Kitabı oku: «In at the Deep End», sayfa 6
‘Sorry,’ said Orson. ‘I didn’t realize.’ He stood aside. ‘Have a great night.’
We hurried inside, before he could change his mind.
‘That was really cool,’ Alice said to Bo, in a really uncool way.
‘He was in my year at uni,’ said Bo, shrugging. ‘His real name’s Tim.’
Bo led us to the corner of the dance floor where Ella and Rebecca were dancing, their coats in a pile on the floor between them. Ella was dressed eccentrically again, in a jumpsuit that looked like a tuxedo. I was nervous introducing them to Cat and Alice, but I needn’t have been. The heat and darkness of the club made everyone stand closer together than they otherwise would have done, shouting into each other’s ears like deaf old friends. Soon we were on our second bottle of house red, and Rebecca was talking to Alice – I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was a lot of intense nodding – and Ella was teasing Cat about her advert audition.
‘Why are they auditioning British people?’
‘Maybe no one in Germany wants the job,’ Cat said.
‘Are you fluent in German?’
‘Do I look like I’m fluent in German? It’s a non-speaking role,’ Cat said. ‘I just have to look enthusiastic about sausages in a German way.’
Ella laughed again, throwing her head back, showing her perfect teeth. ‘She’s brilliant!’ she said to me.
‘She is,’ I said, and I gave Cat a hug.
The music seemed to get louder and the club hazier, though it’s possible it just seemed that way because of all the wine. People started dancing and we joined in, eyes closed, hands in the air. Bo and Rebecca were dancing together, trying out some lindy hop moves to the EDM.
‘We should go out more!’ Cat shouted in my ear, over a dance tune I didn’t know.
‘Yeah!’ said Alice. ‘I love lesbians!’
‘Me too!’ I said, draining my glass and trying to refill it, then realizing we had run out of wine. ‘I’m just going to the bar,’ I shouted.
‘What?’ Alice shouted back.
‘The bar!’ I did a drink mime.
I pushed my way through the sweaty, smelly bodies, looking over my shoulder at my oldest friends dancing with my newest friends, feeling a surge of happiness and gratitude.
I ordered another bottle of house red and was waiting, half dancing, when I noticed a woman at the other end of the bar, long curly hair, leather jacket, staring at me – a ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ sort of stare.
I looked away, a bit put out, but when I looked back she was still staring, still apparently hating me for no reason. When she caught my eye, she tapped her friend on the shoulder and whispered something in her ear. Her friend turned and then started walking towards me, looking me up and down, like we were in a Western and were about to have a shoot-out. I clutched my glass of wine in what I hoped was a threatening manner.
‘All right?’ she said, raising her chin to me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘My friend – the one with the curly hair? Yeah – she thinks you’re hot. Are you single?’
I turned the woman down – the staring put me off – and went to tell the others what had happened.
‘Don’t you know about that yet?’ said Ella, taking charge of the bottle and refilling everyone’s glasses.
‘About what?’ I asked.
‘About the scary lesbian eyes. It’s a thing,’ said Ella. ‘If you fancy someone in a lesbian bar, you have to stare at her like you want her dead. And she stares back like she wants you dead.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then you have sex,’ said Rebecca, shrugging.
I looked at Cat and Alice. They seemed as fascinated as me. ‘Without speaking to each other?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes,’ said Bo.
‘But how does that work?’ I asked. ‘How do you go from death stares to kissing?’
‘You just do,’ said Ella. ‘Although I’ve never got past the staring stage, personally.’
‘Try it,’ Cat said to me. ‘Pick someone. See if it works.’
I scanned the room. Several of the lesbians were wearing baseball caps at a jaunty angle. I noticed more than one undercut. I felt out of my depth. And then I saw a woman standing next to the DJ booth who seemed more sure of herself than anyone else in the room. She was probably in her late twenties, tall and angular, with golden skin and short, dark hair, curly on top and shaved at the sides. She was standing up, shoulders back, surveying the room like she owned it, which made her seem even taller; her posture was the first thing I noticed about her. The second thing I noticed was that I found her incredibly attractive.
I looked at Cat. ‘Do it!’ she said.
‘She’s too cool for me,’ I said.
‘She’s not,’ said Ella.
‘She’s looking away now, anyway,’ I said.
‘Go on!’ Alice said.
So I stared at the woman until she looked away from the woman she was talking to and looked back at me. I kept staring. The others sniggered and turned their backs, but they were obviously still half-watching us, because I heard Ella say, ‘She’s coming over!’
The attractive woman walked up to me and leaned towards me, so close that I could tell she was wearing men’s cologne, to introduce herself over the music.
‘Sam,’ she shouted.
‘Julia,’ I shouted back, and as we shook hands, I noticed the muscles in her forearm tense. They were pretty well developed, and I had a sudden vision of that forearm having sex with me.
Sam smiled a half-smile like she knew what I was thinking, holding my gaze. Her eyes were a very dark brown. ‘I like your jumper,’ she said.
‘I like your face,’ I said.
Sam laughed. I felt very pleased with myself. Maybe I wasn’t so bad at flirting, after all.
‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?’ she asked, one arm against the wall, blocking my view of my friends.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. But there was something vaguely familiar about her.
‘Are you an artist too?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said, but then I realized. ‘You know Jane, don’t you? Did you go to a party at her warehouse in Hackney Wick a few months ago?’
She gave me another half-smile. ‘That’s where I saw you. She was trying to chat you up but you weren’t having any of it.’
I started to contradict her – I was pretty proud of the lesbian sex I’d had – but Sam was looking at her phone.
‘Listen,’ she said, glancing up, ‘I’m meant to be meeting a friend now – but I’d love to buy you a drink sometime, if you like.’
‘Great,’ I said.
‘Have you got your phone? I’ll give you my number.’
I was collecting numbers wherever I went these days. I hardly knew myself.
I looked around Sam as she typed her number into my phone, wanting the others to notice that she had chosen me. Me!
I drop called her and we said goodbye, and then I just sort of stood there for a minute, everything brighter and louder and more exciting suddenly. And then the others ran up to me, practically rubbing their hands together.
‘Did I just see you give Sam your number?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said, as casually as I could.
Cat shook her head, apparently very proud of me. ‘Mate,’ she said. ‘You fucking did it.’
‘You’re going to have fun,’ said Rebecca.
‘What?’ I said.
‘With Sam,’ she said.
‘Have you …?’ I raised my eyebrows.
‘When I first came out,’ said Rebecca. ‘She’s really good.’
‘Oi,’ said Bo, who had been listening to our conversation.
‘What?’ said Rebecca. ‘She is!’
You might think I’d have been put off by Rebecca’s revelation, but I wasn’t. I hoped Sam would fuck me, teach me all about lesbian sex and send me on my way a seasoned lesbian, capable of discussing my past conquests in Dalston clubs with people I’d only just met.
Sam texted me that night as I was getting into bed. Sleep tight, beautiful Julia … I’m free next weekend if you are. Sam x
I crafted a reply that was neutral and noncommittal but open to sex: Yeah sure. Maybe next Saturday? Julia x
She texted back straight away: Brilliant, babes. I’ll think of somewhere good to take you and let you know. Looking forward to it … will be thinking about it all week. She put a kiss emoji at the end of the text, which gave me a bit of a thrill.
I closed my eyes and said a silent thank you to the universe. When I’d been sleeping with men, theoretically at least, I’d gone three years without so much as a bit of half-hearted fingering, and here I was, about to have sex with my second woman in as many months.
10. A SEX-CUPBOARD STAPLE
That March was the rainiest on record, and there was a leak in our terrible flat’s terrible skylight, but my swing dance classes and my new friends and the prospect of a date with Sam made the world seem sunny and the flat seem like a luxury apartment designed for Chinese investors. The Monday after I met Sam, I cheerfully put a washing-up bowl underneath the skylight and left for work, smiling at people as I walked to the Tube. My anxiety had a purpose now; it was excitement making my heart race, not nameless dread. But by Thursday, I still hadn’t heard from her. She had told me she’d be in touch, so I didn’t want to text her first. I spent my days listening out for her text, snatching up my phone whenever it buzzed in my pocket, keeping it in front of my computer screen at work so I wouldn’t miss anything. The only texts I got were PPI spam, or Alice telling me to buy milk, or Ella asking What’s happening?? When’s the date????
Then on Friday, during a briefing about the new measures to tackle childhood obesity, my phone lit up with a text from Sam. Tom’s eyes flicked towards it. I pulled it under the table before he could read it.
Still up for meeting? What’s your address? I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow.
I had never been picked up at eight before.
Smriti was saying something impressive about ‘horizons of expectations’ and everyone was nodding, so I nodded too. Owen looked at me and raised his eyebrows in a question.
‘Sam,’ I mouthed. ‘My date.’
‘Nice,’ he mouthed back.
‘Everything OK, Owen?’ Tom asked. ‘Anything you wanted to share with the group?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just – I agree with Smriti, really.’
‘About …?’
‘About what she was just saying.’
I was nervous about the date, mostly for sex reasons. Jane had done much of the doing when we’d banged, and we hadn’t used any accoutrements. I had started watching The L Word as research, and from what I’d seen, I was worried that lesbian sex might be quite accoutrementheavy. I was hoping that things like dildos were for advanced-level shagging – not the sort of thing you’d whip out on a first meeting – but I didn’t want to expose myself as a beginner. I decided to text Ella for advice.
Do you think Sam will expect me to have a strap-on? The Internet says it’s a sex-cupboard staple. I need some lesbian sex help.
She replied straight away, with three laughy-cry-face emojis. I am NOT a sex expert but I’ll do my best. What are you doing on Saturday during the day? Want to go to a sex shop?!
I’d never been to a sex shop before – hadn’t needed to. You can get everything you need for straight sex in Boots or in a vending machine in the pub toilets, if push comes to shove.
‘Where is it?’ Alice asked that morning as I was getting ready to go out. She was putting on her foundation, staring at her reflection in the mirror.
‘Shoreditch,’ I said. I edged around her to pick up my toothbrush. ‘Can I get to the sink for a minute?’
Alice sighed and stepped back to let me in. ‘You could have asked me to come.’
I looked at her. ‘Why would you want to come to a sex shop?’
‘I have sex!’
‘It’s a women-only sex shop.’
‘I’m a woman!’
‘I’m going to be buying a dildo.’
‘Maybe I need a dildo.’
‘To use on Dave?’ I whispered.
She shrugged. ‘Might spice things up a bit,’ she said, voice quieter now.
‘I can get you one,’ I said.
Alice looked as though she was about to argue and then she shut her eyes for a moment and said, ‘Sorry. I’m being an idiot.’
‘Only a bit of an idiot,’ I said. The truth is, I liked Alice being jealous of me. I’d felt the same when she’d got together with Dave, all those years ago; suddenly the person I was used to doing everything with had someone else to do everything with. I’d hated it. But now Alice was going to have to get used to doing without me.
The sex shop Ella took me to was called Sh!. ‘Everyone comes here,’ she told me. ‘It’s a rite of passage.’ As is the way with most things designed for women, it was decorated in various shades of pink and red and purple, so walking in felt like entering a large, latex-scented vagina. There were shelves full of sex toys and feminist porn, but I went straight for the books and cards. You know where you are with a book or a card. They might have nipples on them, but the nipples are non-threatening, two-dimensional nipples and no one will expect you to attach clamps to them or anything like that. But Ella wasn’t having any of it. She put her hand on my back and steered me towards the shelves of dildos, saying, ‘We did not come here to buy cards.’
I glanced up at the dildos and glanced away again. I found them terrifying, frankly. I’d never been a big fan of penises, and I’d certainly never aspired to wield one myself. What if I was no good at thrusting?
I scanned the shelves for an unintimidating cock. There were black ones and blue ones and purple ones, some as small as an index finger, some as thick as an arm.
‘What do you like the look of?’ Ella asked. She was studying me curiously and I had a feeling she was thinking about the size of my cunt.
‘I don’t think we know each other well enough for this,’ I said.
‘Just pick one.’
I was baffled by all the choice. ‘Is this for someone else to use on me?’ I asked her. ‘Or for me to use on someone else?’
‘Both,’ she said. ‘Or you could buy several?’
‘I’m a junior civil servant,’ I pointed out. ‘Buying one massive latex penis is a luxury as it is.’
‘OK,’ said Ella, ‘first of all, don’t call it a penis. There’s no man in this equation.’
‘Good point.’
‘Second of all, this isn’t a luxury. It’s a lesbian essential. Once you’re properly seeing someone, you’ll come back and pick out a cock together. So think of this as your fall-back cock.’
‘My emergency cock.’
‘Exactly!’
A shop assistant wandered up to us. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Not sure,’ I said. ‘Just looking, really.’
‘Have you bought a cock before?’
‘She hasn’t,’ Ella said, before I could answer.
She nodded. ‘Are you into girth? Or, like, length?’
I wasn’t sure, to be honest. I was used to taking what I was given when it came to cocks – having to choose my own felt like picking out a personality for myself. I ruled out the massive black ones as they seemed like the equivalent of a Ferrari – promising too much up front. I also ruled out the little thin glittery ones because really, what was the point? You might as well just use your fingers.
‘I like girth, I think,’ I said. ‘But I was thinking of something quite … all purpose.’
‘Got it,’ said the sales assistant. She reached up to a high shelf and took down a medium-sized dildo with ridges along its length. ‘This one’s good for beginners,’ she said. Which was embarrassing; a bit like someone at a pharmacy saying, ‘Good condoms for virgins, those.’
‘That looks great,’ I said, reaching for it, just wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible.
‘Ribbed for your pleasure,’ she said as she handed it over.
‘Lovely.’
‘Easy to aim, if you know what I mean.’
‘Great.’
I walked over to the till, but the shop assistant didn’t follow. ‘You’ll need a harness, too,’ she said, running her fingers over the display. ‘Leather is more traditional. Or you could try the underpants. They’re easier to get on and off, but they’re not as sexy.’ She picked up what looked like a pair of Y-fronts with a hole in them and stretched them to demonstrate their elasticity.
There was an apple sticker stuck to the floor. I scuffed it with my foot.
‘The stretchy pants are easier,’ said Ella.
‘Don’t get them,’ said the shop assistant. ‘You need a real harness. It’s part of the ritual.’
Ella laughed. ‘Yes, the ritual of having to stop in the middle of foreplay to strap yourself into a medieval torture device, and then you realize you’ve put your leg through the bum hole, and then you have to take it off again, except you’re stuck, and whoever you’re having sex with has to help you get out of it, and the moment’s totally gone—’
‘You get used to it,’ said the shop assistant. ‘If you do it often enough.’
Ella rolled her eyes. ‘Try on a harness, then,’ she said.
The shop assistant tossed me one.
Working out how to put on the harness was like doing kinky cat’s cradle. I stepped into one of the holes, but Ella was right – it turned out to be the wrong one. She had to help me figure out how to put it on. She pulled on the straps to tighten it.
‘Now you put the cock in,’ said the sales assistant, handing it to me. I pushed it through the cock ring and there it was, standing up proudly in front of me, ready to pleasure the ladies. I felt completely ridiculous.
‘I’m telling you,’ said Ella. ‘The pants are much easier.’
‘But much less sexy,’ said the shop assistant, shrugging.
I bought the leather harness.
There was a display of mini-vibrators at the till point. I picked up a blue one and handed it to the shop assistant. ‘This too, please,’ I said. I’d give it to Alice, to make up for having new friends.
‘Now you’re a proper dyke!’ said Ella, as we left the shop.
‘Hooray!’
‘What are you doing now?’ said Ella. ‘Want to come to a vintage fair in Bethnal Green?’
‘I’d better not,’ I said. ‘I have to go home and get ready for my date.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Your date!’
I felt a little ripple of foreboding.
11. WHIPS ARE VERY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
I spent an unusual amount of time washing when I got home. I took the shower head and sprayed it inside my vagina. I wanted to make sure Sam wouldn’t have any complaints if I ended up going home with her. Or would she expect to come back to mine? In which case should I change the bed sheets? Should I trim my pubes? Or should I leave them unshaven so I couldn’t take my underpants off, taking that decision out of my hands? And did wanting to trim my pubes make me a bad feminist?
Sam rang the doorbell at eight exactly. I opened the door, trying to block the view of the piles of shoes and coats in the un-Hoovered hallway, my arms crossed self-consciously; I was wearing Alice’s push-up bra. Here she was, an actual woman who actually wanted to take me on a date. And she was sexy, too, in slouchy black trousers and a black silk shirt.
I felt sick with excitement. Or was it fear? I felt sick, either way.
‘You look gorgeous,’ she said, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.
I made an involuntary noise. I felt like I might not make it through the evening without yelping through pure pent-up sexual frustration.
‘You too,’ I said.
I smiled the smile of a woman who was totally used to going on dates with other women, no big deal. But as I unhooked my coat from the peg, I brought four other coats down with me, including Alice’s mad, oversized leopard-print rug of a jacket. I managed to hang the others back up, but the leopard-print rug slumped off the peg every time, collapsing at my feet, and I was growing frantic.
Sam came up behind me and gently took the coat from my hand. She examined the neckline calmly, finding the fabric loop and slipping it over the peg. ‘Happens to me all the time,’ she said. She picked my coat up from the floor and held it out for me to slip my arms into, the sort of thing a receptionist at an expensive hairdresser might do.
‘Shall we?’ she said, offering me her arm.
The light was fading and the windows of the houses opposite glowed yellow. A large part of me wanted to go back inside and curl up on the sofa with a bar of Green & Black’s, but Sam was leading me towards her car. She owned a car; I’d never been on a date with someone who owned a car before. It was a shit car, but so shit that it was trendy – an old Volvo painted brown on top and orange on the sides. Inside it smelled vaguely of cigarettes. Maybe she smoked. I didn’t know if I wanted to date someone who smoked.
‘The place we’re going is round the corner from my flat,’ she told me, as she turned the key in the ignition.
‘You didn’t have to come all the way out here to get me!’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m old-fashioned. In some ways. I know how to treat a lady on a first date.’ I winced – I do not like being called a lady – but then she squeezed my knee and the vibrations travelled up my leg to my cunt and I was tempted to pull the handbrake and beg her to fuck me right there in the car in the middle of Green Lanes.
I didn’t, though, obviously. Instead, I asked, ‘What’s the restaurant called?’
‘Butter. Have you heard of it?’
I had indeed heard of Butter; I’d seen endless photos of their dishes on Instagram. It wasn’t the sort of place badly paid public-sector employees went for dinner; even the bread basket was out of my price range. Would Sam be paying for the meal, as she’d asked me out and chosen the restaurant? But where would she get that kind of money? She was an artist, possibly the only job that paid worse than mine. And if she paid, would she think I owed her something – i.e. weird sex? No, I told myself. That is not how sex works. You never owe anyone sex.
We walked up one of those recently posh East London streets to the restaurant, which glowed with the promise of expensive food. Sam helped me off with my coat and pulled my chair out. She was really, really chivalrous; there’s no other word for it. She seemed determined to be a gentleman, and I’d decided not to go out with gentlemen any more. But she wasn’t a man, clearly. She looked nothing like a man, and sounded nothing like a man; she just had an incredible energy about her – feminine and masculine at the same time. Somehow she made me feel more female than I ever had in my whole life.
I ordered asparagus to start.
‘We won’t be doing water sports tonight then,’ she said, ripping a piece of bread in half and taking a bite.
‘Sorry?’
‘I don’t really like the taste of asparagus piss. This is the stuff, though,’ she said, chinking her glass to mine. ‘Prosecco’s perfect if you’re about to get kinky.’
‘Not champagne?’
‘Depends how often you want to do it. It can get expensive.’
That set the tone for the evening. Sam brought everything back to sex, which, needless to say, wouldn’t have been my specialist subject on Mastermind. She asked me what I liked to do in bed in such a frank, disarming way that I almost answered. The only reason I didn’t was that I didn’t know what I liked to do in bed yet.
There was no use pretending – I came clean and told her I’d only slept with one woman.
‘You shagged Jane? That night at the party?’
‘After a different party.’
‘Fuck!’ Sam nodded, eyebrows raised, impressed. ‘Well done. She’s hot. She’s a twat, though. But still – hot.’
‘Why is she a twat?’
‘I used to go out with one of her friends. She was a total dick about it, turned her against me. I think she was just jealous. Anyway, tell me more. Did she let you fuck her? And I hear she’s good with her tongue.’
She wanted to know literally every detail of the encounter, and hearing me talk about it seemed to turn her on, which turned me on. I was so far out of my comfort zone I felt like I was pretending to be someone else; I was telling her things I’d barely let myself think before, let alone say.
‘Sex is my hobby,’ Sam told me, once we’d exhausted my sexual history (which took approximately three minutes). ‘It’s the number-one thing I love to do. I met most of my friends through the SM scene. We go to sex conventions together, things like that.’
‘Sex conventions.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have to wear a lanyard to get into those?’
‘A really kinky black one.’
‘Right.’ I concentrated on my food while I tried to work out what to say next. ‘And SM – that’s the same as S and M?’
Sam nodded. ‘People in the scene don’t tend to use the “and”, though,’ she said.
‘Right,’ I said again.
Sam looked at me and smiled. ‘Don’t be scared,’ she said.
‘I’m not scared,’ I said, looking her in the eye. Which was a lie, but never mind – I was definitely more turned on than terrified.
‘The SM community is really friendly,’ Sam said. ‘And no one would ever make you do anything you didn’t want to do. Consent is a big deal.’
‘So you wouldn’t get a whip out on a first date or anything,’ I said.
‘Is that a request?’
After we’d eaten, Sam took me for a walk through the streets of Hackney, towards her flat. She stopped at a bench and lit a cigarette.
‘You smoke,’ I said unnecessarily.
She made a face. ‘I tried to give up, but I have an addictive personality.’ There was something sexy about the way she smoked, even though I knew there shouldn’t be. She noticed me looking at her and held out the cigarette for me.
Why not? I thought. I felt reckless with Sam, as though the rules I usually lived by didn’t apply. I took a drag. It was weirdly delicious, much nicer than I remembered cigarettes being.
We walked on, past a poster for the BFI, and I had a momentary flashback to my night with Finn; I already felt like a different person from the one who had been on that date. We paused outside Homerton station and Sam put her hands on my shoulders, and turned me to face her, and kissed me. It was a gorgeous kiss – soft and stubble-free.
Women were definitely, definitely better kissers than men.
Sam was getting really into it, but I was holding back slightly. You can do this, I told myself. You can totally have sex with her in her dungeon. You are an open-minded, sex-positive woman. Whips are very twenty-first century.
But she must have tasted my fear because she pulled away.
‘Let’s get you home,’ she said, as though she was a kind uncle who’d taken me for a day at the zoo. Not, just to be clear, that any of my uncles has ever kissed me like that.
‘I don’t have to go home,’ I said, leaning into her now that she was distancing herself.
‘Not tonight,’ she said, laughing, ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ And she walked towards the entrance of the Overground, leaving me to follow behind.
She sat with me till the Overground came, and told me more about her art.
‘I did an MFA in New York,’ she told me. ‘Figurative painting is big over there, but most people here are still obsessed with fucking installation art.’ She kicked a chocolate wrapper away from the bench we were sitting on.
‘So you paint portraits?’
She nodded. ‘Of women. From the point of view of the queer female gaze instead of the male gaze.’
‘Do you paint full time?’
She nodded, then shrugged. ‘I’m doing pretty well at the moment, but mostly in the States. I’m represented by this gallery in LA, the Night Gallery?’
I made an impressed noise, though I’d never heard of it.
‘I had a painting in the BP Portrait Award, though, so people here are starting to hear about me. Ingvild Goetz bought one of my paintings. She’s an important German collector,’ she explained, seeing my blank look. ‘Still not represented by a UK gallery, though.’ That, judging by her facial expression, was a sore point.
‘Can I see your work?’
‘I’m having my first solo show in London soon, so you can see it then. If you play your cards right.’ She nudged me with her hip. ‘Anyway, what about you? Did you always want to work at the Civil Service?’
I laughed. ‘Has anyone always wanted to work in the Civil Service?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘They have good pension schemes, don’t they?’
‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘I used to be a dancer. I broke my ankle and had to give up.’
She looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ As though she really meant it. ‘I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I couldn’t paint.’
She understood. I felt a rush of gratitude towards her.
She put her arm around me. A man with a Fitness First rucksack a little further down the platform looked at us, as though trying to work out our relationship.
‘It must be amazing,’ I said, ‘making money from the thing you love to do.’
‘I thought it would be,’ she said, ‘but I’m always comparing myself to other people. Like, Jane – she’s represented by this Hackney gallery, Revolution. And her work is such bollocks.’
‘It is bollocks.’
‘But bollocks is what people care about at the moment.’
‘People don’t want bollocks in their houses.’
‘I know you don’t, at least,’ she said. ‘Not literal bollocks anyway.’ She winked at me.
And then, too soon, the train pulled into the platform.
‘I’ll be thinking of you all night,’ she said, as the door closed between us.
I didn’t try winking back; my winking technique is a bit hit and miss. I watched her waving as the train pulled away, my heart pounding, my head rushing.
She was so fucking sexy.
My bed felt empty that night. I lay awake, too turned on to sleep, wishing I’d gone home with her. So I unwrapped my dildo and tried it out, imagining Sam using it on me, slamming it into myself with the palm of my hand. It was pretty good; I kept at it till I felt myself getting sore. But I didn’t come.
I couldn’t get to sleep afterwards. I watched YouTube for a while, trying to soothe my racing mind with make-up tutorials, but I felt more awake than ever. Fuck it, I thought. I’ll text her – just to say thanks, and that I’d had a nice time.
She texted straight back. Any time babes. It was a pleasure to have such a delicious woman on my arm. Hopefully next time you’ll come back to mine to check out my sketchbook.
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.
