Not long before, a human person—let’s say it was me—had dropped acid and walked into the clear, cold water of Harriman Reservoir, the two-thousand-acre lake created by the Harriman hydroelectric dam in Vermont. By the time she walked out of it again, three hours later, she estimated, a good 0.01 percent of its contents were surely composed of her cum. The reservoir had taken her in its tinkling mineral embrace and laid her on the buzzing currents just below its surface and unendingly fucked her. It’s true that she had vaguely heard, over the years, of people having sex with rivers, vegetable beds, and parcels of woodland. Medieval humans with vulvas were, so she’d read, eminently practiced in the art of oceanic nongenital climax. But nothing like this had ever happened to her before, nor had she expected it, so her astonishment was considerable. Her body felt like a polymorphic tapestry made up of one trillion thirsty assholes flung wide in blinking, ecstatic welcome. Never before had her cunt opened so wide or drenched its surroundings to this extent. Never before, to her knowledge, had it been brought to orgasm by a biome. I have long thought that really good sex temporarily washes binary gender away, and this particular (all too welcome) sexual ambush by reservoir sluiced it beyond comprehensibility.

My Octopus Girlfriend