Back to Vanilla

by Jennifer Maschek

  Luke_66: What would Jesus do? And what would Sister_Suzy say? Hmmm, hmmm?

  SuzyTD: Fuck her. I just keep staring at that cock in that picture and remembering so vividly I can feel it, the push of that head into me and the rasp of that veiny shaft inside me as that pussy of mine struggled so hard to keep on clinging on.

  Luke_66: So tight, baby girl.

  SuzyTD: Uh huh.

  Luke_66: So, so deliciously tight as I slid in and out in those juices. Clinging on.

  SuzyTD: Uh huh, uh huh.

  Luke_66: So good. This is what you do to me, girl. I need to cum inside you again, but for now… let me just show you…

  SuzyTD: Aw fuck. Aw fuck fuck fuck, you, that video, fuck, just did it for me there. Thanks, naughty boy.

  Luke_66: I thought you’d gone kind of quiet there. Was thinking I might have to dial 999. Get an ambulance to come and save you. Kiss of life.

  SuzyTD: Uh huh, smarty pants. And now I just need to nap again. I have an hour before they’re due. Tiredy girl. Hmmm… start cooking or nap?

  Luke_66: No-brainer. Later? x

  SuzyTD: x

  ********************

  It had been more than a week and she still hadn’t found the opportunity she needed to chat to her husband. After a few evenings of psyching herself up to stay up and chat when Rich got in from work, only to either fall asleep or become embroiled in an online session with Luke_66 that took her mind off the realities she needed to face, she conceded and waited. In the meantime, Megan and Rich drifted past one another as life poured relentlessly on.

  Back at work now, she was dimly aware, though not wholly admitting to herself, that her relationship with Luke_66 was sapping rather than fertilising her already stretched energy limits. After that initial gush of excitement, he seemed to soak up more and more of her time, drawing on reserves she was pulling from a place she had no idea existed.

  That said, their second date was set, two long weeks in the future, and Megan knew that some of the reluctance she felt stemmed entirely from the lies she found herself increasingly forced to tell. They were coming too easily.

  Sam had started the odd afternoon at nursery, and it was the following Tuesday lunchtime before she got the opportunity to talk Rich alone. It was exactly eleven days after she and Luke had met for an exceedingly swift coffee before checking into the Premier Inn that lay ten minutes’ walk from the 365 terminus.

  She’d noticed, though professed not to care at the time, that he had booked a room for them in advance; afterwards, he had told her that the cost, if she had changed her mind, would have been a price he was willing to pay, although the uncomfortable thought that she’d been a dead cert for him kept sneaking back into her mind.

  Again, what did it matter? It had been, without doubt, a delightful afternoon. A gentle, hard, intense, sucking, fucking kind of an afternoon, which had started when the giggles and coyness ended and he stroked her face tenderly on the bed, her eyes fixed on the third button of the white shirt he had put on that morning as he set out for work.

  For him, she knew, she was one of a short string of online affairs he’d conducted since having what he called a true epiphany several years earlier.

  “I realised, like the heavens had opened and screamed it down at me, that life’s just too damn short not to,” he’d told her. It was a phrase she heard time and again, for it had become a pervasive, almost defining wisdom of the world around them, used everywhere from television dramas to advertising to everyday banter: life’s too short. She used it herself, for what else fitted? The stereotype of middle age had hit her; from a once never-ending road stretching out in front of her, life had suddenly become too short, and in her online trawlings it seemed as if everyone else, every man in the universe, was noticing it too.

  And so she had arranged to meet Rich for lunch at a greasy spoon right next to her school. He had the day off, the café was neutral ground, and, with Sam to fetch again at 3pm, their time alone was finite and thus became more precious. It also set a limit to focus on their conversation.

  Having quickly established how their respective mornings had gone – Rich had enjoyed a rare lie-in and was on incredibly good form – and ordered chip-laden lunches, she looked down at the Formica table surface in front of her and took an immense breath.

  “I need to say something, and it’s hard, the words are hard to say, but there’s nothing else I can do but say it before it all bursts out… Aw fuck, don’t look so worried.”

  “Is it the kids? Work? That special-needs promotion? What’s up… what is it? It’s okay.” He was always so bloody calm, her rock, and everything could be fixed, but right now, any words she had planned flew right out of her head.

  “You can say it. Take your time.”

  “Okay, okay. Let me just try. When… when… the fact is that when you, when I knew, what I kind of already knew, that you’d… that I wasn’t enough, you needed more, and that you did what you did… fuck, you, you know how hurt I was…”

  “This?” There was relief in his voice, but also an undertone of anger, something she heard so infrequently from him that it barely registered as such. He put the fingertips of his two hands lightly over his mouth, as if to stop the words he was desperate to say from escaping.

  “We’re talking about this, now? I thought it was done? Hell, I’m not saying I wasn’t wrong, but this? Again? It was nothing. It was nothing then and it’s nothing now. You… you scared me… I’m sorry. I’m good to talk… please…”

  The food arrived and they both looked up and smiled their thanks at the waitress, but neither touched the cutlery. Rich took a slurp of the tea to which he’d just added a hefty shot of sugar, and looked at her.

  The hint of defensive in his response spurring her on, Megan continued. “I was hurt, but… but. You were right. You were, and it’s taken this time. What you said, then, at that time. Monogamy, sexual monogamy… it’s shit. It sucks. Manufactured traps, you said. This, us, this works… this isn’t shit, but I’ve thought and I’ve looked and I’ve read and you were right.”

  “Right? This works, but I was right…? Help me out here, there’s something I’m just not getting. Did I say monogamy sucked? Was I stoned?”

  “You were right. Jeez, I know you love me, of course you do, but you were right. I want to cash in my card… the card you promised was mine when you changed the rules and you fucked around. I’ve been so fucking unhappy, but lately? Lately, Rich, hell suddenly it just all fell into place and I know, I just know what I want.”

  “You want to cash in your card?”

  “Call it what you like. But, yeah, I guess I do. I’m cashing it in. I want to use it and I want to keep on using it. I want that freedom. The freedom you took and the freedom you offered me. There are rules, things we can talk about, but I can’t go on treading water on this one, babe, feeling like shit for something I just don’t believe in any more. For something that makes no sense to me.”

  He salted the over-sized mushroom omelette on the plate in front of him and added vinegar to his chips, before picking up his knife and fork, and cutting off a hunk of egg, which he began slowly to chew.

  “I know…” The words felt measured and meticulous as she heard them. “I know how much I have hurt you, Megan O’Hare, I do, but I love you and I love those kids more than anything. Let me understand… you’re saying you want this to end? To find someone else?”

  “I’m saying I would like you to open your mind to the logical progression of your already existing views on sex, on monogamy. Love? No doubts. We love each other. What I’m saying is that I’ve looked into… I’ve been talking to people, people online, who know about this world, and, with rules, our very own rules… our own open-minded sexual rules… think about it. If anyone on the planet can make this work, we can.”

  And with that, the conversation drifted back to more comfortable matters: Sam’s longer days at playgroup, Becky’s endless friendship squabbles, Grace’s upcoming options
.

  Yes, he had said, he would think, they would talk more, and in principle he agreed to discuss and explore a way she could do what she wanted, whatever that was. It was foolish not to agree, he recognised, as the words she was quoting had, in some measure, originally been his own.

  But for now this was all Megan needed. She had said what had to be said, and look, the world hadn’t exploded, or really changed at all.

  13. LittleGirlLost

  Tamsin stood on the street scouring the pavements for men aged between 21 and 39. For whatever reason, this was the required age group of prospective face moisturiser-users, as dictated by the company for which she was currently doing research. Maybe anyone older simply didn’t fit the firm’s image.

  Her awareness of older men had recently been heightened and, her appetite for more of what she liked being at its peak, she figured that as long as she ticked the required age box on the forms attached to her clipboard, she could make this work to her advantage. Approaching men clearly nearer 50 was a no-lose situation: it gave them an ego boost, while letting her tick a box and giving her the upper hand should she decide, upon making contact, that they might be what she was looking for. So far, they never were.

  The initial thrill of the flirt was over now, though. It was 4.27pm on a day that had begun around eight that morning. Her feet were achy and she was beyond bored. The head games she had used to amuse herself – who had and hadn’t fucked the previous night, who was smooth and who bushy beneath their surface veneer of Marks & Spencers, Next or Urban Outfitters… – had become increasingly extreme as the day went on, until they lost momentum and fizzled out completely.

  When a tall, slim, guy, clearly out of her target range for market research but not for personal use, turned the corner roughly 80 metres from where she stood, she decided to give it a final shot.

  There was something disturbingly familiar about him. Maybe, she thought, he reminded her of someone famous, as he was definitely fanciable, with the sort of crumple-face that seemed to have been gained through good times rather than the weariness of life; it possessed the kind of lines she was starting to appreciate. The mop of short but clearly untameable mid-brown hair that topped it off iced a cake she instinctively wanted to get her teeth into.

  “Good afternoon there, Sir. Could I stop you a moment… just a few short questions? You’d be… you’d be doing me a huge favour if you answered them. To be blunt, one more survey and I can go home.”

  He smiled at what seemed like her desperately cheeky honesty and paused.

  “I have a moment to spare, sure. Especially to help out a damsel in distress. You sure I’m your target audience… middle-aged man, reasonably well-off, but slightly scruffy? Tell me, please tell me, it’s not for some sort of embarrassing medical product… I get enough junk emails every day offering me Viagra and the like.”

  And as simply as that, within less, surely, than a minute, he’d raised the topic of sex.

  “Erm, no… not at all. Please, don’t take offence though… it’s a skin product aimed at men under 40. Do you use a moisturiser?”

  “Now I know you’re desperate, though thanks for the compliment. Yes, I guess I can drop ten years, and the rest, for a pretty girl. Even if I am old enough to be her daddy.”

  She laughed alongside him, while noticing an involuntary Pavlovian moistening at his quite specific choice of the word – why not “father”, or keep it at a simple “dad”?

  As she ticked and crossed the boxes on the clipboard in front of her, the feeling that she recognised him from somewhere grew. Questions asked, she paused, leant her head to one side and stared.

  “Do I… we’ve met, right? You work with my dad? Jon? Jon Ward?”

  “That’d be me. I knew it. I mean, thank the Lord you look nothing like him, but… you’re Francis Brewer’s daughter, right? You look more like your mother. Though I had a slightly different picture in my head, I guess. Same audacious little smile… different colour hair though, I think?”

  “It was darker. Yeah, like my mum’s I guess. Briefly turquoise recently but, erm, it didn’t go down too well with the district manager, as you can imagine, hence the change.”

  They chatted a little: her life, his two kids, whom he’d only had in recent years, so they were barely primary school age. It seemed perfectly logical that he would, at the end of this, and now at the end of what had seemed like an unusually long shift, standing all day, offer her a lift back to her house.

  She declined, at first, of course, but relented without too much persuading and thus it was that by 6.37pm, after he’d texted his wife to warn her of his slightly late arrival and to go ahead and eat dinner without him, they were parked down a little-used road, her head bent over his lap as his eyes flitted between watching her bob up and down, always just below sight from the road, and scanning the empty street for cars. Mostly they looked down.

  In a silence broken only by her occasional grunts and snuffles, his left hand stroked her soft head reassuringly, while the right clung tightly to the steering wheel.

  He said nothing at all, but it wasn’t long before he grabbed a fistful of her short bob and began to guide her head harder, then faster, and then slow, before letting go and stroking her hair again as her face, beaming and silent, reappeared. In an understated yet theatrical gesture, Tamsin dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her index finger, before dragging her upper half back up and slumping heavily into the passenger seat.

  “Next time,” he said, “I’d like you to rub yourself as we do that.”

  And then in silence he drove her home.

  14. slUtty-fUckgal

  It was soon after her fourth meeting with Luke_66, same hotel each time, that Megan realised for sure that she wanted him out of her life. The liaisons were spread far apart, a month, maybe more, in between, always afternoons, always brief. But they weren’t the problem. Sexually, no doubt, they just clicked, and each hook-up confirmed that. No, the final blows were struck by the ceaseless communication and his need for a response more instant than she was able, or even wanted, to offer.

  Where are you babe?

  I’m worried, is everything okay?

  I had a terrible day, babe. You must be busy? Tough day at school?

  I think my message program is fucked up, as my messages aren’t coming through.

  Having made the decision herself, convincing him that it was time to move on was an entirely different matter. Megan told him that things were becoming too difficult at home, and, always thoroughly sympathetic, he simply reiterated that he would be there, waiting, till she needed him. After insisting for a while that this was not necessary, she reminded herself of the wisdom of keeping doors open, and, although she wasn’t entirely convinced that this situation fell into that category, it seemed churlish to continue arguing in the face of such unnecessary understanding. On top of everything, she was just too weary to quibble.

  With a reply rate of ten to one on the message front and no sign of him really slowing down, he became another person in her over-peopled existence. None of it was enough, though; she could never get enough stimulation; and as the cold winter nights approached, Megan would doze off to a frantic online mutual-masturbation session, cruising the no-registration chat lines for inspiration, and when all else failed calling on old faithful Luke_66, who waited patiently in the wings for his plaintive lusty late-night cue.

  Without a doubt, he was doing the same as her. They had, in fact, occasionally crossed paths, bumped into one another on some sleazy site or other. At first they had acknowledged this, made excuses – he was just logging back in to change his profile picture, his details, or she was purely there to wind guys up and giggle when they nibbled the bait.

  Eventually, however, this became pointless and they would wink, smile, nod, or ignore and move on. There is no room for jealousy in the ever-shifting scenes of cyber-sex.

  On one level, she remained grateful to Luke_66, for it was him who had woken her up to the ide
a of roleplay, and this was a playground in which Megan was keen to have fun. Where Sister_Suzy, the disapproving and quick-to-punish nun with a filthy streak, had come from, she had no idea. His invention entirely, her character had seemed to spring from nowhere; but taboos and the idea of breaking through and through and on to the other side where virtually nothing was forbidden… this appealed.

  Slowly Megan found herself honing in on the guys who got this, who instinctively understood the world of fantasy and roleplay, a rare talent, but a delight to play with. Even online, when it worked, it seemed, it really worked.

  It was a Friday night in mid-November and, with the weekend on the horizon, she had passed out, as usual, on her couch around 9.30pm. Rich’s key in the door had woken her up and she’d staggered like a 1970s film zombie up the stairs to where her bed seemed infinitely more appealing.

  Tucked up, she was suddenly wide awake and fumbling for the comfort of her phone. Ploughing through the 34 messages that instantly appeared as she logged on was a tedious task, but there were generally a few with some promise and which begged to be answered.

  The_Experimentalist 36 M NYC US: You’re here for the research?

  slUtty-fUckgal 43 F London UK: I am?

  The_Experimentalist 36 M NYC US: I believe so, yes.

  slUtty-fUckgal 43 F London UK: Then it must be true. What are you researching? Are you a doctor?

  The_Experimentalist 36 M NYC US: Unimportant. Yes, I’m a scientist and a doctor. Just doing my job. You dressed as instructed?

  slUtty-fUckgal 43 F London UK: I think so…

  The_Experimentalist 36 M NYC US: Now undress. There’s a gown at the foot of the examination table. Please. Put that on.

  slUtty-fUckgal 43 F London UK: With you watching?

  The_Experimentalist 36 M NYC US: It’s my job to observe. Put on the gown.

  slUtty-fUckgal 43 F London UK: Of course.