TIE ME UP, TIE ME DOWN

The hottest solo show I’ve ever had was of the tie and tease variety. She was very clear about the rules from the off: she wasn't going to initiate anything; but if I told her what to do to herself she would do what she was told. She could touch me, if she wanted; but I wouldn’t be able to move or touch her. So first off, I got tied to a leather office chair we used (yep, even a trip to B & Q can be eroticised – they do a very nice line in soft red rope); and next, I got to choose what she wore: very short, stretchy, sequined skirt, halter top, no bra, no knickers (don’t start me on outfits; let’s stick to this one…), lipstick, sequined mules. (I’d got a tee-shirt and pants on – fully dressed would have been a good effect, but uncomfortable).
We’ve got music playing, soft lighting.
She stands in front of me.
She asks me the question:
“Hmmmmmmmm?”
I’ve got used to this catch-all, entirely female interrogative. It means, ‘Are you going to tell me I’m lovely/how much you want me?’ Or sometimes, ‘Is this all right/was that good for you?’
On this occasion, it means all of these things.

“That’s perfect,” I assure her. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand it, though.”
“You’ll just have to,” she comes back, in character already.
So that’s how it’s going to be:
“You’d better show me what I’ll be missing, then,” I prompt.
She shows me.
She runs her hands over her breasts and down her torso, one hand slipping under the skirt’s waistband. She’s already got her eyes closed, concentrating on the pleasing feelings she’s giving herself. I can see her nipples harden, where the flimsy material of the top touches her breasts.
“Get them out,” I urge her.
My mouth is very dry.
It’s a hot scenario: I can control what happens next - but she’s in control of how it happens - and she can make me wait.
She cups them, teases them, caresses them, before she finally loosens the cord at the back of her neck and releases them both to my view.
“Hmmmmmmmmm?” she asks.
“Oh Goh-hod!” I sigh.
She leans forward, towards me, and then the bitch starts playing with her nipples, inches from my outstretched tongue. My erection hurts.
She’s only got half her kit off and I’ve already started to beg: I’m trying to get her to put her tits in my face and I’m pleading with her to release my cock from my pants for me.
Her only response is to lick her fingers and wet her nipples, so that her fingers run over them more easily.

“Now I want to see you play with your clit,” I insist.
She takes the hem of the skirt in each hand and raises it to the bottom of her naked slit.
“You want to see this?” she asks.
The noises I’m making are barely human, but she seems to interpret them correctly. One hand returns to her left breast, the other lifts her skirt higher, so that she can slip her fingers in.

I make a pleading request. It isn’t good English – barely more than the words “fingers” and “mouth”, together with some panting and gasping – but astonishingly, she seems to understand. She offers me the fingers of her right hand, slick with her juices, and I lick them eagerly. I’m no petrol-head, but the effect on me is the equivalent of what they call ‘kick-down’ in a powerful automatic: you think you’re doing top speed, then your right foot hits the floor and you’ve suddenly dropped two gears and gained a thousand revs. My own right hand is struggling with the rope binding it to the chair arm. I could free it if I really wanted. I’m on the edge; it wouldn’t take much, and we’d have spunkarama. But she’s not there yet – and even if she was, I can tell she’s having far too much fun getting there to rush it - so I don’t want to be the one to jump the gun. I struggle with the urge and watch her using both hands now: one working behind her, caressing her arse; the other rubbing her clit in an accelerating rhythm. In response to this sight, I just make a lot of inarticulate noises - but again she understands - and pushes her sticky fingers right into my mouth this time, where I suck at them greedily, tasting her, ecstatically.

I finally manage to get her to release my cock, which juts towards her rudely. The bitch tongues my ear while she's getting it out. Touching it excites her, and her hand returns to her cunt, hips grinding to press herself against her fingers.

Her eyes close.
“Mmmmmmmmmmm.”
Her sighs have turned to moans.
“Don’t come just yet!” I hiss.
“MmmmmMMM,” she goes; even more enthusiastically. “Mmmm. I might – and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
She steps closer, so her cunt is in front of my face. I’ve got my tongue stuck out – I must look like a fucking gargoyle, but I can’t help myself.
And I need to see more:
“Take the skirt off,” I say. “No, wait! Turn round first,” I tell her, inspired.
She does as she’s told.
“Now I want you to do that thing….with your arse – make it go round and round….”

"What, this thing…?” she asks innocently, over her shoulder.
I make a noise, but I do not know how to represent it with letters – call it a strangled groan.
She’s making her butt sway from side to side, right in front of me. She bends forward at the waist, and rests both hands on the bed. Then she starts to grind her hips, so her arse is moving in slow circles, like the dirtiest invitation you could ever receive.
“You hot bitch!” I encourage her. “Now pull the skirt up.”

She straightens to release her hands and reaches behind to lift the skirt, but she’s too eager.
“Slower!” I caution.
She starts again. She pushes her arse back towards me, and as it sways slowly from side to side in front of my eyes, she takes the hem at either side in each hand and very very slowly starts to drag it upwards.
I can just about manage to speak:
“A bit closer… Oh fuck, ye-es! Now finger yourself.”
She takes a few steps back, and with the skirt now around her waist, she leans forward again. Now I can watch the hand which habitually snakes behind to caress her arse, as well as glimpsing the fingers working her clit. I’m quivering with excitement - there’s no doubt this is one of the hottest moments in my life. I’m probably going to remember it at eighty and still manage to lift the duvet. Since I’ve covered it here, it won’t be in my ten most erotic moments; but it’s definitely up there. It’s an endless moment of pure desire, indefinitely withheld. She bends at the knees until she's almost sitting on my cock. I've got the hottest, sweetest little tush in the world gyrating inches from my straining hard-on - I’m just a thrust away from a pussy which is warm, wet and increasingly eager for pleasure – and yet I can’t quite reach it…..…
I’m completely beside myself.

When I can’t take this peculiar kind of torture any longer, I tell her to get onto the bed. She kicks of the mules and peels off the skirt, and with her kit off entirely, I ask her to frig herself on all fours. She’s fairly hot and bothered by this time, flushed and panting – she doesn’t need much encouragement to get down to it. Resting her weight on her left forearm, she reaches back between her legs with her right hand and goes to work. The noises she’s making are muffled by the sheet.
“Fuck your fingers,” I tell her.
Soon she’s lying on her front, having sex with her own hand.

She’s always a very active girl, know what I mean? I once – and only once – had a girl as squirmy and wriggly as her, when I was about twenty, at university, and I still remember it to this day. So I like to see her giving herself a good time, lying on her front; because of the wonderful way her arse moves up and down so exuberantly; or sometimes, lying on her side, because then her whole body undulates, hips thrusting against her fingers, as if impaled on some invisible cock.
"Ah....ah...ah...umm...umm...ummm..."

Woh lordy, she’s coming!
“Oh God, Baby……,” I’m crooning, while she shudders and moans; “Oh God, you fucking…hot...fucking...gorgeous...fucking...hot fucking bitch….”
I finally slip my bonds, scramble onto the bed and slide the hardest cock in the world right up her from behind.


Why not round off with some top tips for girls who want to go it alone?…..
· Some girls worry about making a lot of noise – perhaps concerned they’ll exhibit more pleasure than they do with their partner – or worry about how they’ll look, how they’re moving. Don’t think about it: the more noise you make, the more you move, the more you pant and perspire, the better. If he doesn’t like you having fun, he’s no fun.

· Shyness doesn’t work on Planet Sex – it’s not attractive, it’s not pleasurable for either party, and it’s not sexy. Get over it. You don’t have to become a depraved slut up for anything if you don’t feel that way, or talk dirty if it doesn’t come naturally; but you do have to move with the confidence of your own needs. There are belly-dancing classes and even pole-dancing classes nowadays, and practice – which you can do in front of a mirror – makes perfect.

GOOD TO TALK (DIRTY)

No round-up of one-in-a-bed fun would be complete without a visit to the world of telephone sex. And since I had a very hot session of this kind not long ago, I may as well add it to my list of top wanks here. In some ways, telephone sex is the ultimate solo tease - because you can’t possibly get at the other person, no matter how much you beg and plead – you’re forced to listen to them becoming excited and coming, without any hand in the proceedings, so to speak. At the same time, the physical distance between you doesn’t prevent it being intense and intimate, in my experience; because it’s as if the other person is alone and yet their most private thoughts and most intimate sounds are right there in your ear; almost inside your head.

Of course there are lots of premium rate phone services claiming to offer this experience, but I more or less assume they’re all shite and suggest you phone a friend. I haven’t seen any offered to women, for a start – and mine seems to love it! Plus, you need the other person to get off, really - and to get off on you getting off – otherwise it isn’t going to work properly. Finally, I think you need to be quite familiar with one another; after all, no one can keep up an uninterrupted running commentary the whole time and have fun; while familiarity helps you picture them, picture what they’re doing, and keep pace with them, when you both start making so much inarticulate noise…...

Although Nicolson Bakers’ wonderful novel Vox (*) is entirely comprised of two strangers, on either side of America, having telephone sex after randomly encountering one another on a chat line, what makes it so accomplished and successful is that aesthetic and subject are perfectly matched in every way. The pair go through the complicated process of becoming familiar over the course of the novel/conversation. And they actually need to get to know each other extremely well in order to reach the point where they can encourage and facilitate the others’ masturbation, guiding one another towards climax. So they spend most of the novel swapping dating experiences, exchanging opinions and views on life, describing themselves, comparing masturbatory techniques and past sexual encounters, before they can, finally, come.
(* This will definitely be in my list of top ten one-handed reading)

Back to me: I was on my own, out of town, and B was home alone; her partner having gone off to visit grandparents with the kids. This is just the sort of opportunity we look for and I was desperate about being elsewhere and wasting it. It didn’t take us long to come up with the solution, though; because we know it’s good to talk and it’s not the first time we’ve resorted to this sort of togetherness. (Given that her voice can cause me to have a Pavlovian rodney during a perfectly ordinary chat, it really only requires privacy and we’re more or less there).

As with meetings in the flesh, anticipation is everything. And she’s someone who likes time to get ready – something you’ve got to appreciate in a woman. So we made an arrangement for later; enabling us to get something to eat, make other calls (you don’t want partners trying you later only to find the line engaged for an hour and a half solid); take time for a bath or shower, time to put your nicest knickers on; and most importantly, time to think about the fun ahead…….

By the hour her return call was due, I was already in a state; because I know exactly what she’s like and I’d been imagining her lingering in the bath and fiddling with herself, as she anticipated the evening ahead. I’d already swapped electric lights for candles, I had the phone beside the bed, I had a spliff ready-made on hand, pillows plumped up so I could recline comfortably, some chilled white wine to drink – and I had that crazy, wonderful, nervous, sexy, flutter of butterflies in the stomach - when the phone finally rang, I could have pissed myself with excitement, if it wasn’t for the wooden state of my willy.

I may have mentioned before that she has a sexy voice. When she comes on the line this time, I could swear my cock twitches in response – she’s like a snake charmer.
“Jesus, I’m bit over-excited, just thinking about this,” I tell her
“Mmm, me too,” she admitted. “It’s hot, isn’t it? Are you hard?”
We swapped information on where we were (she, too, was in her bedroom; confessing that she was so agitated she’d found it hard to stay out of there and keep her hands off herself until the agreed time for the call), on what we were wearing (in her case, knickers and hold-ups; even heels, apparently).
“I need to look my best at times like these,” she says. “Even if you can’t see me, I’m all dressed up for you.”
We talk about our bodies, of course. (I tell her that I'm already hard as iron, that it's glistening with lube in the candlelight. She tells me she’s cleaned and preened and creamed, with some saucy knickers already pushed low enough to expose her slit.) And she admits that when she put some scarlet lipstick on, “to make sure I looked sexy in the mirror”, she’d also put it around her nipples and the outer lips of her cunt. This image proves almost too much for me.

For both us, all this essential info excites us even more and we allow ourselves, finally, to let our hands stray where they’ve been itching to go all evening. I can hear her ragged breath loud in my ear, and she sighs and moans when she hears my own uneven breathing.
“It can’t be attractive in a man,” I worry; “dribbling and panting and wanking.”
“Not so – this is private and this is sex, not a dinner-date,” she reassures me; “it’s definitely okay – I’d be insulted if it didn’t affect you that way.”
And then we’re turning each other on, more and more:
“Are you wanking it now?” she asks. I grunt assent. “Do it, then,” she urges me. “Oh God, oh God, YES! Do it, you bastard!”
“Are you touching yourself?” I ask, needlessly.
“Yes!” she pants. “Mmmm, yes – it feels so good……”

And yet, excited as we are, we seem to reach some sort of natural hiatus.
“Oh oh oh, hang on, hang on,” she says.
“Ok.”
Perhaps neither of us wants to come just yet; perhaps we're curious about what more we can get from this experience.......
“I just need a minute… I’m going to have a sip of wine,” she tells me.
“Me, too.”
I light the j and feel a new, glorious tingle in every nerve; a lazy, sensual ease stealing through my limbs.
For a few minutes, we listen to each other’s breathing slowing down.

Fast and furious climaxes can be wonderful. B once made me come in my pants and that was overwhelming, like being fifteen again. It was dizzying and intense to go from the first prickle of excitement to spurting ejaculation without a pause - not even trying to prolong it, or reciprocate - simply surrendering helplessly to what was being done to me. It’s often quick if it’s in the car, for both of us; the sudden rush ending an hour’s toying and furtive petting and slow provocation within its risky, constricted confines. Just fucking, a second orgasm can have a strange, different intensity to the first. Nevertheless, I’m sure most men find that the most intense, the most long-lasting and the most mind-blowing orgasms occur when you keep approaching crisis and then holding back, without quite coming; and that the more times you keep doing this, the more sensational is the final climax.

And I find this is what happens with telephone sex, because what she’s doing makes you so excited you keep approaching climax, but then you don’t let go, because you don’t want to peak too soon: you’re listening to her, trying to sense that this is the hottest moment, trying to come at the same time. So although we could presumably have both just wanked our way to climax in minutes, on the wave of excitement engulfing each of us – and then done it again (and again, probably) – we hesitate and chat awhile, allowing the feeling to build. I finish the j and half a glass of wine, while she talks me through peeling off the hold-ups, and her knickers, so that I’m picturing her naked, in the candlelight.
“I think I want you to tell me what you’d like to do to me…..” she whispers, after a while.

Ok, I’m up for a little narrative. Why not? Telephone sex is, after all, the art of talking dirty, taken to the nth degree. You have to get someone there - and do it using only your voice. Not surprisingly, ‘oohs’ and ‘aaghs’ won’t always be sufficient. You certainly have to be forthright about what you’re wearing or not wearing, what exactly you’re doing – and how it feels to do it – and about the thoughts, memories or fantasies these activities evoke.
Just time for two tips before I get started:
(i) one thing worth mentioning, is to make sure you can’t be overheard! Nothing could sound kinkier or sadder than someone having a one-sided sex conversation, describing in extremely graphic terms exactly what they are doing to themselves – and trying to make sure that every moan, groan and climactic wail can be heard clearly by someone at the other end of a long-distance phone line. It’ll ether cramp your style or embarrass you the next day!
(ii) Secondly, men should realise it’s got to be about her and paced for her benefit. Most girls need time, but they don’t need you to drone on about all the very explicit details about which men are usually so keen. And most women do not want to know every puerile fantasy which goes through your head; unless it in some way involves them, their infinite desirability and general gorgeousness. If she’s in it, go right ahead; but don’t expect your average thirty-five year-old to get off on your favourite daydream of spanking nubile teenage twins.)

Anyway, mine wanted a fantasy, or some proposal for taking liberties with her person, and I was game to oblige. The things that poor woman has to put up with, sometimes - you can imagine, I’m sure. As luck would have it, her submissive streak ensures it ain’t hard to conjure up an erotic predicament for her; say, along the lines of The Story of O……
You’re taken to what you’re told will be a ‘special’ party, I begin; only to realise, too late, what sort of party it is – and that for the other couples there, you’re the entertainment. No wonder your lover seemed strangely agitated at the prospect of the evening ahead, insisting you wore your very sexiest clothes, even selecting your underclothes. And no one else is in masks; you realise that straight away: you’re the only one with your face covered. The mask denies you your personality, that’s why; no one there is interested in who you are: that’s not what you’re for, tonight. You’ve simply become an exotic object for their erotic gratification.......
“Are you with me?”
“Mmmmm. Good, yes, go on…”
Through the slits in the mask you can see the other guests studying you speculatively as you enter the party, whispering together. You’re already regretting the drinks before leaving, the pill your lover offered to ‘calm’ you, which has left you on an oddly languid, woozy high. You do feel calm, but there’s something else - a strange, careless feeling, a lascivious itch it’s hard to ignore. You feel receptive, open, almost eager for whatever is going to happen to start. When your lover tells you that each of the other guests can choose whichever piece of your clothing they want to remove, you find yourself accepting it without any real protest. And then, on your next, slow circuit of the room, you’re told they can each choose which part of you they want to touch and explore……
At the other end of the line there are little moans and sighs as I paint this picture for her. And as I continue, I pause from time to time to listen to the effect I’m having. When I tell her that slowly, item by item, all her finery is being removed, and she’s going to be made to display herself, to stand still, to parade for the delectation of the other guests, she protests for the first time:
“Oh no-oo… No!”
“Oh yes,” I insist.
They’re crowding around you now, to see better, I continue; to look, and caress and fondle and lick…. And they’re no longer whispering - they’re talking quite openly about what they could do with you, speculating, in no uncertain terms, about what you’ll be good at. They talk about you in such filthy terms, they’re making you blush behind your mask, saying what a hot, dirty slut you probably are…...
“Oh no.”
“Save your breath, Sweetie - it’s too late for your objections, now. And truth to tell, don’t you want it?”
“No!”
“I think you do.”
“Oh no.”
“I think a part of you wants it – a part which can’t be denied any longer. There’s a hot, secret pleasure growing inside you, despite yourself. Your cunt’s aching for it, your back’s arching to push your arse towards those behind you, offering your breasts and mouth and throat to those in front of you.”.
“Oh God, oh God.”
“And now they’re all touching you.”
“Oh God!”
“I’m supporting you, I’m right here; but I’m not going to interfere. I’m just letting them touch you everywhere. And I can see how you’re responding. Your skin’s becoming flushed under all those exploring hands and tongues, your nipples are erect, you’re breathless, pulse racing, lips parted, the tip of your tongue wetting them, seeking those other probing tongues, your sex becoming engorged and moist, your thighs opening…..”.
“Oh God, yes!”
“Now you don’t want it to stop. You’re getting more and more aroused….. Can you imagine what they want now? I whisper. Do you know what I’m going to ask you to do for them now?”
“No.”
“They want to see how you pleasure yourself.”
“Oh no.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll do anything, anything else.”
“What will you do?”
“Anything, I’ll do anything, she promises, breathlessly. I’ll fuck….I’ll fuck you, I’ll fuck them, fuck, they can do anything they like, I’ll suck their cocks….”
“I know you will Baby. You’ll do all that, anyway…..soon.”
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh God.”
“But right now, I want you to touch your breasts, that’s it; put your fingers between your legs and show them how sexy you are….”
I tell her that although she begins reluctantly, hesitantly, she finds herself carrying on with growing excitement; mortified by own responsiveness, her unexpected willingness to make such an exhibition of herself.
“You’re turning them all on," I whisper. "Go on, that’s it.”
“Oh oh oh.”
“Oh yes, baby. You know you’re making matters worse, don’t you, getting them going like this? Everywhere, clothing is being loosened or discarded, hands are straying to their own and neighbours’ bodies…. They’re all wanking themselves silly, watching you; you know they’re going to fuck your fucking brains out when they get their hands on you, don’t you…..”
“Oh God fuck yes.”
“……but you can’t help it, can you? You can’t stop now; not when it’s so-o hot, not when it feels so-o good….”
“Oh God, yes, it does.”
“That’s it. Do it for them. You look so gorgeous, so fucking hot…… And there’s something very exciting about being the centre of that much attention, isn’t there? You’re the belle of a ball, baby – there are so many people who want to meet you and really get to know you; so many people wanting you… They’re going to have to take turns…”
I tell her the other party-goers are becoming increasingly bold in the liberties they’re taking with her person:
“You didn’t know you could feel like this, you didn’t know I’d want you to do these things with others, with strangers, men and women. You’re ashamed of your own excitement, but you just have to have this.”
“Oh God, yes I must. I just can’t help myself….”
“You can’t stop now, you can’t control it any longer. All around you it’s turning into an orgy – they’re more and more frenzied now, inflamed by your submissiveness, by how available you are, how open, how eager for them…… You’re like some kind of sex Barbie - you’re eager for it, you’re hot for it, you’re begging for it now - almost too willing to submit to whatever lascivious impulses are prompting the other guests; to be held by one and touched by another, to be bent this way and that, folded over the back of a sofa….”
“Yes!”
“…..pushed down onto all fours,….”
“Oh no!”
“…… made to kneel,….”
“Yes!”
“……eager to be caressed and fondled, opened and penetrated,……”
“Oh fuck!”
“…… to be licked…… and fingered….. and fucked; to pleasure two….. then three of them at the same time……”
“Oh God, I can’t stand it! Yes-yes-yes-yes-YES. Ohhhhh!”
“You hot, bad, gorgeous, dirty girl…………………. But what’s this, though?”
“Oh, oh, oh, what?” she pants.
“They want a finale. They’re not going to make you kneel down in front of everyone, are they?”
“Oh no! No, no, no, no, no.”
“Ye-es, they are. And I’m standing there telling you to take out my cock and you can’t wait to have it in your mouth and your fingers are undoing my trousers eager to release me and suddenly you’re licking it and it’s so hard and shiny with your saliva and then it’s in your mouth and you can’t get enough of it into your mouth….”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh oh, oh oh, oh..”
“You’ve got your fingers between your legs and your lips wrapped around that big, hard, hot cock…”
“OH! Oh God, look, I can’t…I’m coming again, I just can’t…..Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“They’re cheering, cat-calling, but you’re not listening; you don’t care about anything except feeling that spurt of hot spunk into your mouth….. It’s coming now! Are you ready?”
“Oh, yes, give it to me! Come NOW, you bastard! Do it to me!”
“I am, I’m coming! I’m spunking into you, it’s spurting, spurting into your… into your……”
“Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Ohhhh Go-od!!”
“……into your mouth…. Oh. Oh, yes, then you letting it run out again, over your lips, dripping onto your breasts…..”
“Oh. OH. Fucking HELL! Fucking bloody hell. You bastard!”

Something like that. It may not be word for word, but that’s the sort of thing you talk about at such times, and that’s the way you talk about it. You get the idea, I expect. And then, after a while, after some sweet nothings and some sweet goodbyes, it’s nice to say goodnight and put the phone down and come quietly again in the darkness on your own, just on the brink of sleep, thinking about them; knowing they’re still carried along on that same tide of excitement, too; knowing they’re surely doing the same thing at that very moment, thinking about you………….

NEW BOOTS, NO PANTIES

In my last post, I talked about my search for my partner’s missing libido, and my sad discovery that there were no hidden depths to her sexuality, indulged in private; or if there were, they were so deeply buried by all the stuff that was going on for her at the time, that she had no access either. Since then, she - and quite a few other women - have obliged me with a little solo fun for my delectation, and it remains a special treat. So that got me thinking about top wanks: which were the best solo shows, and what was it about them that worked so well for me? (And I happen to know some of you girls worry about whether you look good during these intimate moments – especially at the time when you might have been too far gone to care – so consider this as helpful hints and feedback).

As a general rule, what works for the spectator, is what works for the participant. If someone desires you and gets off on seeing you excited, it’ll work. It doesn’t matter what you do; it’ll still be exciting. I was once with a woman whose modus operandi was to lie flat on her back, rigid as a poker, hands trapped between her legs, arms covering her breasts. She didn’t yelp, she didn’t wriggle, and although she was quite a looker, she definitely didn’t present me with much of a spectacle. But that’s what worked for her, and because she got off, it was still hot. If, on the other hand, someone isn’t interested in what really works for you when you’re alone, then in the long-term, I don’t see how they can be much use to you when you’re together.

I mean, why wouldn’t you be interested in someone’s solo efforts, if you fancy them: don’t you want to know how to give them pleasure? And what better guide could you have? If a woman isn’t interested, then: (a) she isn’t into the man; (b) she isn’t into cock. If a man isn’t interested, then: (a) he isn’t into the woman; (b) he’s gay; (c) he’s insecure about his own or women’s sexuality, and best avoided. And I think the impulse to enjoy another’s solo efforts is irresistible, anyway. It’s an extension of one’s very earliest desire: the awareness that the other isn’t you and so can withhold pleasure; and an extension of one’s curiosity about that difference. (My own sexual life began - ignoring breast feeding and having one’s nappy changed - as a five-year old, when a neighbouring child offered to take her hand off her ha’penny and give me a look see, to prove that she hadn’t got a willy.)

And I suppose the ultimate goal of that curiosity, the ultimate proof of difference and therefore desire, is to see your loved one in action without you. I know it would be very exciting to see my lover or partner with someone else, for example (and more exciting than threesomes I’ve had with two strangers), and seeing them alone is a similar buzz. Since you can’t actually see them without being present in some way, and thus altering things, you may have to rely on their account afterwards, or accept that it’s something different altogether. (Talking about an account afterwards, one thing that’s surely guaranteed to inflate your partner’s interest to maximum size, is to mention what you had to do to yourself because you were missing him that afternoon/last weekend/whenever.) So in a sense, watching someone going solo can never be ‘authentic’; never quite the same as that thrilling sense of catching someone in flagrante, of being unexpectedly granted momentary access to the most secret aspects of someone’s sexuality.

Never mind – it’s nice to have a goal, a dream. And yet, in the end, I’m not sure it matters. For one thing, there are ways to make a solo performance seem as if your partner is on their own. I don’t want to sound like some sort of lewd Blue Peter, but one of these is as simple as putting a blindfold on them. Then they are less self-conscious, because they can’t see you; while you have the luxury of feeling invisible and unobtrusive. Or one of you can stay up and one go to bed early, on the “if I’m not there soon, just start without me” principle. The one in the bedroom is never quite sure when their lover is going to slip in. When I had the use of an apartment for a while, I got a four-poster draped in muslin, the way the sailor finds Jeanne Moreau in The Immortal Story (dir., Orson Welles, 1968, from a Karen Blixen story, if you want to know). It was a sensual, sexy sort of bed, anyway; but as an added benefit, it worked a treat for solo fun: with a lamp inside, someone outside the bed could see everything it’s occupant was up to; while for the person inside, the muslin drapes, illuminated from within, became opaque; so that they could either believe they were alone, or imagine a whole audience of voyeurs…..

And here’s the other thing: I think our pleasure in this activity has always been bound up with the risk of exposure; a risk it’s carried since we first felt compelled to do it, knowing it was rude and ‘dirty’, as children, or in our early teens. So when my lover describes her nocturnal masturbation sessions beside her sleeping partner, part of the thrill, clearly, is the fear of discovery; which intensifies it. It’s a very private activity, sure; but there’s also the sweet pleasure of risk, of stealing these moments for herself in a shared space. There’s an exciting tension between urges which cannot be denied and the constant fear of embarrassment, which they invariably overcome:
Perhaps it's the thrill ofbeing caught, though I would genuinely be mortified tobe found out, I just can't help it.
Even when she’s been fiddling on her own, she then shares the episode with me. Once she’s started telling me about pulling her shorts down in the darkened house in order to finger herself, she’s reliving the pleasure, through my voyeurism: confession is exciting, too. And how can she ever do it again without being aware of the picture it may make in my mind’s eye, later? When she does it on her own, she fantasises about being discovered, about how I’d guess what she was up to:

I feign a headache and take to bed for a rest. I have to get my hand between my legs somehow. I take two books. One for effect and one that will make me come - and fast. I get into bed. I'd like to take off my jeans and underwear and feel the cool sheets against my naked body, but I don't dare, I could be walked in on any minute. I slip a lubricated finger inside my underwear while I read - although why I bother I'm not sure, I'm so wet already. I'm still thinking about being submissive, about doing what you tell me to do. I think of you walking in now and surprising me, seeing what I was up to, not fooled for a minute by the clothes, which are pulled down - so that anyway, anyone could see what I've been doing.
Similarly, I met a woman who told me she always masturbates in front of a mirror. It isn’t narcissism, exactly: an extra sexual charge is added, by becoming the implied voyeur of her own erotic spectacle. No surprise, then, that she found it so hot to be watched, she’d come before I did.

And all of this ignores the fun you can have when a solo show is given as a deliberate (and perhaps the ultimate) tease; an extended, extra-dirty lap-dance, with touching. If the performing lover is confident enough, this is as hot as it gets. A session like this was definitely one of my top wanks and I’ll post it in due course……... But let’s do this one, first:

In a previous entry, I talked about taking a holiday in Spain with a woman I’ve called Karolina. We were in a flash hotel, in a chic resort, and she naturally wanted to look as good as all the rich bitches around the place. Despite model looks, this was never going to happen in cheap sandals, or trainers. So I bought her some new shoes for evenings. I say shoes, but they were really just jewellery with heels. I don’t recall the make, but they were fairly exquisite Italian jobs, and cost something silly. Were they ‘fuck-me’ shoes? Dunno: but they did say, ‘Look at me - I’m a babe – and someone with money thinks I’m worth it’. For her, this did the trick (I didn’t need convincing she was worth it in the first place). She was excessively pleased with them – to the extent that she insisted on taking the box home with her at the end of the holiday, even though we had no room for it. And nothing in a man’s life is nicer than an excessively pleased woman.
And I suppose to show me how pleased she was, she said, should she model them for me, when we got back to our room?
Hey, why the hell not?

We soon agreed she should lose the jeans, because they had a jewelled chain around the ankles, which we couldn’t see.
So she’s admiring them in the big mirrors lining the dressing area, in just her knickers and top. And then I felt she ought to get rid of the tee-shirt as well, if I was really going to appreciate them properly.
“Ok,” she agreed, game as you like; “that is it?”
And there’s a look in her eyes – very dark eyes, she has - a playful, teasing look, which more or less requires me to go the extra step. (I haven’t seen her for a while and really miss her, so I don’t want to talk about her eyes any more - honestly, I can’t cope.)
I nodded:
“I think no underwear would be best,” I told her, adopting a serious and judicious tone; “it really needs to be only your jewellery and make-up. And maybe not that necklace – the diamante one.”
“Only jewellery?”
“Yep, only the jewellery…...”

It’s that magic time: that beautiful, beautiful time on the very cusp of night, when you can feel the whole world hold its breath before exhaling slowly; shrugging off the heat and labour of the day and easing into a softer, an easier mood. Dusk is swift - the huge palm trees in the hotel gardens are already silhouettes. As darkness falls, the evening air becomes heady with the scent of jasmine and stephanotis at that time of year, and it’s filled with the shrill cries of great gangs of swifts. We're in Andalucia, once part of the Moorish empire, and the call to prayer still rings out from a nearby mosque every evening. And it always feels such a wonderful moment: when you’ve showered and put on evening clothes, after a day in shorts and sandals, and you take a chilled drink out onto the balcony, the breeze a mild and fragrant caress after the air conditioning inside, and somewhere in the room behind you she’s putting the finishing touches to her make-up before she comes out to join you; it’s just perfect. Then we have a drink, waiting for night – in Spain, we don’t eat until ten, when darkness rapidly becomes complete, and it very suddenly becomes much cooler - then everyone comes out onto the streets of the old town to promenade past the brightly-lit shops and the tables of bars and restaurants, which spill out onto the cobbles.

I light some candles, draw the curtains against the glow in the western sky, put some music on (Jan Garbarek, as I recall, if you’re interested). I pour out some wine we’ve had chilling in the mini-bar. When she comes back into the room to pick up the sweating glass I’ve poured for her, she’s only wearing the shoes, a shimmering necklace, and silver bracelets.
She holds her arms out, palms upwards, still playfully self-conscious, amused, in a ta-dah! gesture. I whistle, impressed.
“What do you think? You like?” She knows I like. “They are much more better than the other ones I tried.”
I agree.
She has a fabulous body, but so what - she walks around naked all the time – taking a shower, applying after-sun, putting her bikini on, changing clothes. It’s somehow different, wearing only the high heels.

Karolina catches the rythmn of the music and sways to it from the waist, drink in hand, wearing that big grin of hers, a knowing tease. Then she puts the glass down, raises her arms out to either side, and does a little move, a bit like that salsa one; where the woman bends her knees to drop down, and then comes up with a wiggle of the hips. I’m amazed she can do this in the heels without falling over, but she doesn’t stumble.
She parades for me, then - up and down the main bedroom - while I sit and sip my drink and admire her. At first, she strides self-mockingly, swinging her arms, careless and coltish; then in a more graceful parody of the cat-walk, a hand to one hip.
The shoes do exactly what it says on the box, exactly what they’re supposed to do: they exaggerate the length of her legs, stretch her calves, emphasise the muscles in her thighs, stick out her neat little tush, give her breasts a jauntier angle, and generally make her look a million dollars.
Oh, and when she walks, the heels force her hips into a languid sway.
She’s brown as a berry and the stones on them twinkle against her dark skin. Like her necklace, they wink at me in the candlelight with every movement she makes.
“And now what?” she asks, her eyes still teasing.
Perhaps she imagines she owes me for buying them and she’s going to square that little debt straight away, perhaps being admired puts her in the mood; she’s high on looking fabulous, on being desired. Does it matter?

What are you going to do, in a situation like that; given that it’s impossible to do it all at once (and definitely not all of it, if we were going ot get some dinner)? I wanted to up-end her, her feet locked behind me, feeling those heels scrape the skin of my back at every thrust. I wanted to lick my way, slowly, from her bejewelled feet, up the brown skin of her beautiful legs, to her cunt. And yet, what I really wanted to do, was carry on admiring her – I definitely hadn’t finished enjoying how gorgeous she was. And that’s when I realised what I wanted most.
“Come here,” I said, standing; my voice now hoarse.
She sashayed over, suddenly as tall as me, and we kissed.
I toyed with her: a hand stroking her arse, the soft skin inside her thighs, brushing the intriguing crease of her sex, with its neat little upward line of dark hair.
“I want you to touch yourself,” I whispered, my cheek next to hers.
My tongue runs down her neck, her right pectoral, the bronzed slope of her breast. It curls around a nipple. My right hand covers her cunt, the middle finger slipping into her slit, climbing in a slow caress. She’s already wet.
“Can you do that for me?”
“Ahh. Mmmm.”
“Yes?”
“Oh-h. Yes. Here?”
“Sure. Sit on the bed.”

Karolina sits. I pull one of the armchairs a little closer and ease back into it.
“Good girl. Do what you want, whatever you like.”
At first, she lay in profile to me, her arse at the edge of the enormous bed, feet planted on the floor at its end, head tilted back, hands beginning slow caresses over her breasts, her lower abdomen, her mons. But after a while, either she wanted to give me more of a visual feast, or she wanted to see how excited she was making me; because she swung around and straddled the corner of the bed, so that she could look at me wanking my cock, so that I could watch the elegant fingers of one hand making tiny circles at the top of her cunt…………
I was so happy, I thought I’d die.

Karolina writes a love letter to herself. Lol, she writes slowly with her fingertip, loloooooololoooololooooo. I always love it when they stop watching you, when they lose their self-consciousness and get carried away by the sensations they’re giving themselves. Karolina soon gets there: she sinks back onto the bed, head to one side, dark hair tumbled on the counterpane, thighs spreading, her hands only on her snatch now, fingers moving faster, as she proceeds to give herself a very good time.
At her final cry, I stand, spattering her with jism, along one of those shapely brown thighs of hers.
We finished our drinks, giggling and breathless, still high – and then went back to the shower together.
In the end, there was probably nothing amazing about the way she did herself, or the way her climax affected her – nor anything about mine, come to that, which was particularly spectacular. I think it was just the build-up – and, I suppose, the way she looked such a very glamorous, desirable honey while she did it.

When it was time to go out to eat, the sweet thing desperately wanted to continue wearing her shoes, but worried about losing a heel or twisting an ankle on the steep climb up the cobbled alleys of the old town, which can’t be accessed by cabs.

“Put them in your bag,” I told her; “wear your flat ones, and swap when we get near the restaurant.”
I explained it’s something my partner does all the time, but this is apparently a new trick to Karolina.
“Ver’ good idea!” she declared, giving me a peck and squeezing my arm in gratitude for this tip, her happiness restored. “I will always do this now.”

And of course, all the time we’re out, I have that image of her in my mind, head tilted back on the bed, legs braced, thighs taut, back arched, elegant fingers busy at the apex of those long, brown legs, that beautiful pouting mouth of hers parting in pleasure - and I can’t wait to get her back to the hotel……….
So there you are – that’s one of my top wanks – and a lesson in how two people can be made very happy by one little purchase.

THE DESIRE FOR DESIRE

Last night, I asked my partner to make herself come.
“Just lie beside me,” I suggested; “and do it very quietly and slowly, under the covers. I used to like it when you did that – I’d get very excited….”
“Ok,” she agreed, and licked her fingers. She laughed: “But I don’t know what you liked, though, because I wasn’t doing it.”
“Never mind,” I whispered back; “I enjoyed it, anyway.”
And then we stopped talking and concentrated on the steadily increasing tempo of one another’s breathing.

I’ve had a lot of solo shows over the years – not more than most men have had hot dinners, or anything like that – but quite a few. I’m not like the Graham/James Spader character in Sex, Lies and Videotape, you understand. It was never a single-minded obsession, or something I needed instead of any other sexual act; but it’s something which I do find exciting, in common with other sexual acts.

I think my interest in women wanking started in a very natural way: at the time, I wanted to find my partner’s missing sex-life, and I didn’t know where else to look. We’d once had loads of really great sex; but it had become increasingly sporadic and lacklustre. I knew she wasn’t getting much sex from me any more - and since she didn’t go out, I didn’t see how she could be getting it from anyone else. It seemed logical to wonder whether she was getting it from herself.

In retrospect, I understand that she had lost her mojo, big time. She hadn’t gone off me, or gone off sex – she’d gone off Life, with a big ‘L’. This is hardly the place to get into it, but whatever demons she was fighting in those difficult years, they did not leave her the energy or inclination to enjoy any of life’s pleasures – friends, family, food, fashion, fitness, frivolity – or indeed, any kind of fun at all. Fucking was just one of them.

When you’re in the middle of that experience, it’s harder to be quite so philosophical about it. We’re not talking about someone who’s ill, where you wait for them to get better; we’re talking about a state of mind, which went on and on and on and on. Throughout this time, I like to think I continued to be loving, supportive and committed, but after a couple of years, I did begin to wonder whether I’d ever recover my partner from the dim places in which she languished; or whether I would, like Orpheus, finally lose her to them. Even in brief spells when she was more like her old self, I think it’s fair to say that I remained fairly desperate regarding the question of whether I’d ever again get to experience any love or laughter in my life, let alone passion.

I’m not on my own in this predicament. Given a natural reticence in this area of life, and my my fairly limited circle of acquaintance, it's incredible that I’ve known two women who’ve found themselves involuntarily celibate while in long-term relationships. Fuck knows what sort of weird inner struggle was going on in their partners’ lives in order to disable their libido – I can’t say – but I do know we’re talking about literally years of enforced near-celibacy; so perhaps I wasn’t doing so badly, after all.

In those months, those years, I’d have given anything to have discovered some sign, some evidence of a positive desire in her. And not necessarily for myself – I’d have welcomed any positive want, any demand at all, however outré, and happily tried to meet it – even if it was merely to be separate from me. I sincerely believe I would rather have had her happy with someone else, than miserable with yours truly; if I was the problem. I loved her and wanted her happiness – and whatever she wanted, anything, I felt, would be better than this corrosive, enervating anomie.

I know this is all serious stuff to deal with and you’d think that while you did so, your todger could take a rain cheque. That’s how it seems to work in books and films; where thoughtful, sensitive chaps agonise and emote and act supportive, and never seem to need a wank. But it’s bollocks, isn’t it? In real life, your todger doesn’t know anything about taking time out, or whether it’s appropriate or not. Hell, it’s been making trouser tents at extremely inappropriate moments since you were thirteen! It’s on duty all the time, it’s on a mission of its own. It doesn’t get depressed. It doesn’t feel ambivalent. It just wonders when you’re going to stop being such a drag and give it some pussy. You can try not to think about it, by day; but at night, it’s another story: you might get away with going to bed in a fairly relaxed state; only to wake up with something attached to you, which feels like it’s about to nudge you under your chin, like those grotesque Beardsley drawings for Lysistrata.

So while our acknowledged sexual relationship limped on in fits and starts, with me feeling unloved, unattractive and old, I suppose I imagined a compensatory, virtual sex life: one where my partner was a repressed slut, giving in to her own desires privately; yet for some reason, unable to tell me what turned her on. Why fantasise about your own wife, I hear you say; are you mad? What on earth’s wrong with internet porn? Well, my wife, with whom I’d had a good time in the past, was a real, live woman, whom I fancied; albeit one who was near-terminally depressed. While internet porn, on the other hand, isn’t really much fun, is it? In fact, as far as I can tell, it’s almost entirely comprised of stoical (but hopefully reimbursed) young women, having their faces wanked on by ugly men who don’t expend much effort on fitness or grooming. It can actually be quite a fun thing to do, so I resent people making it seem so boring.

Porn appears to offer you everything – except the one thing you want – reciprocated desire. (Perhaps the men are deliberately ugly in hetero porn as a sign that female desire is irrelevant? Having their desire denied in this way, it’s no surprise some women prefer gay porn, because at least the men are fit, handsome and well-groomed, with good-looking cocks). All sorts of things go on in porn, but it isn’t serious about them; they’re window dressing, a distraction, a minority interest. What it is serious about, is the facial. Even my lover – a cock-sucker extraordinaire – who genuinely gets off on spunk (another story), doesn’t always want a face full of it, by any means. Yet in pornworld every single woman apparently always eschews every other kind of satisfaction in favour of this one act. And they don’t even want it in their mouths, apparently – the cum-shot requires visibility - to reassure the viewer that pleasure was genuinely achieved. But it's hard to imagine it was the woman’s pleasure in this particular situation.

Lots and lots of women take part – an almost infinite number – and yet there’s no point, because they’re the same, they have no individuality; something which would only be established by their particular sexuality, by the differences in their needs and desires, by the different ways they would exhibit their pleasure. (You can try so-called amateur porn in a search for female pleasure – and yes, now and then, you’ll see a woman who is genuinely getting off on diddling herself, or being fucked by two men, or whatever; and more to the point, exhibitionist enough to get off on being filmed diddling, or fucking two men, or whatever. Mostly, though, it’s just more of the same: non-professional women being paid, or persuaded by partners, to be filmed having someone wank on their face; but with the added disadvantage, that both men and women are even less attractive and take even less care of themselves than professionals.)

Now I’ve got that off my chest, I can go back to whether my partner let her fingers do the walking after bedtime, or not…... Not really, is the answer – and no one could have been more disappointed about that than me. I now see that I was only projecting my own frustration onto her – channelled into an imaginary sensuality. So I created a private sexual side to her, which for some unaccountable reason she was unable to share - hidden longings, she couldn’t, or wouldn’t articulate. Night after night, I’d lie there, feigning sleep; slowing my own breathing to a silent, even pattern (counted out like a sonnet, as it happens; 8 beats breathing in, 6 out). In this way, on the fevered brink of sleep, I would reach a state of arousal beyond excitement, where my cock developed a life of its own, twitching and pulsating and throbbing to the same quickening beat as the pulse thumping in my temples. All the while, my ears strained for the tell-tale signs of the sexual urges I imagined assailing her: fluctuations in her breathing, restless movements of her limbs, the almost imperceptible vibration of the mattress, the faint rustle of bedding disturbed by furtive movements of her hands, the soft squish of slick fingers busy in the hot, wet groove of her sex……..

I suppose that a few times, inevitably, over this period, my obsessive vigilance coincided with passing moments of unconscious arousal for her, when the erotic content of some dream briefly disturbed her slumbers enough to cause a faint moan to escape her sleeping lips, a mild tremor in a shifting limb; even perhaps the unconscious movement of a hand, responding to the urging of the dream… And however inconclusive all this might be for her, it was manna in the desert to me; usually enough to push me, helplessly, towards release. My straining cock, teased to a state of quivering hyper-sensitivity by the brush of the duvet over my swollen glans, now needed only the briefest assistance to begin a juddering ejaculation. And having built up for hours with hardly any direct stimulation, I think I’d achieved a state of tantric bliss, an all-consuming, all-body orgasm; during which my entire being seem to spurt out of me in great hot jets, one after the other, until the bed must surely be flooded, with seconds seeming to pass between the surge of each spasm, as it rose from the very root of my genitals, up towards the jerking head of my spurting cock.

And here’s a funny thing – my lover, B, experiences exactly the same intensity from such slow and covert arousal on the edge of sleep:
Actually I don't care where I masturbate, I can do it anywhere really. I'm not a bed-only girl - who is? Infact that's the last place I'm likely to be doing it, too cosy. Though it's the best place for one handed reading, obviously - and there are many times I have lain awake and quietly, slowly, masturbated, barely moving, in the darkness while someone is asleep beside me. It's exciting and addictive because you have such a powerful orgasm - and can't move - but you can't do it too often. Perhaps it's the thrill of being caught, though I would genuinely be mortified to be found out, I just can't help it.

Yet most of the time, I would be unable to reach for my cock and make those few simple movements which would have filled me with relief: for the simple reason that I was always waiting to be the witness of that imagined self-pleasuring; which my wandering thoughts, befuddled, on the very edge of unconsciousness, were absolutely sure was only minutes away. Then, before I knew it, I would finally be overcome by sleep indeed. As a result, the routine hard-on which assails most men in the morning – that cheery ‘hello’ from the little fella, which tells you you’re still alive and the world’s okay - was for me fuelled with half a night of frustrated fantasy. It was so rigid, I could have balanced my morning tea on it if I’d cared to try, or spun the saucer on it instead. If I didn’t bring myself off in the bedroom or the shower before leaving, I would go to work like an unexploded bomb.

Nowadays, I find it rather sad – though also touching, perhaps - to have harboured such extravagant fantasies about my own partner. I suppose it says something for my loyalty and commitment – not to mention my creativeness! - that I was prepared to build an elaborate fantasy around her; to magic into being some focus for my fevered, frustrated sexuality from her lack of interest.

It was, quite literally, years before I accepted the disappointing reality that what you saw was what you got. (And as it happens, what you got was further attenuated by the ordinary toll of tiredness, the demands of work and children, etc). Yet making allowance for both the long spell of depression and these constant contingencies, masked an unfortunate fact; our needs, our sexualities, were badly mismatched. It happens – and you don’t know about it when you hook up as young things and the other demands on you are so much lighter. Every night I was going to bed with a hard-on which wouldn’t shame a horse and a comatose partner. And on another part of the planet, my lover was going to bed with an aching cunt and a comatose partner:
As I said, I’ve always had to masturbate most nights……. Where, when, and what with depends what mood I’m in... I might just be bored – though that could also happen at any time, anywhere. I might be in an excitable mood, needing more time and attention.

With the benefit of hindsight, my own state of mind back then was based on an entirely false premise: I presumed that my partner’s sexual interest might, as an average human being, more or less match my own. As you can see from the insights into my lover’s sexual needs, this was a very reasonable assumption to make - yet also hopelessly inaccurate. Was there any sense at all, in twisting myself out of shape to try to get my quart into her pint pot? No – in some ways, there wasn’t - from the outside, it was a futile waste of the joy and pleasure life can offer us all. Yet I can only say it feels very different when you have years, instead of decades, of partnership under your belt, and still cherish the hope that one exclusive person will last you a whole lifetime.

And in a sense, my imaginings weren’t completely inaccurate; they simply didn’t apply to my own partner. I may have been disappointed to discover the mundane truth, around which I wrapped the coils of my own fabulous imaginings; time having merely confirmed she’s routinely a bad sleeper. But I also now know that while I fantasised about a partner who crept downstairs in the middle of the night to pleasure herself in the privacy of the darkened house, my present mistress, then unknown to me, was doing just that in reality. And to my intense personal satisfaction, she’s been happy to share her sexuality with me:
I'm not sure I have much privacy in which to masturbate, either - but I don't find it too much of a problem... Last night, for example: I went to bed after D………….. but got up again - unusually - to check something I’d forgotten to do. A couple of rude thoughts later and I'm lying on the sofa with my shorts pulled down and using the wet fingers of one hand to make myself come while another two wet fingers work on my nipples. It's late and I'm tired but I'm thinking about something really dirty, involving you - well your cock - and I was wet already, so it only seems to take seconds…..Your B
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It’s a hot image – and information like that can go quite a long way, in a lover’s mind, feeding into your time together later. Don’t hold back, is my advice – with your hand, or your confidences – someone dear to you needs that sort of insight. And tight-lipped partners take note - after a while, they’ll just stop asking.

MATERIAL GIRLS

I think the problem is, I don’t feel as if I’m fucked up at all, you see. In fact, I like to think I’ve finally got a handle on things. I also feel as though my years of maturity are conferring a range of exquisite pleasures, some subtle and acquired, some still as urgent and intense as those of youth. The wonderful thing about someone like Beata, is that she offers both kinds. And one of the subtle pleasures I’ve come to enjoy, when taking someone like her to a top hotel in a beautiful location for a spot of R and R, is the way she both does and doesn't belong…..

Young women like her don’t quite belong, because they were brought up in mean, over-crowded, state-built apartments from the Soviet era. They don’t belong because they normally live for a month on less than their fellow-guests are spending on a single night’s stay. If they moved to the UK, I suppose they’d be the kind of economic migrants rabid newspapers resent. Their fathers are labourers and lorry-drivers, their mothers clean offices in Austria. With her high cheek bones and waist-length, jet black hair, Beata looks exotic, like a beautiful gypsy. As individuals, they’re as different as can be; but they share being outsiders, arrivistes. And since I sometimes feel I spent my youth with my face pressed up against the cold glass, looking in, I’ve got an inkling of how it might be for them.

They shouldn’t really be there at all: though as long as they’re on my arm, they’re just out of reach of the other guests’ distain; protected by the power of my gold credit card, like a charm, a magic amulet.
“And for the miss?” the waiters say, deferentially, as they hover at our elbows, in the fancy restaurants of the Cap.
Beata is no slouch, speaking four languages, but French isn’t one of them. I translate the menu and she orders confidently, through me; sure of what she wants. Perhaps she does belong, after all.

Some women of the gorgeous variety compulsively charm concierges and drivers and maitre d’s - and usually, have them eating out of their hands. Another friend (let’s give her a pseudonym – Karolina – since I’m sure we’ll be meeting her again), invariably does this. She just can’t help herself. Being spoilt and special and knowing it, and being so un-British, she invariably queue-jumps, too; to my perpetual and enormous embarrassment. Beata doesn't like to stand out in that way; her looks are enough for her to be dealing with. And she's too demure, too self-contained to try and charm anyone - but then, she doesn’t need to - her diffidence is equally appealing. Everywhere we go, the male staff are in awe of her and fuss and fawn. Mind you, she’s not like these petite French women – she’s taller than the waiters in her heels – and most of it is leg. It’s something else, though. She’s not shy, exactly - but her quiet self-possession is very unassuming - and perhaps this is unexpected in someone so gorgeous. When we go out, she dresses carefully and well (though with no attempt to draw attention to particular assets) and she’s perfectly made-up, so that I feel she’s made an effort to look her best; but she has absolutely no pretensions, makes no attempt to big herself up at all. In the company of someone like me, she can quietly enjoy all this attention, as she does most aspects of these occasional luxurious trips abroad; but it’s no surprise that the rest of the time, she leads a very retiring existence.
(I’m being deliberately vague, here: at the expense of failing to give a rounded picture of people, precise facts, descriptions and private confidences about others won’t be repeated, however interesting, both because they’re confidential and might identify them.)

The previous year, I’d found myself in the lobby of another upmarket hotel – in Spain, this time – waiting for a cab, which had been called to take us into town for the evening. I was with Karolina on that occasion, and it was a much bigger hotel; so that there were quite a few groups of well-to-do guests, down from Madrid for the weekend, waiting for their chauffeured cars to arrive: the men in their Armani dj’s, the women ranging from youthful arm-candy like Karolina, in chic cocktail dresses and heels, to dolled-up matrons, in full-length evening gowns, weighed down by the family baubles.

“Will people think I’m like them?” she whispered in my ear.

Is she cute, or what?
On a practical level, the answer was ‘not in those shoes’ – which I didn’t say, of course, though I rectified it the next day (yet another story for later…..). But what she’d meant, was ‘do I fit in - could I pass as wealthy?’
By some happy coincidence, she’d landed the right man for the job. On one side, my family were all servants; always the true custodians of good form - and usually such sticklers, they can spot a fraud at fifty paces. So there’s not much you can teach me about the nuances of correct behaviour or dress. She doesn’t appreciate that these folk are nouveau – and I wouldn’t want to fit in with them, anyway, wouldn’t want to be mistaken for them in a month of Sundays - but then, perhaps I have more choices. What you want to say at times like that, is: ‘who cares? - it doesn’t matter a damn, anyway – it’s only money, not health or happiness’. Come to that, I could also add something about all the rich women out there who’d give a fortune to have looks like hers; let alone what they’d give to have her youth. But Karolina knows that - they both know all that stuff. And who are you to say it doesn’t matter?

Yes, she’s half in love with this fraudulent five-star shit - the must-have naff designer gear, the C-list celebrity nightspots, the pretentious holiday places listed by Conde Nast, the unremarkable meals which cost a month’s salary where she comes from, the bling of cars and boats worth more than a house – it’s one reason why she's there. I like to think I’m a man of simple tastes, easily pleased; but I’m kidding myself: it isn’t really a simple business, getting the time-out to holiday with her, and it definitely isn’t easily achieved. Her aspirations may be equally complicated and the reasons for her attitudes equally profound.

So they’re a bit like Cinderella at the ball, both these women. (And though I’m too long in the tooth to play Prince Charming to their Cinders, I can be a fairy godfather - another of the pleasures conferred by age). With my help – and sure, from time to time, the help of other men like me - they can join the club: because they want it, because they’re hungry, because it’s their turn. And why ever not? They’re clever, ambitious, educated, sociable – and gorgeous. In short, they’re worth it. As Beata and I walked through the gilded lobby of that Riviera hotel, on our way out for the evening, I caught a glimpse of us in one of the big mirrors. After keeping it in a pigtail on the beach all day, her fabulous hair was loose again, earrings sparkling beneath. She was wearing light beige linen trousers and a matching jacket, with the palest green top and bra, which looked wonderful against her black hair and the beginnings of a tan. Anyone could walk by and be reflected; but like the mirror in Snow White, it can’t lie about who’s the fairest one of all: it’s been waiting for someone as perfect as her…..

I felt I understood something then, which I hadn’t quite realised before, and so hadn’t been able to tell the adorable Karolina, when we were in Spain that time: that never mind anyone else, she was what the hotel was for. After all, they’re no great shakes, these places, without someone like her beside you. I tell friends and family I’m taking a little break on my own, but why on earth would you do that? Such sumptuous surroundings don’t mean a bloody thing, not to me; not if they don’t contain someone as bright and funny and lovely as Karolina. And that’s all this one’s for, too; with its mirrors and marble and gilt: to be a frame, a fitting backdrop for Beata as she passes through; whether she’s nearly-naked, like that first afternoon, or dressed for the evening. And because she’s beautiful, I reckon she’s got more right to be there than anyone. In one sense, she’s quite an ordinary young woman, from a small town in a much poorer country than France, a gatecrasher in one of the playgrounds of the seriously wealthy. But until her return flight is called at Nice Cote d’Azure in a few days’ time, she’s the belle of the ball - and worth all the hotels of the Riviera…..

Reactions to an older man and a younger woman vary a lot, I find; depending on how cosmopolitan the resort is and the number of stars the hotel possesses. Only Americans and folk from oop north assume they can address you without invitation and I stay away from ‘family’ hotels; the cool hauteur of the rich is a welcome respite, I find. Oddly, people don’t look contemptuous, which I would have expected before actually being in that situation (I know I tend to sneer, when I see some sad old git in a sports car). Some women of my own age can look a little miffed; that’s common: they give me a look of reproach, as if to say: ‘Oh come on - that’s cheating, you bastard – how on earth are we supposed to compete with that?’ And when I glance at Beata’s exposed midriff, which is, frankly, to die for; taut as a drum, I can understand where they’re coming from. Men, on the other hand, look a lot happier; as if I’m batting for their side.

I told Beata, over dinner, how much I appreciated her helping me with my mid-life crisis. It felt just right, I said; because this was how I’d imagined being older, when I was a teenager – being somewhere like this – though it was a million miles from my parochial existence in those days – and being there with someone like her. The soft ha’penny seems genuinely touched – ‘having a dream’ – even a simple material goal, is something both she and Karolina hold dear; perhaps because their childhood uniquely straddled the watershed of the Soviet and democratic eras, and their own teenage years coincided with a decade offering novel and unprecedented access to the freedoms, goods and tempting possibilities offered by Western Europe.

“And…” I added, on a lighter note, “we’re performing a valuable public service, too.”
This puzzled her, until I explained that when men my age saw me with a babe like her on my arm, I felt it cheered them up and gave them hope.
“And when their wives see us,” I went on, “it makes them buck their ideas up; they want to make sure their old man doesn’t get any funny ideas into his head and try for a younger model.”
This notion pleases and amuses her no end – perhaps it arms her against the looks which must follow her everywhere - lascivious, jealous, appreciative, curious.
And given the fun I’m having, administering this fillip to other middle-aged travellers, it’s a bit of a win-win situation all round.

DEEP INSIDE EUROPA

It's been a great year; mostly because I had a wonderful summer. You have to start your summer early and finish late – that’s the trick of it, I feel. I ended it in the Greek islands in November and I started it in June, by taking a very sweet and lovely acquaintance to Antibes. I can’t get away with my lover and I couldn’t take my family - so what do you do?

On this occasion, we were staying in a small, but luxurious, four-star hotel – a white stucco mansion, fronted by big palm trees, which had been built in the twenties by an English aristocrat as a place to over-winter on the edge of the Mediterranean. It was a cool and elegant building, full of glossed mahogany and dark wood panels, thick, mushroom-coloured carpeting and giant chandeliers. In the middle of the public rooms on the ground floor, a magnificent white marble staircase led upstairs. And in the centre of this staircase, there was a glass lift-shaft, which contained what I took to be the restored original lift; a quaint affair of wood and brass, with folding glazed doors.

Although it was early in the season, and you could feel a cool wind off the sea and see snow still dusting the peaks of the Alpes Maritimes, it had been very hot at the airport and we’d lengthened our journey by getting lost twice in the hired car; so, soon after arriving, I went down to have a cooling swim in the pool. This was a lozenge of white and black marble, set in the pleasant garden at the front of the hotel, and bordered by manicured shrubbery, with jasmine and bougainvillea climbing the old walls behind. A few other guests – mostly well-heeled Brits – read paperbacks and talked the usual bollocks from striped recliners lined up in pairs around the pool, while starched flunkies fetched them drinks.

I did a few lengths in the cold water and then found a couple of free loungers, with clean towels on them. After an uncertain start to the season in the UK, it was wonderful to begin summer proper at last; to luxuriate in the warm but mellow late afternoon sunshine. My companion, who I’m going to call Beata, joined me, after finishing her unpacking. She’d got a book with her, a visor like the peak of a baseball cap, which held her hair back, and flip-flops. A distinctive diamante piercing winked from the scoop of her belly, but that was more or less it – her bikini was of the next-to-nothing variety – three small yellow triangles, connected by black ribbon.
“Is that….how you came down?” I asked her, casually; concerned she hadn’t found the bathrobe they’d supplied.
She misheard me, or mistook me:
“Yes,” she replied, nonchalantly; “with the lift.”
“Oh, did you?”
She pointed behind us, through an archway in the hotel’s facade, to where big double glass doors led to the lobby, with its concierge’s desk and beyond that, Reception and the entrance to the lift.
“I came through there,” she said, puzzled by my curiosity.

I didn’t clarify what I’d actually meant, overwhelmed as I was by the mental image of her, illuminated within the old lift as it slowly descended to the ground floor, then the swing of her glorious hips across the acres of carpeting; and, best of all, the contrast between the stiff, formal uniforms of the lobby staff and her near-nakedness, as they opened the glass doors to let her out into the garden. Priceless, as they say: she was only trying to get from our room to the pool and somehow she’d strayed into a Helmut Newton photo-shoot! (It made me think of that picture of Charlotte Rampling, taken in Arles, not far away).

http://www.artnet.com/ag/FineArtDetail.asp?G=&gid=0&which=&aid=12541&wid=424899381&print=1

It simply wasn’t the sort of hotel where people wandered about in swimwear - and her bikini barely earned that description, anyway. But I had to hand it to her: if she’d sensed a faux pas, she’d had the pluck to bottle it out. Gorgeous doesn’t make mistakes, I suppose: when you’re as young as her and you look as good as she does, you can probably get away with anything.

Although it was a stylish old building, I found it a rather pretentious place, under-resourced and over-priced (like the whole coast), and somehow smug about the chic, elegant ambience which was its main selling-point. So no surprise it was popular with a certain sort of English middle class punter, prepared to pay a little extra for its exclusive cachet, yet not rich enough to comfortably pay for the truly exclusive (because even more expensive) Hotel du Cap up the road, where Madonna and Tom Cruise stay. The men seemed stunned by their release from the corporate fortresses in which they spent their working days, pale and out of shape; their complacent wives looking either stringy or blubbery, (believe me, none of them were going to risk travelling in a glass lift and walking through the lobby in a miniscule two-piece). Perfectly pleasant people, I’m sure; providing you don’t try to stop them enjoying the first world comforts of living in the Home Counties, with a hand-built kitchen and a German car in the drive and children in private schools. If you do try, I’m afraid they’ll have to kill you.

One of the pleasures of being with pals from other countries (where do I begin? – if they’re women, it’s a very long list, so don’t get me started!), is that the boring Brits don’t know whether you’re “one of them” or not. The answer is yes-but, no-but. I won’t be sitting at the bar til all hours having a good old chin-wag with my compatriots about property prices in Surrey or Tuscany for holidays or the iniquities of capital gains tax, that’s for sure. I’ll be on a mission, deep inside Europa, I’ll be up and coming, my finger on her trigger, eyes squeezed shut. I’m English as they are, as it happens – but I’m not in the club – include me out. And I like euroland, I love it. I fell for it as a young fella, desperately in love with a girl from Burgundy, and I love it still. Drop me in it, anywhere, with a fistful of Euros and a rented car and I’m happy as a sand boy.

I like to think I might have been equally happy at this prospect, even sixty years’ ago, when it was occupied territory. But then spying offers this same sort of ambivalence towards one’s national identity, doesn’t it? – the same opportunities to shrug off all the defining clobber of background and upbringing and slip your moorings a bit. It’s this slippage, this pick-and-mix approach to the subjectivities on offer, which I find so liberating about travel; while my two lovely euro-companions have their own interest in self-invention and masquerade. (Coincidentally, the espionage thrillers my fellow guests are reading by the poolside offer them this same pleasure - though vicariously – with iconic examples of the genre, such as Day of the Jackal and The Bourne Identity, even taking the uncertain construction of our identities as their theme.) As I say, having Beata with me is a big help – in the company of my wife, we’d be boxed and labelled in no time. And I really couldn’t expose my poor wife to these other British guests, anyway; to the sort of people you get in these hotels. To her credit, she wouldn’t stand a chance: she lacks the killer instinct, she hasn’t that particular kind of condescending confidence, she’s missing the competitive gene. But an intimidatingly attractive, exotic younger woman, who they can’t ‘place’ socially, pal up with or patronise, whose status is undecipherable, whose role is dubious, and whose language is unknown – bloody perfeck!

Smart as she is, our relations are not entirely intellectual, I must admit. What I find particularly gorgeous about Beata, is the length of her fingers and toes. They are just so beautiful. And here’s a curiosity – her nipples are really long and beautiful to match! Isn’t nature wonderful? Of course I enjoy getting the latter to full length. I have got to add that nature is really unfair, though: she’s got a beautiful face, beautiful hair, beautiful body (right down to the ends of her toes); but how did she get to have a beautiful fanny as well? It’s fantastic! It’s a while since I’ve had a cunt I’ve wanted to lick quite this much – to say nothing of her truly magnificent thighs and arse. And good girl that she is, her snatch is usually completely shaved. Oh joy unbounded! I look at her at the beach club and nearly every possible depravity in the world has to take a back seat - all I want to do is get my tongue around the edge of that tiny bikini and lick and nuzzle until she utters those lovely little moany noises she does.

Back at the hotel every day, she happily indulges this urge of mine. I try to explain to her how very exciting, but also how touching, I’m finding a tiny little curve she has at the very very top of her thighs, when she’s lying down; but unless she’s going to take up yoga, or use a mirror, she’ll never even see it the way I do, let alone appreciate its beauty. I take my time with the tonguing and try every trick in the book, gambling playfully on the plateaus along the way like a happy goatherd, but she’s not a big one for being teased, I’ve found. I can torment my lover to ecstasy; with her, pleasure deliberately withheld is pleasure bestowed. Beata, on the other hand, likes a nice, steady climb: big slow flat strokes, with a beat between, then firm but light lapping, sustained until we’re getting close; something circular, perhaps; then a thumb, stroking upwards just ahead of my mouth, as I take her clitoris between my lips, and finally letting the twinkle-toed tip of my tongue dance the light fantastic……. Tasting her excitement drives me crazy, and I cannot tell you what a delight it is to see this studious, composed and demure young woman losing control, fingers clawing and clutching at the sheet. We’ve got a massive bed in dark mahogany, with big square French pillows of crisp white cotton, and I glance up to see her long dark hair spilling across them as her head rolls from side to side.

If I have one complaint about the Riviera trip, it’s that I didn’t have any dope. I really like sex when I’m high; especially late at night. Vigorous, urgent sex definitely has its place and you don’t need it for that – though I still think you acquire a few thousand extra nerve cells at the end of your knob when stoned – but when you’re going to luxuriate in a couple of languorous hours exploring every nook and cranny of someone who looks, smells and tastes simply wonderful, then it’s a winner - the textures and flavours and scents are all enhanced. Sometimes, it’s quite incredible – feeling this lovely big lively woman, panting and trembling as you take her there – and all of your energies and concentration, and all her excitement, her whole complicated being – it all seems to be focussed on this tiny, tiny point of contact; as if you’re holding her up in the air with just a few millimetres of finger-tip or tongue and you’re going to keep her there and not let her fall…….

I think I spent every afternoon of that holiday with my tongue in Beata’s slit, so it didn’t ruin my fun; but I’ve no doubt such lascivious carryings-on would certainly have been enhanced by a toke or two before the proceedings. As per usual, I started out with some in the UK, intending to bring it; but then I ran into a drugs check-point in Scotland, just before leaving! Can you believe that? They’re dead by their mid-sixties, for fuck’s sake. They deep-fry pizzas and Mars bars. They put about 2lbs of salt on any food before giving it to you. It’s freezing there and rains the whole time, so you get arthritis and rheumatism and pneumonia. They smoke too much and they’re always poisoning one another with salmonella sandwiches. And on top of all this, according to the powers that be, we stand a very good chance of being blown to smithereens every time we travel by plane, bus or tube. And yet, incredibly, they actually worry you might have a wee spliff with your dram of a weekend, by way of relaxation. They apparently worry so much, they’ve found the resources to put half the Borders and Lothian Constabulary and sniffer dogs on the station platform! And not to seize drugs barons, or inconvenience the City slickers who get through a shed load of A-class charlie per diam - oh no - just to hassle ordinary law-abiding folk like me, by checking trains going to local beauty-spots for the weekend!

I come out of the ticket office and of course I instinctively keep on walking towards the train. I’ve seen this whole posse of plods in day-glo waistcoats by the barrier, but in this era of global jihad, I’m so used to bomb screening, I can’t seriously believe they’re doing something as old-fashioned (and unsporting) as a drugs check. And even when I get closer and spot the spaniels and start to wonder whether it could be drugs - even then, I remain curiously calm. After all, I’m thinking, I’m sort of middle-aged, middle-class, middle England, me - I’m wearing a fucking five hundred pound suit, for God’s sake – they’re surely only after young scamps, with their meth and crack, so why should I worry. It’s almost legal, isn’t it, nowadays? I’ve only got a ‘personal use’ quantity and anyway it’s well-hidden. Then it suddenly hits me – wake up, you muppet! - you’re in Edinburgh, not Amsterdam. You won’t get through - they’ve got dogs - they don’t have a sense of humour here at the best of times and there are twenty woodentops hanging about without having had the benefit of a single collar, by the look of it. At the very least, I’d miss my plane…...

So only twenty yards short of the barrier, I put the brakes on - apparently in response to a sudden call on my mobile which for some unknown reason requires a violent change of direction – and then I swiftly back-track to the toilets. I’ve gone straight from completely blasé to blind panic – so much for my career in SOE. What if they have someone inside? I’m wondering. If not, I imagine there’ll be lots of young back-packers already there, emptying their pockets. But no – stone me, there’s only yours truly, the silly sod - squashed into a cubicle with my luggage, scrabbling desperately in my case. All the hale and hearty young Scots going camping for the Bank Holiday weekend, they’re carrying nothing stronger than cans of McEwan’s; while the well-heeled bloke, the sassenach in the suit, has to dump his tiny stash like some bloody schoolboy. It’s not dignified at my age, is it, know what I mean?

But then, this is true of so much of my behaviour, in recent years, that I’ve stopped worrying about it. There I am, panting with the effort of manoeuvring and rifling my case in the cramped cubicle, suddenly energised by a surge of adrenalin (I’ll say this for the old Bill, they know how to give you a natural high!), and I can feel my heart still thumping as I find my way out again into the daylight of the concourse. And then at that very moment I really do get a call, from my lover B, wanting to wish me a safe journey, and who now chides me when I tell her about my close shave, but I laugh it off, I start to laugh like a maniac, in fact, and I realise that, no, it may not be good behaviour, or appropriate behaviour, or sensible, or dignified – any of it - but here I am anyway, pursuing my idea of fun here on planet Earth - and at least I know I really am alive, alive-o………………………….

COCK

My latest (sexual) encounter with the woman I’m going to call B was, as nearly always nowadays, in a hotel. B really is like that old song by T Rex: she’s dirty, sweet and she’s my girl. However, strictly speaking, she’s actually someone else’s girl – or rather, someone else’s wife - so a hotel is inevitable. There are other places: we’ve had sex in the woods, in one another’s homes, in cars (of course! – that’s always hot), and in apartments borrowed for the purpose; but I’m a great fan of the hotel fuck. For one thing, it’s civilised: you’ve got en suite, heat and light, somewhere to plug in music if you want, you can order wine, smoke a spliff and drink without worrying about driving afterwards, and you’ve got clean sheets and clean towels without having to smuggle them out of your own home. For another, it’s safe and private and anonymous: al fresco sex and car sex have a frisson of danger, it’s true; but getting seen in a car together by acquaintances or colleagues, being seen by neighbours visiting one another’s homes - or, heaven forbid, being caught there by a partner! - that wouldn’t feel very exciting at all and it certainly wouldn’t be very clever. Find a hotel with a good bar, and worst comes to the worst, you could have been simply meeting for a drink.

Best of all, I find hotels very sexy. I try not to risk us being seen together or embarrass her with a check-in; I go there on my own, in the afternoon, to get a room. I also arrive first in the evening, get some chilled wine, draw the curtains, check the temperature, light some candles. Then I come down to the foyer to meet her, when she arrives, and that way there’s no record of her being there at all. But even just checking-in during the afternoon, the sense of anticipation has already started – that’s another hotel plus - I get a buzz (and yes, sometimes an anticipatory stiffening in my crotch) just from walking down the corridor and opening the door. This is a space from which the workaday world has been excluded: here’s a place which isn’t for sleeping, or storing your clothes, or watching tv, or reading a book. It’s a stage, a little theatre, a film set – a closed one at that – and you can’t wait for the performance to begin. None of it has anything to do with your partner, your children, your home, your work, your friends and family. There’s no agenda, apart from pleasure. No one’s going to make demands on you; aside from where to put your tongue or fingers or cock and when to do it. It’s just impure, unadulterated fun. Worried about your relationship going stale? - have sex with someone else in a hotel room.

There are rules and constraints. Impulsive, spontaneous sex, unexpected sex, unlikely sex; they definitely have their place in life. But after the first few times, adulterous sex is about planning. Otherwise, it never happens. You’re not only taking account of two people’s mood and inclination, two people’s work schedules and their other social commitments; you’ve got two entire households to take into account, every time. Children have to be given their teas and their baths and get put to bed; teenagers fed and settled down to do some homework, and you have to hear about a partner’s day, cook, give them some chat, have dinner with them, clear-up afterwards, put the cat out, whatever; all before you can even have a shower and change your clothes (not too perfumed, not too dressed-up; you’re only going to an evening class, or a drink with a couple of mates from work).

On the other hand, you know for days beforehand that, barring a sudden bug, or unforeseen problems at home, you’ve got a hot date on the cards. On the day, you’re not wondering whether you’re going to get lucky that evening, or whether him/her indoors might be amenable, rather than too tired: you know for sure you’re going to give, or receive, a proper seeing to. You don’t know exactly what form the action will take; but all you know, all you can think about, is that there is going to be some sort of fun to be had: you’re going to see your lover. Paradoxically, I find that because it’s booked and diaried and, in a sense, a ritualised event, it actually frees you to enjoy it more. Put simply (thank God! you’re saying), you no longer have to think will it happen and wonder when it will happen and can concentrate instead on all the dirty possibilities of how it will happen.

So all day, the feeling builds and builds: not a vague, unchannelled, frustrated sexual tension, unsure of its release - it has an object – and an objective. Sometimes you manage to talk on the phone during the day and your lover’s voice, their happy laughter at some shared joke or intimacy, whets your appetite for their company. Sometimes you can’t. Yet even though you’re not with them; as you each go about your own work tasks, attend to the demands of your different households, make your divergent journeys across the city, you’re connected: you share a secret knowledge. You have the self-same goal in your minds, all day long. You’re aware that, gradually, the parallel trajectories of your lives are moving imperceptibly closer; until, as darkness falls, they begin to converge, towards that moment when you’ll finally feel their skin against your own again…..
And is there anything that beats being in a hotel room, brimful of anticipation, and getting that lover’s call, to tell you she’s in a cab and on her way? I doubt it.

Time for a brief digression, while I’m waiting. The purpose of this will soon become clear. (Please note, this message will not be shown again – I’ll just bloody-well digress):

The film Random Hearts (1999, from an eighties novel) is a deeply flawed and at times turgid work, despite great leads (Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas) and Pollack at the helm. I used to think it was probably an insensitive and over-narrativised remake of Wong Kar-Wai’s more modest, low-key and subtle effort, In the Mood for Love; but although the latter is set in Hong Kong in l962, it is actually the later film, released in 2000. Why do I mention them now? Two reasons. One: because both feature two tentative strangers, falling for one another, when they are obliged to confront their spouses’ adultery. In a sense, their own confusion and hurt shows them how their partners could have strayed; yet in both films you feel that the bond between the wronged partners, a bond gradually created by their shared predicament, probably becomes more profound than the one experienced by the original adulterers.

In the Mood for Love is stylish and accomplished, well worth a viewing; Random Hearts less so. Nevertheless, the American film does have a great idea (which it almost completely wastes); that is, suddenly realising you never really knew a dead partner at all. And like a lot of flawed films, it still has its moments. The second reason I’m mentioning the movie here, is because of one such moment. In it, Ford and Scott Thomas are brought together when their partners are killed in a plane crash on their way to a secret weekend together. Ford finds it hard to live with his new knowledge of his dead wife and questions one of her colleagues, as he tries to discover how long the affair had been going on and whether he was the only one in ignorance:

“Why is this so important to you?” she asks him.

And then she goes on to tell him how she herself surprised her husband with someone else:

“I caught Sam with a woman once. I spilled a milkshake on my skirt, so I ran home from lunch. I heard them in the shower. And at first, I thought it was the radio. But what she was saying you don't hear on the radio. I ran. I couldn't go back to work. For hours, literally... ...I didn't even remember I was involved with someone else - I had been for months. And I liked my life with Sam. Things were fine.”
“What'd you do?” he asks.

“I kept my mouth shut. And I never went home again without calling first.”
And then she tries to explain, in vain, to this really straight-up, scrupulously honest guy (he’s a detective with Internal Affairs), how – or why - she lives with these compromises and unknowns he’s obviously finding intolerable, even in retrospect:

“To say that involvement......and I don't mean casual sex, I mean romance. To say that whole part of life - half the fun of life - has to end... If you told me that had to be over......I'd feel old.”

Ford:

“If you had known about Peyton......would you tell me? Now, I mean.”
“No.”

(thanks Drew's Script-O-Rama – mad, but great work)


Anyway, back to me - I’m in that hotel room, still waiting. And then, lo and behold, I get the call. She’s late – married lovers are always late – get used to it. And yet she says ‘sorry’, so very sweetly, once she’s in the lift and kissing me, I couldn’t care less if I’d been waiting for hours. She’s no pushover – she’s a termagant when wronged – but the way she says ‘sorry’ sometimes is so-o acquiescent, it’s almost dirty. ‘Christ!’ you think to yourself, ‘what on earth could she possibly have done to be that sorry – gone several rounds with my best friend?’
(Her ‘Hello’ on the phone has a similar effect - it feels like she’s just put her tongue in my ear. Does she practice this stuff?)
The other thing she says, once we’ve had some chat and a bit of fondling and she’s down to her smalls, is:
‘How do you want me?’

Girlfriends, partners, lovers, wives - I can only suggest you try this little phrase at home. Perhaps you already do, or something similar; but some of you might not have attended the same Training School for Sluts as my Sweet Pea, so it may be worth mentioning. Saying ‘sorry’ in a manner which suggests you feel so guilty about some recent act of depravity you’d not only consider it completely reasonable, but actually welcome being spanked silly, as expiation for your crime: that’s on the advanced course and probably quite a difficult skill to acquire (though after all, any apology is never going to go amiss). But saying ‘how do you want me?’ in a waistressy, air hostessy sort of way, that’s not too hard, is it?

Sometimes, as Robert Burns famously noted, things get messed up by contingencies; however much planning you do. Domestic or work problems can cause a last-minute cancellation – and then I’ll find myself sitting on my own, with only a brief and apologetic text to ease my misery. You’re both married, so you aren’t going to have a nice long chat on the phone instead, or an arrangement to meet later – you’re on your own, so get used to it. Is there anything worse, I wonder, than waiting in a hotel room, full of anticipation, and then getting that message from your lover, to tell you she won’t be coming? I doubt it. Perhaps that’s why her apologies are so abject, so freighted with regret - because she really knows how it can feel sometimes.

On another occasion recently, she was very late, after a blazing row at home, but still made it.
“Aren’t you a clever girl?” I observed, once she’d confided and I’d consoled and she’d brightened up no end. “There you are, miserable and distraught – and ‘course it is upsetting, him being horrible to you. But unlike most people who slam the door and storm out in a state after a domestic – and then wonder which friends they’re going to go and disturb – you’ve got someone already waiting; someone who adores you……ready to commiserate and say nice things……”
“I know, I know,” she said; “it did occur to me that it was a bit of luck! And don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
Anyway, once she was thoroughly cheered up, she went on to show me her appreciation. And it occurred to me that she’d got an added bonus out of an evening which had begun so inauspiciously. Back home, Bugger-lugs had been left to stew in his own juices. She, on the other hand, instead of moping about miserably, had had her spirits restored by supportive and convivial company – and could now return to the old meanie to collect an abject apology from him, smug in the secret knowledge that she’d just had an extra helping of someone else’s cock to serve him right.
She’s a one, isn’t she? I’m not sure there was much luck involved.

On this occasion, the darling girl had arrived more or less on time and in good form. I now told her how I wanted her: I’d bought some lingerie and needed to see her in that. She’d actually complained she had nothing to wear a couple of weeks’ before – so of course I’d had to put that right, asap. I’d been astonished and ashamed to have a woman of mine tell me she was running short of saucy kit! (This is another good reason for a hotel room: not only can you give the woman presents which are going to make you a very happy man; she also gets the chance to try them in the bathroom, adjust make-up etcetera; so she’s confident she looks good enough to have you gagging for it.) A Reger one – which had looked fetching on the hanger - was a bit of a disappointment and we rejected it. Lingerie’s like that – (a) you can’t tell til it’s on, and (b) clothes are deliberately (?) sized flatteringly, while lingerie sizes are accurate, even small – so that’s why, if you’re a man buying it, a few alternatives (from a shop which takes returns!) always makes sense. Paradoxically, a cheaper la Senza one-piece in satin and micro-mesh was the business. It pushed her breasts up nicely, and she thought the satin panels on the front flattered her (admittedly trim) stomach, while I liked a little ruff of tulle, which formed the hem just above the arse and mons. Since the whole thing was too short to cover anything, this was a very rude effect indeed – ruder than nakedness – which is, of course, the point of the exercise.

In or out of sexy gear, what is it about her that’s so damned hot? I’ve given this quite a lot of thought. Although I might say she isn’t conventionally pretty, (I might, but I could get big tears or a smack), I must stress that she’s gorgeous in her own way and she is ‘fit’. Even so, that doesn’t add up to hot; though it’s definitely a good start. As I’ve said, she gives an impression of total acquiescence, at times – you feel anything will be permitted, nay encouraged – and more than likely, will give her intense pleasure. That gets a tick. She’s full of dirty little tricks, which leave you gasping. Another tick. She’s eager and responsive and demonstrative, easily aroused and often quick to climax (tick); and when she does, she’s noisily overwhelmed by her orgasm, in a way that’s both exciting and oddly affecting. Actually, sod it, I don’t have boxes – for my sins, I simply adore the woman – but if I did, she’d tick the lot. Then there’s something else – the X-factor - a quality I’d never have thought of looking for, and yet which, once found, is a sure-fire winner……. She seems to want cock – very very badly. This, I think, is the hottest thing of all. Better still, she seems to really really like mine.

Sweet thing that she is, B even sends love letters to my cock, by email, like this one:

“I have never wanted cock like I want yours. God, I fantasise about it. I love you taunting me and teasing me with it as well as fucking my brains out. I love it when you wank it in front of me. And when you talk about it on the phone. When you told me recently on the phone how it felt fat and heavy it was all I could do to stop myself from putting my fingers inside my knickers, which were already dripping wet.”

Now, quite apart from any other sexual activity, my regular partner is very amenable to it, too. In fact, the noises she makes when I slip her a length assure me that not only is this something she’s been quite eagerly anticipating for at least the last half hour or so; but also, that she’d like me to carry on giving her some, in no uncertain manner, and for as long as it takes. A mouth full of it, when I’m toying with her - say, when I’ve been deliberately keeping her teetering on the edge with my middle finger - will push her over, every time. And this is all very satisfactory – no complaints there. Yep, once she’s up and running, the wife has a reasonable enthusiasm for the various pleasures of sex, nowadays – and amongst other things, she appreciates what my cock can do for her at such times. I’m not sure she’s quite as keen on the thing in itself, though; if you can appreciate the distinction.

Here’s an anecdote, by way of demonstration….. I used to have a really great cat. And for a laugh, now and then, we’d fill a sock with catmint, tie it up, and give it to him. The poor little beggar would get himself in a pitiful state. He just could not get enough of that sock. He’d rub it, clutch it, sniff it, lick it, bite it, lie on it, hump it, inhale it, roll around with it, lick it some more, and finally clutch it in his paws and rub it all over his furry little face until he simply blissed out, legs in the air, and went into some sort of cat coma for about half an hour.
And that’s how B is with cock.

Where she’s concerned, my cock can do no wrong. Seeing it turns her on (even before I get it out), touching it turns her on, rubbing it and wanking it turn her on, licking it turns her on. It more or less goes without saying that sucking it sends her into orbit - but that’s an entire topic in itself. Get this: even that squishy clicking noise of me wanking it, anywhere within earshot, has her panting. I can do anything with it and it’s a turn-on: I drag the swollen head of it across her supine face, just beyond the reach of her tongue, and she’s beside herself. I push the greased end of it up the crack in her arse, blindly nuzzling the opening, and the woman’s in paroxysms. I may hold it, poised, ready to enter her cunt, but tantalisingly withhold it, and she gets crazy and confused; eager for one of us to make her come immediately, yet wanting to hold on to the feeling and begging me to fuck her. Or I’ll smear the whole heft of it in lube and press it against her, so that her own eager movements make it slide over her clit. Sometimes I stay still, poised above her (I knew there was some purpose to all those ‘core’ exercises at the gym), and just lend it her, like some sort of organic sex toy, for as long as she likes; so that she can nudge and rub her clit with the blunt, sticky end of it, while taking the Lord’s name in vain. And she’ll do this thing, which I can’t even describe, it’s so hot; touching herself with my cock and her own fingers combined, so that we both risk premature dementia. Basically, all I need is twenty or thirty minutes’ self-control and a teasing attitude and she’s a spent wreck, like that dear long-lost moggy of mine.

Precious little time for taunting and teasing this time, though; because it’s been a while. It’s a very eager and intense session. Nothing fancy – we just can’t get enough of each other – and we can’t get it soon enough. Forget any build-up – a few minutes in and she’s rubbing the head of my lubricated cock against her pussy, the dirty way she does, and I’m almost laughing out loud it feels so good, while she’s whining and squirming under me, beside herself. Then I’m at her side, one hand under her, a finger to the little pucker of her arse, and her back’s arched off the bed, cunt pushed against my other hand, while I chivvy her clit towards climax and she starts quivering like a whippet. (But more attractively, I feel I ought to add). She comes sounding tearful, a whimpering flood of release.

When I fuck her – and all I’ve been wanting is to get my cock into her again for a fortnight – I lift her legs up, pulling her onto my cock, and after we’ve been fucking a while and we can tell we’re both in the zone, she starts to do that wriggly thing which drives me crazy – it’s like having a mermaid on the end of it (I don’t know, obviously, but I imagine it’s like that). I tell her what a hot, dirty bitch she is, how she’s driving me crazy and I can’t help myself. This only serves to encourage her and she does something devastating; an irresistible coup de grace. I’ve got the backs of her calves against my chest and her arse off the bed and the little minx reaches around under us and wraps her right hand around my cock. Oh Lordy! Have you had this done to you? When I thrust I feel like I’m fucking the deepest, tightest cunt in Christendom, and when I’m pulling back, I’m still in it! There is usually a very limited amount of time I can take that kind of total stimulation without coming like a whale – and she knows it, which makes her more and more excited. She starts to carry on like a woman possessed. Not only does she get to feel my cock sliding through her fingers and into her cunt, but each thrust also presses her own fingers against her pubis, pushing her to some new peak. When she comes again, her ‘Ohhh’ is a sustained wail. It sounds full of regret – presumably for the loss of self-control, it occurs to me in a wandering, stray thought, before everything turns to pure sensation - but it’s probably because our climax is also an ending.

Although it’s urgent, the sex seems to last so long, that I glance anxiously at my watch beside the bed. It’s nine thirty. I cannot believe so little time has passed – by my estimate, what seemed to go on and on for ages lasted a mere ten minutes. It turns out, we entered a time-warp together: when I tell her the time, she doesn’t believe it either.
“Phew, that was frantic!” I observe, still breathing hard; “it was like a couple who’ve been apart, who haven’t had sex for a long time.”
“We have been apart,” she reminds me gently; still a little resentful of a recent holiday I took with my family, which inevitably caused the separation
And though she doesn’t say it, I can complete the other correction myself – we are a couple – and we both know it. The companionable people back home who share the everyday business of our existence; they get our commitment: but they don’t get to share this passion, lust and love. They don’t get the excitement and romance of it; not even the constant dialogue about every aspect of lives, which we conduct by phone and email, by word and deed.

I love this time – in bed with her in the afterglow - sipping wine, caressing one another, sharing laughter and confidences. She’s utterly endearing in these moments. I didn’t mention this before – that’s because it’s not a hot quality, exactly – but it is a remarkable phenomenon, nevertheless: my cock is like a magic wand, where she’s concerned. No, really: the psychological effect on her of spunk is profound and magical. Spunk not only changes her mood, it changes her personality. She’s a feisty little madam at the best of times – she’d hardly be having adulterous sex in a hotel room, otherwise, would she? And before she gets some, she’s often full of her usual spark and vim. After a tough day, she can sometimes be acerbic, or bossy, or quick to take offence. After you’ve got some cum into her or onto her, you wouldn’t think it was the same person.

She admits this herself:

"Your spunk has a calming effect on me. You see - if I could just pop round, say every couple of days and get fucked, or have you spunk on me, it would be fine."

Suddenly, she’s the very sweetest, most pliant, most loving woman on earth, adoring and adorable. You wonder where this angel has been hiding. Of course, this strange and moving transformation doesn’t make it any easier to part…….

Oddly, if time was lengthened during the minutes when we were actually fucking, it seems strangely foreshortened during this luxurious, tender and delightful spell, as we chatter and laugh together afterwards. In no time at all, it’s suddenly ten and even though we’re severely tempted, there’s no time for further frolics - we’ve got to leave Planet Love and get suited and booted, ready for re-entry to Earth. Despite the brevity of this session, it feels as though we’ve been through the whole gamut of human emotions – anticipation, despair, elation, love, ecstasy, and sweet sorrow – all in one hour flat. And by half-past ten, we’re both back in our own homes, on our respective sofas, giving our respective partners the benefit of our companionship for their kind of evening. The last thing anyone expects from what the red tops call a ‘love cheat’, is that they should be home before the pubs close. When people imagine unfaithfulness in a partner, I think they often presume it will be with someone younger – or at least someone single. And they presume that, in order to get that other, possibly younger, singleton into the sack for a bit of unfaithfulness, their errant partner will need to be out for the entire evening, wining and dining, trying to recapture their own youthful days of singledom, and creeping home again guiltily in the wee small hours.

Not true – not if you’re shagging someone else with similar commitments and a matching shortage of time. In my experience, you can have unprecedented amounts of very dirty and illicit fun in a lunch-break, or a spare hour during the afternoon; in twenty minutes after collecting someone from work in the car; on a Saturday morning, when you should be shopping; during the time it would take to attend an evening or exercise class, or go to the supermarket. (The trick being, of course, to do all the important verbal foreplay of chat, sweet-talking, or talking dirty on the mobile beforehand. “I’m so sorry you can’t make it until later,” I might say to her. “Of course, it wouldn’t matter at all if I wasn’t so in love with you / if you weren’t so goddam gorgeous / if I didn’t desperately need to give you some cock,” etc etc etc - I’m sure you get the idea.)

Such fragmented time together can be frustrating; but what people don’t realise, is that it also eroticises your whole world. Any absence from home, however brief, may mean a romantic tete a tete on the phone. Any routine journey or chore can lead to a meeting, or a sexual encounter. Everything has a new significance. I think John Updike (that accomplished chronicler of adultery) captures this very well, in a number of different stories. And I don’t want to quote it, and get a big bill from his publisher, but I’m thinking especially of the ending to “The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd” (in Trust Me, 1987); where he talks about seeing your lover’s car parked in a petrol station or in a convenience store parking lot when you didn’t expect it, and how it makes your Saturday, the world suddenly exciting again; your pulse racing and your heart swelling with an upsurge of hope, which connects you again to your deepest feelings, and to life.

Of course, you don’t really need to meet at all: nowadays, it’s become easier to have a lot of adulterous (and anonymous) fun, using those handy modern inventions, the mobile phone and the pc, without even leaving home.
But that’s another story……………………………