‘I’ll do it,’ the bus driver said. She thought about complaining as he took the shining blade from her, applied lather to her face, covering up the shadow, but she stopped herself.
‘I was never any good at shaving,’ she said as he began to carve into the soap with deft movements. ‘Nobody ever taught me properly.’
His face was intent as he worked, moving delicately but surely about her. He eased back her head to expose her throat and she felt her breath catch, hearing the rasp of the blade. At one point it struck with an audible nick. She saw the alarm in his eyes.
Liz stared at the bright line of blood darkening in her reflection. ‘Shit!’ She made a grab for more tissues, holding her head still.
Cliff darted forwards with his tongue, and licked away the first drops that had formed. He grinned, smearing his teeth with her blood.
‘The biggest taboo, these days,’ he said.
‘Stupid! You should be more careful.’ She held damp tissue to the cut, alone with the pulse of blood in her neck, feeding into her own consoling hand. Cliff went back to holding her from behind, dropping the razor with a heavy clatter into the sink.
They stood for a while, until the bleeding stopped. He unzipped her dress and began to peel back the shoulders, gently undid the bra and helped her let the falsies fall with dignity on to the heap that her discarded dress had made.
‘What I always wanted, really. People like you are so hard to find. You’d be perfect as either a man or a woman. But what I really wanted, you are. A woman with a prick.’
He’s nice, but maybe a bit shallow, Liz thought in order to distract her attention from the mirror image. The narrow man’s chest with its hair and wiry muscles. And the shock of her wig on that body, the face now androgynous and beautiful. Flowing and abundant false hair on a stringy, underdeveloped body.
Until now she had avoided seeing this combination, woman’s head on a man’s body. Usually, the wig came off first, then make-up, and then she was just a man in a dress. That was all right, a standard figure of fun. But with her wig still on and the clothes on the floor, she was a woman inside a man’s body. She looked at herself as she was now, standing in her Marks and Spencer’s knickers with the shaft of her stiffened penis strapped by the elastic to her stomach.
With his index finger Cliff traced the shape of her nipples, the cool tip making her shiver. He cupped his hand around the smoothness of a pectoral. ‘You’re a woman, aren’t you? But you’ve got all different things…’ His other hand reached to the end of her cock where a glistening droplet was forming. ‘But you’re really all woman.’
She thought, I’m content to let him say this to me. He’s defining me absolutely and I’m quite content to let him. What does that say about my current state of mind?
But I can be anything. It’s a political thing, a personal choice. I am determined to be what I want. Yet at his touch I harden and seal. If he says I am a woman, a woman with a prick that he wants to marry, then I seem happy to be that. Why do I do that? How can I let him?
But his jaw was resting heavily on her shoulder, one palm grinding gently into her chest as he moved his own body against her from behind, making her follow his rhythm. She fell into it, pulled by the arc of tension across her chest and drawn out on the raw, choking bliss as he fingered her cock. His fist closing over the apple-red flesh, drawing reluctantly away, fingertips playing over it, a beautiful but sullen tropical plant, almost about to flower.
He of course had his own erection ground into her buttocks and the sensation was almost shocking to her.
‘I don’t want you to fuck me,’ Liz said. And her voice was dry and lower. ‘I want us to come together, face to face. Both of us held together, in each other’s hands. That’s safest and it’s equal. It makes us one, in a way. Like grafting stems in a nursery.’
‘Like last night?’ he asked. ‘But that was just the first time. It wasn’t really sex. Just messing about. Just wanking each other off.’
She halted each responsive gesture. ‘No, it wasn’t. That’s childish. We’re all wankers, aren’t we? It shouldn’t be a term of abuse.’
He shrugged. She went on, helping him to remove her knickers.
‘We oughtn’t to feel the need to ape the usual cut-and-thrust. Not if we don’t want.’
Looking confused, he took her face in his hands. ‘I’m just trying to say I want you. I do. I do. But how do I want you? All I can say is that I want to fuck you — and I do. But what else is there? What else do I know?’
‘We’ll learn together. It’s never too late, honestly. Last night is a wonderful starting point. Don’t you think?’
She unbuttoned his shirt, drew him tighter to her. Her cock rested nose-first against his midriff and had to be moved as she unzipped and released him. Then one cock met its companion; they nudged against each other familiarly, rasping as their owners collided and fastened this hardness between their bodies.
THIRTEEN
It was raining everywhere. Last night they had forgotten to pull the blinds and the water ran in sheets down exposed glass. Grey waves of light rolled through the room, and Andy woke to find the world television-grey and uninviting.
He woke Vince up. ‘It’s twenty past eight.’
Vince turned over
