“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 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 neutraclass="underline" 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.