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Anna takes my hand and slides it inside her pajamas, down between her thighs, and my fingers dip into warm wetness. "It's just an idea," she says.



Five minutes later, Anna's hands are splayed up against the kitchen counter. Her pajamas are on the microwave. The taste of her is in my mouth, we're tangled up, her pale legs around my brown hips, my hands holding her up and the moment I'm inside her — fully inside her, every part of me slick and hummed with feeling — it occurs to me that this is the first moment of completely unprotected sex I've ever had in my life.



And then she lets out a low moan and we start to rock together, half-standing and urgent, and the thought slips away.



"You are so hungry," she murmurs. "My wolf."

me. It floats above our bodies. In calling it unprotected sex, unsafe sex, those dangers taste pretty fucking delicious. A condom holds me from her, defends us against each other. The word guards us from babymaking. It beats back death. Unsafe sex assumes I need to be saved.

I've been dating Anna for five months. We met salsa dancing in East L.A., in one of those movie moments: crowd parts and there she is, this beautiful geek, except unlike in the movies she's holding a sombrero margarita glass. She's a good dancer for a white girl — it's all in the hips. During the day, Anna's an epidemiologist, which means that in between moments when we're having the best sex of my life, she's citing statistics and studies and odds about sexually transmitted diseases. In those times when I'm reminded that I'm going to die, my mouth is pulled to her throat, which I bite lightly, and she laughs and I breathe her in. She smells like ache. It's a brilliant laugh.



A week ago, Anna's at the computer. She's entering data into a calendar program, sipping her coffee. Her cats only barely open their eyes when I walk into the living room. I've got the element of surprise in my favor; I move on the balls of my feet, one foot then the next, but the floor creaks and she's on to me.



"Hey," she grins. "I have a proposition you're going to love."



"If it involves selling junk bonds to old folks, sign me up." I slide my hands over her shoulders, finger her collarbone. Yesterday's entry in the software program shows body temperature, a red circle and a red heart. Anna stretches up and kisses me, and I want her and my morning coffee in the same moment.



"So don't flinch until I'm done speaking," she says. "I've been tracking my fertility for the past three months. With this software" — and here she grabs my neck because I am indeed flinching — "I can predict exactly when it is most safe for you to come inside me. When it is medically nearly impossible for us to conceive."

Nearly. My girlfriend the scientist is using fertility software as a contraceptive device.



"I don't want kids yet," I say. We just started dating, I don't say.



She stands up and goes into the kitchen. "Neither do I. But I'm not going back on the pill at thirty. Just as an occasional treat. No latex, no UTIs, no yeast infections. Just you and me." Then she pulls my hand down to touch her, and we're up on her Mexican-tiled kitchen countertop, and it's like I said. I lose my mind for a second.