Daniel, leaned in, his lips parted. At first, Ed’s lips remained locked, and he feared a false dawn. Then, slowly, they opened, and he felt the inside of her mouth slip against his. Before he knew what he was doing, he had put the tip of his tongue inside, and it had found hers.
She pushed him away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I went too far, didn’t I? I ruined it.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘It’s OK. It just tickled, that’s all. Like licking a battery.’
‘You lick batteries?’
Ed did not answer him. Instead, she pressed her open mouth onto his. He felt the tip of her tongue. It slid deep into his mouth.
* * *
‘I tongue-kissed with Ed today,’ Daniel found himself telling Athelstan in the Union, that evening. He wanted Athelstan to make him feel triumphant, instead of miserably guilty.
‘Astoundingly well done,’ said Athelstan, distracted as he kept his vigil as the girl once again served behind the bar. ‘I would show more excitement, but at this moment you are a distant planet as I bathe in the heat of a mighty sun with enormous tits.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that women might appreciate not being reduced to a pair of breasts?’ said Daniel, a variation on the question he had been punishing himself with since leaving Ed’s room that afternoon.
‘Daniel, dear sweet clueless Daniel. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Sometimes… women really, really want you to look at their tits. They actively encourage you to reduce them to a pair of bouncy breasts. You can tell when they want you to do this because they show them to you. I mean, look around you now, in this bar. What do you see? Tits. Tits everywhere. Thanks to the latest developments in bra technology, even girls with literally no tits are showing you their tits to the very limits of public decency.’
Daniel had to admit Athelstan was correct. There was much cleavage on display, seemingly intentionally. He saw the pixie-haired girl who had stepped out of their bathroom in a towel the week before. He could see she was looking at Athelstan, and yet she did not acknowledge him. He saw now that some of the other girls there that night looked familiar. They had also stepped out of the bathroom, or out of Athelstan’s bedroom, at various times over the past year. And yet none of them even said hello now. Boys who wanted to punch him, girls who wouldn’t speak to him after. Athelstan’s lot struck him as a very lonely one, in that moment.
‘Now, what can be learned from this ocean of mammaries?’ Athelstan was saying. ‘This. That girls are very OK with being reduced to two water balloons in a truss a lot of the time. And believe me, while we’re reducing them, they’re reducing us. Which is why I take care to arrange myself to my full advantage after every piss.’
‘It can’t be that animalistic, surely? That’s just depressing.’
‘It’s nature. What’s so depressing about that? The idea that we have a soul that somehow makes us higher is just something dreamed up by religious lunatics like your former good self. We are animals. Just tits and arses and bellends and balls and clits and muffs. And arms and lungs and kidneys and all that shit. But it’s the sex stuff that’s important. The essence of a person, their true self, it’s all underneath their clothes.’
Daniel stopped listening before Athelstan stopped talking. He kept on feeling the echoes of the electric sensation on his tongue from earlier.
‘I’m pretty sure she liked it,’ he said aloud some minutes later, surprising himself. ‘We did it for several minutes before she had to go and play netball.’
‘Netball?’ said Athelstan.
‘Yes, she’s on the team.’
‘Doesn’t she realise that game is full of sexual symbolism? By the end of the match the net is dripping with metaphorical semen… Ah, shit. Talking of metaphorical semen, there’s Spencer Macleavage.’
Daniel saw Spencer approach and sank inside.
‘It’s OK, Spencer,’ shouted Athelstan, ‘you don’t need to come over! We’ve seen you already!’
‘Alright, lads?’ said Spencer, sidling up beside them. Daniel gave him a half-hearted nod, trying not to encourage him for his sake.
‘You can’t have her, you know. If you try anything, I’ll batter you.’
‘I don’t know what… oh, you’re doing that thing from the other night again. Sweet. Yeah, that was funny.’
A light seemed to go on in Spencer’s head. Daniel had a gut feeling things were about to get worse.
‘Well, you never know,’ said Spencer, ‘maybe I will have her, know what I mean? Might, you know, “bang” her tonight actually.’
Daniel shook his head violently, mouthing ‘no’ as Spencer played along with what he imagined was the joke. Spencer didn’t see.
‘Yeah, might take her home and give her a “good seeing to”. And she’d be “loving it” and all that.’
Athelstan’s neck stretched. His head rolled. He was a deadly snake waiting to strike.
‘Oh, you’re going to do that, are you? You’re going to “bang her”? Give her a “good seeing to”? And she’ll be “loving it”?’ Guess that will be “sweet”, won’t it?’
‘Um. Yeah. Isn’t that what I’m, um, meant to do?’ Daniel could see a veil of cluelessness fall from Spencer’s face. There seemed no way of stopping what was going to happen next.
‘You’re talking about the woman I love, you pestilent cunt!’
Athelstan leapt from his reclining position, grabbed Spencer by the lapels of his sports blazer, and head-butted him squarely in the nose. Blood sprayed across the rim of Daniel’s pint glass, sinking into the froth of his lager. He stared dumbly at this for a second, wondering if it could be scooped out. When the shock wore off, and he looked up, Athelstan was already being dragged away by bouncers. Spencer was sitting bolt upright on the floor, blood flowing out of his nose in a wide flat jet, the girl from behind the bar trying to catch it in a beer-soaked towel.
* * *
‘She had a bloke the other night,’ said Athelstan, huddled within his leather jacket, the skin above his leg-warmers pimpling as the cold bit. Daniel sat next to him at the bus stop facing the Union building. They weren’t waiting for a bus. ‘I saw him coming out of her house first thing in the morning. She waved him off wearing nothing but a towel that barely covered her twat. She’d obviously ridden him senseless. He looked quite dazed.’
‘You surprisingly don’t sound like you have a problem with that scenario,’ said Daniel.
‘I don’t. I rejoice in it. I fully support her in all her gluttonous activities, be they cake or cock-based.’
‘You do know we’re sitting outside in the freezing cold because you just got kicked out of the Uni for head-butting Spencer Macleavy due to some paranoid idea that he’s after her, don’t you?’
‘Well, Spencer Macleavy can’t have her, obviously! But anyone else can dip right in. You can have her if you like, if you don’t mind me watching.’
‘I will pass on that. But you are aware that until you head-butted him, Spencer was probably only vaguely aware of her existence, and now, thanks to you, they seem to be getting on quite well. Meanwhile, she now knows you as the moron who head-butted the nice guy she’s just met.’
‘Yes, I am very aware of the cruel irony of the situation.’
Athelstan’s face dropped. The smirk that sat on his lips so much of the time evaporated.
‘I think she’s the One, you know,’ he said.
‘Really?’ said Daniel, surprised. ‘I didn’t think you were looking for the One.’
‘I don’t mean… I mean the one who can match me, sexually. Who can make it as good for me as I can make it good for them. That’s all I meant. One enormous, sublime fuck, that’s all I’m after. That’s true love, as far as I’m concerned. Where’s there to go, after that? The only way is down. No point hanging around.’
Daniel was not sure he was convinced.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s time to drop this “rake” nonsense. You’re no Lovelace
, are you? I mean, you’re not going to ever do anything really bad, like… So you may as well rein it in now, before you do anything else stupid.’
Athelstan sighed. ‘Maybe you have some sort of vague, miserably correct point buried in there. But I maintain that head-butting Spencer was the only morally honest— Shit. There they are, coming out now.’
Daniel observed their silhouetted forms holding hands against the illumination of the Union bar foyer. ‘Maybe we should just go,’ he said.
‘Look,’ said Athelstan. ‘They’re heading for the taxi rank. If they go anywhere together I will have no choice but to run over there and douse their passion in a downpour of jizz.’
‘Hopefully it won’t come to that,’ said Daniel, following the figures, their faces lit up now from the light of the car. ‘It’s OK. She’s getting in the taxi. He’s not. Ah, they are kissing though.’
‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Athelstan, getting progressively more agitated. ‘And that’s not a friendly goodnight kiss. That’s a “let’s make tentative plans to perform sex acts on each other at a later date” kiss, which considering that Spencer’s nose is only held on with sticking plaster right now is quite remarkable. This means war!’
Athelstan bolted upright. Daniel pulled him back down.
‘Don’t! You’ll just make things even worse.’
‘You’re right. I must remain calm. And then, when the time is right… move in for the kill.’
‘What did I just…’
Athelstan was not reachable in that moment, as he watched the taxi drive off, leaving Spencer waving on the pavement. After standing dazed for a minute, he went to cross the road, heading for the bus stop. Upon seeing who waited there, he turned, and swiftly walked away. The walk soon became a frantic run.
* * *
Athelstan was sat on the sofa amongst his newspapers, wearing the 1986 England strip and pixie boots, staring at the poster of Tony Hancock, when Daniel came in after seeing Ed, wondering if there was such a thing as tongue-strain.
‘I saw them again today,’ said Athelstan, who hadn’t been at that morning’s lecture or seminar. ‘He ordered food from her at the hatch. Her hand brushed his, and lingered, even though she was holding a ladleful of beans at the time. It was a moment so full of implied tenderness, I was nearly sick.’
‘But they’re not, like, proper boyfriend and girlfriend yet, are they?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I haven’t seen him round her house anyway. But it’s only a matter of time. When they unwrap his nose, I reckon. That’s when it will happen. Did you know that bender had the audacity to go to A&E over such a mild tap?’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing I can do. I have, as you are at pains to point out, completely shot myself in the foot. I am all out of ideas and out of puff. I feel practically impotent. Meanwhile, Churchill’s Black Dog is humping my leg with vigour. Perhaps I should just let true love take its rotten course, retreat from the battlefield, and die a slow, sad death in a ditch somewhere.’
‘That doesn’t sound like you.’
‘Ah, but who am I?’
‘Aren’t you a rake?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a libertine after all. How pathetic!’
* * *
Daniel watched as Ed undid her shirt, revealing a functional grey bra.
‘I mean, in the Bible, women are always baring their breasts, aren’t they? OK, it’s usually when they’re hysterically sad, but it shows that there was no social taboo against breasts. It must have been something that arose later…’
He couldn’t stop talking, even though he no longer needed to argue his case, and barely had to before. Ed unhooked her bra and smiled shyly. Suddenly he was looking at her naked above the waist. He froze for a second, uncertain in the moment what to do about it. Her breasts weren’t like the ones in Athelstan’s newspapers. They hung down, almost like small sacks, but that was OK, wasn’t it? He reached out two fingers and a thumb towards a nipple, tweaking it uncertainly, feeling almost stupid at the gesture. It went hard under his fingertips.
‘I don’t know if it’s OK for us to do this,’ she said.
‘Do you want me to stop?’ he said.
She shook her head. She took his floating free hand and rested it on her other nipple.
‘Do them both,’ she said.
* * *
‘I am a rake!’ cried Athelstan from atop the rubbish-strewn living room table.
‘You seem chipper,’ said Daniel. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing at all, except that my incredible organ, that is, my brain, has been doing some serious thinking and has presented me with a way out of my seemingly impossible conundrum!’
‘Really? Do talk me through it.’
‘Gladly. Question: What is the major stumbling block to me glorying in the flesh of my beloved? Answer: That she saw me rightfully head-butt my arch-nemesis Spencer Macleavy, wrongfully assuming that I am a vile thug, allowing Macleavy to take the spoils that are rightfully mine, using the style and manner he wrongfully stole from me. Next question: How do I get her to change her perception of me in time to sabotage her budding relationship with Spencer and for her to then transfer her affections to my good self? Answer: By lying my tits off!’
‘I see,’ said Daniel, standing back as Athelstan leaped off the table into a pile of carpet debris. ‘And what particular lie do you plan on telling?’
‘I shall pretend to apologise to Spencer, in front of her, to the point of grovelling for forgiveness. Spencer, being a wannabe acolyte who would do anything to gain my company and approval, will no doubt accept. Once in Spencer’s orbit, and therefore hers, she will see that I am the original and Spencer is but a pale copy and dispense with him in favour of me.’
‘That all sounds strategically excellent, albeit morally bankrupt, but surely apologising to Spencer would go against your every natural instinct? You do actually hate him.’
‘I admit it will be a challenge,’ said Athelstan, sliding off the table, ‘but the temporary humiliation will be more than made up for by my fucking his girlfriend, thus stripping his no-doubt petit-bourgeois, monogamous version of love of its dignity, and immersing it in a trough of my own shit. And after that I can lie down and die happy, my rakish ambition fully achieved.’
Daniel geared himself up to be vocally appalled at Athelstan’s plan, as he was surely expected to, but instead felt unexpected words form in his throat.
‘I touched Ed’s breasts today… and kissed them.’
Athelstan pulled him close and hugged him. ‘You’re on your way, Danocchio. One day, you’ll be a real boy.’
* * *
‘I guess the only thing it really makes sense for God to forbid is full penetrative sex, because that’s the only thing that could lead to procreation. All the other stuff, it just brings people together, and relieves frustration. He must see it as a good thing, and that’s why there’s nothing in the Bible expressly for— ah…’
Daniel ejaculated inside Ed’s mouth. She gagged.
‘Sorry, I guess I should have said that was going to happen. It kinda crept up on me…’
‘It’s OK,’ she choked. ‘It’s just gone up my nose.’
She reached for a tissue and blew.
It was the second time that morning he had come. The first time they had manually stimulated each other. After he surprised himself by successfully bringing a woman to orgasm, Ed had admitted she did it to herself often and felt ashamed, but had been afraid to tell him. Daniel had felt he should tell her about his own habit but hadn’t. He wished he could stop talking when they did things together.
Ed finished blowing her nose and stretched out beside him on the bed. She smiled at him.
‘My turn now,’ she said.
At least it would shut him up, Daniel thought, as he kissed his way down her body.
* * *
‘Spencer, I am sorry. I am really
truly sorry. I am vermin. I am scum. I am a seething verminous pit of scummy scum. I am not worthy to touch the hem of your garment, which, I have to say, is very dapper and stylish. I am beyond forgiveness. Please do not try to forgive me. It would be wrong of you to do it, due to my irredeemably unforgivable nature. Do feel free to punish me in any way you see fit that does not involve animal cruelty. We must always think about the animal’s feelings when inserting them into anuses or tips of penises. But punish me, yes, do! I demand it!’
Spencer laughed, his unveiled nose slightly pink where it wasn’t still black. ‘It’s OK, Athelstan. We all do silly things when we’re drunk. There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Punish me, I say!’
‘Um, you could… maybe… buy Lisa and me a drink?’
‘A drink? Certainly. Will all the blood in my veins be sufficient?’
‘Ah, no. Just a pint of Fosters. Pint for you?’
Lisa, her name revealed to Daniel at last, sat next to Spencer, her hand holding his. She nodded.
‘Two pints it is,’ said Athelstan. ‘And my still-beating heart!’
Lisa laughed as Athelstan stood up and, in his best burgundy velour suit, ruffled shirt, cummerbund and football boots, pushed his way to the bar.
‘He’s quite a character, innee, your friend?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘He’s certainly that.’
Daniel wondered what he was doing there. He had agreed to go along to the union bar that night because Athelstan had once again begged for his support. His instinct had been not to, to stay as far away from his friends antics as possible. But still he went.
Spencer and Lisa whispered and smiled as they waited for Athelstan to return. Daniel had quickly become invisible to them. Watching them, he could see why she would be a good match for Athelstan. True, the hedonistic goddess figure Athelstan took her for now seemed a something of a fantasy, and he wondered how much truth there ever had been in some of his observations, but she obviously liked a laugh, and looked like she knew her own mind enough to keep him in check. The idea that Athelstan would settle for one girl out of the many now didn’t seem that improbable, however much he denied he was after anything other than one magnificent sexual coupling. But then, there was nothing wrong with her being with Spencer either. They just seemed happy.
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