The Not So Invisible Woman

by Suzanne Portnoy

'Right.' I said. 'Sorry, Max, you're not the guy I thought you were. We might as well end this conversation right now. But thank you for calling.'

  'Please,' he said, his tone almost pleading. 'Please. Don't go. You sound absolutely delightful. Just meet me for one drink.'

  I pondered. 'So, what do you look like?' I asked.

  He said he was about six feet tall, medium build, grey haired and 54 years old. 'And in quite good physical shape,' he added.

  'I'm not usually into older guys,' I admitted.

  'Oh, just the one drink, Suzanne. I promise, if we get along, I'll buy you dinner. Then if that works out, I'll buy you a car. And after that, a house. I have a million pounds in my current account.'

  That made me laugh, and since his deep baritone was alluring – I've always had a thing for deep voices – I accepted. Max and I worked out a date two weeks in the future, as my diary was full until then and, in the period leading up to our dinner, we talked on the phone almost daily and got along well.

  I called Bernadette to update her on post-brunch developments.

  'Can't you even try to like him?' she asked. 'It sounds like he ticks at least some of your boxes – car, house, loads of money.'

  'I'm trying to keep an open mind,' I said. 'Really.'

  'Good. I think this one sounds like he could be The One.'

  'The One' was a bit of a joke between the two of us. Morene, my psychic, had said there was someone out there for me when I'd last seen her. She'd predicted that I was going to meet a man much older than I, a guy who invested in creative companies, lived on a mews and 'collected things'. She said that if I didn't dismiss him for the usual reasons I tossed off men – small cock, beady eyes, tiny ears, wrong shoes – I'd end up marrying the guy.

  Max seemed worth a shot.

  He turned out to be pleasant-looking and pleasant to be around. He was quite a gentleman, too, but not the distinguished gent I'd stared at over brunch. Though his face was a little too pink and round for my liking, as I prefer thin and angular men, he had a surprisingly handsome profile. Dressed in a navy-blue-blazer and chinos – rather conservative for my taste – he looked like an umpire on a cricket field. But he was a great storyteller and loved drinking, so the champagne went down well as Max told funny stories about his days in advertising and about his friends, whose names were straight out of 'Jennifer's Diary' in Harper's.

  I found myself fantasising that his having a million was true. Just the idea of all that money made me moist. Most of my men lived off their overdrafts.

  Max invited me to stick around for dinner. A good sign. He was still telling stories when I looked at my watch. It was midnight; four hours had dashed by, and I'd hardly noticed. I began to wonder if Max could grow on me, despite my not being overly attracted to him. Certainly, financially he was a far better prospect than any of my previous boyfriends, ever. And unlike so many monosyllabic types I'd put up with in my youth, he was a great raconteur. He really knew how to spin a yarn, and for a change that took the pressure off me. I'd always fallen into the role of court jester, so it was a mini vacation to be able to sit back and watch someone else hog the limelight.

  After that first chaste date, we carried on chatting on our mobiles daily. He would entertain me with stories about recent dinner parties at aristos' stately homes, and then turn to other current events in his life: mostly battles with his social-climbing ex-wife and problems with his spoilt teenage daughter.

  I called my friend Janie, a long-time single with a penchant for unavailable married men, and told her that for once I'd met a guy with a car and a job and a million pounds in his bank account.

  'Wow,' Janie said, 'maybe he's The One.'

  'Oh, I don't think so,' I said. 'I'm just not feeling it.' I told her how even on my first date with Rump Shaker, I'd felt something. 'Even if it was mostly in my loins and a lump in my throat.' I explained that I felt a lot more comfortable around Rump Shaker, that with him I didn't have to prove anything. And that I always wanted to see him again. Though Max was entertaining, I didn't feel any great urge to see him a second time.

  'Let me get this straight,' she said. 'You're telling me that you'd actually prefer being with a human strippergram with diamonds in his teeth, no permanent employment, four kids from three different mums and financial problems, to an extremely wealthy, smart and attractive, single older man?'

  'Yeah. Stupid, eh?'

  'Don't you want, like, a real guy?' Janie said. 'At least one with long-term prospects?'

  'Right now? Actually, no,' I said. 'I'm just having too much fun at the moment.'

  'You're nuts,' said Janie, laughing as she signed off.

  I thought it interesting that my girlfriends had such different takes on the men in my life. When I'd told Pat that Rump Shaker had a second career as a builder, and that he sometimes did handiwork around my house, naked, taking his tea breaks in me, she thought he could be a contender.

  'What about going out with him?' she said. 'He seems like he has real potential: builder, sexy, big cock. He sounds right up your street.'

  Just as I hung up from Janie, my phone rang. It was my human strippergram, calling to say hello and to tell me how work went the night before. We'd spent a few hours together earlier that day, when he'd come round to fix a leaky tap, then he'd gone off to perform at three hen nights in a row. He collapsed into bed with one of his exes at four the next morning, he said.

  To most girls, that call would have been a reality check, but it just made me laugh. I'd never considered Rump Shaker boyfriend material, and I didn't mind that he slept with other women or that his life was a bit complicated. I knew I'd see him again, when the time was right for some mutual fun, and that was enough.

  About two weeks into our tête-à-tête relationship, Max invited me over for Sunday lunch at his house in West London. The prize on the menu was pheasant, which he boasted of shooting a few days earlier on the estate of some titled friends. Between the twin lures of roast pheasant and society gossip, he had me.

  The bird turned out to be a bit dry, but after sharing two bottles of Margaux, I wasn't exactly parched.

  'I've been thinking,' Max said suddenly, 'that our first break should be a weekend trip to Chicago.' He asked what my schedule was like.

  I told him, for starters, that I couldn't get away that easily. I had two kids in school and, unlike his monied-up friends, no domestics to pick up the slack. As for my two kids-free weekends coming up that month, they were booked already.

  It was time I made clear I was not looking for a serious boyfriend.

  'But wouldn't you like a serious boyfriend?' Max asked.

  'Not really, not right now,' I said. 'I'm having fun just juggling.'

  'Well, I don't do the "crash and burn", dahling,' he said. 'I want an adult relationship. Do you know what that means?'

  I thought I did, but I knew he was going to tell me anyway. Our conversations were strictly one-way affairs. He talked, I listened. And listened and listened. I wouldn't have, normally, had he and his boarding-school accent not been so amusing.

  'I don't mind your dalliances, Suzanne,' Max said. 'Just don't make me jealous.'

  His words surprised me. Apparently he had decided on a relationship without consulting me. This is a first, I thought.

  'Clarify your intentions,' I said.

  'I'm not interested in having more babies, or in our doing the laundry together. And we can't be platonic,' he said. 'I just want someone with whom I can spend the weekend, preferably away. That means nice holidays, nice hotels . . .'

  'Sounds perfect,' I said, and I meant it. It did sound perfect. Except there was one small problem: I wasn't sure whether I fancied my meal ticket.

  Max opened a third bottle of Margaux and suggested we 'move upstairs'.

  I held a glass of wine in one hand and gripped the railing with the other, as Max took my arm and led me up the stairs. We walked into his bedroom and I almost tripped on the books and clothing that littered the floor. I sa
w eyeglasses, pills, more books, old newspapers, an overflowing ashtray and cufflinks. And that was just the side table. This wasn't organised chaos; nothing looked intentionally placed, like in a design magazine. This was just a mess, and it wasn't romantic.

  Max kissed me hard in the doorway, then began ripping off his clothes, contributing new piles to the floor. Almost immediately we were on the bed having sex. There wasn't much foreplay, not even much kissing. He just rolled me over and tried taking me from behind, doggie style.

  I crouched, at his request, on all fours, and stared at the patterns on the grey-and-black duvet cover.

  'Could you please tilt your bottom up just a little bit higher?' Max asked, ever so politely.

  I complied.

  'Just a few inches more?'

  Again, I complied, arching my back like a cat. I got the sense he wasn't hugely experienced. He didn't know how to give me any pleasure, and didn't seem particularly interested in offering any. If he had been with a lot women, it certainly didn't show as, sooner or later, one of them would have taught him the golden rule of good sex: ladies first.

  Although I'd had a porn-star fantasy for years, this wasn't the one. In my brain, I was with a hot black guy with a ruler-length dick while a Richard Gere lookalike shouted do-this, do-that directions from the sidelines. Here was a 54-year-old white man with a skinny five-incher asking me, politely, what to do, but instead of fulfilling my fantasy, he was just making me work.

  After about a half-hour in the cat position, it hurt, and not in a good way. The skin on my elbows felt raw after too much time in one position. Too much time, because Max couldn't keep it up.

  'Would you like me to take a Viagra?' he asked once the obstacle to our lovemaking became clear to both of us.

  'Yeah, sure.' I tried to sound game, though I really wanted to go. The throbbing elbows were a painful reminder of their existence. Usually, I spent my time in bed pursuing pleasure, not feeling pain.

  'I'm really sorry,' said Max. 'I normally have no problem getting hard.'

  I mumbled the usual assurances.

  'I find you a bit intimidating, to be honest,' he confessed, before taking a stab at a joke. 'I'm sure I can't be the first man to say that!'

  'You're not.'

  I was reminded of Tom, an edgy actor-comedian who'd told me the same thing not so long before. We'd met through business, and after our work meeting he'd invited me out to dinner. We flirted through appetizers and the main course, but put our pudding off. A few days later, we booked a cheap North London B & B for some lunch-time fun. But despite his own reputation, he found mine harder to handle.

  He'd picked up my book after meeting me and quickly caught on to my big-cock fetish. He'd boasted about his size over dinner, but that was before reading about some of the men I'd been with. Too late, he realised his cock wasn't that spectacular after all.

  I spent most of that afternoon stroking Tom's cock whilst stroking his ego. I sucked his perfectly fine above-average cock to keep him hard enough to fuck me in the short bursts before more tongue action was required. A sweaty 45 minutes later, we both managed to climax, but it was one of the more challenging sessions I'd ever had.

  Until I met Max, that is.

  The Viagra didn't do the trick.

  'I really must go,' I said, after giving the Viagra the requisite twenty minutes to kick in. I explained that I needed to collect my children from their father's house. My kids-free weekend was over, as was my affair with a 54-year-old toff. When I heard the front door close behind me, I felt relief. The feeling surprised me, but I could not deny its message.

  I rang Max the next day to tell him I didn't want to see him again.

  'I just don't think it's going to work out,' I said. 'I thought it best to just tell you before, you know . . .' Before you book any weekend trips to Chicago, is what I wanted to say.

  'Oh, I feel quite forlorn, Suzanne,' said Max. 'I was just going to ring you up to tell you how much I liked you.' He said nothing about our sexual non-experience.

  The omission brought to mind my experience fucking Oliver, a film director two years Max's junior. He was another private-school-educated guy with a posh voice who didn't make me come and hadn't seem bothered. I'd found him sexy on the street but a bust in bed. So focused on the goal of coming, he forgot that was my goal, too.

  Although I could see the attraction that came with the older-guy package – power, confidence, money – I'd yet to meet an older man with whom I felt a real connection. I wondered if, having achieved a certain status, they'd grown selfish and didn't care about their partner's pleasure. Or maybe they'd just never learned the basics, having slept with women who never opened their mouths to express their needs. I didn't understand how a guy could pass the half-century mark and not have figured it out.

  Perhaps I was doing something wrong; perhaps it was my fault I didn't click with these guys. I called my friend Paula. A gorgeous 38-year-old singer with long brown hair, sexy Germanic features and a slim curvy body, she could have had her pick. And she picked as her husband a man in his mid-sixties. After he died, she took up with a 62-year-old.

  'What do you see in these older guys?' I asked her.

  'They just seem to know what to do,' she said. 'They're more sensuous, more loving. Sex isn't about a race for them.'

  Easy for her to say. In my experience, just getting to the starting line was an accomplishment.

  13. PLEASURE AND PAIN

  Paul came by today,' Pat said one day when I popped over for a cup of tea. 'Remember him? Cute, Scottish guy, skinny?' I recognised the name instantly, even without the description.

  I'd first seen him two years earlier at a birthday party for Pat. He'd stuck in my brain ever since, unlike Max, who flew out of my head about as quickly as he'd landed there.

  Pat's party was held at Guanabara, a Brazilian club in Covent Garden, and the place was so full of hip young Latinos swivelling their hips and wiggling their asses, I felt like a foreigner who had accidentally landed in Rio de Janeiro.

  I'd just gone blonde again and, middle-aged to boot, knew fitting in would be a challenge, so I'd worn a long black ruched skirt that looked vaguely Spanish, with a tight red top knotted around my midriff. I couldn't be Latina but I could do sexy.

  And I did feel sexy as Jack spun me round on the dance floor and kissed me between songs. That didn't stop me noticing Paul, though. He stood out because he was another fair Anglo in a sea of dark-haired hotties, and because he was my type – lanky and undernourished looking, with high cheekbones and short blond hair just beginning to go grey. He was about six-feet tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and had the kind of human-hanger body that made anything he wore look good. He was wearing a 1940s-style double-breasted blue suit with a flat cap and brogues. He was arty and handsome and carried himself with the confident air of an original.

  'Who's the guy in the cap?' I asked Pat. 'I've not met him before.'

  'That's Paul,' she said. 'He has a girlfriend,' she added, as if reading my mind.

  'OK,' I said. 'He's cute, though. What does he do?'

  'He runs an animation company in the West End. Pretty successful, actually. I've known him for years.'

  Cute and tall and thin and arty and rich. And taken. Damn.

  Jack interrupted my reverie. 'Ready for another dance?' he asked, grabbing my hand without waiting for an answer. As I walked towards the dance floor, I mentally filed Paul under 'Save for Later'.

  I must have misfiled him under 'Forget Him', because that's just what I did, for two years. Then one day Pat tossed his name into a sentence.

  'Paul came by today. I thought he wanted to see me, but instead he kept looking at your fucking book the whole time.' Pat told me he spotted The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker on her coffee table, and asked to borrow it.

  'Begged to borrow it, actually,' she said. 'I told him to buy his own. Hope you don't mind. Boost the sales and all.'

  'Paul,' I said, momentar
ily diverted from the aphrodisiac of commerce. 'The cute guy from your Brazilian birthday party.'

  'That's the one,' she said. 'He was asking about you, too. Wanted to know if you were single.'

  'I thought he had a girlfriend.'

  'Not any more,' she said. 'They broke up about a year ago.'

  She let that fact sink in, then told me he'd also asked for my number.

  'I hope you gave it to him,' I said. 'He's gorgeous.'

  'I thought I should ask you first. Guess that was unnecessary.'

  'No, that's fine. Thanks, darling. Appreciate it,' I said.

  I waited a nanosecond, so as not to sound too eager. 'You don't happen to have his number, do you?'

  She did, and an hour later Paul and I had a date for later that evening. I invited him to join me for a night out with some pals. One of my girlfriends, Lucy, a singer/songwriter, was showcasing her music at Pop, a club in Soho, and had invited some friends along for support.

  Paul walked into the club wearing a blue pinstriped suit over a white cotton T-shirt and a grey-and-blue tweed flat cap. He smiled when he saw me, and kissed me on both cheeks as he joined the table.

  I didn't usually subject a first date to a night out with my mates, but I knew Paul would fit in. Based on that first night I met him, I knew he was easy going and smiley and clearly wasn't someone who couldn't handle strangers.

  Except for the change of wardrobe, he looked no different from when I'd seen him two years earlier.

  'Hi, stranger,' I said, looking into his big blue eyes. 'Good to see you again.' I knew he knew I meant it.

  When the show ended at ten, the last place I wanted to go was home, at least alone. I proposed a visit to my home away from home. 'Shall we go to Soho House and get a bite to eat?' I said. 'I'm starving.'

  Too late, I realised the wording of my request didn't leave much room for a 'no', but in any case Paul seemed happy to stay by my side. So we drove to the House, took a seat at the Circle Bar, and ordered some chips and a couple of Pinot Grigios.

  'I saw your book at Pat's,' he said, as we manoeuvred in to a couple of seats. 'Congratulations.'