by Linda Jaivin
Oh dear. Philippa suddenly realized that Jake was holding his breath.
He was beginning to feel faint. Philippa pursed her lips against his. He exhaled through his nose, as calmly as he could, and she felt the tremulous breath tickle the corner of her lip. Trying to breathe normally, he pursed back.
Then there was this younger man-older woman thing. Philippa wasn’t too sure about this. Julia was all for it, and swore by the virtues of younger men. Their playfulness, their sweetness, all the free time they had to spend clipping their toenails on your bed and installing games on your PC, their sense of adventure, their reliable erections. You didn’t have to spend half your time putting bandages on festering old wounds caused by some other woman, or pretending to sympathize with the jaded, cynical outlook on life of an older man. You could be successful in your career without being perceived as a threat, or competition, Julia had also argued, because the younger man would expect you to be farther down the career path than he was anyway.
Philippa could certainly see the virtues of younger women. But when she went for men, she usually liked them a bit older, a bit kinkier, and a bit more experienced. Still, there was something about Jake, something deeply naughty, which strongly attracted her. It would be foolish to make decisions on some vague principle. She didn’t like making rules for herself. When she discovered she’d made some sort of rule, she usually tried to break it.
When Philippa opened her lips slightly to nibble at his, a tremor reading at about 5.6 on the Richter scale erupted in the region of his solar plexus and rippled out through his torso and down his limbs, including the crucial fifth one. Trembling, Jake sighed into her mouth and eagerly nibbled back.
Then again, precisely because she was so attracted to Jake, if it did turn out just to be a one-night stand she’d probably get really depressed. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. She willed her lips to stillness while she reviewed all the options. Why were people in such a rush these days anyway? I mean, how does it happen that if you make a move to see someone you met once before that the question of sex comes up before you’re even through the first date? Then again, not only had she asked him out, she’d suggested they come to this park. Everyone knew that couples came to Nielsen Park for one reason: to pash. And she would tell people that she was writing an erotic novel, wouldn’t she? She shouldn’t be such a hypocrite.
Jake felt pins and needles creeping up his left leg, which was folded under him, and in his right hand, which he was leaning on. He was sure there was a mosquito feeding on his left arm. But he didn’t dare make a move to slap it. She still hadn’t responded to that last nibble and this worried him. Maybe he was moving too fast. Maybe she wasn’t the sort of girl who jumped into bed on the first date. Maybe she’d need a trifle more work, a tad more time. That was cool. He didn’t really mind. He was having fun. It was a bit misleading, though, all that stuff about being a writer of erotic fiction. I mean, why would she tell him that straight off if she weren’t hinting at something? The thought briefly crossed Jake’s mind that he might just be, well, research. Something about that actually quite appealed to him. On the other hand, he wondered what her writing was like. He didn’t think much of the erotic fiction he’d come across. It was either, oh, wet and overwritten or off-puttingly cold and brutal.
Jake momentarily relinquished his position upon her lips. He nuzzled her cheeks with his own and nuddled her chin and rolled his head around on her neck. At the same time he managed to shift that annoying dreadlock from in front of his face. She appeared to like this change in tack; she seemed to be nuzzling and nuddling back.
Or maybe, the thought niggled him, she was just using the opportunity to stretch her neck which, like his, had grown stiff with tension and suspense. He was beginning to wonder if he’d made a mistake. Perhaps she wasn’t just equivocating. Maybe she was just passive. He couldn’t stand passive women. Jake prided himself in being a sensitive, feminist-reared New Man of the Nineties. He liked a woman who took an active interest in the goings-on.
His dreadlocks felt furry on her skin. She found dreads fascinating. She’d read somewhere that people lose about six thousand hairs a year. Unlike other hairstyles, where the dead, shed hairs ended up clinging to clothing or floating in soup or embedded in computer keyboards or between the teeth of combs or in big wads down the drainpipes, with dreads virtually every hair stayed with you, matted for life.
She liked the concept. It was a bit like having perfect memory, no experience ever slipping away, each strand of the past preserved and densely interwoven with the present. She felt that sexuality was like that. Every sexual act adhered to your sensual consciousness forever. Every time you went to bed with someone, you brought along everyone else you’d ever slept with. Every touch expressed an entire history of caresses.
Practically speaking, however, she had a few doubts. According to her hairdresser, some people with dreadlocks didn’t think they were supposed to wash their hair ever again. Several times, when her hairdresser had been asked to cut off dreadlocks, she’d been overwhelmed, almost to the point of fainting, by the pongy perfume of scuzzy scalps. Philippa wondered if Jake washed his hair. She sniffed. His dreads smelt rather nice, actually. And so did he. Sun-toasted flesh with a faint bouquet of young male sweat.
Philippa wondered suddenly why she had been feeling so reactive in all this, so passive. Without further ado she brushed her mouth across his face, tasted his cheeks, with their soft down, licked the tip of his nose, rubbed her lips across the clear line of his eyebrows, and sucked gently on his eyelashes. The stilettos in chapter five! Why hadn’t it occurred to her before? They wouldn’t click on rugs. She’d have to get rid of the throw rugs in that Victorian inn. She made a mental note to do this as soon as she got home, and then, with a great effort of will, she loosened her grasp on philosophical and authorial and other dilemmas and reached out to draw Jake closer. Closer was exactly where Jake wanted to be. The unexpectedly sudden flowering of her desire allowed him to relax and float on the honeyed vibrations that her tongue and lips were setting off all over his face. She buried her face in his hair, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then focused in on his ear, probing its recesses with her wet tongue, chewing on the octopus flesh of his lobe. From his ear she worked her way slowly down his neck with big soft bites to his Adam’s apple.
By the time she worked her way back to his mouth, his lips were parted and waiting for her. By now, there was no danger of rational thought interceding on either side. They drew hungrily on each other’s mouths. Philippa felt sensation streaming down the tingling pathway to her sex, which was growing wet, and Jake’s erection strained uncomfortably against his jeans. They were inside each other’s shirts now, and then pants, and the darkness—it was not a particularly moonlit night—was their cover as they tumbled over the hard rock. They fucked with clothes half off, half on—a sleeve here, a sock there—and it was a wild, animal, bruising romp that took no account of the hard, uneven rock or the possibility of passers-by or anything else except their united, raw desire. Afterward, they lay panting and spent in each other’s arms, Philippa stretched out on top of Jake.
Jake reached out for a pair of trousers to fold under his head, and shifted slightly to find a more comfortable place for his hip, which felt as though it were being stabbed. They heard a brief skidding sound and the soft but distinct plop of a medium-size object falling into the sea below.
“What was that?” Philippa wove her fingers possessively into Jake’s dreads as she spoke. She really did not want this to be a one-night stand.
“Dunno,” answered Jake, who was now concentrating on ignoring a pebble lodged under his shoulder blade. “I think I kicked a rock or something.”
“Didn’t really sound like a rock,” Philippa observed.
“No, it didn’t,” Jake conceded.
Shortly afterward, they straggled along the darkened path, holding hands. Jake was barefoot. In his free hand he clutched one of his boo
ts.
Far below them his other boot settled on the seabed.
The next morning, Philippa woke up first. She found herself wedged into one corner of the bed by Jake’s sprawling limbs. His hair had taken over the pillows. She tried to recover some territory with gentle nudging but couldn’t budge him. Funny how heavy such a thin person could be. Giving up on the thought of going back to sleep, she rolled out of bed, threw on a singlet and jeans, and went to the corner shop to get some milk, fresh croissants, and big purple grapes. Back at her place, she undressed again and slipped into a sarong. She parked herself in the living room, which also served as her study, eating grapes and skimming the weekend papers while waiting for Jake to wake up.
When he finally arose, he scratched his head, stretched, and wondered briefly where he was. He looked up at the stack of books by the bed. Oh that’s right. Philippa. The writer. He yawned, threw on a towel, and headed into the toilet to have a piss. Then he padded out to find her, by which time Philippa, alerted by the sounds from the bathroom, had arranged herself as alluringly as possible on the sofa. He smiled at the sight. Choosing a Gadflys CD from her collection (Jake approved of her musical tastes after all), he put it on the stereo.
“Now we’re heading for the stars and shooting for the sun; it’s time to rise and shine,” crooned the Gadflys. Perfect morning-after music. Jake cuddled up next to Philippa. He popped a grape into his mouth, leaned over and, positioning his lips just over hers, bit into it and let the sweet juices run from his mouth onto hers, licking the spill off her chin. “Put on a smile for me and say you are my friend.”
“You my friend, Jake?”
“What do you think?”
She took a grape now, and chewed it to a pulp before kissing him with an open mouth, pushing the pulp and juice from her tongue onto his. They consumed nearly a whole stem of grapes like that. Then Philippa, feeling naughty, took four grapes and, one by one, inserted them into herself. She opened her legs. “Like diving for pearls?” she smiled, lying back against the cushions.
Jake was a very skillful diver. Still chewing on the grapes, he sat back up and reached for one of Philippa’s feet. He pulled them up toward his face. Taking the foot into his mouth, he sucked moistly on each toe, licking the spaces in between them with a wet and squishy tongue. Philippa gasped and squealed with the pure sensual pleasure of it.
Jake smiled and licked his lips. “Bit like walking through mud, isn’t it?” he said, tucking that foot back down onto the sofa and reaching for the other.
“There’s something about you, wherever you go, I call your name out low.” Nearly helpless with bliss, Philippa reached out and pulled off Jake’s towel. They tumbled off the sofa and onto the rug. As they went, Philippa just managed to snaffle the condom she’d hidden in the bowl of grapes. Pulling her clean-licked feet over his shoulders, he entered her with slow, lazy thrusts timed to the rhythm of the song. “And there’s nothing I can say. You’ve got to take a chance on me and see what it gets you, and see what it gets you.”
See what it gets you. Philippa’s warning system was down. The night before she might have perceived irony in those lyrics. At this moment, however, undulating underneath this charismatic semistranger, love songs in the air, hormones on the brain, she suffered a severe, if temporary, irony deficiency.
Afterward, as they lay cuddling on the rug, Philippa looked up past Jake. Was that a man’s face in the window of the building opposite? That’s odd, she thought, that flat’s been vacant for ages. How long had he been there? What had he seen? She was just maneuvering for a better look when Jake kissed her again. By the time she looked again, the man, if he’d been there at all, was gone.
“What are you looking at?” asked Jake.
“Nothing.”
He shrugged. “Can I’ve a shower?”
“Sure,” she replied, following him into the bathroom.
Afterward, they made coffee. Seated side by side on the sofa, they dipped warm croissants in each other’s coffee. After consuming two regular and one almond croissant, Jake patted his stomach and put his arm around her shoulders.
“It just occurred to me, Jake,” Philippa said, with a touch of trepidation. “When you said you were seeing someone off at the airport yesterday, was that the woman you’d been seeing?”
“Uh, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d she go?”
“China.”
“Really? She might have been on a flight with a good friend of mine, Julia, a photographer. What a funny coincidence. You might have even seen her in the queue—she’s short, thin, dark with long black hair, and usually wears interesting, retro clothing.”
Jake choked on his coffee. He coughed rather violently, and Philippa, concerned, patted his back. He had to think fast on this one. “Doesn’t strike a bell,” he shrugged, thinking, clang clang clang. Oh well. He’d have three weeks with Philippa and then he’d say good-bye. Three weeks was plenty, really. Practically a lifetime.
Or maybe this is how it happened:
“Where’d she go?” Philippa asked.
“China.”
“Really? What’s she doing there?”
“She’s a photographer. She’s going on some sort of cultural exchange.”
“Oh really?” Philippa said, covering up her emotions. “What’s her name?”
“Julia. I actually met her at the same party where I met you.”
Philippa needed time to digest this.
“Uh, Jake, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I’m going to have to get to work soon.”
“But it’s Sunday.”
“I know. That’s my day for working on my novel.”
Perhaps, she thought, it simply went like this:
“Where’d she go?” Philippa asked.
“O.S.”
“Is that a place?”
“Yeah,” said Jake, stretching himself out and into Philippa’s lap. “It’s a place.” He started to pull up her sarong over her legs, exposing her thighs, which he kissed. He meandered upward. “But I like this place better.”
Chapter Eight –
Peking Duck
What a mad, mad place. I wonder if I’ll ever be back, if I’ll ever see Mister In Your Dreams again, if his snakes made it through the day, if my interpreter will ever recover, if I paid too much for that opera costume, if my films will come out all right, if I’ll ever be able to pay off my Visa, if Jake will be waiting at the airport and, if so, what I’ll say to him. Mengzhong, “In Your Dreams,” what a name. Mengzhong, Mengzhong. I’m sure I never pronounced it correctly. But then, he didn’t do so well with Julia. Never mind.
I’m sure I should have bought that rug. Sure, it’d have cost a fortune to ship, but where are you going to find one like it in Sydney? I wonder if I’ll have to declare my tea? Australian customs are so strict. I can’t believe I did what I did with Mengzhong. I can’t believe it was just this morning. Seems like another universe. God, I’m wired. Hope the neighbors remembered to water my plants. I wonder if there’s any interesting mail waiting for me.
Yes, it was my first trip to China. And you? I know I should have closed my eyes. I hope this guy in the next seat isn’t going to talk to me the whole way back to Oz. I’ll die. I wish they had a special section on planes for “people who are not in the mood to share feelings or exchange experiences or communicate in any other fashion to the person next to them.” Unless, of course, their seat companion happens to be a killer spunk, in which case you could just move straight to the mile-high club lounge. Unfortunately, Mr. 38A is not a killer spunk; in fact, I don’t think he’d count as even a mildly threatening spunk. Of course, that’s so unfair. Shouldn’t judge books by their covers, and I suppose I should consider myself lucky that he’s waited this long to start talking. It probably helped that I just stuck my nose in The Wild Girls Club all the way from Beijing to the stopover in Guangzhou.
Oh really? You do business
there? How interesting. Stop it Julia. Don’t encourage him. Yeah, no, actually, I’m a photographer. On a three-week exchange sponsored by the Australia-China Council. Why are you telling him all this? It’s just going to incite more conversation. Both black and white and color. . . . Yes. . . . For magazines, mostly. Here we go. Maybe we can just switch on to automatic pilot. Maybe I should pull out The Wild Girls Club again. No. I’ll never be able to concentrate.
Uh, Julia. Nice to meet you, Mick.
God, aren’t the girls going to die when they hear that Mengzhong was a snake-charmer and sword-swallower, and a contortionist. He had the most amazing stories about sneaking across the border to North Korea and being in jail. Jesus, that’s what you call turbulence! Hate that! It’s so scary! No, I’m right, thanks, Nick. It’s only a little turbulence. . . . Oh, sorry. Mick. I’m so bad with names.
The interpreter, Mr. Fu, didn’t seem highly amused. Still, didn’t that woman at the embassy say that in China nothing was as it seemed? I mean, judging from the general picture she painted, Mr. Fu might have been offended politically, or he might just have wanted to be paid off to piss off, or maybe—and I’m no bad judge of body language, especially when it comes to these things—he was just jealous. Wouldn’t that have been bizarre!