The stadium was at the college which was pretty far from my work. I took a trolley there since it was too much money for a cab. The stadium itself was old and made of bricks. It was early in the season and still cold, but people were ready for summer. The stands were filling up despite the chill. The air smelled of popcorn and beer and faintly of too many people. Yet wasn’t an unpleasant place to be. Cory was standing out front in a team cap. I had no trouble recognizing him from his picture, waved, and went over. I made my mouth smile, trying not to let on that I felt uncool and as nervous.

“Hey, you showed up,” he said and grimaced, self-conscious of his obvious self-doubt.

“Yeah, although I have to admit this isn’t where I expected to meet.”

He replied, “My work is more experimental, so I have to go where the juice is if you know what I'm saying.”

We walked inside and got a beer. In line we chatted about the local college—he was an alum. I wasn’t—and baseball.

We took our seats high above the crowd. The stadium wasn’t quite half full, but it was more people than I had expected. No one was sitting in the cold, uncomfortable seats around us. We spread out our food and propped our feet on the row of seats below us. Cody produced a team blanket from his backpack and gallantly spread it over my shoulders. It was a thin polar fleece blanket, but between that and the beer an agreeable warmth spread through my body as I relaxed.

“Can I interest you in a wiener?” Cody asked and laughed as he held out a hot dog to me.

“Oh, that was bad. Is that the best you can magic up?” I asked, raising the pun level.

“You don’t have to spell it out.”

“That’s a swing and a miss,” I laughed and bit into my hot dog. It was a chili dog and pretty good. It felt normal, like we were on a date with a little light banter and some trashy food at a baseball game. It seemed wholesome, and I remembered my friend’s words in the bathroom. Laila was such a bitch. Whatever Cory was, he wasn’t a monster. Besides, there were plenty of norm monsters. To think otherwise was stupid.

We watched the game. It was exciting, and we drank steadily until they closed the beer stand in the 6th. We had the foresight to load up in the 5th and by the time it closed we were feeling tight and sharing popcorn and the blanket. Every so often we would both reach in for the popcorn at the same time, and our hands would touch. Then we would laugh. It was somehow casual and sexy. Joking with him seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

At the top of the 7th, Cory leaned over and said, “Are you ready?”

I lowered my beer, snuggling against him under the blanket. “For what?”

“The Magic Show,” he said, he waved one hand and wiggled his fingers and raised his eyebrows salaciously.

“Oh, I thought that would come later,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, I was serious. I’m going to do it right here.”

“What exactly are you going to do?” I was embarrassed to ask, which was stupid. He was doing whatever it was to me and my body. I had every right to know.

“It’s going to be your basic O spell. I’m going to use the energy of the crowd to power it,” he explained.

He said it like I would know what an “O spell” was. Of course, I didn’t. I did think about it for a little while and wondered what on earth he could mean. Finally, I had to ask. “What’s an O spell?”

“You don’t know?”

He sounded surprised. I shook my head.

“Shit. I figured you were a magic addict, and that’s why you were trolling Cinder. Why else would you want to meet strangers doing experimental sex magic?” He didn’t stop touching me.

“I’m at a weird time in my life, I guess,” I told him with a shrug.

“There’s safer ways to have an existential crisis than trolling the internet for experimental sex magic. You could, you know, go skydiving.” He sounded perplexed by what I was doing.

“Yeah but skydiving isn’t magical?” I explained.

“We don’t have to do this. I’m not even sure there’s any point. I was on Cinder looking for a player. Someone who would know what an O spell normally felt like and could make a comparison with mine. I was looking for a magic addict.”

“I’m still game for the spell. I just want to know what it will do.” I was curious now. He probably meant to scare me off, but the idea the spell was something dangerous and possibly addictive was more of a selling point than it should have been.

“Are you sure? There's a chance it could fry your brain. It probably won’t, but it could. Even if your brain stays raw and not mushed up, you could end up addicted. There are like no positives here.”

“If there are no positives, then why would anyone do this? I mean it has to be pretty cool, or else people wouldn’t get addicted. Besides you seem like a solid dude. You won’t fry my brain.”

“I’m not going to try to fry your brain. I’m going to try to give you an orgasm, but brain frying may be an accidental side effect. Look this is theoretical magic. No one has ever attempted to harness the power of a bunch of norms singing to give a woman an orgasm. At least I don’t think they have. Why would they? It doesn’t make any sense. There have been a few occasions of people using the Take Me Out to The Ball Game song to affect the outcome of the game, but it’s too blunt. The energy coefficient is something like a twelve, which makes it unsuitable for the more delicate work of small object manipulation.” He must have seen the obvious confusion on my face, because he said, “You don’t care about any of this. Look, it’s a just a giant orgasm. With no touching. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“A giant orgasm with no touching? That sounds fun. Look, let’s just do this, okay? It’ll be fine. I have a good feeling about this,” I told him and wiggled in my seat. The teams on the field had changed position so I knew the 7th inning stretch would be coming soon.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to be responsible for getting someone addicted.”

I could tell he was beginning to give in. “You won’t get me addicted. I’ve been bitten by a vampire, and I’m not addicted to that. I think I’ll be able to handle a magic orgasm.”

“You’re a blood junkie?”

I glared at him. “What? No. Isn’t that like the opposite of what I just said?”

“Yeah, but…”

There were two outs already, and I didn’t want him to change his mind. “No buts, dude. Let’s just do this. It’ll be fine, I promise. Is there anything I need to do to prepare?”

“No. Mostly you just sit there. It’s a creepy spell, because I don’t need your consent, but of course, I’m glad I have it.”

I watched him for the rest of the inning. He didn’t seem to do anything special to prepare. When the third out was called the crowd went wild and started to stand up. I followed his lead and stayed seated.

The sound of singing reached our ears, and Cory started chanting under his breath. I watched him waiting for something to happen. When it started, I had to put down my beer. I got it down just in time. My legs shook. I couldn't stop squirming in my seat. The feeling was intense. The orgasm spread through my body. I turned to Cory in the seat, grabbing onto his arm. I would have stood up or laid down or done something, anything to break the sensation that gripped me. It hovered between pleasure and pain. My body burned and felt in danger of exploding from pure sensation. I wanted to scream out, but it was so powerful I couldn’t do more than moan. Above the glorious buzzing in my brain, I heard the crowd reach its crescendo. “Old ball game,” they sang.

The sensation over, my body spent, and I went limp. It had been such a brief experience. It was like huffing nitrous oxide. In one moment the sensation had been my entire world and in the next, it was gone, and nothing remained of it.

“That was awesome, or maybe awful. I don’t even know,” I said once I could speak again.

Cody asked, “Do you feel okay? How many fingers am I holding up?” He held up two fingers.

“One, asshole,” I said sticking up my middle finger. “I’m fine.”

“It would appear so. Was it good? Did you cum? I couldn’t tell if I was hurting you or not?”

“It was good. I think. It kind of hurt, too,” I told him and shifted in my seat.

“It hurt? I don’t think it should hurt.” He looked me over. “Do you want to do it again?”

“Not really. Once was enough, I think.” I tried to remember if I had wanted to be bitten again straight away or if it had taken a while. “I don’t think I’m addicted,” I said thinking of the cold alone feeling I’d gotten after I’d been bitten.

“Interesting and you said you’d been bitten by a vamp and didn’t get addicted?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to do this again. I think. Maybe I will at some point. I don’t know. I’m not in any rush. It kind of scared me. It wasn’t like an orgasm.”

The small blanket had fallen off my shoulders when I had been writhing about, and he adjusted it over my shoulders again. It was a very familiar gesture, as if we had a real relationship beyond this one date.

“Interesting. Pass me one of those beers, will you?”

I handed him one of the beers we had stockpiled before they closed the bar. We sat in comfortable silence watching the game and drinking our beer. Fairly buzzed from the beer, I put my head on his shoulder and snuggled against him for warmth. He put his arm around me, pulling me closer.

We watched the rest of the game that way, cuddled under the blanket with a beer and a hot dog like it was the most natural thing in the world. It seemed as if we could just float along in our little bubble of warmth forever with the game and the crowd below us, the real world never touching us. Of course, we couldn’t, by the bottom of the 8th inning, the home team was losing, and people were already starting to file out of the stadium. We began packing away our stuff, and once he took the blanket off of me and put it in his backpack, I was left cold.

“What’s your plan for the rest of the night?” Cody asked me.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I have one.” I hadn’t been sure what to expect from his little experiment.

“Wanna come back to my place and listen to records and have a beer?”

I probably didn’t need another beer, but I had reached the point where I was chasing that high feeling. The good buzz of the first two drinks slowly dissolved into the cloud of bad decisions and hangovers. Since I didn’t want to go home alone and I felt comfortable with him, I said, “Sure, why not?”