1. Somewhere between her third and fourth orgasms, there was this moment. My fingers released the pressure on her clitoris. My head rested on her rising and falling chest. Seconds earlier, it was passionate and loud and sweaty and frenetic. Now, breathless, we lay in stillness. That’s when there was this moment. This moment where I could hear her heart racing through her chest, feel her throbbing through her clit and into my fingertips, and for a brief, ephemeral moment, our pulses aligned. It was like being at a stoplight and your blinker aligns with the car in front of you. We looked at each other softly. Her eyes were obscured. I swept her hair aside.

2. Hair aside, there were other attributes that I did possess, I assured her when we first exchanged photos. Kindness. Respect. Experience. Enthusiasm. A great smile. But no hair. She responded, “cute! Not my type, but I’ll try anything twice.”

3. “Twice in three weeks,” she cheered as she walked toward me on the sidewalk outside my apartment. Even though it was our second time meeting, I still had butterflies all morning. (This would be true for all future meetings too.) There was something about her.

Her hair, her breasts, her personality bounced as she approached me. Maybe it was because we had spent weeks chatting (plus the five hours we spent together during the first meeting), maybe it was because she was fundamentally such a charming and wonderful person, maybe it was because she was one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen, it felt like looking at the sun – if looking at the sun caused you to blush. In public and private, I often found myself looking away from her, and then being drawn back to admire her.

We quickly reacquainted in my apartment. As we waited for the spicy noodles we ordered, we drank the rosé she brought and discussed everything from politics to mechanical keyboards to astrology to Vegas to cookware to our shared love of music, friends, and dancing. We gushed about what makes for the best muff dives – enthusiastic consent, mutual safety and comfort, and effusive communication. Our rapport was effortless. Our bed chem was magical.

No longer able to resist, I finally asked, “can I kiss you?”

“It’s hot that you asked,” she said.

Folks. This was maybe the hottest make out session of my life. We wanted to absolutely devour each other. It was intimate, electric, sensual, breathtaking, and sauna-level steamy. Short kisses. Medium kisses. Long kisses. We had everything. There were moments where we weren’t even kissing. We paused – as if to fully savor the present moment – eyes closed, our foreheads touching, our noses circled and rubbed each other. I sucked on her ears and teased her – kissing down her chest and then returned to her neck. She groaned. “Wow you are such a good kisser,” she said, her eyes still closed, as if she was still processing. “There are a lot of bad kissers out there. Believe me.”

That was when I first noticed what would become my favorite facial expression of hers. It was like a stank face. Her nose crinkled. Her lips curved. She growled, “ooh you know what you’re doing.” As we kissed, my right hand cupped her left breast. My left hand rested in the space between her folded legs. Our bodies drew even closer. Our temperatures rose. We started to unbutton and unzip, a continued escalation when [BUZZ] [BUZZ] [BUZZ]

1. Buzzed? Drunk? I couldn’t be. We only had a glass and a half each. But when I tore myself away from her, from the couch, to retrieve the food being delivered – after sincerely contemplating just asking the delivery driver to leave the food on the street – I stumbled down the hallway, my equilibrium off-balance. Oh, I thought. This is what it feels like to be drunk with lust. I made my way back. After much deliberation, we decided to eat while the food was hot. I liked that we made each other really laugh. Not the practiced, fake, polite laugh that everyone has to do. But the surprising even to ourselves guffawing that comes with a genuine laugh. Authentic, witty, intelligent, well-rounded, playful. I thought in disbelief, who IS she?

2. She helped clear the dishes and we returned to the couch where the tension had continued to build while we ate. We burned with anticipation. A slow burn. Painfully slow – which made the yearning so much worse (read: better). I rubbed her legs while we talked. Our eyes locked. She casually picked up my hand and moved it farther up inner thigh. She knew what she wanted. I knew what she wanted. She wanted to melt into a puddle. I did not break her gaze. I did not give her what she wanted…yet.

I rubbed her inner thigh. I traced my fingers along her vagina over her pants. Above it, below it, beside it, circling it, from one leg to the next. I brushed by it, accidentally. Then intentionally. Gentle, then firm. Firm, then gentle. She tried to keep talking but her voice trailed off as her eyes rolled back, her head tilted back, and she moaned. Rapidly, she tapped her hand on the couch and growled that she liked how I was touching her. She was expressive, and I loved how well we communicated.

We languished. We smoldered. We melted into each other. The thinnest piece of fabric lay between what we both wanted. She grew warmer and warmer. She was radiating. We couldn’t talk anymore as we were entirely consumed by lust. When she opened her eyes, she looked at me with ravenous, hungry eyes. We practically ran to the bedroom. It was time.

1. “Time for one more?” I asked. She was planning on running a bunch of errands that one can only do in the suburbs – Costco, Target, Lowe’s – before returning to the city, about an hour away. But afternoon turned to evening, as we had, once again, spent five hours with each other.

We first started with a coconut oil massage. I massaged her shoulders. Her neck. Her back. Her pus…wait, not yet lol. I teased and teased her. I caressed and sucked on her breasts. I brushed past her vulva with my nose and my lips. My lips criss-crossed her lips. She moaned deeply that she loved that stroke. Then I incorporated my mouth. Firm licks with the tips of my tongue, right on her clit. I remembered what she liked from our first meeting. “If you want me to cum, this is the way to do it,” she said as she squirmed and made her stank face again. She rapidly tapped the bed, and said, “ughhh you are so sexy.” She came. Once, then twice, then thrice. I kept my finger on her clit in the exact spot I knew she liked. We stayed like that, suspended in time, me pressing, until she shivered. “I think I gotta leave a Yelp review. How are you so good at this?” I asked her if she had time for one more, and she said yes.

I flipped her over onto all fours. Face down. Ass up. That’s the way I like to lap her up. Her legs were shaky and like jello. She had just a little more balance than a baby giraffe. (She would not end up running errands, not because of time constraints, but because she couldn’t walk through all those big box stores with wobbly legs. She was exhausted.) She was so wet. I felt her pressing backwards into me. She wanted my tongue in her. She wanted more and more. I lapped and licked and massaged her clit and she orgasmed again. “How can I put on clothes if you keep doing this to me?''

1. To me, RAOMD is an ephemeral way station with lots of comings and goings (hopefully lots of comings.) With differing intentions, priorities, preferences, experiences, and schedules, the stars need to align to meet someone, especially someone with whom you can share spicy nudes, spicy noods, and equally fun spicy and non-spicy conversation. I thank the stars that she (and really, all my muff dive successes) were exactly that. Actual friends. We text. We check in on each other. We encourage each other as we meet new partners. When the stars align, we meet up. And when we do meet up, butterflies all morning, hearts beating slightly faster, like an electric current is running through our veins, our bodies feeling the magnetic attraction, we kiss. And when we kiss, it’s kismet.