Twenty Tones of Red

by Pauline Montford

  She read and read and then when she’d picked up courage started to post comments and chat. Again the vibe was endlessly positive. ‘Enjoy yourself girl’ they said, ‘try this and if you like it then why not try that’. As with nearly all the women’s and girly sites the only element of complaint seemed to be about the men. A lot of them weren’t very interested in dominating their lovers. A lot of them weren’t very good at it an even worse a lot of the women couldn’t find a man to play with at all.

  Some of the sites were blocked by the school’s security system and frustratingly those seem to be the ones with the most pictures and videos. A lot of the text-only sites still seemed to be available and it was on these that she read accounts hundreds of other like-minded women describing their fantasies and their desires in intimate detail.

  A few months later her own parents registered with an Internet Service Provider at home and this new world became easily accessible to her. This was still in the days when the World Wide Web was slow and had to be accessed via a dial up modem. Even so, the choice was bewildering. She found photos of women doing all the things she had imagined in her many fantasies and she even found some wonderful video clips. She now knew that her fantasies were normal, they were part of the human condition and there were millions of women just like her all across the globe who took pleasure from similar thoughts and scenarios.

  The impact of her research was hugely positive she began a long transition from a time of doubt and guilt to one in which she realised that her sexuality was part of who she was. She became more comfortable with herself she became more at ease with her exploration and experimentation.

  She was soon able to afford a second-hand laptop of her own and this only increased her curiosity and the amount of time she was able to spend researching her sexual passion. There was the added benefit of increased privacy. In her early days of browsing she had frequently made the classic mistake of leaving her history visible to the next computer user. Both her father and mother had clicked the back button on the browser to discover images of naked bound women and she had had a difficult time blaming them all on her older brother. Now she had total control she could sit in bed in the privacy of her little bedroom with one finger on the controller that moved the cursor around the screen and the other on the tender little bud of her sex.

  Her electronic explorations were a godsend because in real life she was having trouble finding a suitable relationship. In her early teens her male peers were so acutely self-conscious and under confident that even getting a good strong snog was difficult. Most of the girls in her year had developed much more quickly than the boys and most were taller and stronger. Many solved the maturity gap by seeking out boyfriends in the higher years and would then come back to brag about their sexual activities. She didn’t seem able to find anybody suitable at all and for a couple of years her relationships took a nose dive.

  Looking back she realised that perhaps at that time she was still giving off an uncomfortable and slightly shy aura. She was still getting used to the changes in her body and although her confidence was building it would be a while before she felt ‘complete’ and ‘ready’.

  The big break came when she was fifteen. At around the time of her birthday she started to feel fully happy with herself and her body and when she went to parties she drew the attention, seemingly for the first time, of some of her friends’ older brothers. Best of all was the tall dark and handsome Simon. He was an eighteen year old engineering apprentice and when he came to pick up his little sister Amy from a party she could see him watching her from the doorway. He stood rattling and jangling his car keys in the way boys did when they’d only been driving a few months and she found his gaze very intriguing.

  Somebody had sneaked in a small bottle of brandy and they’d been sitting in the back corner pouring big shots into their cokes. This meant that they’d quickly got very giggly and were soon trying to outdo each other on the dance floor. The music was excellent. Brit pop had just happened and it was one of the most exciting times to be becoming interested in bands. She identified first with Oasis because like her they were northern and down to earth but then Blur had some great songs too. The media tried to create drama and conflict between the two groups and some of the boys at her school took sides and tried to argue about who was best. In her little group of friends they had very early on decided that there wasn’t any real rivalry and besides they liked them both. Music was dramatic and exciting and you didn’t have to choose which camp you were in. You could have it all.

  It wasn’t all the jangly guitar sounds of the Brit Pop bands. There were also a lot more poppy ‘girly’ tunes that they all enjoyed. They loved a really silly song called Barbie Girl by Aqua and she was dancing to this when she noticed Simon watching her from the bar near the door. He was looking at her in the way that the more confident boys did. He was appraising her. She knew he was studying her body as she moved and she shamelessly put some extra seductive wriggles into her routine.

  The song was a big tease anyway and beneath its saccharine veneer it was really quite naughty. The lyrics were fantastic. She absolutely loved the lines ‘undress me everywhere’ and ‘I can beg on my knees’ and here and there they seemed to throw in the line ‘Hanky Panky’ for no reason at all.

  She was mouthing these words at her friends and doing as much crazy dancing as she could and whenever she glanced back at the bar he was still shamelessly watching her. He was well built for his age and looked quite tough and already she was imagining him dominating her. Perhaps he would take her away to a remote cabin and be really strict. She could already see scenes where he was making her dance naked for him and kneel and kiss his feet before he manhandled her and squeezed her in his strong arms. She liked the ideas a lot and some of them were to come true.

  They started going out and it was her first grown up relationship, except there was a twist. For the first eleven months he wanted to keep it secret. She had mixed feelings about this arrangement. A hidden romance had built in drama and excitement but at the same time she wanted to show him off and be seen with him. She understood his reasons. Firstly it wasn’t very cool to be going out with one of his sister’s friends and secondly she was significantly younger than him.

  Looking back as an adult she also realised that if they’d had sex when she was fifteen the threat of time in prison must have felt very real for him, and perhaps too, as he was a decent sort, he had felt that it just wasn’t proper.

  They very quickly got to exploring their sexuality in other ways. He was the very first to touch her properly ‘down there’ and luckily for her all the experiences were positive. She had heard a host of bewildering accounts of course most of the pornography and forums on the Internet described sexual relations as relentlessly fiery exciting and satisfying. Some of the accounts from her girlfriends were slightly different and a lot of them admitted that their boyfriends’ advances often felt like fumblings which left them feeling confused and unsatisfied. She herself had started to become slightly concerned that there was too big a gap between fantasy and reality but her first few encounters with Simon put her mind to rest. She was thrilled by his touch and the way he held her and kissed her and they started to work through certain stages. She knew from the American teen movies and from all the classroom gossip the steps that couples went through in terms of intimacy and she seemed strangely compelled to follow them.

  In their first session of heavy snogging she allowed his hands to explore her breasts and buttocks but only through her clothes. She herself avoided touching his groin although she could feel that he was hard and excited. He respected her wishes and at the time that was the most important thing. Their second intimate session was on a babysitting assignment for a neighbour and this time she allowed him to remove her top and blouse and fondle and lick her breasts. The feelings were delicious and when his hand strayed to her crotch she was almost overwhelmed with the temptation to let him touch and rub her there.

  S
he held back though. There was an order and some part of her feared the idea circulating that she was ‘easy’ or a ‘slag’. The series of bases and levels of intimacy seemed to be designed to prevent this. The protocol at school was that you went on a certain number of dates and reported your activity. Too little and you were dull or frigid, too much and although the other girls were eager to hear all the details she knew that the more jealous ones started to circulate rumours.

  And the third serious date she let him touch her down there and found it thrilling. Her expectations had been low as so many of the girls had reported feeling disappointed but she wondered if perhaps Simon being a little bit older and more experienced had learned how to caress a woman with a little bit more finesse. She came very close to reaching an orgasm but held back because some part of her still felt it might have been embarrassing. On that occasion she also touched him although also held back from giving him complete release. That would be the next date she told herself. She reported her activities to her closest friends and they shared her pleasure and excitement with great enthusiasm, or at least seemed to. The world of girl chat was never that simple. The ones without boyfriends listened keenly but it was clear that many of the others were jealous and she was careful not to make her accounts sound too good.

  At the time they talked about little else. Boys, sex and sexuality were the main topics of daily discussion followed closely by diets, clothes, shopping and celebrity gossip. The sexual tone topic of the moment was fellatio, or ‘blow jobs’ as they were more commonly known. They had very limited experience between them but it was clear that every girl would have liked to have been an expert. Some of the more adventurous ones sought out the appropriate pornography on the Internet but the preferred method of learning seemed to be listening carefully to the girls who proclaimed themselves highly experienced.

  The mood of the time was summed up in their most popular joke. The story concerned a younger girl with a new boyfriend who was keen to please him orally. She sought out the most experienced girl in the upper sixth form and eagerly asked her advice. The girl proudly proclaimed that the art of oral pleasure was very simple. Once you had taken a boy in your mouth you simply remembered the island. Remembering the island was the key point. Once you had remembered ‘Honolulu’ you simply repeated the word as often as you could and the movement of your mouth and the action of your tongue produced exactly the right sensations.

  The younger girl was thrilled with her instructions and on her very next date tried out the technique. When she returned to school on the Monday morning she was sad and downcast. The elder girl sought her out and quizzed her as to why she was so unhappy and it turned out that the date had been a disaster. After taking her new boyfriend in her mouth the younger girl had remembered the island and mumbled ‘Madagascar’. The rapid gnashing of her teeth had created some very unpleasant sensations and resulted in her being dumped.

  The joke was probably popular not only because it was funny but also because it contained some genuine wisdom. When shouting goodbye to each other they would frequently shout the words ‘Honolulu’ or ‘Madagascar’ and this provoked peals of laughter.

  There was soon a true story that brought equal hilarity to the school. A pretty and studious girl called Alison Woodcock, whose surname also added a depth of humour to the situation, had an embarrassing incident with her boyfriend that she was foolish enough to share with her friends. She’d decided to orally pleasure her long term boyfriend for the first time and had knelt in front of him and applied the Honolulu technique. She could see that very quickly he was about to cum but she was uncertain what to do with his semen. She decided she didn’t want it in her mouth or on her face so turned her head sharply at the moment of climax. The result was that his ejaculation found its way into her ear.

  She had meant to only share the story with her friends but soon everyone in the year above and below was tapping and their ears and going through the motions of cleaning them with their finger whenever she passed. Even worse one of the most common expressions they used in the school in place of ‘excuse me’ or ‘I didn’t hear that’ was ‘come again’. This meant that whenever she was in class and somebody spoke quietly some joker would catch her eye then poke their finger into their ear and shout ‘sorry I didn’t quite catch that. Could you come again please?’

  It provided some of the most consistent hilarity of that year and later whenever she met her old school friends the Honolulu and ‘come again’ stories would inevitably re-emerge.

  Her relationship with Simon went well and she found him wise and kind and sexy. So much so that just a few days after her sixteenth birthday she lost her virginity to him. It went well and she was glad she did it although by then her expectations had been raised and she had to admit that she had been expecting something a little bit more explosive. Looking back she realised that the key element that had been missing for her was the torture and torment and build up that was always present in BDSM. She was discovering that although she enjoyed it she simply found the majority of sex too quick. She liked to be caressed, restrained and tormented for at least an hour before the penetrative action began.

  They had two more relatively happy years together although eventually they did both become increasingly jealous and started to fight. He hated it when she went out with her girlfriends or was seen with other boys and she hated it when he went away to work and came back with stories of drunken nights in pubs and nightclubs. The relationship cooled. Looming at the back of her mind was the thought that she was soon to go to university. Although she liked him she knew she didn’t completely love him and some part of her knew that she would need to move on. She didn’t want to be one of the saddos who kept their boyfriend from home all the way through her student days. Somehow she knew that she needed to break free and look for something better.

  The first term at university was a real eye-opener. Suddenly she had her own room in student accommodation and there were hundreds of handsome intelligent young men all around her. It would’ve been very easy to lose her head and chase after all of them, and lots of girls did, but she was determined to behave more calmly as befitted a young woman who had already had a three-year relationship with an older man.

  She watched and flirted and bided her time and after waiting three whole weeks found herself at a party snogging a devilishly handsome hairy creature from Sutton Coldfield called Howard. Her new boyfriend had thick dark hair, intense lupine eyes and a mono-brow that made him look very much like a wolf. His body was hairy too and after several passionate nights together she decided that in his case she liked it.

  Howard was basically a hippy and that limited their time together. She slowly worked out that she liked men with focus and purpose. Mostly she wanted their drive applied to her and then to their career and life in general. She never really knew what happened to her relationship with him but over time it just fizzled out. By the end of the summer term they were doing different things and socialising in different circles. They would still arrange to meet but increasingly this was at the end of an evening and only so they could spend the night together. They were both vaguely aware of drifting apart and neither seemed particularly bothered. In a sense it was one of the nicest and easiest endings they could have. They were still friends, they still liked each other and they still had a good time in bed. But they simply didn’t feel the need to be together very much and they didn’t have a lot more to say to each other. In the final few weeks of term with the long summer holidays looming they agreed to officially call it over. They did see each other again and they found that over the next twelve months if there were ever at the same nightclub or party they would inevitably end up going home together but this was just because it was easy and old habits died hard. The spark and the flame had flickered out long before.

  The summer after she and Howard split up was her worst romantic droughts. She was on the lookout for a new exciting love and she found that the more she wanted it the more difficu
lt it became to find. There was a perverse psychology to the situation and it was something she often discussed with her best girlfriends, Jackie and Sue. They all agreed that there was some kind of subliminal message of need that people could give off and knowing this she gave up. She convinced herself that it would be no bad thing to concentrate on her studies and her female friendships and decided that for the second year at least she wouldn’t have a boyfriend. Of course it was only a few weeks after she had accepted this decision that she met Andy.

  He was to last for the next couple of years and their friendship was the easiest and closest she’d had. They met in the library, and it was the first relationship she had started without the confidence boosting effect of alcohol. He started talking to her in the queue and they very easily and naturally went for coffee. They were opposites and that seemed to work. While she was doing practical subjects like Information Technology and Business Studies he had chosen to study Film and Drama. This meant that he took her to all kinds of underground theatre and exposed her to a range of European and Japanese films that she would normally have avoided. Much of it was dull and difficult to understand but that only added a spark to their relationship. At the end of each viewing they would fiercely discuss the relative merits of the plays and films and usually managed to take the passion of the argument into bed. Things in the bedroom did eventually start to quieten though and she realised a little sadly that it was because of his inherent niceness and gentleness.

  She was beginning to realise that her craving for bondage and domination couldn’t be ignored. She could like men, she could find them attractive and start to admire them as people but they seemed to end up as friends or she found herself feeling the sort of love for them she felt for her brother. For some reason she needed what she called the ‘grrrrrr factor’ and that only came on when the men confessed to wanting to tease and dominate her.