Ali May
Ali May is International Editor of the Erotic Review and an award-winning writer and a broadcaster. In a previous life he has done strange things, including importing lorries to Iran from Japan, and being enlisted as a marine – not by choice – when he didn’t know how to swim. His first collection of short stories, Geography of Attraction, was published in 2015, and he is currently writing his first novel.
The first time I had sex was on a bus. It was when streets were narrower in Tehran but summers just as hot. City buses were imported second-hand from Germany and Hungary. Their interiors were refurbished to last a little longer; but the new seats, made of metal frames and foam cushions covered with cheap, faux leather, were not strong enough to tolerate vandalism of everyday. The seats were red or blue or green, but the colour didn’t make much difference in giving passengers a pleasant experience. They were so worn you could feel the frames underneath. The covers were either jammed to granite hardness with overstuffing, or so yielding that the existence of the cushion over the frame was a moot point in terms of physical experience.
With the bus fare came a possible bonus, which meant a lot in August 1990, during the post-war period of rations and low supplies. If you bought a bus ticket on a summer’s day in Tehran you’d already paid for a mobile sauna session. The bonus was the potential for the sauna to turn into a steam room. If a small number of passengers boarded the bus, dry heat might prevail. But with each additional passenger getting onto the moving spa, the humidity level grew. On a bus filled with passengers you were guaranteed the full steam room experience.
There was another attraction to boarding a full bus. Buses in Iran were traditionally a segregated means of travel. Men occupied the front and women the back. As with many such rules, this subdivision was not carried out on an egalitarian principle, nor did it take account of demographic realities. Almost two-thirds of the space was designated male territory. Bars were put in place to make sure division was practically enforced and morality preserved. It was only natural that women invaded the men’s section at busy times. When the bus was really full, it felt as if the spa manager had turned up the heat to maximum and forgotten there were perishable humans inside, requiring both oxygen and residual hydration.
To get to the park where I played football with my friends, I always got on the bus at the beginning of its route. On this particularly day all the windows of the bus were open, but in only a few minutes I felt sweat drops travelling all the way from my temples to my chin, armpits to navel. I was standing in the open space towards the back of the male area. As the bus filled up, I had to retreat, move all the way to the window and submit to being carried by the crowd this way and that. It happened only a few stops from the park. The bus was still quite full, but there was a bit of breathing space. I was looking out the window when I felt something soft and rounded touching my buttocks. It moved rhythmically, and with it I felt the front of my trousers beginning to stick out. I knew what was happening counted as sinful, but I liked it. I liked it so much I was scared to turn around and risk losing it. I’d heard stories. Navid brought “super” magazines to the park every week and we all hid under an old weeping willow and looked at those forbidden pictures in amazement and desire.
I adjusted the bag containing my football boots to my front, trying to conceal my response. I closed my eyes and thought of the naked girls I’d seen in those pages: German girls, Swedish girls, English girls, Japanese girls. But the girl who was rubbing her bottom against mine with so much intention was an Iranian schoolgirl. I could tell by the little bit of the dusty, cotton and polyester uniform I could see in my peripheral vision that she must be in high school, a couple of years older than me. I was aching to turn and look at her, but scared that people might notice what we were up to if I did. Summoning my most innocent expression, I glanced around as though to get my bearings and managed a forty-five degree turn to the right. Now I could see that she was taller than me and was indeed wearing the navy manto and head covering falling to the chest that girls her age were expected to wear to school. Body draped, her round face was left exposed to absorb all the sun. She didn’t look like any of the girls in the magazines, but in my new position she managed to grab hold of my hand and press it. Was it a warning? Was she angry with me? As I considered these options, the crowd suddenly pushed us towards the wall.
Now we were standing side by side, but somehow my opened hand was caught between her soft bum and the hard bus wall. I didn’t know what to do. My hand, the whole of my arm, my complete being felt paralysed. I was afraid that if I moved my hand she’d get upset and make a noise. I didn’t want to be caught. It would be awful, the thirteen-year-old son of a war martyr touching a strange girl’s buttock on the bus, in public, in broad daylight. Could there be anything worse?
She kept moving her body slowly. Her left arm was rubbing against my right shoulder; by the terms of our strange dance, it was her turn to make a new contact angle. A turn of only thirty degrees to the left meant that she was driving me crazy with her breast. Wasn’t she wearing anything under her uniform? Thanks to summer her nipple was caressing my arm where my short sleeve ended. There were only two things I wanted in the world at that very moment: I wanted the driver to brake hard, and for it to be suddenly night-time and all of Tehran swallowed in darkness. There have been very few occasions in my life when I have been grateful for the mysterious rhythms and spurts of Tehran traffic, but for once it worked for my pleasure. As the urge to give full attention to that bare nipple became alarmingly compelling, the bus suddenly jolted to a brutal stop, and yes, she was rubbing my entire front with her front for three seconds. Her conspiratorial smile told me that she knew how I felt.
I could stay no longer. With the sports bag clutched where it was required, I ran awkwardly down the steps of the bus and up the street. I’d already missed my stop and stayed on the bus for eight more, quite a long way. But on that day I ran all the way to the park where there was a pond filled with weed and gold fish and ducks, and I jumped right into it with the bag still glued to me. Two guards thought I was trying to mess with their authority and dragged me out and ‘taught me a lesson’ by repeatedly pinching my ears. I didn’t mind; I had cleansed my body.
FOUR IN HAND
John Gibb
John Gibb first started writing questionable stories for the Erotic Review when it was the only monthly magazine in Europe committed to serious sexual fiction. He learnt his trade as a journalist writing about crime for the London Evening Standard, but the subjects of his stories range from food to education, to the power of innocent love and the erotic potential of the escape mechanism fitted to the Tornado F3 air defence aircraft.
I
“I won’t forget December 23rd 1983 in a hurry. Holiday time in the West End and I was on my way to pick up Fowler and take him for lunch at Bentley’s. I arrived at Soho Square early and decided to take advantage of the warmth of the recording studio. A black Daimler parked on the kerb, half on a double yellow line, had blocked the way in and I was forced to squeeze between the car and the front door. It was a sharp, clear day, no warmth in the sun and the vapour from the car’s exhaust rising in a plume to join the sooty effluvia which in those days floated like grey gas above the London roof tops. A man in a heavy Crombie lounged against the car studying his watch. ‘Plod,’ I thought, ‘doesn’t look happy.’ As I climbed the wooden staircase, I could hear raised voices, one of which was Fowler’s. An argument seemed to be in progress and by the time I reached the fourth floor, words, louder and more formal than is acceptable in polite conversation, were becoming clear: ‘You may think yourself qualified to advise others about pronunciation, but these are my words and it is what I say that goes.’ To which Fowler replied in that infuriating way he had, eyebrows half way up his forehead, and almost certainly with his fucking monocle jammed into the side of his face. He was employing his calm and patient voice: ‘I have to produce a recording of your book which the public will buy, which is why I hav
e been employed to record you reading it. Perhaps if you spent more time mixing with real people instead of having them served up to you like biscuits, you would be aware that EQUERRY is pronounced “EQUERRY” and not “EQUAIRY”.’ I reached the top floor where there was a single closed door above which a light glowed red and a sign screwed to the wall beneath it reinforced the warning with SILENCE in neon. Insipid daylight seeped in via a grubby sash window and I could see storm clouds gathering black above the City which meant that snow was on the way. Beside the closed door, perched on a typist’s chair, was a girl in a riding coat. She stared at me, a handkerchief entwined between her fingers. I said, ‘Who are you? What’s going on?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the Duke,’ she replied, ‘he’s not happy at all.’ For a moment, I failed to understand and said, ‘What Duke? When is Fowler going to finish?’ And it was some moments before I remembered that he had been working for months to publish a book about driving teams of horses with carriages at speed about the countryside. ‘Christ,’ I said, ‘you mean The Duke?’ And her nod coincided with an explosive and uninhibited retort to Fowler’s remarks: ‘Who are you to tell me how to read English; anyway, who’s President of the fucking English Speaking Union? I’ll tell you who is, I fucking am and either we do this fucking book my way or we don’t do it at all.’ An impasse, it seemed to me, which would result in Fowler saying something like, ‘OK, if you want to make a fool of yourself, who am I to get in your way?’ Which in the event was exactly what he said. It was probably time to go, I felt.
I looked at the girl, now on her feet. She was tall and fresh faced, cheeks pink, hair in a bunch. ‘Do you fancy lunch, it looks as if I’m going to be stood up?’ And she smiled and nodded and we set off downstairs, and that was how I met Nellie.”
II
“I’m Nellie Wallis and I work as a groom at Ronnie Whistler’s yard in Larkrise. Sometimes the Duke passes the word that he needs a couple of lads to act as back-steppers for his four in hand and he’s chosen me ten times in all. I have to hang on the back of the carriage and move about while he barks away at the front and we canter around the obstacles. He kits us out with black riding pants and boots and he looks after us with a good feed and a bit of jocularity. On this particular day, he’s picked me up at the yard and we’ve gone to Windsor and spent an hour or so on the marathon course and then he’s told me to come with him to London because he’s going to record his book on Competition Carriage Driving and he might need someone to run a couple of ‘errands’. Well, of course, we all know what that means, but it never amounts to anything much and it’s nothing I can’t handle. Then he’s fallen out with a beard in the recording studio and seems to have forgotten about me and then this man appears and offers to take me out for tea. He’s a broomstick, slick hair with curls on his neck, seems to have broken his nose at some time; pin-striped suit and silk shirt and tie. Probably a bit of a rascal. On the way out I tell Sergeant Hoskins that it looks like being a long day and I’m going to find something to eat, while my new friend whistles up a cab.
“As we progress slowly down Old Compton Street, he says his name is Porteous. He refers to himself only by his sir-name, shakes hands, shoots his cuffs and smiles. Perfect gent. ‘Fancy a spot of fish?’ he says as we arrive in a lane somewhere at the bottom of Regent Street and a man in a heavy blue coat steps out and opens the cab door and ushers us into Bentley’s Oyster Bar. It’s a wide, cream-painted restaurant with a zinc-topped bar and little booths where waiters in white aprons are serving oysters and Champagne. The downstairs room is full of smart-looking, well-dressed gentlemen drinking out of silver tankards and reading the Sporting Life. These are big, well-fed, pink-faced boys in Holland suits and pale blue ties. Porteous says this is where old rugby players eat when they’re just past their best and bored with training. ‘Bubbly?’ he asks and passes me a heavy goblet of Champagne. He opens his wallet and removes a wad of notes which he passes to the doorman and turns to me: ‘Handy chap, Coleman, places the occasional investment for me over the road.’”
III
“I’m Keith Coleman and I have a small property in Esher, next to the cricket ground. I earn a fair wage doing the door at Bentley’s and I’ve been greeting at lunchtime during the week since 1966. My Father did it before me and passed on all the ins and outs. In the evening I do alternate nights at the Café de Paris and sometimes help out at The Savoy. It was December 23rd when Mr Porteous came in for luncheon with a tall girl in a heavy riding coat which he slipped from her shoulders and handed to me to deal with. She’s a striking filly underneath, long legs in a pair of black riding breeches and boots and a saucy little bum-freezer jacket. I have a feeling that I may have seen her in the ring at Epsom from time to time. I never forget an arse and I can see that Mr Porteous has decided to make a modest investment in the hope that something positive may come of it. He passes me a wager which I take across the road to Ladbroke and when I return, they’re sitting down to a couple of dozen ‘Extra Fine’ and flagons of Black Velvet. Nice.”
IV
At Bentley’s, Porteous is secure in his metier; he finds himself in the company of men he feels at home with; rugged characters with whom he collides on muddy Saturday afternoons at Richmond and Harlequins and who he plays golf with on Sundays at Royal St. George’s. These men are the salt of his earth who on weekday evenings, congregate at the Clermont and Boodles and take their pleasures discreetly; men to whom the sacrament of comradeship comes first and foremost. Today he has acquired the accoutrement of a girl who has appeared out of the blue and, he has to admit, taken his breath away. It seems to him that she is perfectly acceptable; she is after all, known to The Duke and is familiar with the social and sporting intricacies of the turf. He glances covertly at her across the table; takes in her eyes, wide apart, her generous mouth, skin firm as an apricot. She knows how to handle an oyster, lifting the slippery meat to her lips and sliding it across her sharp tongue with relish. He has noticed the muscular swell of her thigh as she slides behind the table onto the soft, leather seat. He wants her and has it in his mind to take her back to his pied à terre in the Albany. “I want to show you my little place round the corner,” he says as the waiters clear away, “Edward Heath has an apartment there, so does Buccleuch.” Nellie looked at him, “Who?” she says. “Well it’s a good place for coffee and a brandy. Perhaps a smoke? Get away from here.”
The girl considers him. Well watered as she is, she has a strong head and is in control. She has become bored with the ferrety attentions of priapic National Hunt jockeys and likes the look of this runner and is happy to let events take their course. She smiles across the table and the deal is silently done.
It is at this moment that the head waiter, Stokes, sidles up to the table and says, “Mr Porteous, sir, I have a call for you,” handing him a bakelite telephone and bending down to plug the cable into a socket by the table. It is Fowler. “Slight difficulty, old boy,” he says. “The Duke’s on his way down and he’s not at all pleased. He says you’ve kidnapped his groom and he needs her for an errand. He has his personal protection officer with him and they’ll be with you in five minutes. I should scarper if I were you.” Porteous quickly fishes out another wad of crisp notes, slips them across the desk to Stokes, nods at Coleman who is watching from the door, and has Nellie in the back of a cab heading south as the bonnet of the Ducal Daimler noses into the top of Swallow Street.
The Albany will turn anyone’s head; cut off from the chaos of the city, it is a refuge for powerful men just to the north of Piccadilly, accessed through a discreet wicket gate where residents and their friends are welcomed and strangers eyed with suspicion. Porteous has inherited his apartment from his father and the faded art deco would have been what Wodehouse had in mind when describing the bachelor Wooster at home. He sits and watches the girl looking down across the gardens, her shape at the window caught in black silhouette against the weak afternoon sun. He stands and slips his arm around her waist and she rests her head on his sho
ulder. He kisses her as she turns in his arms and clings to him and he feels her hard breasts against his chest. There is always a moment as Porteous starts a relationship with a woman, when his heart becomes saturated with heat, causing a shortness of breath and light-headedness. It is a physiological manifestation of his astonishment that a woman is prepared to react to him in a sexual way.
Nellie, swept along by strange events, is herself light-headed, her breath coming in short bursts, her face flushed, a pulse beating in the sinews of her neck. She sinks to the floor where Porteous, spread like a crucifix on the deep carpet, lies waiting for her. He submits to the girl, who is slowly filleting his clothes, de-boning him of his Hackett pants until everything has been peeled away and his cock lies fresh as a tropical fruit across his stomach and she can slip from her jacket and kneel between his legs and take his arms and pull his hands into her clothes and he is able to tug the riding tunic over her head. And she sits back and he pulls down the boots and slides his hands into the waistband of her breeches and the Christmas sun squats, scarlet, on the rooftops of Mayfair and floods gold through the window and catches the gold of her hair. And when Nellie takes him in her hands for the first time, Porteous immediately ejaculates sumptuously into the valley of her breasts while he gazes, terrified, into her startled face.
Nellie knows instinctively that moments like this can be an end or the beginning and she says, “Hello, you certainly needed that didn’t you, now it’s my turn,” and she takes his hand and places it deftly between her thighs. She sits, facing him, legs apart, her back arched like a bow, her index and central fingers holding the lips of her vagina apart and, while she sorts out his hand so that he can do what she wants him to do, she says, “Some days the fever comes at you without warning.” And she takes his fingers and sets them to work in her wet, rustling, fecund sex and as she writhes and moans, she holds his gaze and all the gathering shocks and nervous impulses and waves of breathless fear and passion are passing through her eyes and after a while, she falls forward, her body curled, across him until she lies, breathless, along his chest, and his hand deep in her groin and her mouth on his as she shudders and brings up her knees and he feels the wetness flooding from her.
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