"post-coital conversation no. 5" by m.m. gumbin
Her legs hung limply over the bed’s edge as he lifted his bare torso up and pulled himself out of her thighs, the wood floor creaking with the nervous shuffle of his hooves. His shoulders—broad and hairless, riddled with self-consciousness—stiffened, in stark juxtaposition to his lower equine half. She lay there exhausted, her limbs numb, incapacitated, unsure if this is how her body was supposed to be reacting. It had not been what she expected.
“So. How was it?” he asked.
She exhaled, a deep breath. Her gaze focused on the stucco ceiling, whatever she could find not to look at him. The plaster made many different shapes and appeared to her at once cluttered and blank. “It was good,” she said.
“Just good?” his voice quivered.
She wasn’t sure how she felt. It was painful, perhaps pleasurable, but mostly made her feel… objectified: like a dog’s play toy, ruffled and torn with abandon. She knew he meant no harm, that he lacked skill, that it was also his first time. And yet, she was surprised to find in someone so timid such a beast underneath.
“I did my best, really. It’s difficult to get the positioning, the angle, quite right.” He huffed quietly, clearly disappointed.
“It’s okay. Sex is always kind of awkward, right?”
She had considered herself adventurous, reliably up for trying something new. But mythology? her friends would ask. And not even a satyr? Well, she’d say, let’s first see how the hoof fits, er, you know. She wondered what she’d say to them now, as she felt his waiting presence loom over her. His tail twirled somewhat happily behind him as his torso twisted from side to side, looking and lingering around her apartment as if to make the moment last.
She sighed. His inexperience had been rather charming at the bar(n), in that cute-college-freshman way. But she was not the relationship type anymore, their dalliance really a one-time thing.
“You’ve got a nice place.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, it’s kind of late. What do you think about me—"
The place stunk of his odor, of sweat, of blood. She wasn’t sure if her period had come early or his girth had broken through some second hymen.
“Can you just… clean that up?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, sorry.”
She watched him trot to the bathroom naked and thought of how strange his body looked. His four hairy legs were twice the size of her arms. His upper body flabbier than she’d imagined, not as defined as the pictures she’d seen. And the hair that ran down his entire back in a line, into an L-shape down his lower half; she hadn’t even noticed that.
She smirked to herself. Sex was like Twister: moving around the shapes of disproportionate bodies to fit them together, to work with and against one another, to form some kind of union. She missed those childhood games.
He strutted back over with a wet rag, his head hanging down, his shoulders curved inwards, looking like a contracted roly poly. Somehow, just hours ago, she had wanted to ride him all night long. Now, after his meek personality had revealed itself and replaced that confident stride, his body seemed not a thing to tame, but a tentative armor, all that coarse hair and soft skin. Only after sharing something as intimate as sex could she see him so differently. Who was this man?
Then, she gazed down at her own body with new eyes: her misshapen breasts fell to opposite sides like deflating balloons; her belly button seemed alien, with its random indentation above her waist; her arms and legs protruded from her torso like doughy bread loaves. Her body was just as strange as his. These embodied shapes, with their unique creases, contours, and curves, had been connected: inside, on top of, and wrapped around one another. I mean, she thought, that should be awkward, right?
He squatted onto his haunches, in between her legs, and washed the sheets, obviously ashamed that it had come to this. The white wet cloth bled red, ruined and smeared, as it absorbed her blood.
She was about ready to call it a night, but then, he looked up and smiled, that smile that convinced her in the first place, the look in his eyes of humanity, of sensitivity. She could tell that he got attached too easily. In fact, so did she. For a few minutes anyway. Drawn in. How emotions get the better of me, she used to say.
But this felt different. This feeling was rough, like the dirt in Kentucky where she once ran wild as a little girl, where she rubbed her feet through the viscous mud, back and forth, amazed at the way it would wash over, envelop, and mold her toes. Sensations that felt like discoveries. She could feel herself getting excited again as he sloshed that rag near her inner thighs.
“Did it hurt?” He glanced up but then avoided eye contact, as if knowing the truth, perhaps what had kept him from consummating with girls before.
But she just giggled and seductively nodded her head, her eyes fixed on his. Then she slid her bare legs up to his neck and pulled his torso down. Desires are primitive, she thought. There’s got to be some place for awkwardness and passion to coexist, for reason and impulse, for man and animal. He hovered over her, so close she could now feel the tip of his nose, soaking up his scent.
So. How was he? Her girlfriends would later ask.
Good, she’d say, leaning over and speaking in hushed breaths. Very, very good.
m.m. gumbin is a writer and filmmaker from Tucson, AZ. He is an MFA candidate in Fiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts and a 2018 graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His writing has been published in The Normal School, Motherwell, and Fiction Attic Press. He works in Development at Red Hen Press and lives in Los Angeles, CA with his dog Fiona.
