by Linda Jaivin
Trying to ignore the urgency of his loins, he explored her breasts and belly, kissing her madly as he went. He parted her legs and stared. It was a fascinating and yet somewhat scary sight. All that hair! Did they all have so much hair down there? And were there always so many uneven folds and tucks? What was in there anyway? For some reason, his overeducated brain threw up the term vagina dentata, and he felt his prick suddenly begin to deflate. No! This couldn’t be happening! This was the classic unreconstructed male antifantasy: the fear of being castrated by a cunt! He’d written a paper on it last term! He knew it was just a pernicious myth. Why was it haunting him now? Chomp chomp. Chomp chomp. Stop it, Marc! His panic mounting, he tried to focus on what he was doing. Right. The clitoris! He was going to stroke it, and kiss it and lick it until she came. Now, which bit would the clitoris be? He studied the options and made a reasonable guess. Judging from Helen’s satisfied moans he assumed he’d passed with honors. The smell of her cunt, which he found slightly overwhelming at first, began to thrill him. He was getting hard again. Had she come? How can you tell? Oh well. That would have to do. If he didn’t stick it up her right this second he was going to explode. He scrambled on top, poked himself inside, remembered the condom, pulled out and, somehow, with Helen’s help (he really couldn’t recall how it all happened) got it on, entered her again, and several thrusts down the warm wet track, blew like a whale.
The next morning, he tried to apologize. Helen put her finger to his lips. She was Understanding personified.
Marc was in love.
Chapter Eleven –
Ergonomic
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is, well, you can call me Argus. How should I describe myself? “SWM, 38, powerfully built, paraphiliac (inspectionalist, to be specific), looking for . . .” No, make that just looking. If I were a food, I’d be fried eggs, black-eyed peas, lemon tartlets, and certain varieties of sushi. If I were a game, I’d be marbles. Do you get it? All right, I’ll spell it out: I am a voyeur.
I can see some of you mouthing the word pervert or sleazebag (yes, I can see you, too, readers!) but please, hear me out. The women I enjoy watching are perfectly safe. I look but I never touch. That’s a matter of principle and pride with me. Besides, I would never allow any harm to come to my pets—and I think of them as pets, in the nicest possible sense of the word. If, for instance, I ever saw someone sneak into one of the flats belonging to “my women” and try to rape her or nick her television set, I’d be over there in a second. I’d break the bastard’s neck between my fingers before he could say boo. That’s not an idle boast. I am a master of Zen do kai and of other more esoteric, but no less lethal, forms of martial arts as well. I like reading: George Bataille is a personal favorite. Me too, thought Philippa.
I am not what you’d call a very social sort of person. I don’t go to parties, or barbies, or cafés, or clubs, or pubs, or dinner parties, or brunches. I don’t, in fact, have any friends as such. Of course, there’s Ahmed. Each day when I purchase my daily supply of milk, corn flakes, steak, and artichokes from the corner store, Ahmed, the owner, always asks how I am. I always reply “Fine, Ahmed. How are you?” He will answer, in turn, “Not bad—for a Tuesday” (or Wednesday, or Thursday, or whatever day it is) and always I laugh as if hearing this little joke for the first time. Then I pay him my money and leave. Does Ahmed count as a friend?
I also have a lady friend I meet once a week. We have a little arrangement, you might say. But that’s another story. It’s the first story, I might add.
Have you noticed the number of times I say I (“eye”)? Do you think it’s a coincidence?
You might wonder what I do. I’m a guard at . . . well, does it really matter if it’s the art gallery or the Pussycat Lounge or the State Bank or Bondi beach or government offices or the Hellfire Club? If you’re very observant, you’ve already worked it out. If not, never mind. Suffice it to say: I keep watch over things. I enjoy that. When I’m not doing my paid job of guarding, I assign myself other tasks, which I take no less seriously. The task I have assigned myself most recently is keeping watch over Philippa. You might think of me as her guardian angel.
The reason I know Philippa’s name is because one day I saw her come out of her building with a council recycling box. She put it down on the pavement and caught a bus into town. I hurried outside and, under the pretense that I was interested in the previous Saturday’s Good Weekend, picked through the more personal scraps of paper. I found a number of envelopes, all addressed to Philippa Berry. I also found a few pale but intriguing segments of what looked like erotic fiction, printed out on a printer badly in need of a ribbon change: “tracing little circles on her clitoris,” “sensation of that massive rod sliding in,” “she slides the head of a large dildo into the,” that kind of thing. There were also three small bottles of Coopers Ale, a scrap of red velvet, an empty box of Panadols, and a newsletter from Greenpeace. I kept the scrap of velvet. They don’t really recycle velvet, do they?
I already know a lot about Philippa. It’s not surprising, Philippa chuckled. Our buildings nearly abut. My flat is on a slightly higher plane than hers. Physically speaking. I wouldn’t presume to make any such judgments on moral or metaphysical grounds. From my bathroom window I can spy into her kitchen; my bedroom gives me a vantage point into her living room cum study. If you knew Philippa like I know Philippa, you would understand that these are crucial centers of activity. I do regret not being able to see into her bedroom, of course; but I don’t mind using my imagination. I don’t always, if you’ll pardon my crudity, have to see the gleet on the sheet.
Besides, Philippa puts on quite a good show in her kitchen and study. She sometimes feels her nipples in the middle of a stir-fry, or touches herself when she’s writing. I had guessed she was writing erotica before I found those scraps in the recycling bin from the way she sometimes seems overwhelmed by what she’s tapping into her keyboard. I love the slow, resigned way she unbuckles her belt, unzips her jeans, and slips her hand in. She holds onto the back of her ergonomic stool with her other hand and closes her eyes and leans back and just goes for it. It’s a riveting sight. I try to come at the same time as she does. Simultaneous orgasm is such a beautiful thing, don’t you think?
That stool is the sexiest piece of furniture I have ever seen. It doesn’t look like much—one downsloping red cushion for her ass and an upsloping one for her knees and lower legs and a few black bars holding it all together. It spends nearly all day caressed by Philippa’s buttocks and limbs. Sometimes, she wiggles around to get more comfortable on it or straightens her back, lifting her ass and pushing her pussy down on the seat, and I think, please, let me come back in my next life as an ergonomic stool.
If she has her window open and so do I and the wind is right, I may occasionally catch snatches of conversation she has on the phone or when someone visits her. Sometimes I know she has visitors from the activity in the kitchen—she’s preparing more food than usual or maybe someone’s in there talking to her. There’s a younger girl who’s often there, who has beautiful green eyes and short blond hair, not my type really, too thin. She does seem to be on fairly intimate terms with Philippa, however, if you get my meaning. I’ve seen them engage in a bit of suck face over the salad making, and there’s always something going on with fingers and breasts and pussy, but they save the really good stuff for the bedroom. That’s what I assume, anyway, because I only get the appetizers in the kitchen, and they rarely go into her study. What I’m trying to say is that Philippa is a lesbian, and that interests me a lot. Or I thought she was a lesbian, anyway. I’m a little confused after what I spied with my little eye earlier this evening.
Of course, there was that episode when I was just checking out the flat before renting it, but I didn’t really, you understand, know Philippa at the time. Besides, I could hardly see the woman involved for all those revolting—what do they call those things?—dreadlocks, that’s right, dreadlocks on the guy. Never mind. I later
came to assume it was someone else, maybe a friend of hers, who’d borrowed the flat. I don’t think my Philippa would ever do it with someone who had dreadlocks. No, not her type at all.
It’s funny how suddenly summer just sort of slips into autumn and autumn slides into winter. It’s chilly enough to wear a sweater in the daytime now, and the days are as short as they’ll ever be. That suits me just fine, because once it’s dark, if someone has her lights on, and yours are off, you can pretty much gaze away to your heart’s content, and my heart is rarely content unless I’ve done a lot of gazing, believe me.
I had just got home from work. I was about to switch on the lights when I noticed that Philippa was in her study with that girl. Or I thought it was that girl, anyway. Sitting on the ergonomic stool was a gamine creature with short blond hair and very red lipstick, a neat black sweater, an aqua miniskirt, and black stockings. She’d kicked off her shoes. Her legs were a bit on the muscular side, but her feet! Perfection itself! The exquisite arch and shapeliness of her feet exceeded in beauty even my darling Philippa’s own pulchritudinous pedals.
Allow me a slight digression here. As I mentioned above, I am actually involved with a woman at work. Well, she’s not a colleague exactly. But you could say we are having a bit of a regular thing at my workplace. She is beautiful, and she understands me perfectly. She knows I am sinful and punishes me for it, which is good, but I have always been deeply disappointed by her feet. They remind me of nothing more than cod, and I detest cod. I do love to worship a good pair of feet.
Anyway, I was so deeply fascinated by this woman’s feet that it took me a while to realize that she was reading what Philippa had written on her computer. Possibly some of that erotic fiction. Philippa paced, in and out of view, until her reader, without taking eyes off the screen, beckoned to her with a graceful curl of the hand. Philippa stood just behind her to the right, reading over her shoulder. Because of the peculiarities of the view, while the stool and its occupant were perfectly framed for my delectation, I could see Philippa only from the waist down. I saw her friend’s hand reach out to embrace her knees, and then glide absentmindedly up and down her legs, as though basting them. Philippa sidled up a bit closer. I could see the other hand of her friend on the keyboard, scrolling. Then, much to my delight, the hand on her legs started to travel up the inside of her thighs. Oh, that’s right. I forgot to mention this. Most uncharacteristically, Philippa was wearing a skirt today. A short black pleated skirt—a schoolgirl’s skirt. And stockings—real stockings, the kind you wear with a garter belt. I saw that when her friend’s hand lifted up the skirt. Her thighs were a pure vanilla against the licorice lace tops of her stockings. They made my heart race. Anyway, then the hand moved right up between her legs, and I don’t know exactly what it was doing but it must have been good, because Philippa appeared to go a bit wobbly at the knees. Then the hand pulled her panties down her legs. She stepped out of them, and then returned to be fiddled with some more. Now I’m not really an expert on this sort of thing, but I think it’s possible, judging from the fact that the hand seemed to go higher and higher and Philippa’s body seemed to be expressing something on the border between pain and ecstasy, to assume that she was being fisted. I watched that elbow move up and down like a piston. Very interesting indeed.
I should make it clear that throughout, her visitor continued to read what was on the screen. Never once did she take her eyes off it, even when she slowly pulled her hand out from between Philippa’s legs and licked her fingers, one by one. When the hand returned to embrace her around the waist, Philippa swiveled around, threw her right leg over and perched on her friend’s lap, kept from sliding off (the stool slopes down, don’t forget) by a strong arm around her waist. She hung her head over her friend’s shoulder, snuggled up, closed her eyes, and began to wriggle around in her lap. After a while, her friend, still scrolling, still reading, got Philippa to lift her hips up while she pulled off her own undies and lifted the miniskirt, only to reveal—and this is where things get a little weird, if you ask me—what must have been a thick, stiff, eight- or nine-inch cock! Where’d that come from? Philippa wove her fingers through her friend’s blond hair and—here, I received my second shock of the evening—it came off! It was a wig, which she tossed off to one side. The head underneath was closely shaved, and now, I could see clearly, was definitely that of a man.
Philippa then raised her own skirt and sat down on this guy’s erect dick very slowly, pulling up and nearly off it, and then down a bit more, and then up and down, engulfing it bit by bit until she was seated again. Now, she fucked him, fucked him hard. She fucked him in a vertical fury, as a matter of fact, and believe you me, I was in a bit of a vertical fury myself by this time. Occasionally she broke the rhythm to sit right down on that swollen porridge pump of his and, with her hips, stir him like oatmeal.
He was still trying to keep up the pretext of reading, but I fear it had become a bit of a charade by now. Philippa noticed his eyes drifting from the screen, and in a half-strangled, extremely sexy voice, cried out, “Scroll! Scroll! Don’t stop!” I could see him straining to concentrate, one hand still working the scroll button. She glanced over her shoulder at the keyboard. “You’re almost there!” she gasped. “You’re at the climax! Keep going! Don’t stop! Just a little more!” Just then, he bucked upward so powerfully that she nearly fell over and his love boat almost slipped its mooring. His upper body arched back to the floor, where he supported it with his hands, and his top lip curled up over his teeth. “Aaaaaargh,” he groaned, “aaaaaaah.” “Sorry?” I heard Phillipa ask. “Nonverbal,” he explained. After about a minute, during which time neither moved, he slowly righted himself and, holding the panting Philippa close to him, with half-closed eyes read for about a minute longer. “The end!” he shouted.
At this, she threw her hands into the air. “The end!” she exclaimed, laughing hysterically. “The end!”
It was as good for me as it was for them.
The end.
Amen.
“Fuck off Argus, Adam, whatever your name is,” snapped Philippa, closing the blinds with a sharp crack. “It is most definitely not the end yet. Remember, this is my story. I don’t mind you watching but piss off out of the narrative, all right? Just piss off!”
She sat back down on her stool, still fuming. The nerve of some characters. Trying to end the novel there. She shook her head. You let them into one story and they think they can rule your book. Such a sleazebag. All that guardian angel bullshit. And that crap about masturbating on the ergonomic stool. In his dreams. Mengzhong! He didn’t even bother with the condom. Men. You just can’t trust them.
Ahem. Now, where were we?
Actually, it’s true. I have finished my novel. Richard, my writing teacher, he of the wild costumes and exquisite feet, seemed to like it. And yes, it’s also true that it was as he was reading the final chapters that we finally consummated what had turned out to be, after all, a secret and smoldering mutual passion. But that’s as far as it went. Never mind. He told me that evening that he had just finished his book of women’s erotica too. Since then, he’s cleared the frocks out of his closet and stocked up on denim shirts with fringes and cowboy boots. He’s learned to play the guitar, to do the boot-scoot, and to speak with an American accent. He’s grown a mustache (it took him a while after all that waxing), and departed for San Francisco to investigate the gay country scene there. I got one postcard from him. He’s having a ball. So to speak.
I was sorry to see him go. He was great, reading every chapter as I wrote it, giving me loads of good advice. I just wish he’d shown me his. After all, I’d shown him mine. Never mind. He always claimed he didn’t want to influence me.
So, I’ve sent the manuscript to a few publishers, but so far (it’s been four months) there are no takers. I know that’s what you’re supposed to expect with a first novel, but still, it is a bit discouraging. Never mind. I’ll persist.
I bet you’re wondering w
hat’s happened to everyone else in the meantime.
At Chantal’s urging, she and Helen did join Sam and his mate for dinner that night. Serendipity struck: That evening turned out to be the start of something beautiful. Not for Helen, but Chantal. At first, she thought Sam’s mate, Damien, had to be gay: He was attractive, stylish, and had a fabulous sense of humor. He was a furniture designer and shared her passion for style in all things; when he commented that the sight of a beautifully proportioned toaster could make him swoon, she knew exactly what he was talking about. He was even a faithful reader of Pulse. Later, he dropped an apparently casual but in fact pointed reference into the conversation about his ex, “a gorgeous woman who is still my best friend.” He wasn’t gay after all! She realized that she’d finally met her living ideal: the heterosexual gay man.
Two days later, on a Friday, Chantal arrived at her office only to be informed by the secretary that the publisher wanted to see her immediately. She knocked on his door with some trepidation. What he told her, however, was that the editor-in-chief had handed in her resignation, and he wanted to promote Chantal to the position. She thanked him, walked into her office, closed the door, took off her heels, jumped up and down a few times on the carpet while waving her hands in the air, put her shoes back on, sat down at her desk, freshened her lipstick, and rang up Damien. She invited him to join her for some champagne that evening. They had another bottle over breakfast the following morning and have been inseparable ever since. She confides that if she’d known sex could be that good she’d have made more of an effort to get some over the years.