him.
When I came out of the bath, he rolled me over on the bed and kneaded my back from neck to ankles. I would have thanked him-I imagine the satisfied sighs got the message across. On his way out the door he paused. “Next time, of course, I want at least a blowjob for that,” he said.
“That’s only funny because I know you’re not kidding, sweetheart.”
Some people wouldn’t ask. I can think of one in particular. I’ve always been attracted to strong, tall men. And they have not ever forced anything on me. Except for one. But I begged him to do it.
It was assault with kissing. I’ll call him W. When we met, we were both in love with other people, but it didn’t matter. What we did could only loosely be called sexual congress anyway.
W was tall and nicely built, the result of a career in sport. We flirted over the course of a week and agreed to go out on the Friday night. I dressed and thought about W, his long, thick limbs and large hands, knowing something odd was happening. I couldn’t imagine myself in this man’s arms so much as on the end of his fist. He looked capable of breaking me into small pieces, and crushing those pieces into a ball. I could not stop thinking of him hurting me, and the thought made me sick. It also turned me on.
Our meeting place was just south of the river. We stood at the crowded bar of a pub for a while before going on to a comedy club where I got legless on gin and tonic. The acts ranged from bad to criminally awful. I began fantasizing about having W’s bulky shoulder rammed into my face. I went downstairs to the ladies’. W followed me in.
“You’re not going to corner me in the loos, are you?” I asked, pawing his shirt. My head came to not quite the middle of his chest. I could smell the sour waft of a day’s sweat on him and was aroused.
“I’m not stalking you,” he said. “Much.”
I bit him as discouragement. The layers of fabric felt fuzzy on my tongue. My teeth closed just hard enough to make it hurt. But he didn’t flinch. “Now then,” he said, taking my face in his hands, “you’ll pay for that. I’ll see you outside.”
I was unstable on my heels, leaning heavily on his arm all the way to the corner of my street. We stopped and I looked up. He lifted my body easily, standing me on a bench. From that height we had our first kiss.
“Get a room,” yelled some teenagers from the other side of the road.
We didn’t. Not that night, anyway. The night after.
The location was a pastel-decorated chain hotel in Hammersmith. I didn’t even take an overnight bag. He pushed me down on the bed as soon as we were inside and straddled my waist. Pulling out his cock, he aimed it not for my mouth or my cleavage but at my cheek.
So it began. After that first time, when he hit the side of my face so hard with his erection that there were blisters inside my mouth afterward, there was no going back. “I’ve never made a woman cry before,” he said. “I liked that.” No pretense of romance. Just us, anywhere we could be together alone, and his open palm. On cold days in parks where the biting weather would make it sting all the more, he’d stop the car suddenly, and we’d get out and he’d smack me one. My knickers were always sopping wet after.
I couldn’t explain the bruises. I didn’t. “Ran into the door,” said with a shrug. “Hard session at the gym.” Or, “A bruise? Where?”
There was the weekend W reserved a room at the Royal College of Physicians. Visiting medics can stay there when in London; I don’t know how he blagged his way in. We sat on the narrow single bed, watched a porn documentary and ate pizza. I had too much to eat-when I went down on him, his member was too big and it choked me. I coughed up Meat Feast and diet cola on his thigh. His penis grew even harder. He pulled my hair until I cried as he masturbated on my tear- and vomit-covered face. The bathroom was shared with the next bedroom. When I stepped into the hall, a young Indian doctor left the room opposite. He glanced up and froze, shocked to see me. The young man must have been able to hear us carrying on, though perhaps not the detail of it, as he seemed puzzled at the vomit on my chin and shirt. I lifted my hand in a small wave. “So, then, which one of you is the physician?” he asked awkwardly. “I am,” I lied, and walked past him to the toilet. The doctor’s jaw plummeted.
W was as mystified by the attraction as I was. “What do you think when I’m hitting you?” he asked one afternoon. We were sitting on a bench in Regents Park watching the geese and swans. Every few minutes, satisfied no one was coming down the paths, he’d hit me again.
“Nothing,” I said. There was only the moment when his hand would stop stroking my cheek and I knew the smack was coming; the first hard impact of his palm against the side of my face; the eye-wetting sting of pain; the warm glow of heat there afterward. It was perhaps the only time when there was nothing else in my head. It hurt, but the pain was neutral: there was no hate or disgust behind it. It was pure and exhilarating like any other physical experience. Like the moment of orgasm where you forget yourself, your partner, the world.
“Do you get angry with me?” he asked.
“No.”
W visited my house only once. He whipped me through a shirt, then topless, stopping only when I started to bleed. In the shower at the top of the stairs, he covered me in piss, then forced my face down in the puddle as he beat the back of my thighs. After he spent his load on my face, he held a mirror up. “You are such a picture,” he sighed. Eyes stinging with come, I half-opened my lids to see a red-cheeked girl squatting in a white tiled bath. And he was right. It looked good. Not in a cover-of- Glamour way, mind. I smiled broadly.
Once on holiday in Scotland I furtively sent W letters. “Ate a packed lunch and contemplated the dimensions of your hands,” read the first, tentative one. Later: “Next time you see me, don’t forget to bring a torch and those ropes.”
And the last, written a day after I stood out in the cold night air while the midges chewed me alive and W outlined in detail exactly what he wanted to do to me: “After you told me how you would beat and defile me, I came back inside dripping wet.” Yes, I was still in love with someone else, but that was a model-gorgeous, gentle lad, who would never even hear me on the toilet, much less contemplate painting my face with his feces.
The relationship felt too tightly wound to survive, destined for a breakup, a spell in prison, or, worst of all possible worlds, a suburban marriage with occasional light S amp;M. W couldn’t bear the thought either, and one night we engineered, on the flimsiest excuse, the demise of our affair. And I-polite yet firm, like a woman in film noir-smacked him.
“You’ve been wanting to do that since we met,” he said.
That never stopped me wanting him. Two weeks later I sent a note. “There are still marks on my left breast from your fingernails. I miss you.” vendredi, le 12 decembre
Phone call from the Boy last night. It consisted of the usual moaning and gnashing of teeth, both in a sexual way and at our fate of being star-crossed lovers with the A23 betwixt us.
Toward the end of the conversation, things turned a bit more prosaic. “My dad’s going to be in London a couple of nights this week.”
“Why’s that?”
“Retraining courses for work,” the Boy said. “I know he’s dreading it. He hates London. I mean, what is there to do when you’re stuck in the city by yourself and don’t know anyone?”
One thing came to mind immediately. Dear God, I hope he doesn’t call an escort. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Your dad’s a smashing chap, someone’s bound to take him out on the town one night.” Please, don’t let him call an escort. And please, I know it’s a lot to ask.. please don’t let it be me. “Maybe your mum could go as well?”
“No, she’s busy this week.”
Fuck. My logical mind knows it’s statistically unlikely. Still, I have three hotel visits in the next two days and can’t help wondering. If time has taught me anything it’s that (a) cheating is a common human condition and (b) the stars always align against me. samedi, le 13 decembre
Went to Bedford for a booking last night and caught a late train back. There was almost no one on the platform: a youngish professional wearing sneakers and headphones, a few lone women. I wondered if they were going home from work, and if so, why this late? The trains were running behind and it seemed we were waiting ages.
A clutch of teenaged boys jumped on, drunk and raucous. One of them eyed me up whilst the others harassed the fat boy in the group. They took one of his shoes and played an increasingly violent game of keep-away which culminated in his loafer being chucked out the window at another train. He began screaming and tackled two of the other boys. They got off at Harpenden, unsurprisingly, and the carriage was mine alone as far as Kentish
