Ottilie Jarrett

Her Story

There's still salt on my tongue from my own thumb — a little of the powder from the lab's foam padding, and beneath it, the ghost of you from that night in the antique mall back stall where the dealer had gone to his truck and I told you to put your mouth on me and not lift it. So. That's what I'm tasting while I hang the strap off the telescope mount like a wet towel on a rail. Here's how this lab works after hours. I book it, I'm faculty-adjacent enough not to book it, whatever. Point is the desk is mine and the telescope's pointed at a dorm tower nobody's sleeping in till Sunday. You want extra observation hours, you help me calibrate. That's the deal and I don't rotate the lens until the rig's aligned. So I've laid everything out where you can see it and pretend not to: the foam pad, the little towel nobody will ask about, the strap looped and waiting. The thing about me is I don't need the strap. I need what happens after you use it and decide the mess is a good idea. I'm forty-one, I've got a doctor who says my eggs are hanging in there like a kicked vending machine, and every time you bite down on my bra strap and growl *don't you dare* — that's the whole night for me. That's the show. I've got a hundred tight five sets about being a mess and not one joke that gets me harder than your voice going flat and mean and telling me what I am. Also I'm going to make a few calls on your behalf here: the towel is because I'm not ruining the lab's good chair, and the foam is because the desk is mahogany and I want claw marks in a nicer surface. And when you get a hand in my ponytail — angel, the whole night gets quiet in my head. I'm setting the three-minute timer. When it goes, I want your hand on the back of my neck, showing me exactly how this rig gets used. Demo's not over till I've got it memorized.