46 Her body is pale and her breasts slight. Her hips are high and firm like a Russian peasant’s. He surveys the pale expanse of her flesh as he spreads her out beneath him, noting every mole and blemish scattered across the whiteness of her warm skin. A brown stain on the left side of her left breast, a hardened mole in the small of her back, a spot of darker pigmentation blending into the darker pink of her right nipple. He licks every exposed inch of her. She devours his cock with ardour but also delicacy, her clever tongue darting across his shaft, her hot mouth cupping and then swallowing his heavy, dark balls. He notes that her nipples are not overly sensitive. “How do you prefer it?” he asks. “Doggie style,” she answers quietly. He turns her over, holds his cock aloft and directs it to her entrance. The view is breathtaking. The puckered hole of her anus darker, inviting, vulnerable. He positions himself at her lower entrance, parts her now wet lips as she raises her rump further upwards, face buried in the blanket, her breasts hanging firm from her supple body. He thrusts himself inside her. She holds her breath and exhales with a deep sigh of pleasure.
47 He would later reflect how much she enjoyed taking her pleasure. He woke her in the morning by sliding below the bed covers and waking her with his tongue and teeth inside her still damp cunt, in which he could still taste himself. Other women always washed themselves out after sex; Mimi was the first since Edwina not to do so and retain his juices inside her. Her whole body spasmed and she came. He then rose up, pushed her legs apart and inserted himself between her swollen cunt lips. While he moved in and out of her, her eyes locked on his, imploring, screaming silently, watching him as he fucked her, both wordless. Something about her touched him deeply. Before they rose for breakfast, he managed another erection and she sucked him off to completion, his thin, tired come jetting into her mouth. She said nothing and afterwards rose quietly to move to the bathroom where he heard her spitting it out and gargling.
48 What affected him most about Mimi was the way she kept her eyes open throughout their lovemaking. A silent stare that spoke a thousand words. And how she joked that her eyes were now all shiny and glazed and Marcel would know, without the shadow of a doubt, that she had been fucked. That it was written all over her eyes and would stay that way for days. And reassured him by stating that it didn’t matter in the slightest. She remained with him for the whole day, his guide to Amsterdam on a cold and windy December day. He remembered her in the throes of sex; she, cheerful that this man could make her laugh so much, with his dry, almost absurd jokes and wit. They parted at the train station, both refraining from any kind of promises.
49 She had told the Englishman of her dreams and plans. She couldn’t stay with Marcel forever. Maybe she should advertise herself as a potential mistress for a rich man to subsidize and keep in comfort. After all, it would only be sex. A commercial transaction, but not as compromising as being a whore. The way his eyes clouded over when she said this, she realized he disapproved so she dismissed the idea as a joke. But she did place an advertisement in a newspaper a few weeks later.
50 She received a handful of answers to her advertisement. She met some of the men. A drink, maybe a meal, at worst a blow job, she reckoned, even if they were unsuitable. Kept her out of the house for a few hours, looking after the ever growing baby, away from Marcel’s clutches. There was another Englishman. Commercial traveller across northern Europe. He’d fuck her in his rental car, not even bothering to take her to a hotel room, but she kept on seeing him several times. The asshole, she kept on calling him, and afterward she would cry because she knew he was just using her, and treated her like dirt. Why was she punishing herself in this way? She confessed to the man in London. She knew it gave him pain, but he absolved her. So she saw the jerk again. He didn’t even bother to undress her, ordered her skirt up above her waist, roughly pulled her thong off and indicated the back seat-of the car to her. They were parked by the side of a small regional road. Anybody could have seen her moving bottomless to the back of the car. He positioned her on all fours and savagely entered her with no preliminaries. He grunted as he came, then, pretexting an important business appointment, excused himself from dropping her back to the bus station where he had picked her up and left her standing there in the countryside, his come still dripping down her thighs and legs. Never again, she swore, but deep inside was uncertain how long her resolve would last. Maybe she needed this humiliation?
51 He called her every week and told her how much he missed her and how he liked her and just felt so natural and comfortable with her. Mimi agreed: it wasn’t just the sex, they did feel good together, walking by the Rijksmuseum, the canals, Kalverstraat and across town, smiling in front of the window of the Condom Shop or nervously giggling at the windows of the Red Light District. Yes, we must meet again, they both agreed.
52 She had told him how the man in Zurich had insisted she shave her sex, and this thought obsessed him and kept him awake, and hard, at night. She has a lovely cunt, hair straight and brown and thick lips pouting through the growth. When she positioned herself with her rear thrust towards him and on her knees, the spectacle of her cunt was better than any porn movie. Straight gash punctuated lower down by little hills of darker, protruding flesh which he liked to chew on, pull gently, play with, opening her cunt like a flower, unveiling the nacreous pink of her damp insides.
53 Through the ad, she also met a younger Dutch boy. He was too good-looking by her standards but liked the baby and didn’t mind her bringing him along when he took her for drives. They would help the child fall asleep and then would go to bed in his bachelor apartment. He worked in computers. The first time he undressed in front of her, she was shocked by the size of his penis. Seemed so enormous. She was really scared how much it would stretch her, but surprisingly he fitted inside her like a glove. However, he often had difficulty coming and would thrust away inside her for ages until she had lost all feeling and she would then have to tire herself out until her jaw ached helping him climax with her mouth.
54 Her eyes, below me, inches from my own, as I move inside her. Watching me. Judging me. Asking questions I have no answer to. Listening to the shortness of my breath as my climax approaches. Glazing with joy, shiny, luminous. Moving the thousand shades between grey and blue. Mimi’s eyes. She’s getting to me.
55 They decide to meet again and he FedEx’s her the money for the train journey to Paris. They arrive at the same station a half hour apart. He has booked a small, picturesque hotel on the South Bank with a view of Paris roofs and migrating pigeons. They walk, see movies, shop on the Champs Elysées, eat too much and make love with great abandon when their stomachs are not too full. Enjoying ice cream at the Haägen-Dazs terrace on the Boulevard Saint-Germain he cracks a joke, and Mimi laughs so much she pees in her knickers. Back at the hotel, he licks her clean. She is still laughing. The sound of her happiness alleviates his darkness. But the weekend quickly ends and there are trains home for the two of them, separate trains, separate lives.
56 He knows she is partial to words and whispers indecent suggestions and dirty deeds into her ear as they fuck and feels her whole body strain and react as her cheeks colour even further at the thought of what he is outlining. He intimates at another man joining them in their activities, watching this stranger mount her as she fellates him and then both males simultaneously investing her holes. He improvizes a story in which they are both captured by pirates or gangsters and made sexual slaves and in which he has to suck to hardness the cocks of their male captors and then guide them manually into her and is made to watch as they despoil her repeatedly; to cap it all, he is then himself sodomized in her presence and gladly sacrifices his anal preserve out of love and affection for her. She listens in rapt silence, but the heat generating from her body, her cunt, her skin betray the story of her lust and her eyes acknowledge her increased excitement.
57 He wants her again. By now, she has left Marcel’s house and lives alone in a small cottage with the baby. A friend comes from Esto
nia to stay and arrangements are made to leave the little boy in her care. They meet up in the bright arrivals hall of a small airport by the Mediterranean. She has cut her hair shorter and coloured it auburn. She wears faded jeans and a burgundy chenille sweater. He hires a car and drives to a nearby port where someone has recommended a pleasant hotel. The room has a balcony overlooking the sea and he fondles her arse while they take in the view. He undresses her with all the slow, lingering ritual of a religious ceremony. He trims her pubes. Jokingly suggests she should not wear any underwear for the duration of their stay here. She smiles and agrees to his whim. They eat, they fuck, they talk, and neither of them wishes the week to ever end. One afternoon, he takes a short nap and she decides to go for a walk in the town. In her absence, he delves into her handbag and finds a photograph of her and another man, a good-looking younger man by whose side she is smiling blissfully into the lens of the camera. He knows it is not Marcel. Or the English asshole or the Dutch computer man. He guesses she is still seeing other men in the intervals between him. He says nothing to her.
58 He knows it doesn’t make sense and the relationship has no future. She is 20 years younger than him and there is no way he has the mental fortitude to even try and believe he could try and bring up another child, even more so that of another man. He knows she likes sex too much and will eventually tire of him. He knows she uses him, and the sex she grants him is her unethical, if Eastern European way, of paying him back for the gifts, the money, the travel. He often awakens at three in the morning in his marital bed at home dreaming of her, fantasizing of the warmth of her body, of witnessing her being fucked by total strangers while he holds her head in his lap and wipes her feverish brow He imagines taking her to a nude beach and exhibiting her to the unflinching gaze of others, her nipples and sex gash highlighted by scarlet lipstick, showing her off, maybe piercing her parts, and organizing her ravishing in some sort of pagan ceremony. He plays with himself when he thinks of the way her eyes always betray her sexual pleasure. He pictures her with her erstwhile Dutch friend, he of the uncommonly large penis, and in abominable close-up watches the monstrous cock impale her to the hilt, stretching her apart like a piece of raw meat. In dreams, he has no shame.
59 She sends him a birthday card in which she assures him he is special. You are my treasure, she says. Two weeks later, she calls him, desperate for some money. He obliges, relieved she didn’t phone advising him she was pregnant. Apart from the first evening in Amsterdam, they have never taken any precautions.
60 Christmas comes and Mimi has made arrangements to return for the festivities to her family in Estonia. She cannot afford to fly so is hitching a lift to the German coast at Kiel to catch a ferry with one of her girlfriends who is married to a Dutchman. Even though she hasn’t asked, he sends her money and a gift for her little boy, whom he has never seen outside of photographs. The two-year-old is blond.
61 He misses her intensely. Wants her like hell. Since she moved out of Marcel’s house, she no longer has access to a computer so their rare conversations take place over the phone. In Estonia, her mobile is out of reach. Out of sheer stupidity, he logs on to their familiar Internet chat room under her old handle “estonian girl”. Within minutes, he is deluged by calls. The majority of them are clearly just attracted by the reasonably exotic name, particularly the Yanks, and have no previous knowledge of her. It’s been months after all since she had last been online. But some clearly know her well. He improvizes his way through a half hour conversation with an architect in Brooklyn who has seemingly extended her an open invitation to come to America. Visibly they have often spoken on the phone. As he probes further to unveil any possible intimacy, he is rumbled and the other man disconnects.
62 He compounds his mistake the following day and assumes her Internet identity again. He gets a call from “infinity and beyond”. Another man who knows Mimi, and through a process of deduction he uncovers the fact they are still in contact and have exchanged pre-Christmas text messages on their respective mobile phones. The man has just returned from a trek to Tibet and wishes to meet her again. He blunders his way through the conversation by pretexting her mobile’s battery is low and elicits more information. It is quickly apparent Mimi is fucking this guy on a regular basis; in a hotel in a place called Aalmark. He logs off angrily.
63 He knew he wasn’t her only man. How could he expect to be? But the smug assurance by “infinity and beyond” that she was a great fuck and why didn’t they have another session after Christmas, in the obvious expectation of an enthusiastic response, damn hurt. A lot. And made him so angry at Mimi.
64 Between the rage, the haunting images of her with others. Men as well as women (although he’d never been the sort of man who gave undue thought to women together). He remembered how during the course of evening meals in restaurants on the Mediterranean port, she had often remarked on the sexual attractiveness of, one day, a waiter who limped and the next evening a waitress who enjoyed using her poor English while serving them but was otherwise dreadfully plain-looking. She said she took pity on them, but he knew her interest was also to some extent sexual and her mind was still excited by their bedside patter about a third person between the sheets.
65 Still under the empire of anger, he felt the need to confront her. Tracked down her parents’ address through directory enquiries and booked himself on the first flight to Estonia. He just had to confront her. On one hand, something unhealthy buried deep within his head or loins, hankered to share her touching beauty with others, but not this way. Not without him. The jealousy burnt a hole inside him.
66 He’d kept watch on the apartment block for half a day when she emerged. She held the little boy’s hand and made her way, holding a heavy suitcase in the other, towards the nearest bus stop. He hailed a cab and followed her.
67 Mimi and her son arrived at the docks and, standing 50 yards back, he observed her negotiating passport control and walking the gangway with another woman dressed in thick winter attire on to a large passenger boat. He checked the destination: Kiel. She was on her way back to Holland. He had over an hour to get his own case from his hotel room, check out and purchase a ticket for the boat. He saw her, the boy and her girlfriend eating at the ship’s snack bar that first evening but decided against making contact. The next day, the ship held a large dance after dinner and, sitting in a remote corner of the cavernous room, he observed Mimi from afar as she kissed the child goodbye and her friend returned to their cabin. She sat at the bar, alone, slowly sipping a drink. The music began, loud and formless, a frantic aggregate of beats and naked rhythm. A man invited her on to the dance floor. She was smiling. Damn, why did she always smile? Another drink, then another dance partner. Midnight came and she was visibly drunk. But happy. He watched as her last dance partner whispered something in her ear and took her hand and moved towards one of the doors to the lower deck. He followed. He was already seasick and what he saw didn’t help. There was Mimi, in a dark corner of the deck, on her knees, sucking the man’s cock with an appetite that looked mighty indecent. The man gripped her hair between his hands, forcing her to take him ever deeper. From his hiding place in the shadows, he couldn’t see whether she kept her eyes open or not. He turned and vomited over the wooden deck.
68 The man she had been voraciously sucking off had finally returned inside and Mimi stood on the deck, leaning over the guard rail, watching the sea at night, lost in her thoughts. What, he wondered, was on her mind? Did she feel there was poetry in the landscape of the night? Sadness in the oppressive silence, broken only by the clapping sound of nearby waves? He moved quietly towards her, her silhouette highlighted against the brightness of the pockmarked moon. He gently put a hand on her left shoulder. She turned round to face him. Thinking maybe the other guy had returned for more. She was crying. “You?” she gasped. “Yes,” he answered, a knot gripping his stomach. “What are you doing here?” The faint trace of a smile spreading across her cold lips. “I loved you,” he said
, “didn’t you know that, didn’t you realize it by now?” She lowered her eyes, accepting her fate.
69 He raised his other arm and pushed. Mimi offered no resistance. Her body toppled over the rail and disappeared into the darkness and the sea. He looked at the illuminated face of his Tag Heuer: it was one in the morning. The distant horizon was 200 miles off both the coasts of Denmark and Germany. A time and a place for love and death.
[I acknowledge stealing the title of this story from Stephin Merritt’s and the Magnetic Fields’ wonderful triple-CD set]
Surrender Dorothy
Lisa Montanarelli
Dorothy was my best friend in college. When we first met, she was, by her own definition, “straight”. But her definition of straight changed like the wind. Dorothy was the first woman I had sex with, and vice versa. She framed this event as an act of charity – to help me determine whether I enjoyed having sex with women – as if she somehow represented all women on the planet. After having sex with me, she decided that she also had to sleep with her best friend from high school, who would be crushed if she ever found out that Dorothy had slept with any woman other than her. Thus one charitable act led to another, and soon Dorothy was shepherding me into sexual configurations of various numbers and genders. Since I was the shy one, I was happy to rely on her to organize our sexual forays. Until she finally came out as bisexual, she had a way of organizing group sex, then fleeing the scene, racked with guilt. As I later discovered, Dorothy fantasized about having sex with virtually everyone she knew, and my burgeoning bisexuality provided an opportunity for her to test-drive some encounters that would otherwise have been difficult to rationalize, given that she still called herself “straight”.
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