New Campfire Skills

*I wanted to write something that was funny and hot, where the fish-out-of-water aspect made the tenderness hit harder. If you smiled even once, thank you.*

I want to start this by saying I'm Benjamin, I'm fifty-two years old, and I own exactly zero pieces of gear that normal people take into the woods. I'm a tattoo artist. I work under artificial light, I drink oat milk lattes, and until recently my idea of roughing it was a hotel with a slow elevator.

And then there's Tulani. She's forty-eight, she's been hiking since before I met her, and she married a man once for ten years who apparently took her to every national park west of the Mississippi before they split up amicably when she was thirty-eight. I met her two years ago at a gallery opening when I was fifty, and she was wearing hiking boots with a cocktail dress, which should have told me everything.

So anyway. Redwood National Park, edge of it, a little campsite she booked months ago. It's dark, it's damp, and I am fighting a tent.

"This pole goes through that sleeve," Tulani said, sitting on a log with a beer like a queen watching a jester.

"It goes through nothing. This sleeve is sewn shut. Look at this. I'd show you but you're busy laughing."

"I'm not laughing," she said, and then she laughed.

I got one corner up and the whole thing sagged like a tired old man. The rainfly was the real enemy. It had more clips than a jewelry store and every single one of them seemed to attach to nothing. I said a word I don't usually say in front of ladies, and she said it right back at me, which made me feel better and worse at the same time.

"Benjamin. Baby. Come here. Look. This clip goes to that loop on the pole, see?"

"Oh. Well. Yes. Obviously I knew that!"

"Sure you did."

We got it up, eventually, mostly her, and I collapsed next to the fire pit feeling like I'd done a full shift at the shop. She got a fire going in about four minutes flat, which felt like witchcraft to me. I watched her feed it little sticks and I thought, this woman could survive anything, and I can't even pitch a tent.

We ate whatever it was she'd made over the fire, and it was actually good, and the trees were so tall they swallowed the sky, and the creek behind us was doing its little water noise. Stars started coming out between the branches. She'd laid a waterproof mat on the pine needles earlier, all set for stargazing, because of course she had.

Here's the part where I tell you the thing that actually happened, because that's why I'm writing this.

She poked the fire and said, "So I want to talk to you about something."

"That's a scary sentence out here in the wilderness."

"It's not scary. Or, okay, it's a little scary. It's something I've been thinking about for months."

I put my plate down. Months is a loaded word from a woman like her.

"Months," I said.

"Months," she said. She looked at me straight on, the firelight on her face, and she said, "I want to try anal. With you. I want to do it to you, actually."

I have been tattooing people's bodies for twenty-five years and that sentence short-circuited me anyway.

"To me," I said.

"To you. If you want. And I've been researching. Lube, going slow, all of it. I would never just spring it on you, which is why I'm springing it on you now, gently, with a fire."

I laughed, because what else do you do. And then I told her the truth, which is that I was terrified and curious in about equal parts. Fifty-two years old and I had never let anyone anywhere near that part of me. City guy. Tattoo hands. Nobody had ever asked, and I'd never thought to wonder.

"But you've thought about it," she said.

"I've thought about it since about ninety seconds ago."

"Sure, okay." She smiled at me. "But you're not saying no!"

"I'm not saying no."

"Then finish your beer and come with me."

She took my hand and led me away from the fire, down to the flat spot by the creek where she'd already spread a thick blanket over the mat. She'd planned this. Of course she'd planned this. The stars were ridiculous up there between the trees, whole galaxies of them, and the creek kept talking to itself in the dark.

She sat me down on the blanket and knelt beside me and kissed me, slow, her hand flat on my chest, and I felt my nerves start to settle into something else. She'd had a small bottle of oil in her jacket pocket, which, again, planned.

"Okay, baby. First rule. Anything hurts or feels wrong, you say so, and we stop. Second rule. There's no goal tonight. We're just exploring. Say yes to that."

"Yes to that."

"Good. Pants off."

I got my pants off and the night air was cool on everything and I was already half hard, which surprised me given how nervous I was. She pushed me gently back onto the blanket and had me bend my knees up, feet flat, and she settled between my legs like she was setting up a new tattoo station, all calm and deliberate.

"Comfortable?"

"Comfortable enough to be embarrassed."

"Don't be embarrassed. Breathe. Watch the stars if it helps."

She warmed the oil in her palm first, rubbing her hands together, and then she had me lift a little and she slid a folded towel under my hips. She talked the whole time, low and steady, telling me what she was doing before she did it, which turned out to be the whole trick, because my body couldn't flinch at a surprise it never got.

"First touch is just outside. Nothing goes in. Just here." Her oiled fingertip touched me right on the rim, feather light, and I made a noise I'm not proud of. "There it is. That's fine. That's just new."

"That is so weird."

"Bad weird?"

"Unknown weird. Keep going."

She kept going. Slow circles, just the pad of her finger, around and around the outside, light as anything, and she counted the circles out loud for a while, joking about it, saying I was a good student, saying my skin was warming up under her finger. And it was. It genuinely was. Every pass the muscle loosened a little and the weirdness drained out and something else started pooling in its place.

"Okay," I said, "okay, this is. Huh."

"Huh is good. Huh is the correct review."

"You've done this before, to someone?"

"Received, never given. Same research applies. More oil. More patience. There."

The circles got a little firmer. My cock was fully hard now, lying back against my stomach, and she noticed and said, "Look at that. Your body votes yes even when your mouth hedges."

"My mouth hedged for one question, max."

"It did."

She added more oil, dripped it warm down over everything, and went back to circling, and I lay there under the redwoods with my knees up like some offering on a blanket, and the creek went on talking, and her finger kept making those slow patient rings around me, and I heard myself say, "You could go inside a little. If you wanted."

Her finger paused. She kissed the inside of my thigh.

"Only a little?"

"Only a little. I think I want to know."

"Then we go slow, and you breathe out when I press. Ready?"

"I'm ready."

I breathed out, and she pressed, and the stars swam a little, and that's where the night really started.

The pressure was the strangest part. Not pain, not even close to pain, just this deep strange fullness that my body had absolutely no file for. I gasped, loud, some sound halfway between a cough and a word.

"Hey. Hey. I'm right here." Tulani's hand pressed flat on my thigh. "You're okay. That's just the muscle saying hello. It doesn't know what this is yet."

"It knows it doesn't like it," I managed.

"It doesn't know anything yet. That's the fun part. Breathe out for me again. Long one, like you're blowing across hot coffee."

I blew across the imaginary coffee and the muscle eased a fraction, and her finger slid a little deeper, slow as honey off a spoon, and the gasp turned into something else. Something lower.

"Oh," I said.

"There it is. See? Hello, muscle. Nice to meet you."

"It's. Okay. Okay, that's. Huh."

"Huh again. You keep reviewing me in single syllables, Benjamin, I'm going to start charging by the word."

I laughed, which honestly helped more than the breathing did, because laughing unclenched everything, and while I was unclenched she moved her finger in this tiny gentle curl, barely a motion at all, and my whole body did a thing I had no control over.

"Whoa," I said. "Whoa whoa whoa."

"Good whoa or bad whoa?"

"I don't. What was that. What was that."

"That, my love, was your prostate, and from the sound of it, it's very pleased to make your acquaintance."

She found it again. Same spot, same lazy curl, and this time I didn't gasp, I groaned, this long embarrassing sound out of the bottom of me, and my hips actually pushed up off the blanket on their own like my body had positions it was done keeping quiet.

"There, huh?"

"There," she said, wicked and warm. "Baby, I hate to break it to you, but I think you're a natural."

"I'm not a natural. I'm fifty-two. I've had exactly one finger in my ass for a total of maybe forty seconds."

"And look how well it's going. Most guys fight it for an hour. You're out here levitating."

"I nearly did levitate. My back left the blanket."

"See? Natural. Add more oil."

She did, dripped warm over everything, and pulled out slow and