Page 3 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
I’m not even sure I’d been on the pull that night. At that point, I was free, easy, just keeping an eye open. I’d sworn off relationships for a while after Dexter. Dexter was an artsy wannabe writer; we’d lived together and, at the time, I’d thought he was profound and deeply intelligent. I’d envisioned a future selling his poetry leaflets and living off love and creativity. Then one day I said I didn’t get one of his poems. Next thing you know, he turned into a melodramatic shit who walked out and took my kettle. It was a bloody good kettle.
So you’re probably wondering how this evening panned out. Stu and Beth probably got it on, right? Some drunken sex back in a three-bedroomed shared flat, some open-mouthed snogging, the night ending with their bodies sprawled across a mattress that came with the rental (and had been treated for bed bugs, several times) and the swapping of phone numbers that may or may not have led to the sparks of a potential relationship.
No.
After Beth laughed at Stu’s rubbish smeg joke, we all got some shots in. The bar we were in played a rather lively mix of house music which Beth and Stu grinded away to quite inappropriately. Danny and I joined them like some sort of older sibling chaperones. There was gentle swaying on our part and a moment when the DJ played a dance remix of Britney Spears and Danny mouthed all the words to the chorus and seemed to know parts of the accompanying dance routine.
At about 11p.m., Beth and Stu ended up outside the bar having a snog and a bit of inappropriate frottage against the doors of a closed artisan cake shop. They got a cab back to Beth’s place in Hammersmith but when she got through the door, she threw up in the hallway. That girl never knew how to mix her liquor. She was lucky that Stu didn’t take advantage of this. Instead, he waited outside the toilet for a while hearing her spewing, hoping it was just the one bout and he’d still be able to achieve congress that evening. However, after the toilet flushed for the third time, he popped his head around the door to wish her a good night. She didn’t respond. She dropped her phone in the loo. Before Stu left, he threw a bit of newspaper and bleach over the carpet thinking it was the kindly thing to do, but this only discoloured it greatly meaning Beth never got all of her security deposit back.
We bring this story up a lot when Beth and Stu meet, even though they hate it. They’ve always held a grudge for each other which I feel is more due to the embarrassment that they half had sex in the street. Five months after this, Beth met Will who became her long-time boyfriend. Stu shagged his way around London and at one point had a very serious case of gonorrhoea, which I knew about as Stu showed up on our doorstep one day grumbling that his wang was falling off and asking Danny how he could fix it.
At the same time Beth and Stu had been dry humping in the street, Danny and I stood beside our siblings, staring into space about the wheres and hows of getting home and wondering if we were hungry. We watched Beth and Stu get into a cab.
‘Come with us!’ they roared.
Danny and I declined politely and watched them drive off, their faces attached to each other in the back seat. I thought about chips and jumping in a taxi. Or maybe a bus. It was summer. I thought about walking, about my aching feet. Should I go home and make oven chips? That was a bind. I worked out which was the closest chippy/kebab shop and which was the less stingy when it came to garlic mayonnaise. I thought about texting my roommate, to see how her date went. It was with a bloke she’d met through her new yoga regime. I thought about what if I got home and they were going at it all tantric in the front room? Maybe I shouldn’t go home. I wasn’t prepared for what I heard next.
‘Fancy a fuck?’
I turned to look at Danny Morton. He said ‘fuck’ strangely – in deep guttural Northern tones. He was looking straight ahead so I wasn’t sure if he was even talking to me. I didn’t suppose he was so drunk that he was talking to the lamp post. He wasn’t shy, or coy about it. He knew exactly what he wanted. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Chips were suddenly not a priority. Danny stuck his hand out into the street and a taxi stopped. He got in the back and left the door open. I followed.
‘Victoria Park fella, Lauriston Road,’ he said to the driver.
We didn’t say anything to each other for the whole cab ride. I remember being sat on opposite sides of the seat and not even holding each other’s gaze. I’m not sure what the taxi driver must have thought. To any outsider, it may have looked like we were mid-fight, a cloud of some sort of tension sat between us. When Danny stopped the cab, he paid for it and held the door open for me. He opened the front door – a plaque on it claiming it to be the ‘Cumbrian Embassy’ – to a flat that was above a bohemian clothes shop. When he got through the door, he stepped in and I followed. He turned, closing the door with one hand behind me. He was unfeasibly close.
What happened next? Oh my days. I remember him pulling his body into mine. The kiss was extraordinary, exceptional: the hand to the back of my head, fingers tracing my collar bone. He turned and pinned me to the stairs. He said nothing. He parted my legs with his hand and moved his head down to my waist, pulling my skirt up. I could feel his lips through my knickers. He used his fingers to move the fabric to one side and I felt his tongue lightly press against me. I put my hands down on the steps to steady myself, mostly from the shock that he had located my clitoris. He then moved himself up over me, unbuckling his belt, removing my knickers and well, we had that fuck he was after.
And I remembered feeling aroused but strangely excited thinking about the times when first-time sex had not gone like this at all: the sloppy misaimed jabbing against my perineum, the neck lickers, that lad who convulsed and I was worried the power of Christ had compelled him. The time I had nearly garrotted someone with my handbag, coats getting in the way, sex that’s clumsy and you’re constantly apologising to each other. I simply felt surprise, pleasant surprise. He was of reasonable size and girth and knew exactly how to move. I’d never felt that build-up of energy within me to reciprocate. I pushed my hips against his, hearing him moan slightly.
But there was something else, equally as unnerving: he was looking at me. Into my eyes. The number of times you’d be looking over someone’s naked shoulder or have your face buried in a pillow. This couldn’t be more different. He cupped a hand around my face and just kept staring. I’d never felt more appreciated, but I was starting to feel unnerved that perhaps I wasn’t allowed to blink. I bulged my eyes slightly. His eyes creased and he laughed.
‘Come…’
He said that word Northern too. But he kept moving over me. I wasn’t sure it was a request, an order, or a competition but I could feel the energy, the warmth building up, my legs trembling. I remember coming. Hard, moaning loudly as his hands reached down to my naked thighs and he pushed harder, deeper into me. I remember having a momentary panic about STIs and pregnancy, set against the fact I’d just had amazing sex in a stairwell in East London and come like a fricking rocket.
He was still looking at me when the moment was interrupted by a key in the door. Stu stood there looking at his brother’s naked buttocks set against my straddled legs.
‘Oi!’ Danny said. ‘Close the door!’
I laughed.
‘You cheeky bastard. Is that her sister from bar?’
I was very aware that Danny was still inside me.
‘Would you close the door and give the lady her sodding dignity!’
I was hiding underneath Danny at this point.
‘Whatever, I’m going down the shops.’
He closed the door. Danny withdrew. Truth be told, I was too shocked to move. He sat there and scratched his head.
‘Y’alright?’
‘Uh-huh.’
He sat there half-mast. What to say next? Tell him I came? Ask him if he came? Something wildly romantic and sincere?
