The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker

by Suzanne Portnoy

  ‘Yes, group sex counts, I said.’

  ‘Well, let’s see. I’ve been having sex since I was fourteen. And there was a period of four years in my mid-thirties where I probably had five different girls a week, so that’s . . . what?’

  ‘Fifty-two multiplied by five, multiplied by four.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘About a thousand.’

  ‘OK,’ Daniel continued. ‘And then maybe half of that time there were two girls at once, or two the same day, not to mention the years leading up to my thirties. So, maybe two and a half thousand.’

  ‘That’s a lot of girls,’ I said, suddenly feeling almost virginal.

  And that, he said, was why straight forward fucking didn’t interest him much any more. There was the occasional vaginal penetration, but only as a precursor to my taking it up the ass. Mainly cunnilingus was his thing. For a long time, that was fine with me, though I knew it was partly because he was lazy. All he had to do was lie there with his mouth open. But, after six months of doing the same old thing every day, I wanted variety. I actually wanted good old missionary, just a regular fucking fuck.

  One morning, I lay in bed next to him, thinking, if he fucks me up the ass one more time, I’m going to scream. Then I did scream. ‘Why won’t you just fuck me?’

  He turned one sleepy eye towards me. ‘I was waiting for that,’ he said. ‘I just find it boring, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I don’t!’

  Soon after, he was taking Viagra as a little boost to overcome the boredom of straightforward sexual intercourse and to keep his dick hard while he did it. He’d buy it off some dodgy dealer he’d met in a pub, come home and split a 100mg tablet in half. The effect of the 50mg lasted him two days. But he said he had no control over when and where he’d get hard. We’d be on our way to the supermarket and he’d say suddenly, ‘I think we should go home now,’ and point to the crotch of his trousers.

  ‘We need food. Can’t you do something about that?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s out of my control, Suzanne.’

  I’d have to turn the car around so we could fuck for a couple of hours. I’d think back to when I was a teenager and my girlfriends and I would talk about boys. My friend Debbie educated me. ‘They can’t control it, you know,’ she explained. ‘It can just get hard for no reason and, when it does, they have to come. Otherwise it really hurts.’

  I had grown up believing I was actually doing boys a service by sucking their cock, sparing them hours of pain. Now, all these years later, it still hadn’t occurred to me that perhaps Daniel could control his erection and just didn’t want to.

  The first six months of our relationship was our honeymoon period. I still believed Daniel was actively looking for work and that this period of poverty might be over soon. He was carrying his little notebook around, making notes and telling me he’d had meetings with editors. Though not bringing in an income, he seemed to be trying. He had quit taking coke and promised to cut down on the cigarettes and alcohol. Meanwhile, I woke up most mornings to sex; my boys liked having a big guy around, and I came home after work to see my kids sitting quietly at the kitchen table, doing their homework and eating a snack he’d prepared for them.

  After a half-year together and about four months after he moved in with me, my children went to summer camp in Upstate New York, and Daniel and I had a month to ourselves. We hung out at Soho House two or three times a week and had a couple of dinner parties on nights we stayed in.

  After one of our dinners, a film producer who was a longtime friend of Daniel’s took me aside in my kitchen. ‘I’m so glad he met you,’ he said. ‘He was a bit of a mess before, but you seem to have straightened him out. I’ve never seen him look so healthy. What’s your secret?’

  ‘I fuck him every day.’

  As the film producer took a drag on his cigarette, I was reminded of the most serious crime among Daniel’s many misdemeanors. His smoking drove me crazy.

  I had quit when I was twenty-seven after David gave me an ultimatum: ‘It’s me or the cigarettes. You choose.’ It didn’t take much convincing to make me quit when I calculated that, by quitting smoking, I’d both keep the boyfriend and save enough each month to buy two pairs of shoes. Daniel, on the other hand, was deeply attached to his Hamlet cigars. He loved smoking and, despite my pleas that he quit, he wouldn’t, promising only that he would not smoke in front of me.

  On my forty-second birthday, Daniel said, ‘You say I don’t do any real work. Just wait till you see how I transform that postage stamp you call your garden.’ He bought flowers from the nursery to spruce up the beds. He also picked up some turf and patched a spot that had been worn away by a son who wanted to be a goalkeeper when he grew up and who, despite daily practice, never learnt how to save a ball without dramatically falling over, in the same spot, when making a catch. My garden did look lovely when David was done, but my biggest present was still to come: he promised to quit smoking.

  That night I took my children to my parents’ house for dinner. Daniel said he was going to stay in, as he wasn’t feeling well, but on the way home I spied him in the doorway of a bar on the high street, cigarette in hand. I honked the horn and waved, and he waved back, tossing the cigarette behind him.

  That pushed every button in my brain. I stormed through the front door and, cursing Daniel, grabbed a suitcase from the loft and threw as many of his things as would fit into it. The kids cowered in their rooms. I dragged the suitcase into the boot of my car, drove back to the bar and dropped the suitcase at his feet.

  ‘You promised to quit smoking for my birthday and you couldn’t even do it this one day,’ I said. ‘That’s it. I’ve had it. Here’s your stuff. Now give me back my keys.’

  He looked stunned as he reached into his jacket and handed me my keys. I turned around and drove home.

  Two hours later, after giving me time to cool off, he was at my door. ‘C’mon, Suz, open the door. I’m cold.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I shouted through the window. ‘This time I’m serious. Find somewhere else to stay tonight.’

  ‘Listen, you haven’t given me all my stuff,’ he said, and asked me to fetch his black sweater and brown loafers. ‘You can pass them through the door and then I’ll go.’

  I got the sweater and the loafers. When I opened the door, Daniel pushed his way in and ran straight through the house to the back garden. He started pulling up the new turf and the flowers and tossed them over the fence into my neighbour’s garden.

  ‘Get out of the house!’ I shouted. ‘I’m calling the police.’ I heard the kids crying upstairs. ‘Leave!’ I said. ‘I’m not joking.’

  Daniel stayed in the garden, kicking things. I went to the phone, dialled 999 and screamed, ‘A man’s just broken into my house! Please send someone quickly!’

  Within five minutes three police vans were in front of my house. They left soon after, with Daniel in the back of one of the vans. At least he has a place to stay tonight, I thought.

  Replaying the scene in my head the next morning, I reconsidered the severity of his crime. A night in the cell seemed rather a large price to pay for smoking a cigarette.

  Later that day I drove to Daniel’s brother Trevor’s flat to drop off the rest of Daniel’s things and to suggest he tell Daniel to find somewhere else to stay.

  ‘We’ve been waiting to see how long it would take you to catch on,’ he said. ‘He’s a fuck-up.’ Trevor told me all of Daniel’s girlfriends eventually chucked him out. ‘He’s a great liar. He’ll tell you he’s quit drinking and then go out and get drunk behind your back,’ he said. ‘He had no intention of quitting smoking, Suzanne. He probably just thought that was what you wanted to hear. He won’t quit any of this. He can’t.’

  A few days later, Daniel came round to the house and charmed his way back in. ‘Wow, that was quite a performance,’ he said.

  Still angry, I tried remaining stern but laughed despite my efforts.

  ‘You were really
convincing,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen you quite that angry before.’

  ‘Well, you said you’d quit smoking. That was meant to be my present. Some fucking present.’

  ‘I like smoking – what can I say?’ he said. ‘I apologise. I’m really sorry. Though I think it’s you who should be apologising for sending me to jail.’

  ‘I’m not apologising.’

  ‘Look, can I come back? I’ll really try. I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really love you. You may be the only woman I’ve ever really loved. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Just give me a couple of months. I’ll clean up my act. If things don’t work out by then, I’ll move out. I promise.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a couple of months.’

  9. BACK TO RIO’S

  Daniel moved back in, carrying the suitcase I’d thrown at him just a few days before. As he unpacked and began hanging his clothes in my wardrobe, I thought, Why don’t I just tell him to go now, while his bags are still packed? But I said nothing. Maybe it was guilt. For all his bluster, Daniel was helpless, and I had come to suspect that what he had confessed several times before – that he had nothing without me – was true. I felt guilty that I’d stopped feeling the same way about him. Maybe I figured it was better to have a man around for my kids – even one who was an unemployed alcoholic smoker – than no man at all. I’d got used to Daniel, even if I knew the situation was probably unworkable. And I’d put a timeframe on this new stage in our relationship, so figured I had my get-out clause. ‘We’ll give it two months,’ I said. Meanwhile, I figured, I’d get laid.

  We’d been together ten months at this point and he hadn’t written anything besides a few press releases through one-off jobs I’d got him through contacts at work. Journalism was a dead end for him. I rewrote his CV, as I’d done for David ten years earlier when he was on the dole. David got a fabulous job soon after, and I hoped the same might happen for Daniel.

  ‘But I don’t know what else I’d do if I didn’t write,’ he protested. ‘That’s what I do. I’m a writer.’

  I wanted to say, ‘Yes, you write a fantastic shopping list.’ Instead, I said, ‘C’mon, don’t be defeatist. There’s plenty you can do.’ The two-month window I’d given him stretched to six, during which I concocted so many career possibilities for him I contemplated starting my own job centre, ChangeYourCareer.com.

  ‘How about Hack Ltd, a freelance-writing agency aimed at getting PR stories into the national press?’ I suggested one day, ticking off items on my list. ‘Or Charm School for Boys, a workshop for men on how to pick up women. You’ve certainly slept with enough women to be an authority. Or See-Through Windows. Everybody needs window cleaners and you’re enough of a voyeur you might get some perks, in addition to the cash.’

  He actually tried all three, and many more besides. He’d start each career enthusiastically, but within a month he’d dump off, complaining, ‘It’s just not going to work. There’s no money in this.’

  ‘Every business needs time to grow,’ I said, sounding like a life coach and cringing at the clichés coming out of my mouth. ‘You can’t expect it to be an overnight success.’

  He didn’t have the patience or dedication to give anything a few more weeks. Then one day I came home from work and he said, ‘I’ve got a great job! It’s selling corporate video services and the commission rates are really high. If I play my cards right, I could be pulling in twelve grand the first month.’

  I tried to be supportive, thinking maybe what he’d need was to find jobs on his own, without my intervention. The telesales job lasted three weeks. He was sacked for turning up late too many days in a row. And he’d been sick the first four days of the job. In fact, Daniel was ill a lot. He’d catch the flu and be laid up in bed for three weeks, not the usual few days, and he always seemed tired.

  He was still smoking and his breath was rank. He had put on over a stone since we’d met. His stomach had gotten noticeably larger. He was a mess.

  But he still had charm. One summer Saturday afternoon, we drove to a local bar for a couple of happy-hour cocktails. It was a gorgeous sunny day and I was wearing a short green minidress. I pulled my car into a tight space opposite the bar with ease, even though there was barely three inches between my car and the ones on either side. Some young Australian guys sitting at an outdoor table watched me park, and apparently didn’t believe it was possible for a woman driver to squeeze into a space that small. They were whooping and shouting at me. ‘Way to go, girl!’

  As we passed them going into the bar, one of them said, ‘Nice parking.’

  ‘If you think that’s nice,’ said Daniel, ‘you should see what’s underneath the dress. No knickers.’

  I looked at Daniel as if to say, ‘Can’t you let it go ever?’

  The boys laughed and then invited us to join them. We spent the afternoon in their company, first drinking at the bar before moving on to the flat that belonged to one of them. Mark, one of the lads, invited Daniel to do some coke.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said, looking at me. He had told me he’d quit half a year earlier.

  ‘It’s your choice,’ I said. ‘I’m going soon.’ I was drunk and tired and bored at this point, and I didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of Australian guys half my age, cute as they were, and they were now drunker than me and moving on to the harder stuff.

  Daniel said to the best-looking guy, ‘Do you want to fuck my girlfriend?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ asked the guy.

  I didn’t stick around to hear his answer and walked out to my car and drove home.

  Daniel turned up around eleven, two or three hours later, alone. I was watching television and he joined me. We smoked a joint, then fooled around on the couch for a while. Around three a.m. his mobile phone rang. It was Mark.

  I heard Daniel say, ‘Sure, we’re just watching television and smoking a joint. See you in a few minutes.’

  The doorbell rang ten minutes later. The three of us sat on the sofa, smoking a joint. Then Mark pulled out his cock and, turning to Daniel, said, in his thick Australian accent, ‘Do you mind if your missus sucks my cock?’

  ‘What do you think you’re here for?’ he answered.

  His cock must have been about eight inches long, flaccid. It was the biggest I’d ever seen. When I started sucking it, Daniel, sounding offended, said, ‘Flippin’ heck, that’s some huge cock!’

  ‘I know,’ said Mark. ‘Sometimes I just like to flip it over my shoulder.’ He whipped it from side to side like it was a twelve-inch Cumberland sausage.

  I laughed. He was cute and funny. And so well hung.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he continued, ‘I accidentally hit people in the face with it.’

  Daniel didn’t laugh. While I sucked Mark’s cock, Daniel watched Mark get bigger and fatter and harder. Daniel sat on the floor against the sofa. After a few minutes, while Mark tried to fuck me doggy style on the sofa, I looked at Daniel. He appeared to be asleep, but given that he’d spent a couple of hours with the boys taking coke, I knew that wasn’t likely. I could tell he was upset. He only enjoyed threesomes if he could be in control, the big man. And he was always comparing himself to the other guys, something I learnt from our first threesome with boring Baz.

  Mark couldn’t stay hard and, when I asked, ‘Is there a problem?’ he said, ‘Sorry, I took some E before. You know how it goes.’

  I tried to keep him hard by sucking him off again. He said, ‘You give a fantastic blowjob.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ I said, stealing a glance at Daniel. I caught his eye. He wasn’t asleep.

  When Mark left a couple of hours later, I was relieved. It got boring trying to keep him hard, although it felt out of this world when he was.

  The next morning I said to Daniel, ‘What happened to you? You spend the entire afternoon trying to get one of those guys to come back with us, and then, when it happens, you get all jealous and pretend you’re asleep.’

  ‘You looked
like you were enjoying Circus Cock a bit too much. That kid could have been in a freak show.’

  ‘I thought that was the point,’ I said. ‘He’s just an Australian kid with a big cock.’

  ‘Yes, a very big cock.’

  ‘Look, Daniel,’ I said, ‘if you’re going to pull men for me to fuck, then you have to accept the consequences. Sometimes one of them is going to have a bigger cock than yours.’ I explained that, if he couldn’t deal with that, then we shouldn’t be doing this, and if he really didn’t enjoy watching me have sex with other guys, he had to tell me.

  Just then his mobile phone went off. It was Mark asking for my number.

  ‘No, Mark,’ I heard him say. ‘You can’t have her phone number. Sorry, mate.’

  Mark was the last threesome we ever had. It wasn’t fun for Daniel any more. And, as it developed, he wasn’t much fun for me, either. From being a three-a-day guy when we first met, now, eighteen months later, even with the Viagra, we were having sex once a week. Most nights he said he was too tired.

  I suspected he wasn’t lying. More and more, when I came home from work at six p.m., I’d find him asleep on the sofa, with the TV on, snoring. The situation became increasingly unfulfilling. The challenge of trying to turn this guy’s life around, I realised, was insurmountable.

  Over the next few weeks I took steps to get him out. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I really don’t love you any more. Our two-month-notice period is long past and nothing has changed. I’d like you to move out, Daniel.’

  I had to find a way to get him to stop loving me, so I began to cheat.

  Only ten minutes to go. I look at the clock: 12.50 p.m. At one I grab my briefcase and my jacket and tell my receptionist, a pretty young blonde girl with a penchant for heavy-metal music, ‘I have a meeting in town. I’ll be about two hours.’

  Within minutes I’m off the grotty main road and removing my clothes in the changing room before heading into the sex zone – Rio’s. There are two naked black guys sitting in the Jacuzzi. The bubbling water is covering up most of their bodies, but I can still tell one of them is quite overweight. He reminds me of a laughing Buddha. The bubbles can’t disguise the blubber around his neck and flabby arms. The other guy is slim, muscular and hot. He’s clean shaven, including his head, and I see fantastic biceps and can make out the beginning of a sculpted chest. He has big dark eyes and a welcoming face. I walk closer to the Jacuzzi to get a better look, because I’m not wearing my glasses and want to make sure my eyes aren’t deceiving me. No, I think, he really is very hot. I walk up the steps to the Jacuzzi, take off my towel and step naked into the water. I’ve found my target.