by Lette, Kathy
Clit: ‘I’m so happy I could jump for joy.’
Me: ‘Yeah . . . right off the nearest cliff.’
11
No, I am not going to sleep with him, I told myself as he pushed me up against the wall of the elevator and kissed me ravenously. The man was a force of nature – a lightning bolt.
No, no, I am not going to sleep with him, I told myself as I grabbed the fragrant, muscly-thighed one and drew him closer.
‘You’re so hard,’ I murmured into his ear. But making conversation was also hard. When the lift door opened and other couples poured in, we drew apart and made another attempt at dialogue. It’s safe to say that Wayve was not about to make Cicero quake in his oratorical boots. He talked in brief spurts, every comment directed several inches below my head, directly at my cantilevered breasts. Each utterance drove home what a mistake this was, when in quick succession Wayve said, ‘What happens to the ice sculpture, after it melts?’ – ‘Is Mystery Island completely surrounded by water?’ – ‘Are there any undiscovered caves there? I bloody love caving.’ – And ‘Have you seen the flamingo dancers in the ship show? That’s some awesome shit, right there.’
‘Flamingo dancers, eh?’ I looked at him quizzically, trying to picture the dance troupe standing about on one leg. But when we were out of the lift and alone in the corridor, Wayve said things like ‘I can’t wait to lick your pussy,’ ‘I’m going to spread your legs and fuck you,’ and other sexy sentiments whispered hotly in my ear all the way to my cabin. Okay, it wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, but it was certainly hitting the spot.
All I could think of were things not to say, like ‘Do you still choose your cereal for the toy?’, ‘Does your Mum know you’re here?’ and ‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’
Once inside the cabin, I seemed to step outside of myself and watch proceedings. I paused by the bed, arrested by the vision of the young man lifting his shirt over his head, revealing a broad back, the skin varnished to a violin shade after days of fun in the sun and then, oh, the peachiness of his perfect posterior as he lay stark naked across my bed.
No, no, I am not going to sleep with him, I told myself as I slipped out of my dress and kicked off my heels.
On my bed the towels had been shaped into an elephant, a swan and a dog that clutched the TV remote control in its sculpted paws. No, no, I am not going to sleep with him, I repeated, sweeping this terry-towelling menagerie to the floor.
No, no, I am not going to sleep with him, I told myself as I unhooked my bra and dive-bombed onto the bed and under the sheet at record speed so he wouldn’t have time to see my stretch marks, whacking my shin on the end of the bed and somehow grazing my nose on the sheets in the frantic process.
No, no, I am not going to sleep with him, I told myself as I saw his cock thickening, the glans enormous. Unlike me, he was so at ease in his skin – including his foreskin. As he applied the condom I noted how different he looked from Harry. The fleshy turtleneck, of course – thank you for the tip about his tip, Emerald – and then that dark mat of pubic hair at the base of his shaft. His excited cock was waving back and forth like a windscreen wiper.
No, no, no, I am not going to sleep with him, I thought . . . but as the young man ran his firm brown fingers down my spine, my tongue was hanging so far out of my head that the cabin carpet got a free shampoo. He bunched my hair in his hands, pulled my head back and kissed me ravenously. I dwelt, once more, on my husband’s infidelity and lack of contrition, then grabbed the stupendous joystick before me. It was the size of rocket ship ready for blast-off. T-minus ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six . . .
Just as I was giving in to the moment, Wayve suddenly spoke. ‘Dominate me.’
‘Sorry, what?’ I sought clarification. ‘What did you say?’
‘Dominate me.’
‘Oh, oh, right . . .’ What the hell did he mean? I had no idea, but, trying to look worldly and suave, I straddled Wayve and pinned his arms down on the bed as forcefully as I could. But then what? I wasn’t sure what my next manoeuvre should be. It struck me that boys his age have watched so much porn that they must expect a pretty sophisticated repertoire. Especially from an older woman. I immediately experienced a performance anxiety I hadn’t felt since those hedonistic hours of enforced folk-dancing in primary school. It was obvious he wanted me to play a role – but of what? Teacher? Prison matron? Mother? Good god, not mother! Paging Doctor Freud to reception . . .
I racked my brain, not sure of the script he craved. I am firmly of the opinion that handcuffs are only acceptable if you’re an undercover police officer. The only thing I’d ever whipped was cream for Amber’s famous pavlova. Ironically, I would have quite liked to be dominated myself: since he’d roughly grabbed my hair to kiss me, the whole Poldark fantasy of the strong young stud unable to control his passion was playing on repeat in my head. The only area in which I was clearly dominant was intellectually. Maybe I should ask him sternly to name the square root of the hypotenuse, or to triple an entendre, or maybe to do a little light quipping in Latin? Discombobulated, I dismounted and rolled to the side.
‘So, what are you into?’ Wayve asked, rubbing my nipple between his fingers. ‘Rope play? Rough verbal? Anal? BDSM?’
‘Um . . .’ was the only reply that leapt immediately to mind. It seemed that I was now the one failing the audition for the Algonquin Round Table.
He kissed his way down my body and my pulse quickened. I felt his tongue flick under the lacy edge of my lingerie and brush back and forth across my vulva for a blissful few seconds. Just as I was surrendering to the joyous idea of finding myself in one of those subtitled European movies, Wayve said something I couldn’t quite catch.
‘What?’
‘Hair?!’ he said, perplexed, before drawing back.
‘Um . . . yes, well, we are mammals,’ I pointed out, reassuringly.
Wayve tugged Emerald’s ‘Lover’s Spark’ Brazilian briefs down to my thighs and gazed, amazed, at my nether regions. I kissed the top of his head, stroking his shoulders encouragingly . . . but, glancing down at his naked body, I realised that my toy boy’s impressive appendage had deflated faster than a beachside li-lo at the end of summer.
Beer dick, I surmised. Well, it was getting late and he’d no doubt been drinking all day. Or, wait, could it be . . . the bush? Maybe he’d never seen a woman with bush? No way . . . he’d told me in the lift that he’d grown up on a sheep station, so surely the bloke was used to a little light bushwalking? I had been hoping that he might actually be partial to a bit of bush tucker.
But Wayve was making a repulsed face, like a kid who’d been offered a plate of spinach. The condom hung limply from his cock the way washing hangs lifeless from the Hills hoist on a breezeless day. For him, this was clearly a Bush Tucker Trial. Suddenly, instead of starring in a black-and-white French film, I’d been unceremoniously recast in an episode of I’m a Nonentity . . . Get Me Out of Here!
‘Do you prefer your women waxed?’ I inquired. ‘A waxed pudenda may sound erotic, but when it’s growing back it looks like a shag pile that’s been terrorised – a super-itchy shag pile.’
Judging by the intense look of revulsion on his face, Wayve was thinking that waxing wouldn’t be enough to achieve deforestation on the scale this situation required. No, my mons was obviously going to require several months of strategic bombing with napalm.
I pulled him back up into an embrace, snuggled into his arms and inhaled his delicious scent – musky, tantalising, what was the word I was looking for? Oh, yes – young. Determined not to be rejected, I slid down his body this time, flicked the condom floorwards, as though I did this every day (dear god, I hadn’t even seen a weenie beanie since teenhood) and aroused him with my mouth. He got hard straight away but then I felt his body convulsing and pulled back in annoyance. I wasn’t going through all this just to give a toy boy a blow job, I thought, angrily. Men are just like holidays – they never last long enough. If I’m going to cheat on my
husband, I want to do it properly. Or improperly, actually.
‘Getting off at Redfern? I don’t think so. I like to do the whole City Circle,’ I said, trying to employ some blokey, euphemistic vernacular. I rolled on another condom and then sat astride Wayve, tossing my hair theatrically as if I were in a shampoo commercial. (Isn’t that what women did?) But his flaccid penis just flopped around inside me, like a dead salmon in a tumble dryer.
‘Reckon I’m just feelin’ a bit guilty about me girlfriend,’ he explained.
‘Oh? Right,’ I said, dismounting once more.
It may not have been true, but we both clung to the excuse like two drowning people to a tiny piece of verbal flotsam.
‘Yeah . . . I’m s’posed to be on a fishin’ trip with me mates, not on a cougar cruise with MILFs.’
‘A mother you’d like to fuck – is that what I am?’ I asked, huskily, in full Mrs Robinson mode, caressing him once more with confident strokes.
‘Well . . .’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You’re more of an MP.’
‘An MP?’
‘Mature pussy.’
Now it was my turn to feel all desire deflate. I fell back onto the pillow. It seemed that when he’d pulled my hair back tightly it wasn’t part of a take-me-roughly Poldark fantasy at all. He was obviously just trying to iron out my wrinkles to make me look younger – a ‘Fairfield face lift’, we used to call it. ‘If you’re in love with your girlfriend then why did you come on a cruise like this?’ I asked, curtly.
‘Well, all me mates were comin’ for the free holiday and, well . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I’m a country boy. If it’s got a hole and a heartbeat, we fuck it then count the legs afterwards.’
Unless it has pubic hair, apparently. ‘How poetic,’ I muttered. ‘The post of poet laureate clearly beckons.’
‘I see no problem divin’ and munchin’ when needed, either. It’s just the “Me-Tarzan-You-Jane” jungle look kinda threw me, ya know?’
‘You’re plagiarising Shakespeare again, aren’t you,’ I said, facetiously.
‘Who?’
‘Oh, lord. William Shakes . . . never mind.’
I felt the chasm of the generation gap yawning between us across the sheets. ‘Body hair is sensual and essential. It captures your pheromones, which are nature’s invisible perfume . . . All those girls waxing to make themselves more attractive to men, they’re basically losing their secret weapon. Bring back bush, I say. A woman should only wax lyrical . . . Hasn’t your mother explained these things to you? I’m sure your Mum doesn’t wax. And she’s probably about the same age as . . .’
I tried to claw back the words as they left my mouth, but it was too late. A look of repugnance crossed the boy’s smooth countenance. This whole encounter was turning out to be a disaster on par with the Hindenburg. What had I been thinking? The short answer was I hadn’t been thinking, I’d been drinking. And it was all Emerald’s fault, the fact that I was now lying here with a tumesced toy boy, totally unbegotten.
This was not what I’d envisaged. Just for one night I no longer wanted to be Julie Andrews and Mary Poppins and Pollyanna all rolled into one big, self-sacrificing ball of niceness. I’d wanted to be Bette Davis in All About Eve, claws out and sequins flying. I’d wanted to be Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons, eating men for breakfast. I’d wanted to be Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl – dark, duplicitous, wicked. I’d wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara, giving zero mint juleps about getting what I wanted, when I wanted it. Spurred on by this impromptu mental pep talk, I tried to arouse him again with my hand. There was a brief spasm of life and he turned towards me eagerly, but then he suddenly pulled another disgusted spinach face and pointed at my stomach. ‘What’s that?’
I followed his gaze to below my navel.
‘Oh, you mean my baby marks? They’re just slight stretch marks from growing two humans in my abdomen.’
Once more the turbo-thrusting twenty-something’s manhood dwindled to a limp shrimp lying on his leg. I was so embarrassed, all I could think about was which South American country I could flee to without a visa at short notice. Even the terry-towelling animals seemed to be looking up at me from the floor with pity. Come on, I rallied myself, you’ve been humiliated by people a lot higher up the food chain than this bit of beefcake. To disguise my mortification I quickly adopted the unfazed facade of a Henry Higgins type, or Henrietta Higgins in this case, briskly explaining about the Bard and island geography and flamenco dancing and how no one could know if a cave was undiscovered, because it was, well, undiscovered . . .
Wayve turned to me with an expression so intense I thought I may have missed my vocation as a high school teacher. I leant in, all the better to hear his appreciative, awed compliments on my intellect and erudition. ‘Yes?’
‘Think I’m gonna puke,’ he said.
I went straight into mum mode – fetching the ice bucket and a towel and placing them by the bed, dissolving aspirin in a glass, applying a cold flannel to his burning forehead. Then I sat by his side, stroking his arm soothingly and chatting away to him like . . . well, like mother and son, really.
I’d soon forgotten about being begotten. Fucklessness is often confused with celibacy, the difference being, of course, that the state of celibacy is voluntary. Yes, I may be a shagless tragic, but being shagless is better than being badly shagged. Isn’t it?
Yep, I thought, tonight I really turned my life around – I used to be insecure and frazzled, and now I’m frazzled and insecure.
As I nursed the boy off to sleep, I thought the night could only be made worse by one thing – my sisters finding out that my daring walk on the wild side had led me straight off a cliff. There’s nothing bad about sisters that sharing personal and intimate details won’t aggravate.
No, I swore to keep the whole catastrophic encounter to myself. I’d never give my siblings the comedic satisfaction – never, ever, ever. I’d rather chew off my own tongue.
12
Total catastrophe! I WhatsApped both sisters, pre-dawn, my head hanging over the toilet bowl. I couldn’t chew off my own tongue now as promised, as it was stuck to the roof of my mouth, coated in fur. From mojito to finito in, like, less than one hour.
One thing I’d learnt is that a separated, middle-aged woman who gets drunk enough to sleep with a boy toy will be rewarded with the sight of herself vomiting up five martinis in the middle of the night.
I’d woken an hour earlier with a vague recollection in my fuddled, muddled brain, that I’d brought home a souvenir from the disco; a two-legged souvenir. I cautiously began to roll in his direction, wondering what kind of small talk could save me from the crippling humiliation of our unconsummated evening. What did boys his age like to talk about? Football? Surfing? Instagram influencers – whatever the hell they were?
When I discovered the other side of the bed to be empty, the wave of relief that washed over me felt tsunami-like in scale. But it was quickly followed by a wave of nausea so strong it propelled me to the bathroom – where I’d been lying ever since, my hot cheek pressed up against the cold tiles.
When I finally felt confident I could stand without listing starboard, I eased my way into the shower to wash off all remnants of the night before. I showered with my eyes closed to avoid the too-bright light. It hurt to walk. As I was dressing, I also noticed a raised welt the size of a crockpot on my shin, a bruise rapidly turning the colour of an aubergine on my ankle from where I’d whacked it during my diva dive onto the bed the night before, and a stiffness in my hips which could only have been from some overexcited disco moves, rather than the horizontal tango, as I’d hoped.
Worse, catching sight of myself in the mirror, I noted that my labia had swollen. No wonder it hurt to walk. Honestly, it looked as though someone had taken to my nether regions with a bicycle pump. No, that didn’t quite explain it. It looked as though pirates had moored a rubber dinghy between my thighs. At least if there’s an accident at sea, I can ride my own inflated labia to shore, I thoug
ht, amazed. I also had a sheet burn on my nose – not the best look on a middle-aged mum of two.
Eventually, with minty breath and hair turbaned in a towel, I limped like a saddle-sore gunslinger into the living room I shared with my sisters. Emerald had one foot up on the coffee table and was uncharacteristically painting her toenails a blood-red shade, while Amber was curled up on the other end of the couch in her cupcake-patterned Peter Alexander PJs, peering at the computer open on her lap, no doubt emailing instructions to her over-protected progeny about what to do in case of a cyclone, tsunami, bushfire, flood, nuclear attack or Martian invasion.
‘Well, well, well, here’s a cowgirl who’s been ridin’ the risqué range!’ Emerald greeted me, approvingly.
‘So, what was such a catastrophe, and why are you hobbling?’ Amber asked, glancing up from her screen and blowing on the halo of froth atop a cappuccino.
‘Actually, I think it’s a case of ARDI.’
‘Oh, god, what’s that? Not some hideous genital disease, is it?’ Amber recoiled. ‘There’s a weapons-grade gonorrhoea during the rounds of the Pacific, apparently.’
‘A-R-D-I – ABBA-related dance injury,’ I explained. ‘My over-exuberant Mum manoeuvres, circa 1982, have left me in need of a Zimmer frame.’ I winced as I shuffled towards the armchair facing them. ‘Christ, it hurts to bend my legs. I’ll only be able to go up the stairs backwards, on my bum.’
‘Well, you were burning up the dance floor like one of the Spice Girls.’
‘Yes – Old Spice,’ Amber said, ‘judging by the ensuing chiropractor bills.’
‘Ignore her. She’s just jealous. Women have been treated like second-class citizens for centuries. Now it’s our turn to have some fun. Just look at it as reverse sexism. So, I will take that second helping of beefcake, thank you very much. Toy boys are more effective than a Kegel8 miracle machine. My fanny muscles are now so strong I could suction my way up a wall, like a vaginal Spider-Woman.’