Though it was early, the basement was packed with people watching a band playing covers of American rhythm-and-blues songs. At first we stood by a pillar, sipping our drinks to make them last. Then I danced, first with Sofie, then Freja, pressed close together by the jostling crowd. The place was unbelievably hot. Within minutes sweat was running down our faces and soaking our clothes. Droplets of moisture dripped from the ceiling, barely a foot above our heads. I danced with my eyes closed, dizzy and ecstatic. Freja draped her arms round my neck and I squeezed her against me, feeling her thighs moving under her damp cotton dress, the ridge of the bra-line bisecting her back. Then, as the band sang uh uh yeah yeah do you like it like that we were kissing, her fingers scraping away strings of wet blond hair from her mouth as we crushed our faces together and my hands traveled over the curve of her buttocks, the slippery nape of her neck. The hour of the last tube was edging closer and with it would have to come some kind of decision, but there was no contest, not really, because Freja was smiling and grazing my cheek with her knuckles and conferring with Sofie, giggling and whispering as I stood apart and nodded my head to
the music, lighting a cigarette, tapping my foot yeah baby oh baby oh in time and just to make sure taking off my watch and slipping it into my pocket.
By the time we left it was very late. We sat in a coffee bar and ate toasted sandwiches, smiling conspiratorially at one another. Sofie drew fingertip patterns in spilled tea on the Formica tabletop while Freja and I played footsie until there was no money left for drinks and all three of us started to yawn. Finally I confessed I had no way to get home, and they both laughed, as if I was being sly. Freja told me they’d try to sneak me into their hotel, and led me by the hand into Fitzrovia, to a townhouse in one of the bigger squares with an illuminated sign above the door saying the Richmond or the Windsor or something House. We hung around outside, prevaricating. Freja and I kissed and ran our hands over each other, almost clawing each other in desperation. Sofie hopped up and down a discreet distance away, hugging herself against the cold.
As they rang the bell for the porter, I hid out of sight. After a minute or two someone came to the door and they disappeared inside. I waited for a long time, crouching behind a pillar box across the street. I began to feel lonely, suspecting that all the earlier discussion at the club had been about how to get rid of me. The stars were faint in a sky that was now turning from black to a washed-out purple-gray. On the other side of the square a car started up and pulled away, its engine sounding loud and hollow in the silence.
I must have been dozing when Freja came back down to let me in, because the first thing I heard was her voice hissing my name. She was standing in the doorway, waving frantically. I ran over and she pulled me up several flights of thickly carpeted stairs to a little room with two single beds and a huge mirrored wardrobe, a looming Formica block that dominated the far wall like a prehistoric monument. The lights were off and the curtains half drawn, letting through a dribble of predawn light that fell across Sofie, just a mound under the covers, pretending to be asleep.
Without looking at me Freja started to undress, stepping out of her skirt and carefully folding it over the back of a chair. Too shy to watch, I turned away and found myself confronted with her double image in the wardrobe doors: the curve of her back, her birdlike shoulders. She unhooked her bra, struggled into a long cotton nightie, and dived into bed. “Hurry up,” she whispered. “Get undressed and get in.”
Gray hands unbuttoned a gray shirt. I was self-conscious: though I couldn’t see her eyes in the half-light, I knew she was watching me. I got down to my underwear and crawled beneath the blankets and we tried to stifle our laughter as we wrapped ourselves around each other. She smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke. I kissed her salty face and her tongue darted out from her hot dry mouth. My body was a single nerve, thrumming with each small urgent movement, each shift in position. Her mouth at my ear. Her exploring hand.
Several times in my life I’ve gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it’s possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it’s emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.
I found the hard points of her nipples with my mouth, sliding a hand into the extraordinary slipperiness between her legs. Her nightdress rucked up round her waist, then, as I pushed it higher, became a solid wad round her neck. I felt her lift up her arms and snake out of it, a sudden rush of cold air sweeping in as her movement dislodged the blankets. Then her miraculous hand was on my cock, slithering me into her as the covers fell away completely. The cold somehow added to my excitement as I arched myself back and forth. “Don’t squirt your stuff inside me,” she warned, and I pulled out and came copiously onto the sheets. My moan produced a kind of answering sigh in her, a long exhalation that might have been melancholic or relieved or regretful or satisfied,
all or none, I had no idea. I saw Sofie was awake, watching us. Her mouth was slack, her eyes glittering.
We rearranged the blankets and lay silently on the narrow bed. I reached for Freja again but time had somehow passed and her breathing was even and the light coming through the chink in the grubby curtains was hard and strong, strong enough for me to see that Sofie was still watching. “You’ve got to go,” she said. “People will wake up soon, and they can’t find you here.”
My head was swimming with lack of sleep. The daylight made everything complicated; guilt lurked in the corners of the room. I foraged for my clothes on the floor and, with a quick glance at the two girls, one asleep, the other staring, I tiptoed downstairs. From behind the frosted-glass door in Reception came the sound of someone moving around. I fumbled with the front-door latch, and all at once I was standing outside in early-morning London, a place of sunlight and milk floats and street sweepers, tucking my shirt in and realizing that I was miles from home and hadn’t even got enough money for a bus fare.
There was a huge row, of course, but I didn’t much care. I retreated to my bedroom to trace and retrace every minute of my night, the quickly fading loops and whorls of happiness.
There were times like that later on, with Anna. In the squat, in various shared beds and shared houses. Watching and being watched. We had abolished privacy: we hoped guilt would go with it. Watching could become anything. Mechanical or transcendent. It could leave you open-mouthed, touching yourself. It could make you curl up defensively, resenting the selfish animal sounds, the smell of other people on the pillow into which you were pressing your face.