I can’t quite place my finger on it, but I think it was the “Do you want to see my owls? I keep them in the basement” line where things went from amusing to borderline-creepy. Which I’m kinda assuming was the point, so good job. :) (Although, I gotta admit, I am kind of curious as to what the “owls” actually were, if they weren’t owls)

“Do you want to see my owls?” is usually such a foolproof pick-up line, too.

(This is totally autobiographical, isn’t it?)

He seems really demanding at first, with the shoes line, and it gave the whole story a feeling of her being a prostitute to me. Which may be intentional, but the rest of the story didn’t seem to imply anything of that sort. I did like it quite a bit other than that, it just threw me off for that one short bit.

The gender of the narrator is left ambiguous, which is definitely an interesting idea.

I am trying to say that I saw the narrator as a dude before the sex and only then considered that the narrator was (probably?) female.

I really liked this, especially how little the sex features. Excellently paced, and technically almost perfect. Very nice work with the dialogue rhythm as well, commas as pauses can get very tricky and you handled them elegantly.

The one technical quibble I have is using “slipped” twice in the same sentence towards the end.

A very quiet, oddly cute slice of life piece.

woop thanks for the catch about slipped, fixed that

Is it wrong that the first person I think of when I hear this story is Dan Dreiberg?

haha, lord

didn’t even think of that

nibbles on your ear

everything will be all right.

This was lovely. It almost had a feel of magic realism.