Overblown and cut out.

Walking off the plane, respectably drunk from first class, my hair pulled back and pinned high, my skirt hugging my legs, nothing underneath, my heels flexing my calves, old perverts fucking leering at me. My mind was on one thing, what he'd think of me, would he kiss me outside on the sidewalk: would he kiss me, would his tongue taste like coffee hiding whiskey, would he finger me in his car while we drove to his place? I wondered if I was insane being here like this. My time with him flashed through me in less than a second: I went ahead and contacted him through his website. I'd read all of his books, but I'd read a lot of books, I read for a living. But there was something about him, not just the way his words stared a hole through me, but something about him as a person. I wasn't sure what it was exactly, the photos of him online or the fact that when I contacted him under the pretense (how I hate that word) of who I was in the city, who I worked for, what I did in publishing, he replied like I wanted him to, humble yet arrogant, and respectfully declining my literary interest in him. He had his own money, had conceived a writing application last year, and it had blown up hugely, and there were enough savvy investors to erase his need for a publishing deal, which was too bad. But there was something vulnerable to the message, and when I called the number below his signature he was soft spoken, polite, and humorous. A month went on. A month. Constant texting, calling, photos. First the faces, then a shot of my tits, my ass, my fingers blocking an otherwise graphic shot of my sex. He sent me shots back, all of it: his chest, shoulders, cock, him out of the shower. It was the first time I'd sent a man anything like that, but I trusted him. In bed at night, I'd listen to him, ask him to read me something, and he finally did, and I'd masturbate to his voice, his words. For a man who wrote like him, he lived alone, confused by it, but something told me he needed distance. But it didn't stop me from flying out west and seeing him.

First flesh impression: He was a little heavier in person, especially in profile. He was taller than I'd imagined him, 6'1, big shoulders, tattoos down his arms, which I'd seen in the photos, but in person they were more prominent. I have one, on my shoulder blade, a black rabbit, a ghost rabbit from fiction that stirred me as a little girl, and when he first saw it in an early photo I'd sent him he immediately texted back, "Watership Down, that image haunted me throughout my childhood in the saddest and best ways. Good piece."

--From that point on, the first impression didn't matter, I was mad for him. And outside on the sidewalk, there at SeaTac, he pulled me into him and kissed me, ran a big hand over my ass, got me hotter than a teenager.

Back at his place, a smaller place than I'd imagined, we had two hours of the bar up the street in us, I met his famous dog, and then he and I were in bed fucking like prisoners. It was Friday, then it was Saturday night: pizza boxes everywhere, empty bottles of wine. Walking out of the shower, I passed his desk and chair and it just then occurred to me that it was where everything happened for him, and something gripped me. I had to leave the next morning. I had to leave and I panicked. Back in bed I asked him what he thought of me, where he saw us going in the future. His dog jumped on the bed and curled up and slept behind the back of my legs. I instantly fell in love with both of them. But he basically told me that I lived in the city and he lived two thousand miles west. He also said we'd just met, which was fair, but it hurt. It hurt because of the last four weeks of constant contact, of wanting, almost hurting for him, and it also occurred to me there that he probably had a few more like me waiting in the shadows. Looking into his eyes I could see that I was nothing special. I was another reader, a hot piece of ass that might grace a poem in some obscure, chickenshit way. The moment changed for me, it changed his writing, and it changed him. But feeling him next to me, his cock against my leg, his freakishly big and weird body sleeping, his dog snoring right in rhythm with him, it was clear that I had to be the last piece for him, the last "booty call" he'd need to have. I rolled off the bed and quietly kissed the air until his dog awoke and walked out. I gave him a little bone from the box on top the fridge, and grabbed the longest knife from the rack, closed the bedroom door and watched his silhouette sleeping, bathed in moonlight, a drunk and fat attempt at what was once my future in my heart. I held the knife and felt the whiskey move me closer quietly. I'd had enough men like him. He wasn't special, he played with words for a living, and I'd fallen for it. He'd live after I left, but he'd never be able to fuck another woman.