Hostel

Beau sits on a concrete bench in bright Tivoli Gardens. He is happy to be resting, but hates conceding that his feet are sore and that he is unlikely to be able to carry on much longer into the sunny night. The rides and amusements of Tivoli remind him vaguely of Coney Island or the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Tivoli, however, is cleaner and more orderly—the way he would imagine a costume closet organized by a Scandinavian drag queen with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Beau sighs. It is difficult to reconcile the midnight sun with his body's automatic winding down after weeks of dedicated travel. He has not drank. He has not smoked. He has not passed more than a half smile at the other lone travelers. He wakes at dawn with an itinerary programmed roughly to the hour and then lies down at midnight.

It has been three days since he floated through the windmill fields of the Baltic Sea—looking like acres of opalescent, spiny extra-terrestrial flowers—and emerged into the ports of Copenhagen. The train began in Lisbon and traversed first Spain, France and finally Germany.

He began his exploration of the city immediately, attacking his touristing with the focus one would apply to a final exam in something very serious like architectural engineering or nuclear physics. He has studiously explored the National Museum, obediently nodded through tours of the canal systems, and appropriately admired the graffiti of squatted Christiana.

The sun continues to shine on the dragon boats floating on the dark pond in Tivoli. A few swans dart between the bright tongues of the dragons' mouths. At 11pm, the Danes and other tourists show no indication of giving in for the evening. Teenagers fumble about in the backs of the dragon boats groping one another and giggling excitedly. Couples sit closely, their heads bowed in quiet conversation, feeding one another macarons piece by piece. Families picnic with plastic beer steins, even the toddlers still staggering along the edges of benches and chairs. Beau's mind buzzes with the brightness of the sun, his haziness further instigated by a three-hour time lag.

Beau slides on aviator sunglasses, tucks his hands in his pockets, and starts for the grand brick exit to

Vesterbrogade

. The sky is the washed out color that blue fades to in Polaroid photos from the1970s. Sausage and cut grass blend into a damp smell. Near a trashcan slicked with adverts for a black metal band, a woman bends to light a cigarette. She cups her hands around it and swears, Beau guesses, in her own language as the lighter continues to falter.

After tossing the cigarette and the lighter into the trash in defeat, she begins on the same trajectory as Beau, slipping a white alligator clutch under her arm. She strolls in front of him, a silk turquoise dress dipping down her back in a deep V. Her dark blonde hair is thin but touches the bottoms of her scapula, sweeping back and forth over her spine bones with the motion of her hips. She gathers her hair into a fist and then drags it over her right shoulder. Beau's nostrils flare, his mouth salivating slightly, as the freckles of her back become visible. Her thin calves show a deep, elegant split with each step.

Down the cobblestone drive they both go, until the clicking of her heals stops abruptly. Her right foot tugs forward attempting to dislodge her slim white high heel from between the stones. Myriad unknown words universally recognizable as profanity erupt from her thin lips as Beau passes her. He smiles, puts forward a hand to help her balance as she pulls forward harder with her foot. The pleats of her dress swing just above her bony knees.

"Thank you," she says in heavily accented French.

"You're welcome," he replies awkwardly in even heavier accented French.

Then in Russian, she says, "You're French is very good for a Russian."

Beau replies fluently in Russian, "That's funny because I'm not Russian."

"Ah. OK. English it is." She smiles and Beau starts to wake up a little as a small gap shows in her front two teeth. "I thought you looked French," the woman says, "but your accent sounded like a Russian speaking French."

Beau's cheeks begin to warm. "Do you want a cigarette?" he questions and begins to grope his empty pockets. He hasn't smoked in weeks he knows, but hopefully searches for a gift.

"Ah, I don't smoke anymore. It's good mine wouldn't light. I had a beer too many is all and then a crave." Her o's are held too long and her a's hang high in the back of her throat. And then he smirks as a fast image of shoving his cock into the back of her soft throat flashes in his head.

"Yes," Beau continues to fumble, smiling like a gargoyle, "I know that feeling too." They continue on in step as they pass through the exit of Tivoli. The cars still hum past with the sun reflecting from their mirrors like tiny lasers darting randomly through the lanes. Her skinny, muscular legs contract with each of her steps. The front of her dress also falls in a deep V down her sternum and Beau is suspicious that her small breasts are bare underneath the thin silk fabric. There is a triangle of three moles that he can see on her left breast just as the flesh leaves the flat of her sternum and rises onto her small breasts. Freckles lightly decorate her collarbones.

"Where are you going to now?" she inquires, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Heading to my hostel. I have a train to catch early in the morning." He smiles as he starts to wave goodbye and his body drifts toward the west.

With her charming accent and rosy lips she replies, "I am staying at a hostel too. Which are you going to?"

"Woodah," he says.

She smiles her gap toothed smile, her blue eyes creasing at the edge. " Me too. I was going to take a taxi, but I can walk with you?"

"Sure, " Beau says, surprised with her trust. He holds his elbow out to her, and then wonders if this is an American gesture. But she tucks her arm into his. He inhales a rose scent with notes of dark spice, tobacco, and scotch.

They walk about a block in silence. Then they begin the familiar conversation of travelers and discuss origination, profession, outlooks on American foreign policy, local sites and destinations. Claudia—he learns is her name—came to Copenhagen for a wedding of family friends and leaves for home tomorrow in Krakow.

As they reach the hostel doors, Beau looks at his phone. It's late, but still difficult to sleep in the bright night. "Can I buy you a drink?" he inquires as they pass the hostel café quiet with only a few small groups of people drinking Carlsberg.

After two beers, they borrow a cigarette and step out to the street. Claudia and Beau giggle as they pass the cigarette back and forth telling puns and jokes from their own languages. The cigarette butt dims and brightens like a firefly. Claudia takes a long inhale, blows the smoke familiarly out her nostrils, and leans her head back onto brick. She closes her eyes. Her neck is long and white. Beau leans back beside her and thinks of closing a hand around it. Side by side, he notices the smudges of her lipstick on the end of the cigarette when she passes it back to him. At long last, the night has become dusk like. And then the silence begins.

It is one of those moments in which it is unclear who moved or reached out first. It is one of those sacred seconds when two people are suddenly pressed together. Beau relishes these rare couplings that are simple, effortless, and spontaneous. He begins to grope her face with his tongue like an awkward teenager in new braces molesting his first crush. She seems a little taken aback by his forcefulness and starts to back away.

Then relaxation comes to him. Beau stops kissing her, letting his lips just rest on hers. He slows his breathing. He puts a thumb on the contour of her cheek and his fingers stroke the soft skin below her eye. He moves his other hand to her ear lobe and presses firmly. And then Claudia begins to press her body into him.

Beau softly pins Claudia against the red brick of the hostel. She slides her hands underneath his button down shirt. Her fingernails softly drag circles on his sides. Claudia's cheeks infuse with pink and her pale blue eyes are half open and soft.

Beau puts a hand on her bare shoulder where her dress has slid off to the side. He was right, he sees, about her bra. They gaze together at her naked clavicle, the rise of her breast, and both giggle. Her nipples are obvious beneath her thin dress. He leans in and kisses her, pressing his tongue deep into her soft mouth, pressing his chest into her increasingly hard nipples. Claudia giggles and then all goes silent as she engulfs his neck in strong sucks and bites, his skin catching between the gap in her front teeth.

Beau is feeling heady, half stoned from sleepiness and half tipsy, pushed forward with surreal desire in the dusk as Claudia continues to roughly caress his neck with her mouth and teeth. She looks up at him with large, blue eyes as she moves up and down his neck. He is ignorant to the lone strangers and entwined couples who pass by intermittently—until a moped pulls up, driven by a woman in skin- tight black leather pants and stiletto black heels.

The new woman stands from the white scooter, pulls off her black helmet, and a pile of dyed red hair falls clumsily around her shoulders. Their eyes meet, Beau and the lady in black, and she winks at him. Claudia stops and raises her head, her eyes follow Beau's as she leans forward to his lips. All three begin to laugh conspiratorially.

The woman in black says something in Danish. She waggles her long fingers at them. As she walks away into the café, she blows a kiss to Claudia and Beau. From behind, the woman's red hair matches the red bottoms of her shoes. Beau pulls Claudia through the door then and up the stairs of the hostel, their laughter and clatter echoing up the stairwell.

Alone in their dorm room, the silence begins again. Claudia slowly walks to the large industrial window that looks toward Tivoli. She stands as a silhouette in the window, the sky gritty outside and the tip of the moon just above the horizon. Claudia turns her head over her shoulder and her blue eyes are sultry, inviting. Her body makes the shape of an S against the window, her legs slightly spread. She turns forward, and slowly begins to beg Beau forward.

She takes a slim, pale hand and moves all her hair behind her back. She combs her fingers through her blonde hair. As if there is all the time in the world, and no man behind her ready to fervently slide his very hard dick into her from behind, she pushes the hair upward high onto the top of her head. She moves her head back and forth as if she is swaying on a boat. As she pulls the hair up into a high ponytail, her back skin is again revealed and beginning to flush pink. She is like a lightning bug, her fast blood becoming iridescent beneath her skin. Beau's dick hardens more as he becomes excited at how easily her ass might turn pink from his even harder hand.

He steps forward, and pulls the fine zipper on the back of the dress down. First comes the pale hollow of her lumbar spine. The zipper stops just below the crease between her ass. Small symmetrical dimples decorate her high sacrum and he can see opalescent perspiration shining on her light skin in the dusky light.

He bends, sets his tongue just between the dimples and slowly pulls his tongue up her back and to the base of her neck. He tastes salty diluted flower.

Beau pushes Claudia's dress down her shoulders, and the fabric drifts to the floor around her white heels. Beau was wrong. She is actually fully naked beneath the dress. Claudia laughs quietly as she toes the dress to the side. Beau steps back, caressing her shoulders. Claudia looks forward, naked in front of the large window. The warm sent of her pheromones rise as he begins to softly kiss her neck. He still wears his clothes, standing behind her. There is something about rubbing against a naked woman through his clothes that always turns him on.

Reaching forward, he begins to draw circles around her nipples and soft sounds move from Claudia's mouth. He presses his teeth into the side of her neck and she begins to laugh with her moans. Beau wants to hear her come, partly out of the curiosity he has for hearing a woman's personalized small death, but also out of some other deeper instinct. It is one of the few things in life a person should do just because they can.

He drops one hand to find her warm clit, which is easy to find as it pulses forward to him. He gathers both breasts into his hand, slowing his deep massages. Claudia begins to hunch forward, as if she can't quite contain herself. He smiles at how easy she is about to break. He loves a lady with a low threshold for stimulation. A long moaning exhale comes from her lips as he puts two fingers into her. At the addition of a spreading third, her muscles relax around his hand and she exclaims words to which he is clueless about their meaning.

Claudia turns around to him, her back against the cool window, her chest flushed with pinkness. Beau grabs her jaw and pushes her up against the window harder as she smiles. He pushes a palm between her breasts and curls his fingers in as her skin blanches. But then she roughly pushes his arm away and laughs.

She grabs the two sides of his shirt and rips it open, the plastic buttons clicking to the ground. Claudia slides down the window and onto her knees. She looks up with huge eyes as she pulls down his pants, the points of her high heels pushing up against the wall. She curls her finger and thumb around the base of his cock. For about five seconds her soft lips rest around its head. She leans away from him, and then he is suddenly deep in the back of her hard throat. Her high pony-tail is all he sees looking down as he drives his cock farther forward into her moaning mouth. He grabs the base of her pony-tail with easy pressure which makes the both of them moan louder.

They must not have heard the door of their room. After Beau picks Claudia from the ground and turns them both around so he leans on the cool window just about to slide as agonizingly slow as possible into her from behind, they both see the redhead laying belly down on the bed across the room, her stilettos kicked up behind her. There is a brief second of confusion. But Claudia moans even louder now and her cunt becomes even warmer as he slowly strokes her clit contemplatively in circles, curious as to where this will go.

He rests his chin on Claudia's shoulder so he can look into the brown eyes of the woman watching them. He very slowly rests his cock at Claudia's opening. As she tries to push herself back onto him, he grabs her hips, holding them in place so she can't control the speed of his entry. She squirms against his hands, her breaths deepening. He cups both sides of her ass as he glides slowly into her. And that's all it takes to make her come again sharply.

Beau continues to move in and out as he adds more and more pressure to Claudia's clit. The red head flips to her back and enthusiastically peels her leather pants off. Facing them, her legs bent and pussy exposed, still in her tall heels, she begins to rub her own clit. She licks her fingers with a smile and buries her own fingers inside and continues to rub her clit with the other hand.

Beau can feel Claudia tightening around him again. Both women stare at one another, their breath going loudly together and their moans harmonizing. Then Beau pulls out, scoops Claudia suddenly into his arms and drops her on her knees in front of the red head. The red head leans forward and buries her face between Claudia's legs as Beau begins again to fuck her from behind. He is driven forward and his mind clears and there is nothing except warmth, the smell of honey and the shiny eyes of the red head staring at him as he and Claudia come together.

A few hours later, Beau makes his train at 7am. He has left Claudia and the redhead curled together in the bed of the hostel. They are an arrangement of limbs with contrasting colors against the bare white sheets. He begins to read

Oedipus Wrecked

and promptly falls asleep, his head vibrating against the window.