity Mirror in an LA Bungalow, Night
home_private · night
I leave the vanity light on and the closet mirror angled just so — I want to see what they would see if they were watching, and I touch myself slowly enough to study every expression my face makes,...
#home_private#silk_robe#summer
The mirror is angled the way I like it — closet door pulled to forty-five degrees, the glass catching the vanity light and throwing it back across the bed in a band of amber. I positioned it before I sat down. That's the part I don't examine too closely: the...
Partner's Hand in a New York Apartment, January Morning
home_private · morning
He wakes before the alarm and his hand moves under the duvet without asking — she lies still in the grey January light, watching snow collect on the sill, thinking of the first morning they did this...
#duvet#home_private#tasting#winter
The snow had been falling long enough to collect on the sill — not a dusting, but a ledge of it, building in the grey January light the way silence builds in a room where no one is speaking. She was watching it when his hand moved. She hadn't heard him wake....
Wearable Vibrator in a Chicago Conference Room, Winter
conference_room · afternoon
The app is on his phone and she is giving a presentation to forty people in a River North conference room when he turns it to medium — she doesn't break eye contact with the slide deck, she doesn't...
#conference_room#sheath_dress#winter
She knows exactly where he is sitting. Third row, left side, one seat in from the aisle. She clocked him when she set her laptop on the podium — the way you clock a variable before a negotiation, because variables that go untracked become surprises, and...
Silicone Dildo in a Montreal Condo, Winter Night
home_private · night
She lights the candle her grandmother brought from Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré before she takes the dildo from the drawer — the two objects on the nightstand together, the wax saint and the silicone...
#flannel_nightgown#home_private#winter
She lit it the way her grandmother had taught her — one match, no second chances, the sulfur smell gone before the wick caught. The votive from Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré was small enough to cup in both palms, cream-coloured, the wax already faintly concave from...
Glass Dildo and Wand in an LA Bungalow, Sunday Morning
home_private · morning
Sunday morning in Silver Lake and the ritual is always the same: she sets the wand on the left side and the glass dildo on the right, pulls the blackout curtain to a single strip of California light,...
#cotton_robe#home_private#summer
The strip of light came through the same place it always did — two inches wide, maybe three, falling across the foot of the bed at the angle that meant it was still early. She had learned to read the Sunday morning by where it landed. Right now it cut across...
Bullet Vibrator in a New York Gym Locker Room, Winter Morning
gym locker room · dawn
The locker room empties after the 6 a.m. spin class and she stands at her open locker for a moment too long — the bullet is in her gym bag where she put it deliberately last night, and she counts the...
#gym_locker_room#sports_bra_and_leggings#winter
She starts counting before she means to. The last footstep — heels on tile, unhurried, someone who has nowhere to be at six-fifteen on a Tuesday — and then the soft hydraulic sigh of the outer door, and she is already at three before she decides that counting...
Sleep Shorts on a Texas Ranch Porch at Pre-Dawn
home_private · pre_dawn
Alone on the porch at 5:30 a.m. with the coffee going cold on the rail — I slide my hand inside my sleep shorts and work my fingers in deep while the cattle stand motionless in the blue pre-dawn, and...
#home_private#sleep_shorts#spring#tasting
The cattle haven't moved. They stand out there in the blue-grey pasture like they were set down by hand and forgotten, every one of them still, their outlines soft in the dark that hasn't quite decided to lift. I've been watching them for ten minutes now,...
Wand Vibrator in a Vermont Cabin, Three Days Snowed In
cabin · afternoon
Three days snowed in alone at the family cabin in Vermont — she finds the wand in her bag exactly where she packed it six months ago and realizes, watching the fire die to orange coals, that she has...
#cabin#winter#wool_socks_and_thermal_undershirt
The coals had been going orange for an hour. She hadn't fed them. She'd watched them instead, from the floor with her back against the couch, the thermal rucked to mid-thigh, both wool-socked feet flat on the hearthrug. Watching the fire die was something she...
Hiking Shorts on a Vancouver Trail, Spring Morning
forest trail · morning
Two miles from the trailhead and no one behind me on the switchback — I step off the path into the cedar shadow, back against a trunk still damp from last night's rain, and work my fingers inside my...
#forest_trail#hiking_shorts#spring#tasting
The cedar shadow falls across the path and I step into it without deciding to. The trunk is still damp from last night's rain — I can feel it through my shirt the moment my back settles against the bark, a cold that spreads between my shoulder blades and...
Silicone Dildo in an Amtrak Sleeper Berth, Midwest Winter
Amtrak Empire Builder · late_night
The Amtrak Empire Builder slides through Iowa at 2 a.m. and the berth curtain is just thin enough that I can hear the couple in the next compartment — I press the silicone dildo in slowly, one hand...
#amtrak_empire_builder#sleep_slip#winter
The train has been moving through nothing for two hours. I know this because I have been awake for all of it — lying on the narrow bunk, watching the Iowa dark slide past the gap in the curtain, counting the town lights that appear and dissolve before I can...
Glass Dildo in a Vancouver Condo, Anniversary Apart
home_private · night
The Vancouver condo, their anniversary — he is in Singapore, the time zones impossible — she uses the glass dildo they chose together in the shop on Granville Street three years ago, and afterward...
#his_tshirt#home_private#summer#tasting
She had set it on the nightstand before she called him. That was deliberate — the archivist in her needing to establish sequence, to know that she had looked at it first, that it had been there in the frame of the conversation without him knowing. The glass...
Silicone Dildo in an LA Bungalow, Partner Sleeping
home_private · late_night
His breathing has been even for twenty minutes and I slide the silicone dildo from beneath my side of the mattress, the LA night still warm through the open slats, moving slow enough that the bed...
#cotton_underwear#home_private#summer#tasting
The fan makes three rotations for every breath he takes. I have been counting. He's been under for twenty minutes — I know the sound of real sleep, the way his exhale goes slack at the end, no more performance in it. The bungalow holds the day's heat in its...
Rabbit Vibrator in a Chicago Office Bathroom, Midday
office_bathroom · midday
Twelve minutes before the all-hands resumes — she locks the single-occupancy bathroom on the 34th floor, sets the rabbit on the lowest setting, and tracks the second hand on her watch with the same...
#office_bathroom#winter#wool_blazer_and_pencil_skirt
The second hand passes twelve and she starts counting. Eleven minutes, fifty-nine seconds. She knows the number because she counted the walk from the conference room — forty-one steps, one elevator bank, one locked door — and she knows the number because she...
Glass Dildo in a Toronto Condo on a January Night
home_private · night
The glass dildo sits on the nightstand like an artifact she has been studying for weeks — tonight she finally opens the instructions she printed and sets her phone timer, the Toronto skyline...
#home_private#sleep_shirt#winter
The Toronto skyline sits cold and gridded in the floor-to-ceiling window, a thousand lit squares suspended above January. She has looked at it every night for three weeks without really seeing it. Tonight she sees it. Tonight she has set her phone face-up on...
Flannel Shirt in a New York Apartment, First Winter Alone
home_private · morning
Six weeks since the divorce papers arrived and my body is remembering itself — I pull the wand from the nightstand drawer at 7 a.m., the radiator clanking, snow silent against the window, and I bring...
#flannel_shirt#home_private#tasting#winter
The radiator knocks twice, then goes quiet, then knocks again. I have learned its rhythm in six weeks the way you learn anything you cannot turn off — by lying still and letting it become part of you. The window shows nothing but grey and white. Snow falling...
Wearable Vibrator, Partner Remote, Manhattan Apartment
home_private · night
He holds the remote and I hold nothing — the wearable vibrator pulsing on a pattern he's choosing from across the Manhattan apartment while I try to read, which was the bet, and I'm losing the bet,...
#home_private#leggings_and_sweater#winter
The book is open to page forty-one. It has been open to page forty-one for twenty minutes. I know this because the lamp on the side table is the only light in the apartment and it falls directly on the page and I have read the same paragraph four times and I...
Wand Vibrator in a Parked Car, Austin Rain
parked car · afternoon
Parked in the H-E-B lot in the rain, Austin, she pulled the wand from her gym bag because the conversation with her ex went twenty minutes longer than she had body for — now she's in the backseat,...
#gym_clothes#parked_car#spring
The windows had already started when she climbed into the back. Just at the edges first — a soft erasure working inward from the corners of the glass — and she watched it happen the way you watch something you didn't ask for arrive anyway. She hadn't planned...
Fingers Inside in a Hoh Rain Forest Tent, Summer
Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, Washington · midday
The Hoh Rain Forest campsite is silent at noon, her tentmate gone to the river, and she is on her sleeping bag in the green light that comes through the rain fly — she works her fingers inside...
#hiking_shorts#summer#tasting#washington
The green is not one color. She noticed that first — the way the rain fly turns noon into something underwater, something that belongs to a different taxonomy of light entirely. Olive where the nylon doubles at the seams. Pale where it stretches thin over the...
Glass Dildo in a New York Apartment, Sunday After Mass
home_private · morning
Sunday morning after mass and she is still in the blue dress, the glass dildo from the drawer she has prayed over more than once — she uses it with the same deliberateness she brings to prayer, which...
#church_dress#home_private#tasting#winter
She has not taken the dress off. This is the thing she is aware of first — that she came home from mass, hung her coat on the hook by the door, set her gloves on the radiator the way she always does, and then stood in the bedroom doorway in the blue dress and...
Bullet Vibrator in a Los Angeles Bungalow, Lights On, Mirror
home_private · night
Twenty-nine years old and I've never done this with the lights on — the Echo Park bungalow, the bullet vibrator, the bathroom mirror I turned to face the bed three weeks ago and haven't turned back,...
#home_private#nothing#summer
The mirror is still there. I keep expecting to have turned it back. Three weeks ago I carried it out of the bathroom on a Thursday night, set it against the baseboard across from the bed, angled it up. I don't know what I thought I was doing. I told myself it...
Fingers in an Amtrak Sleeper Car, Midwest Night
Amtrak sleeper car · late_night
The Amtrak sleeper between Chicago and St. Louis, curtain drawn, the car swaying like a slow argument — I've been awake since Springfield thinking about the woman in the dining car and I slide my...
#amtrak_sleeper_car#autumn#tasting#travel_clothes
The curtain moves when the car sways, a slow drift left and then correcting, left and correcting, like something that cannot decide. I have been watching it for forty minutes. Since Springfield. Since the lights of the platform slid away and left only my own...
Fingers in a Portland Gym Steam Room, Dawn
gym · dawn
The Portland gym steam room is empty at 6 a.m. and she is already doing something she will not categorize — she's between the bench and the wall, fingers working quickly, and when she's done she...
#gym#tasting#towel#winter
The steam valve hissed and stopped. Hissed and stopped. She had been listening to it for four minutes, which was long enough to know no one was coming. She had not planned this. That was the part she kept returning to, sitting on the lower bench with the...