The harness came in a Trader Joe’s bag, which is how I knew Dani was nervous. She only reuses bags when she’s trying to act normal.
“It’s borrowed,” she said, setting it on my bed like a casserole. “From Marguerite. From, like, two apartments ago. She says it’s been washed. She said it twice, so now I don’t trust it.”
“We’ll wash it again.”
“We’ll wash it again,” Dani agreed, and then neither of us moved, because the black straps were lying there on my gray comforter and the silicone part was lying there with them, a dusty plum color, not huge, not tiny, honestly kind of cheerful. Like a thing a toddler would be given to chew on. I started laughing and could not stop. Dani put her hand over her face and her shoulders went too.
We had been talking about this for about three weeks. Talking is generous. What happened was that I said, in the car, apropos of nothing, that I’d never done it from the giving side, and Dani went quiet in a way I’ve learned means yes, please, keep going, and then three days later she texted me a screenshot of a harness product page with the caption “no pressure” and about nine crying-laughing faces. No pressure. From a woman who had clearly read the size chart.
So here we were, Saturday afternoon, my apartment, the radiator knocking, the blinds half down so the light came in in stripes. I had put on real music, which was a mistake, because it was too good and made me feel like I was in a movie about a person who knows what she’s doing.
“Okay,” I said. “Who’s wearing it?”
“You said you wanted to.”
“I do. I’m asking if you still want me to.”
Dani took her hand off her face. Her eyes were wet from laughing. “Yes. I want you to. I’ve wanted you to since you said that thing in the car, and I’ve been walking around for three weeks like a girl with a secret. Ask Marguerite. I called her at work.”
“You called your ex-roommate at work to borrow a sex toy.”
“She was thrilled.”
I picked the harness up. It was heavier than it looked and the buckles were cold. “I don’t know how this goes on.”
“I do,” Dani said, a little too fast, and then went pink to the ears. “I watched one video. One. It was a very calm woman with a very good lamp.”
“Show me.”
She stood up and took the thing from me, and for a second she held it against her own hips to figure out the front from the back, frowning, a girl doing a puzzle. Then she handed it back. “Easier if you step into it. Leg loops first. Do it over your jeans, we’ll — no, off. Off is better. You’ll feel the straps.”
I took my jeans off. I have had Dani see me in underwear a hundred times and it was not weird, but it was weird to do it in the middle of the afternoon with my socks still on, with a plan, with the plum-colored thing waiting. She watched. She wasn’t pretending not to.
“You look good with socks on,” she said.
“Shut up.”
I stepped into the leg loops. Dani knelt to pull the straps up my thighs, and her knuckles dragged along the inside of my leg, and my whole body went oh, a little drop, a little silly. She felt me flinch and looked up from down there.
“Too tight?”
“No. It’s — you’re just right there.”
“I’m just right here,” she agreed, and kept her eyes on mine, and tugged the strap one hole snugger, and I felt it settle low across my hips, snug against the bones. She stayed on her knees a second longer than the buckle needed.
“Stand up,” I said, and my voice came out different. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Good. I’m nervous too.”
“You are not.”
“My hands are shaking. Look.” She held them out and they were. A tiny tremor, like she’d had too much coffee. I took them and kissed the knuckles, one hand, the other, and the harness bumped her stomach and we both looked down and burst out laughing again.
“It’s so there,” I said.
“It’s so there!”
We were a mess. That’s what I want to get across. People write this like a ceremony. It was two women in a bright apartment honking with laughter because a purple silicone object kept poking the furniture.
The dresser is across from my bed, an old thing I got from my aunt, solid wood, with a mirror on top that tilts. I don’t think either of us planned the mirror. But when Dani sat on the edge of the bed to pull her sweater off, I turned to put my phone on the dresser and there we were in it. Her in her bra and her cheeks all flushed, hair coming out of its clip. Me, bare-legged, socks, a black belt of straps around my hips, that ridiculous cheerful plum shape sticking out like I’d walked in from another world.
I stared. I looked like somebody I’d want to meet. That surprised me.
“Oh,” Dani said behind me, quietly. “Oh, look at you.”
“I look insane.”
“You look incredible. You look like a — a pirate. A very sexy pirate.” She came up behind me and put her chin on my shoulder, her hands flat on my stomach, and in the mirror I watched her eyes go down and come back up. “I’m serious, Cass. Look at yourself.”
“I’m looking.”
“What do you see?”
“A girl who’s about to be terrible at this.”
“A girl who’s about to be great at this,” she said into my neck. Her mouth was warm. She kissed the place under my ear, and I leaned back into her, and one of her hands slid down and closed around the silicone, over the front of the harness, and gave it a slow stroke like she was introducing herself.
I made a noise I have never made before.
“That’s a good noise,” Dani said, delighted. “I’m going to remember that noise.”
“Do it again.”
She did. And I swear I felt it, the base of the toy pressing on me through the straps, the pull of her hand tugging the whole thing against my clit. It was the weirdest feeling. It was not nothing. It was like being touched through a very thick glove, which was frustrating and kind of wonderful and made me want to walk into a wall.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I want to be on top of you. I want to see you.”
“In the mirror?”
“In the mirror. If you want.”
“I want.” She turned me around and kissed me, finally, a real kiss, hard, and her tongue tasted like the mint she’d been sucking on in the car. Her hands went to her own bra and she undid it, quick, quick, and dropped it on my floor, and then she wriggled out of her leggings and underwear in one go, hopping, nearly taking out the lamp. “Sorry. Sorry! Wow, so smooth.”
She lay back on the bed with her head on my pillow and her knees up, her skin freckled everywhere, and I stood at the end of the bed with a purple object between us and, I’ll be honest, for one second I froze. I didn’t know where to start. It was one thing to want it. It was another to have all the parts out in the afternoon.
She saw that. She didn’t make a joke. She held her hand out to me and said, “Come here. We start slow. We start with your mouth, if you want. I’ll tell you if anything’s wrong. I’m a loud talker, you know I’m a loud talker.”
“You’re the loudest talker I’ve ever met.”
“Then you’ll never have to guess.”
That unlocked me. I climbed up and kissed her, and then down, down her neck, her chest, and she arched when I took a nipple in my mouth, and the harness dragged against her thigh and she laughed and gasped at the same time, which is a sound I love. I went lower. I put my mouth on her the way I know she likes it, slow at first, tongue flat, and she said “yes, there, God, yes” and her hand went into my hair. I made her come once like that. I wanted to. I wanted her loose and soft and wet before anything else happened, and she was, when I looked up she had her arm over her eyes and her whole body was loose.
“You’re not allowed to be this good,” she said, breathless. “I had a plan. You’re ruining the plan.” She pulled me up by the shoulders. “Okay. I want to feel you. I want you to go in slow and I want us to see it. Pillow under me, please.”
I got the pillow, she lifted her hips, and I tucked it under. The lube was on the nightstand, the good kind in the tube, and I got it all over my hand and the silicone and, accidentally, her stomach, and she shrieked because it was cold. “Sorry. Sorry.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine, just warm it up next time.”
“Next time. I like that you said next time.”
“There’s going to be a next time,” Dani said. “You’re going to want a next time.”
I climbed between her knees. I had her ankles by my hips and there was the mirror over her shoulder, tilted just so, showing both of us from the side. I could see my own back, the straps across my shoulder blades, the line of my spine, and Dani’s face tipped up toward me. I held the toy at the base like she’d shown me, and lined up, and stopped.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “Go slow. Tell me what it looks like.”
“It looks —” I gave a hoarse little laugh. “It looks like I’m about to do the most important thing I’ve ever done with a purple dildo.”
“Cass.”
“Sorry. Okay. Going.”
I pushed. Just the tip, just enough, watching her face. Her mouth opened. She breathed out, a slow, long breath through her teeth. Her hand came up and grabbed my forearm, hard.
“Good?”
“So good. A little more. Wait. Wait. There. Okay. Okay, there.”
I went in another inch and stopped and she said “yes” and I went in another. I could feel it in the straps, the pressure low on my own body, a lazy pulse where the harness bore down on me with every little roll of my hips. It wasn’t like having a cock, because I don’t have one, and it also wasn’t like anything else. It was a new thing. I was holding all her pleasure in my hips. When she tilted up, I felt it. When she clenched, I felt that too, through my whole pelvis, which nobody had mentioned.
“Oh my God,” I said. “I can feel you.”
“I know. Isn’t it nuts?”
“Is this normal?”
“I don’t know,” Dani said, “I’ve never done this either. I’m learning with you.”
That did something to me. I’d thought she knew. I’d thought the confidence and the video with the good lamp meant she’d been here before. She hadn’t, either. We were both in new country, both holding on, and she’d still been brave enough to hand me the Trader Joe’s bag.
I leaned down and kissed her and started to move.
It took a minute to find a rhythm. My first few thrusts were stiff, jerky, like a person learning to drive stick. She laughed up at me, not meanly, and said “easier, easier, just rock,” and put her hands on my hips and showed me, a slow roll, forward and back, and I got it. My hips got it. I looked up and the mirror showed it too, the long muscle of my back working, the line of Dani’s thigh hooked high on my waist.
“Look,” she whispered. “Look at us.”
“I’m looking.”
“We’re so hot. Oh my God, we are so hot.”
We were. We really were. I watched myself move above her, hair falling in my face, socks still on, and I didn’t hate any of it. I looked like a person who wanted someone and was getting her. Dani’s face went to pieces under me, her mouth open, her lashes wet, her hand sliding between us to rub herself in time with every push, and I felt her start to tighten.
“Faster?” I asked.
“No. Harder. Deeper. Not faster. Like you mean it.”
I did it like I meant it. I put my forearms on either side of her head and drove down, long and deliberate, and she cried out and her heels dug into the back of my thighs. She was saying my name. She was saying God and right there and don’t stop and, once, very clearly, “you’re doing so good, baby,” which made something in my chest swell up so big I almost lost my rhythm.
“Say that again.”
“You’re doing so good.”
“Again.”
“You’re doing so good, you’re so good at this, don’t stop —”
And she broke. I felt it before I saw it, a clench and a hard shudder, her whole body pulsing around the silicone and bucking up into me, her fingers working furious circles, her head thrown back so the mirror caught the long stretch of her throat. She came with a sound like a kettle. I held still and let her. I held her through every wave and she kept hold of my arm so tightly I had little crescent marks later, five dents, a souvenir.
When she came down she laughed, then started to cry a little, the good kind, and pulled me down onto her chest, and the harness crunched against both of us.
“That,” she said into my hair, “was the best thing I’ve ever done with my body.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You were perfect.”
“I was stiff for the first minute.”
“You were perfect after the first minute. Roll over, I need to — oh, wait. You didn’t.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. You’re vibrating.”
I was, kind of. My thighs were trembling, my whole body one live wire. The base of the toy had been grinding on me for what felt like an hour and I was so close to the edge that I could taste it.
She eased out from under me, careful, slow, unbuckled me like she was unwrapping glass, and the straps fell away with a click. I lay back. She got between my legs and put her mouth right where the harness had been, warm, wet, soothing and cruel all at once, and I swear I came in under a minute, one ragged shout at the ceiling, my heel kicking the side of the dresser so the mirror swung wildly and showed us the ceiling fan, the corner of the window, the stripe of light.
“Oh,” Dani said, wiping her chin, smug. “Did the mirror move?”
“Everything moved.”
“Good. Marguerite’s going to want a full report.”
“You are not telling Marguerite.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I wondered if I would. I think I would.”
“We’ll get our own,” I said. “We’ll order one that isn’t from Marguerite’s old apartment.”
“Black. With, like, a little buckle.”
“A little buckle.”
“You’d look fantastic in a little buckle.”
I laughed and turned my face into her hair. Outside somebody’s car alarm chirped and stopped. The light had moved across the floor and found the Trader Joe’s bag, still sitting empty by the bed, looking exactly like what it was: the most nervous, most courageous thing anyone had ever carried into this room.
“Hey, Dani.”
“Mm.”
“Thank you for bringing the bag.”
She snorted into my collarbone. “You’re so weird.”
“I mean it.”
“I know,” she said. “I know you do. Go to sleep, pirate.”
