shouldn’t have said that, don’t remind him!
“This is all rather out of left field,” he said.
“You would be able to fly to see your family instead of drive,” I said. His family are very close to him in feeling, but not geography. Living in London would put him much closer to the major airports.
“True.”
“And you’d have nicer furniture.” My flat is furnished in the slightly naff flowery vein favored by landlords of the aspirant class. “You don’t have to decide. I won’t take offense if you say no. But it’s an offer, anyway.” Ah, negotiating the terms of modern cohabitation. Who said romance was dead?
It would solve one problem-that of the belligerent Housemate. Though perhaps faced with the day-to-day of my comings and goings, the Boy would soon go off the idea. But I sure could use a friendly face and a foot rub with the beating these stiletto-clad feet take on a daily basis. mardi, le 16 decembre
Most transactions in the business are paid in cash. I find myself at the bank rather often and tend to use the same one every day. Cashiers are naturally curious people who would have to be brain-dead not to wonder why I come in with rolls of notes several times a week and deposit into two accounts, one of which is not mine.
One day I presented the deposit details on the back of a slip the Boy had been sketching on. He studied art, at some long-forgotten time in the past, and still tends to doodle and scratch at odd pieces of paper. The cashier turned it over, looked at the drawing, and looked at me. “This is good. Did you do this?” she asked. “Yes, well, I’m a.. cartoonist,” I lied. The cashier nodded, accepted this. Which is how the people at the bank came to believe that I draw for a living. Whether they took the next logical leap of questioning why any legitimate artist would demand payment in cash is unknown to me.
One advantage of this job is not being limited to the lunch hour for running errands. Therefore, I tend to go shopping in midafternoon. “Live close to here?” the grocer by the tube station asked one day as I picked out apples and kiwifruit.
“Just around the corner,” I said. “I work as a nanny.” Which is blatantly unbelievable, as I never have children visibly in tow and, unless the Boy is staying over, am only buying for one. Still, he now occasionally asks how the kids are doing.
I tend to bump into neighbors very seldom, except in the evening, at which time they see me dolled up in a dress or suit, full makeup, and freshly washed hair, meeting a cab. “Going out?” they ask.
“Best friend’s engagement party,” I say. Or, “Meeting people from work for drinks.” They nod and wish me well. I slip out the door and wonder what story I’m going to tell the taxi driver. mercredi, le 17 decembre
Met the As for lunch today. They don’t always hunt in a pack, but when they do, no eating establishment is safe.
A1, A2, A3, and A4 were already waiting at a Thai restaurant. I was unexpectedly the last to arrive-at least three of them are tardy by nature. We exchanged kisses and settled at a corner table.
I count the time I’ve spent enjoying sex from the first time I slept with A1, a number of years ago. I remember the afternoon clearly. The man’s large frame blocked the light from the single window of his flat. I smiled up at him, we were naked, entwined in each other’s limbs. He reached down, put his hand round one of my ankles, and moved my leg until it crossed my body. He bore down on my doubled body and entered me.
“What are you doing?” I squeaked.
“I want to feel the fullness of your arse against my body,” he said. Though it was not my first time-far from it-it might as well have been. Here was a man, finally, who knew what he wanted and, better still, knew what to do to get it.
A1 and I dated for several years. It was not an easy relationship except for the sex. Once our clothes were off, so were all bets. I knew I could ask him for anything and he could ask the same. For the most part, we always said yes to whatever the other wanted, but took no offense if the suggestion was rejected. He was the first man to tell me I was pretty whom I believed, the first person outside of a gym shower I could walk in front of unclothed. And I adored him physically: A1 is tall but not too tall, muscular, hairy. His dark straight hair and gravelly voice were deliciously anachronistic. He was the sort of man who should have been around in the fifties as a captain of industry.
We would have unbelievable rows. The passion I felt for him was something I didn’t know how to handle. It felt too intense and slippery for me, liquid mercury pouring out of my hands. We made it up in the bedroom, of course. Or on his kitchen table. Or his desk at work, after his boss had gone. In an elevator. In a university post office.
And we did it every way we could imagine, from the exotic (double penetration, restraints, golden showers) to the embarrassingly prosaic-missionary while he watched a football match on telly. I’ve done more and dirtier with other people since then, but never felt such a sense of stretching my own boundaries.
He was the first person to take a paddle to my behind; in return, I administered a doubled leather belt to his bottom while he bent over a sofa, holding his genitals away from the strikes. His impressively varied collection of pornography was the first hard-core I’d ever seen, and we acquired new magazines and sorted them into categories with glee. The things he did like-watersports, anal, women with frogspawnish come dripping off their faces-took their place; even things he didn’t like such as bestiality and lesbian sex had their place, because he was a collector. The explicit permission to just look at someone’s body, as opposed to a surreptitious glance in the gym or a furtive peek before the covers came up and the lights went out, was delightful.
I started seeing A2 several years after A1 and I split. He was a sensitive lover. Not gentle as such, but strong and slow. He seemed to me to make no unnecessary movements, and I was enthralled by his long, measured steps. Sometimes, with his pale skin and fair hair, he still looked like a teenager. Or even younger-an overgrown boy. From the beginning of our affair to the end, no body and no touch ever felt so right every time as his did. No fingers and no tongue ever came so close to being what I imagined the perfect lover was like. His body was spare but muscular. Tall but not excessively so. Not an ounce wasted.
He had a washing machine at home; I didn’t. I went round one day with laundry and found a pair of my own knickers in the otherwise empty drum. “What are these doing in here?” I asked.
“I missed you when you went home last weekend, so I wore them,” he said.
I examined the elastic. His hips were so narrow it didn’t seem to have torn the underwear. “Maybe we should get you some for you,” I kidded.
“Maybe we should,” he said, not joking.
I had his key. After waking and breakfasting (poached eggs on toast if hungry, cappuccino and a slice of challah if not), I would cycle to A2’s house. He usually rose late and was showering when I arrived. The bedroom door would be open and I went to the bureau drawer containing almost two dozen pairs of knickers. Choosing one, I would leave it in the drawer of the bedside stand and return to the front room. He would come out and dress. No comment on the knickers, which were for later.
We spent most of each day together. He worked from home; I had odd hours in a bookshop nearby. While I was working, he’d take a break from his, bringing me takeaway cups of coffee and tea. We read the literary supplements; I gave him bound proofs of upcoming books from the back room. My workmates were a mad, absinthe-drinking middle-aged woman and the often-absent, never-happy boss. Almost every week I ended up covering half of their hours but didn’t mind. There were books and plenty of them. And it was exciting the few times an author of note came in the shop. I noticed, though, that most of them breezed in the door and went to check for their titles on the shelves before coming back to the front to greet me.
After work A2 would be waiting at home. No words, just through the door and straight to his sofa. He sat, arms thrown over the back, as I opened his jeans with my teeth. Always a harder trick to pull off than I remembered. Then the first flash of silk or lace, and his hard cock distorting the fabric. I put my face in his crotch and smelled the odor of a day’s worth of sweat, piss, and pre-come through the knickers. I nibbled him, licked the underwear until it stuck to him.
A2 loved to pull at me, turn me over on his hands. He stripped me bare but kept the girly pants on. When he entered me-almost always anally-it was with the knickers pushed to one side, constricting the base of his penis, clinging to his balls.
After a few months the knickers weren’t enough. I bought a summer dress, short, brightly colored. He tried it on. I laughed and fucked him in the dress and was only slightly depressed that A2 had thinner hips and better legs than mine.
“Let’s go to the sales,” he said one weekend. I didn’t have to ask if the purchases were going to be for him or
