The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker

by Suzanne Portnoy

We hadn’t had sex in months, anyway, and my brief Rio’s phase ended when my Florence Nightingale phase began. The idea of sex with others just didn’t feel right when on my mind was the boyfriend at home, dying in my bed.

  But one Sunday afternoon, overwhelmed by grief, constrained by my lack of freedom, feeling imprisoned in my own home, I rebelled. I went to the computer and pulled up SwingingHeaven, a website that a guy at Rio’s had told me about one afternoon as we chatted, post coitus, in the steam room. I just want to get fucked, I thought. I went into the photo adverts, pressed ‘Search’ and typed big + cock + London. Up popped Greg.

  Aside from his big cock, I didn’t know much more about him. The picture showed a man who looked about forty, with very short blond hair and a trim goatee similar to Daniel’s. It looked like he had a decent body – fit but not overly muscular. His cock looked as advertised, very big – long and thick.

  Experienced, very sensible, clean, tested and discrete guy, 38 years old. Fit, athletic build, with a nice thick 8+ cock. Available for the pleasure of single ladies. Confident, assertive and considerate, very broad-minded and good company. I live in north London and can travel for daytime or evening meetings. Distance or short notice no problem.

  It sounded just what the doctor ordered. I sent an email, saying I was living with someone but asking if he fancied an afternoon meeting the following Friday, enclosing my picture. He wrote back that day and said he’d be delighted. We arranged to hook up at Rio’s, conveniently located close to where we both lived.

  Daniel went into the hospice two days later, and died on Friday, three days after that. His mother called to tell me the news as I was giving the kids their breakfast.

  The wait was over. I’d done my share of grieving during the previous two months. I felt sad but also relieved that I no longer had to play the part of the grieving girlfriend. I drove to the hospice one last time and paid my condolences to Daniel’s parents and brothers, who were gathered around his bedside. Daniel was lying on the bed, a clean white sheet pulled up to his chin, with two small flowers lying on either side of the pillow. An odd touch, I thought. I had never seen a dead person before and wondered if the flowers were part of the ritual. Daniel had a smile on his face. He looked peaceful. I went to the bed and kissed his forehead. It was ice cold. It was unsettling to think that someone I’d spent so many hot moments with was now so cold. ‘Goodbye, sweetheart,’ I said. I hugged his family. We cried together. A half-hour later I left the hospice and went back to work. I told my staff that Daniel was dead, crying some more as I shared the news, and then took the rest of the day off. I told my ex-husband what happened and asked him to pick up the kids after school and take them for the weekend.

  Part of me felt I should cancel my meeting with Greg. The other part of me wanted to move on and stop crying and grieving and feeling sad. I drove to Rio’s.

  Greg was waiting in the reception area when I arrived. Thankfully, he looked just like his picture; I was not in the mood for more unpleasant surprises. We kissed hello and went to our changing rooms. I removed my clothes, trying, as I removed each layer, to distance myself further from what had transpired that morning.

  When I looked at myself naked in the mirror, I felt free. I was back in the game, and this time I wasn’t cheating.

  I grabbed the white towel, tightened it round my body and stepped into the club. Greg was at the bar already, drinking a cup of tea. ‘You fancy a steam?’ I asked.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, arching an eyebrow. ‘Lead the way.’

  I took him to the hottest steam room at the end of the hall. It was fairly quiet. There was a handful of men there, none of whom I recognised.

  We removed our towels, laid them on the tiled bench and sat next to each other. The room was enveloped in steam and it was hard to make out the contours of Greg’s body or to see his cock. But the heat felt great. ‘This is just what I need,’ he said.

  You don’t know the half of it, I thought. I wasn’t interested in telling him about my morning. I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want condolences or to answer questions about how my boyfriend had died. I didn’t want to spoil the moment.

  I asked Greg what he did for a living and he said he was a musician. He played the bass and worked as a recording engineer and sometime record producer. He had been in a fairly well-known band in the 80s, made a bit of money and now had a small recording studio in town.

  ‘We have a lot in common,’ I said. I explained that I had sung in a trio back in my twenties and now worked as a publicist and had a number of music clients. I learnt he produced a record for a band my company was publicising at the time. He was easy to talk to – a relief, as I’d been off the scene for a while and was feeling slightly nervous. We talked about work instead of talking dirty. At least at first.

  I didn’t want to be too obvious about the focus of my afternoon but, as he’d made a point of advertising his cock size, I figured he probably was expecting me to confirm the authenticity of his ad at some point. ‘I’m getting really hot,’ I said. ‘Shall we check out the Jacuzzi?’

  He followed me into the pool, and both of us sat in silence while the hot water bubbled around us. It disguised what was down below. ‘Do you mind if I touch your cock?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  I put my hand under the water and discovered that he was already hard. I stroked the shaft, feeling the engorged blood vessels. His cock was at least eight inches long, perhaps nine, and had a well-pronounced thick head.

  Thank God for Google, I said to myself. Big Cock London, indeed. I wondered what it would feel like inside me.

  Greg’s hands went under the water and he started playing with my pussy. We had the Jacuzzi to ourselves. Still we sat in silence. I didn’t feel like talking much anyway. I wanted to get fucked. ‘Shall we go upstairs?’ I said.

  I led him to the red room in the corner, the only relaxation room I knew that came with a pillow. That day, I wanted the extra comfort. We laid the towels on the mat, as I’d done so many times before. Greg lay down next to me. His cock flopped heavily on to the mat.

  I put his cock in my mouth and he indicated his pleasure with a groan. It was so thick, it was a strain to open my mouth as wide as necessary. He held the back of my neck, pushing his cock further down my throat, saying, ‘That’s good. Take it all in.’

  I felt myself getting wet, enjoying the domination. After months of keeping up the act, having to be the strong one all the time, I wanted to relinquish control. Let someone else take charge, I thought. I was happy to let Greg do what he wanted with me, content to give in completely to his desire. I sucked his cock for half an hour, varying the intensity of the pressure my mouth put on it, varying the speed, licking the head, the shaft. I found myself back in a familiar meditative state. The rhythm was my mantra as my mouth went up and down, up and down on his penis. Despite the size of his cock, the rhythm lulled me into a state of complete relaxation, and slowly I was able to get his cock to the back of my throat. It was liberating.

  By the end of the half-hour, I was dripping wet. Greg reached for my pussy. ‘Lie down on your back,’ he ordered me, grabbing a condom from his kitbag. He put the condom on skilfully, then plunged into me rapidly. I felt the head of his cock hit against the back wall of my vagina, stretching me. If it hurt, I didn’t notice. I closed my eyes and wrapped my legs around his back, pulling him further into me with every stroke. I didn’t think about coming; I didn’t think about anything except that big hard cock inside me. ‘You feel so good.’

  He said, ‘I want to fuck you for hours.’ And he did.

  We manoeuvred ourselves into as many positions as was possible on a 3x6 gym mat. His sweat dripped all over me. When he came up my ass, it seemed to last for five minutes. I could feel his cock pulsating inside me as wave after wave of pleasure ran through his body. His whole body trembled. Unlike so many men who become agitated when they come, Greg seemed to be in a trance as he
shot. It was a little frightening to witness. I remember thinking, I hope he’s all right.

  He kept his cock inside my ass while we lay down together. I’d come once already, but feeling his cock soften in my ass made me horny. I grabbed the tiny vibrator from my kitbag and used it on my clit. I could feel Greg’s cock stiffen again, and ten minutes later he came once more, timed to my own orgasm.

  ‘Do you realise we’ve been fucking for, like, three hours?’ I said.

  ‘Tantric,’ he said, smirking.

  This was my first swinging date that lasted more than a lunch hour, but I liked Greg and I didn’t want to be alone that day. After we showered and got dressed, I said, ‘Do you have any plans now?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  I invited him to an early dinner in Camden Town, then we drove back to mine and took off our clothes almost as soon as we got through the door. We fucked all night.

  He was impressively unexhausted and could control his orgasms so that I was always the one to come first. I’ve scored, I thought. I wanted no-hassle fun and that’s exactly what I got.

  ‘This was great,’ I said to Greg the next day as he got ready to leave. ‘Do you do this kind of thing often?’

  ‘Not usually with single girls,’ he said. He told me he had a girlfriend who wasn’t into swinging herself but got off on hearing his stories. He said his usual thing was to meet up with couples on the side, pairs looking for another guy to service the wife. ‘I’ve got a regular thing going with four couples, been seeing them all for years,’ he said. ‘What I’ve been looking for is a single woman who’ll go to swingers clubs and parties with me.’

  He explained that, as a lone guy on the swinging scene, he often couldn’t get in to places alone. ‘Interested?’

  ‘Let me know when the next party is,’ I said.

  In twenty-four hours I’d lost a boyfriend and picked up a swinging partner. I was on a new path and knew where I was going.

  ‘How do you keep track of them all?’ My girlfriend Bernadette thought I was mad. ‘I barely have enough time for one guy, never mind four.’

  ‘Four guys is nothing,’ I told her. ‘I have a diary. I slot them in.’ It made it easy, I explained. I didn’t have all the usual girlfriend problems, all the things chicks worry about: when I’d see him next, whether he’d phone me, how much he liked me. I didn’t have to get involved in their lives, I told her. ‘I just look in my diary and see who I’m going to meet the next day.’

  Following my return to Rio’s the day Daniel died, Greg and I got together every two or three weeks and went to swinging parties. In between our dates I arranged ‘meetings’ with other guys I plucked off SwingingHeaven. There was no shortage of big thick cocks attached to guys who liked using them. I’d finally found my world.

  I’d typed ‘Big Cock London’ into SwingingHeaven’s search engine for a reason and, after Greg, I had to admit what I always suspected: I’m a size queen.

  Pre-Daniel, I thought I could snag a part-time relationship with a dream man the usual ways – newspaper personals, online dating, Soho House – and usually ended up disappointed. Outwardly, these men ticked a lot of my boxes. They looked good, had brains, a decent job, usually a sense of humour. But once they removed their clothes, they didn’t measure up for one reason or another.

  Now, on my list of priorities, the cock came first. Face and bod were next, followed by brains and personality. For once, everyone was honest, too. The focus was on sex. No more pretence about wanting to find a lifelong partner, fall in love, live happily ever after.

  The trick was not to care about any of my fuck buddies too much. I learnt to compartmentalise my emotions. I liked the men in my diary enough to spend an evening with them but not a lifetime. All the stuff that bogs down relationships, the things that doom or take the fun out of them, no longer applied. No brains? No problem. No money? Who cared? Not many men will turn down a relationship that requires showing up every couple of weeks and getting fucked, with minimal contact in between. They seemed to think, ‘It doesn’t come more perfect than this’, and so did I. ‘See you in a couple of weeks,’ they’d say, as they walked out the door smiling.

  While Bernadette remained perpetually saddened that she could never meet Mr Right, or even Mr Almost Right, I became a case in point of a woman who happily accepted the limitations. In the fifteen years I have known her, I’ve watched Bernadette lurch from one catastrophic relationship to another – the cokehead whose habit she tolerated until he became so paranoid he punched her in the face for supposedly flirting with another guy; the clean freak who made her change her sheets every time they had sex. As for me, I found freedom not just from not having to take care of a sick boyfriend, but from not having to take care of any man.

  I quickly discovered that, just as at Rio’s, I was the belle of the ball. The ratio of men to women on SwingingHeaven was about 250:1, and many of the women weren’t even real; they were gay men looking for cock shots.

  I felt more mature, and for once ‘mature’ was not a euphemism for ‘old’, and feeling older was not a bad thing. When I was younger, it seemed I was always waiting for the phone to ring. Now, I was the one making the calls and, unlike in the past, there were few rejections. Honesty came with this maturity. Everyone who I slept with knew the score – that they weren’t the only one and would never be. And I stopped trying to fit my dates into boxes in which they obviously didn’t belong.

  My first date off SwingingHeaven, after Greg, might have been a keeper in my youth. His name was Anthony and he was a hottie. His biography sounded like that of a character in a porn movie. In fact, he could have starred in a porn movie himself. He was a policeman with a fantastic body and a big cock. He had thick dark Italian hair that he swept off his forehead, long eyelashes, big white teeth, big eyes and huge cheekbones. And he was horny as hell. He was fun in bed and made me laugh in and out of it. He was a great kisser who loved to kiss. He also had irregular working hours, a young daughter on whom he doted and a salary one-third my own. But it was great to see him once a month. Sometimes I’d send him a text message to ask if he’d be around that coming weekend, and he’d text back something dirty, like telling me about the hard-on he had while driving around the city in his Vauxhall Astra thinking about me. I learnt that scheduling him in more often than once a month would have been impossible. Anthony frequently broke dates at the last minute, when called back to work or too tired to play. He never would fit into my nine-to-five life.

  Same went for Dave, the taxi driver who worked nights. He was perfect for a three a.m. quickie in the back of a cab. It was fun to run outside in the middle of the night to give him a blowjob, dressed only in a negligée and a pair of froufrou slippers. But he was not the kind of man to treat me to a fancy dinner; in fact, fancy dinners, like nights at the Barbican or concerts at the Royal Festival Hall or subtitled movies at the Renoir Cinema, were not his kind of thing at all. If he were a fixture of my world, dreary Saturday-night dates with the telly would have been guaranteed, given that was his busiest shift. Still, his blue eyes twinkled under the streetlights and he was the most amazing fuck. No sooner would Dave come inside me than he’d be hard again, and go for another round or two. I’d never met a man who could come four times in a row without stopping, pausing only to change a condom when it swelled too much with spunk. I asked him if every fuck was so heroic. ‘Only when I’m with someone as horny as you, Suzanne,’ he said.

  My third date off SwingingHeaven was a beefy landscape gardener named Julio, whom I’d meet at Rio’s on Wednesdays at eleven a.m., two hours before his weekly client meeting. He was a cute guy in his late thirties, with dark-brown hair and a massive chest. He was about 6'4" and had a really thick cock that he loved having me suck. And he was great at oral in return. His inner Lothario was frustrated, given that, on therare times his wife had sex with him, she would come within two minutes, he said, and then roll over. He was looking for someone who enjoyed sex as much as he did and was equall
y willing to devote some time to it. Unfortunately, in addition to a wife, he had a couple of kids and lived up north.

  I was relishing my newfound freedom, not only with the guys I got off the web, but also with Big Cock London Greg. It was an eye-opener exploring the swinging scene with him. ‘Hi,’ he said one day. ‘I just heard about this club in north London called OurPlace4Fun. You want to check it out?’

  We made a date for that coming Friday.

  Greg picked me up at ten, wearing black leather trousers, a tight black rubber shirt and black Tony Lama cowboy boots. I had on the same leopard-print dress I wore in New York when Frank took me to my first swingers club, plus black fishnet stockings and my favourite fuck-me shoes.

  We spent fifteen minutes driving up and down the street in Alexandra Palace where OurPlace was supposed to be, but didn’t see anything that looked like a swingers club, just a row of shops, an Indian restaurant, a closed newsagent and an off-licence where underage kids were hanging out, trying to buy booze. I phoned the number I’d pulled off the club’s website and was directed down a narrow alley with rows of garages on either side. Suddenly, just as we were turning around and about to leave the alley, thinking we’d gone to the wrong place, a door opened and light poured into the street.

  ‘I think you’re looking for us?’ said the doorman.

  We walked up a long steep flight of stairs and paid our £20 through a window to a blonde woman sitting in a sheer red slip. She buzzed us through a second door and we entered a large dimly lit room. A bar was on the left side, and red and green neon outlined the ceiling. There didn’t seem to be many people there. Beyond the bar we could see a number of smaller rooms but not whether anyone was in any of them. Greg gave the wine bottle that we’d brought with us – the website described the club as BYOB – to a man who exchanged it for a cloakroom tag. ‘You’re number seven,’ he said archly.

  I hope that doesn’t mean there are only six other couples ahead of us, I thought.