issues.
• Bubble bath. Good for hiding a multitude of sins.
• Bending backward. Like the bending-over bumshot but in reverse. Poochy tummy extremely likely. Personally I’d rather see an inch to pinch than force someone to suck it in for an hour on the trot.
• Crossed legs. Hasn’t waxed. Ankle socks, ditto.
• Girlish pigtails and teenage clothing sense. Is actually thirty-four. dimanche, le 7 decembre
N, the hub of all gossip, was meeting me at the gym and coming back for supper afterwards. He has a keen interest in porn and the magazine collection to prove it. He told me about his plans for a trip to Amsterdam with a friend from work.
“Why not pick up some girls for a threesome while you’re there?” I asked, leaning forward over the handles of a stationary bicycle. The threesome is his longest-standing fantasy. After the grannies and horses, naturally.
I feel bad for N. Having tasted once or twice the fruits of group sex, it has become a full-time obsession. He was the one, for example, who demanded I go over my night with the posh woman and her boyfriend in detail, even to the point of providing illustrative diagrams. “Why, do you think Dutch women are any more willing than the English?”
“No, I mean you could hire some.”
“Mmph,” he said. He’s an attractive man. While supportive of the concept of prostitution, I don’t think he’d actually dip a toe into sampling the professionals. He started a slow jog on a treadmill while I pedaled. “If there were legal brothels, I could hire out all the girls,” he mused.
“Now you’re being greedy,” I scolded. “If I remember correctly, once is usually enough for you.” With a few exceptions. Once in the distant past he and I had a threesome, and as far as I know, he hasn’t had another shot since.
“Ouch.” But he was smiling. And when he smiles, I think how sexy I find him, how his eyes crinkle like a film star’s. “Any chance you might-”
“Sorry, darling, that train left the station years ago.” Eww, friends hiring me for sex. The thought hadn’t even occurred. Must make a mental note to nip all future suggestions in the bud. Especially as they are not all at the same level of knowledge about my work. A2 knows outright, Al and A4 know the general outline but not the details, and the less A3 knows, the better. N, of course, gets the full skinny, warts and all. Literally.
The belt of the treadmill squealed and buckled under N’s bulk. “Are you done torturing that machine? Because I’m getting hungry.”
He drove us back to my house. It wasn’t late, but the city was already as dark as midnight. N was born and raised in London, and guided the car around back roads and alternate routes I didn’t know existed. The night air was still moist from rain in the afternoon, the streets shining with long red and white reflected lights, and I rolled down the passenger window to listen to the gentle shrr of tires on the road. “How much do you tell that man of yours?” he said after a long silence. N and the Boy know and don’t approve of each other, but since they live in different cities, rarely meet.
“Enough.”
“Can’t imagine he’s happy with it.”
“Can’t imagine he has a choice,” I said, affecting more bravado than I felt. If he turns out to have major objections, I thought, I’ll find something else to do.
Probably. lundi, le 8 decembre
Booking with a banker at a hotel near Bond Street. We drank some coffee, chatted about New York briefly, then got down to business. And, as they say, business is good.
He: “That was my first anal.”
Me: “Really? I’m surprised.” Perhaps not that surprised, since there have been more than a few first-time anals in my past. But surprised he didn’t mention it, and surprised at the spatial imagination of someone who manipulated me around his member so fluidly.
“Well, I enjoyed it.”
“I would tell you it’s my first time too, but you’d know I was lying.”
He (laughing): “So how did I do?”
“Excellent-just remember, lots of lube, and use fingers first. As you did.”
“Thanks-you’re too nice.”
“Well, you did all the hard work. So to speak.”
(later)
He: “I don’t understand why my colleagues would have an affair with some girl in the office, and risk a marriage, when they could have someone like you.”
I nodded, didn’t have anything to add.
“It must be a power thing, or to show off to other men. Still”-and he shuddered slightly, in the manner of a man whose faint tan line from a removed wedding band is still visible, and he knows it-“I just couldn’t risk some little temp ringing my wife up weeks or months afterward.”
We had time before both of our next meetings and talked about Lebanese restaurants in London (good, on the whole) and Italian ones (uniformly rubbish). Later he let slip that he had tried to book me before, when I was away. I’m glad his persistence paid off.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. mardi, le 9 decembre
I walked into the hotel, large coat bundled tight around me. It was more insurance that none of the tools of the trade would fall out than protection against the sharp weather. The client undressed while I laid out the things he had requested: blindfold, the Persuaders, choke chain collar, and nipple clamps.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said, eyeing the whips.
Doubtful. Still, his fantasy, not mine. “I’ll be gentle with you then,” I said. I was lying, and we both knew it.
We were finished in exactly an hour. Sometimes the job seems too easy to be believed. mercredi, le 10 decembre
Grumpy; nothing coherent to write. Have a list instead.
LOVE: A SPOTTER’S GUIDE
• Love at First Sight: the overwhelming desire to see the inside of the nearest closet (pub toilet, friend’s back garden, the alleyway over there, et al.).
• True Love: can be introduced to the family without unreasonable fear of embarrassment. On the part of the family.
• Everlasting Love: a polyamorous couple who haven’t had sex with each other in years.
• Love Match: an alliance between kingdoms.
• The Love of Your Life: the indolent boy from your last year at uni who spent eight-plus hours a day online and ate all the Nutella, the memory of whom somehow improves with time.
• In Love: a momentary instance of being almost as interested in someone else as in oneself.
• Loving: capable of untold amounts of suffocation.
• Motherly Love: capable of untold amounts of suffocation.
• Brotherly Love: forbidden by the moral laws of most world religions.
• Lover: the one who comes round when your partner’s “out of town on business” (read: seeing his lover).
• Lovable: cuddly. In the pejorative sense (similar to the concept of “shapely legs,” which is code for chubby).
• Lovely: only just bearable. “That was a lovely party! I do hope you take me to Kettering again!”
• Love Potion: About the only thing, at this point, that might incite the Boy to call. I’m getting lonely up here. jeudi, le 11 decembre
N gave me a lift home. He had already eaten and I was beyond tired. I made a sandwich for myself and cups of tea for us both while he read to me from the paper.
Later I tried to kick him out of the flat so I could have a bath. It’s been too long since I indulged in a long, bubbly soak. “I’ll wait,” he said. He’s an odd one and stubborn as well, and I was too tired to argue, so I let
