Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  He laughed at the recollection later on that night at work, and for a moment felt faintly absurd, but by the time he was driving home he was eager to repeat the whole thing.

  Jack was disappointed to find Charlotte awake when he got in. She called him through to the bedroom. She was lying on the bed, naked, a wolfish glint flickering in her eyes. His heart plummeted and his disappointed dick sank back into his balls. She gestured for him to lie down, then tugged his trousers to his knees. “How long?” she teased, and with the tip of her tongue attempted to revive his thwarted penis through the fabric of his shorts. Jack tried to get into it, to get into her, but his thoughts were consumed only by the woman in the next room – her brilliant thighs, the earthy jut of her breasts, the promise of sex skulking between her legs. When Jack could stand it no longer he yanked his wife’s undulating head from his lap and dragged her through to the living room. He ordered her to her knees, pushed her head to the floor, then fixing his gaze on the woman’s stockings, fucked his wife with an alarming brutality. Charlotte was too stunned, too excited to protest as the carpet clawed at her cheeks and her husband’s angry member slammed full-force into her arse. She came quickly, seconds before Jack. She giggled, hoisted herself up, cupping her arse and cunt with both hands and scurried off to the bathroom. Jack lay prostrate on the floor, staring up at the woman. He felt a pang of something, but wasn’t sure what.

  Jack’s crush soon ballooned into an all-consuming obsession. He simply could not stop thinking about her. He drove home each morning stupidly excited, his balls churning at the thought of another liaison. He hadn’t masturbated so much since he was a teenager and the pang of something he’d felt that first morning had unveiled itself in a shocking detonation. Jack Gresty was in love. He was as good as having an affair with a portrait. What was more, Charlotte was on to him. Her jibes about his sudden loss of libido took on an accusatory tone. She ransacked his pockets and briefcase, opened his phone bills and, when she found nothing, sought retribution in the form of an all-singing all-dancing vibrator. In the weeks that followed, Jack would often return home from work to the sound of metronomic plunging. When she called him one evening at work and asked if he’d join her on Trisha, Jack knew his time was up. The Schiele had to go.

  As Jack peeled left out of the hospital car park the next morning an almighty pall descended over his world. It was silly, unfathomable that he should be feeling this way, but as he pulled into his drive he felt an astonishing sense of loss. He decided he would console himself with a valedictory wank.

  He poured himself a large scotch, lit some candles and lay flat on the sofa with his aching cock in his hand. She looked spectacular by candlelight and within moments he was bang into a greedy rhythm and a flight of disgusting sex scenarios. He was shuddering his way towards a magnificent climax, when he noticed a gradual shift of her legs. He froze. She shifted again, this time exposing the glistening matted well between her legs. Jack’s fingernails cut into his cock. He could barely breathe. He got up, slapped himself hard in the face and snapped the light on. Christ! She’d moved again. Gingerly, he approached the portrait. She opened her legs a little wider then shifted her arse forward so her cunt was right up in his face. Migod, he could smell her! Jack took his trembling fingers to her mound. Her arse jarred forward another inch and she swallowed them whole. More aroused than frightened, he leapt over to the dining table, grabbed a chair and positioned it in front of the fireplace. He climbed up, then placing his arms either side of the portrait to steady himself, entered her with a violent urgency.

  “What on earth...?”

  Jack spun round to find his wife in the doorway dressed for work, her face buckled in terror at the spectacle of her husband dry-humping the wall.

  A tearful confession vacillated on his lips, but before he could speak Charlotte was rushing over to him, her arms outstretched, her face etched in concern.

  “Christ! You’re sleepwalking! Shhh. Don’t be alarmed...”

  “Uh?”

  Jack swung back round and confronted the portrait. It was exactly as it always was. He dropped his gaze to his deflating dick – blood red and chafed at the tip, and screamed. When Charlotte got in from work that night she noted that the portrait was gone. She was quietly relieved. It was assumed that Jack’s erratic sleeping habits had been the cause of his recent misdemeanors and the “portrait incident” was not mentioned again. Jack spoke to the hospital superior, transferred over to a day shift and things returned to normal in the Gresty household.

  Later that year, Jack’s mother announced she would be visiting. It was the first time they’d thought of the voluptuous portrait in eight months. What would they tell her? Jack suggested they just say it was stolen, but Charlotte, fearing this might give the tawdry gift more prestige than it deserved, insisted on retrieving it from the attic. Jack was in the garden when she went up for it. He heard a loud yelp and then the sound of a body slapping the ground. He rushed indoors to find Charlotte supine on the floor, wide-eyed and gibbering. She gestured to the portrait lying face downwards at the other end of the hall. Jack advanced slowly towards it, his mind starting to whirr and sputter. He flipped it over, took one look at the woman’s heavily pregnant belly and fled the house.

  FINNY’S TALE – THE CREATURE IN THE GARDEN

  Lucy Golden

  Lucy Golden is an intensely private person: she is unwilling to publish her biographical details, considering the intimate revelations in her books to be more than adequate. She says, ‘My books and stories are extremely personal. They are drawn from the very deepest parts of my mind and if you don’t know me after reading them, you never will.’ Her fiction is based both on her own experiences and those of friends; these people are not impossibly rich, nor are they cardboard cutouts. They are real people, with real families, real lives, real careers, who all have a keen interest in sex which they have shared with the author. This populist element in her writing could explain why Lucy Golden has built up such a devoted following.

  I’d never seen a stripper before Rosie’s party. That’s not to say that I’m a complete innocent, but it’s not a normal part of a girl’s everyday life, is it?

  I’ve known Rosie since heaven knows when. In fact it was from her that I heard about this contract devising the new Census Data Collection Forms in the first place. Through her, I joined the contract team, and we shared a flat from the outset. Malcolm joined the team about eighteen months later, and although they hit it off straight away, it was one of those on-again, off-again kind of relationships, that you know will never get anywhere.

  I was on my own at that time and feeling sorry for myself: Rosie was not the only one to fancy Malcolm. I had managed a few gropes and snogs, but beyond that it never really got going and when his work on the contract came to an end and he announced he was going back home to South Africa, I knew I was going to miss him. Then it emerged that Rosie was going with him and that they were going to get married at some stage, and I knew I was going to miss her. In fact, I was jealous. I mean I was pleased for them, and I am fond of Rosie, but it brought home to me that it could have been me looking so happy and about to get married and it wasn’t. And I had been working on this one contract for three years and I was no nearer knowing what I wanted from life, let alone finding what I wanted, than when I started. I was beginning to feel old.

  So I approached their party, a combined going-away, stag party and hen night, determined to have a good time. I knew that most of the contract staff would be there so I was expecting to get lucky even if it didn’t last for ever. Sunday morning is the loneliest time of the week if you wake up to an empty bed, particularly when you can hear voices – or more – coming from your flat-mate’s room.

  It was early July, gloriously hot, and the party was being held in the old Victorian house that Malcolm and the other lads rented out along The Avenue. We held most of our parties there because although the house was nothing special, it had an enormous walled garden and a wide l
awn lined by thick trees and bushes. Alan, Malcolm’s best man, had organised “His and Hers” strippers: a Portuguese girl called Marenia for Malcolm and a gorilla man for Rosie. I drank quite a bit, probably more than I should, and made a last doomed bid for Malcolm which got nowhere; I’m not sure he even fully realised what was on offer. Anyway Alan dragged him back to the living room where, despite Malcolm’s pretence of objection, he was made to sit in a straight-backed chair in the centre of the floor. Marenia came down from where she had been hiding somewhere upstairs, the music started, and she began to do her stuff.

  Now I am not a lesbian, and I have no wish whatsoever to become one, but she was pretty, well no, more than pretty and not exactly pretty. She was stunning; glamorous, tall and elegant, but strutted with determination and pride in herself. The music was just right. She did two tracks, first a dance number and then a really old slow one called “Je t’aime”, and she danced really well to both of them. As I said, I had never seen a girl do a strip before, and I didn’t realise that she would take everything off and I didn’t realise that once she had done that she would drop down into a low squat on the floor and that her legs would be spread wide apart and we would all be able to see her, all of her. Nor that on some girls there could be so much to see.

  And I didn’t realise that she could do all that in someone’s house in front of forty or fifty people she had never seen before, and do it openly, unashamed, uninhibited with total confidence in herself, with grace in her movements and pride in the silent attention from all of us, male and female, her audience.

  And I didn’t realise how erotic all that could be, how deep an effect it could have when someone, who could be male or female, comes out and does something so exclusively and deliberately sexual in front of a crowd of people, and mostly how much of an effect that could have on me. She had a torrent of black hair which, all through her dance, swooped from side to side so that even after she had taken her top off, when we knew she was only wearing her little knickers, even then this thick wild mane kept tumbling forwards over her front. Her hands would disappear under the curtain of hair and then she would spin and the hair would spread out and suddenly we could see her breasts and her nipples and they would be hard and erect and I knew that mine were as well.

  And maybe it was because she was Portuguese, or maybe just confident, or maybe that was just how she preferred it, but she hadn’t shaved under her arms so there was thick luxuriant hair there and a sort of soft dark down running along her arms. It was all quite animal and untamed and I felt myself wanting to touch her, stroke her, and not just the hair but the skin too.

  So when – finally, after an age of teasing and waiting – she slid her tiny black knickers down her long dark legs, I expected another thick bush of that glorious hair, but she shocked me again. There was none: she was immaculately shaved, revealing thick ripe lips almost pouting at me with another pair of lips pushing out from between them and even her clit poked out too. Everything was being offered to us, visible and available. She looked so ready, so complete a woman like some kind of erotic fertility goddess. Everything that she had done, every gesture she had made (and all the little gaps which our minds had filled out), had built to this. Her whole body was primed, totally ripe and ready for sex. And I think I was jealous again. When she was naked she carried on writhing sensuously over Malcolm, resting one foot on his knee then sliding it up his thigh, completely opening herself up for him to see every fold, every glistening crease, every shining pore, everything. Her foot rested in his lap and the toes wriggled around, massaging him gently. At one point she slipped her hand inside the waist band of his shorts and for a few moments, as we all giggled with embarrassment, we only saw the fluttering of fingers beneath the thin cotton. And I was jealous of that too, of the attention that he was paying to her, of the sneaky gropes under her thighs and across her bottom, and of the way she was able to grope him. I wanted it to be me who was doing something so manifestly sexual, me who Malcolm was watching so intently and my body that he was casually caressing. And I wanted to be the one who kept running back to his lap, who could feel his erection, who could hold his head to my breasts and feel his lips nuzzle at me, pretending he was just pretending when we all knew he wasn’t.

  And at last, as the song sobbed to its wailing end, it should have been me who came up to wrap their arms round him, and me who pressed his face hard against my belly. It should have been my body, my scent, my arousal, he inhaled in those deep slow breaths. Me, he finally kissed.

  But it wasn’t me and my arousal was wasted and it all seemed so unfair, specially when he already had Rosie who would be good and loyal, and now he had this girl too, offered in front of all of us, simply as a pleasant diversion. I knew I could have filled either role and I wanted to fill both and I was denied either.

  I stayed in the doorway, outside the cheering and the laughter, watching from a safe distance behind the door as she took her bow and collected her clothes. As she left, passing close in front of me, her clothes bundled under one arm, she flashed an excited, jubilant grin and then was gone, a smooth naked bottom scampering up the stairs to get dressed. I wanted to follow her, but for what? To complain that Malcolm didn’t want me? To tell her I was jealous? That I wanted her life? That I wanted people to stand round watching me, admiring me, the way they admired her? That I wanted to be her? It would have been stupid and I skulked back into the living room as people were preparing Rosie for her turn.

  She too had to take her place on the chair in the centre while a man in a gorilla suit, looking frankly rather silly, came out and started prancing around her. At least, it started silly, but that changed. Again, there was some music and he pulled her up so that he was sort of dancing with her but his huge hands, all moulded plastic and nylon fur, kept groping all over her, over her bottom and up the front of her tee shirt, and his wrinkled plastic nose sniffed and snorted, pushing under her arms and between her legs and making obscene animal grunts of joy at the smells he was pretending to find. It was well done, and was very funny. Rosie laughed as much as everybody else, but following the girl before and with the thoughts that she had put in my mind, well I am sure in all our minds, the gorilla’s game was not entirely innocent. His blank disregard for her attempts to restrain his hands, the complete lack of any expression on his artificial face, his refusal to give any indication that he understood speech, all these together gave it a sinister edge. Like a ventriloquist’s discarded dummy, it was both human and inhuman: familiar and dangerous; playful and frightening. Overall, it made him even more uncontrollable and intimidating and yet, somehow, alluring.

  He was a big man – and Rosie is five foot nothing in the tallest of her spike heels – so when he picked her up bodily he could turn her upside down ignoring her struggles to keep her skirt from tumbling down and showing her knickers. He simply cuffed her hands away and eventually she gave up, letting the skirt fall down over her head while his unfeeling plastic fingers scratched at the taut material between her thighs, jabbed at the damp crease and plucked at the elastic, threatening always to pull her knickers right off. Then he pulled her up higher, gathering in the skirt but now tugging at her tee shirt where it was tucked in at the waist and finally releasing it. Amid her squeals and giggles, she tried to keep him at bay, but again he ignored her protests and finally pulled it out so the shirt tumbled down to her armpits and her bare breasts were revealed to us all, excited, erect and full. Turned back again, he tucked her under one arm and she made only token resistance when he began to pull her top right off. Once that had been tossed away, she tried to cover herself with her hands but he shoved them aside and scratched around her breasts, flicking at her nipples and pulling, pinching at the real flesh with synthetic, unyielding claws.

  With his curiosity apparently satisfied, he laid her down on the floor, but still kept snuffling around at her and preventing her getting up, grunting and then rubbing himself and sort of humping at her. Finally he hauled her up again, threw
her over his shoulder and in a half crouch ambled off out of the circle, pausing briefly next to one girl who squealed in real fear the instant he put his face against her. The cheers and laughter with a big round of applause drowned all this as he put Rosie down again, took his mask off, kissed her and took his bow.

  When a game of “Pig in the Middle” started – the lads refusing to let Rosie have her tee shirt back – I refilled my glass and slipped out onto the terrace to get a little air, to sit down and allow my thoughts to calm in the stillness of evening. They had put candles around, little tea-lights mixed in with bigger candles stuck on plates and in bottles so the whole area twinkled. The sun had disappeared behind the gigantic Cedar trees which marked the bottom of the garden, but it was still light and the smell of barbecues and the sound of other music from other parties drifted through the night.

  “Lovely garden! Lovely night!” The gorilla man was standing behind me, now in shorts and a striped shirt, gripping a beer can in one great fist and a slice of pizza in the other.

  I hated to be so transparent. “I suppose so. I hate gardens.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That’s rather a pity.” His voice came low and deep from inside his chest and sounded wounded so that I was ashamed of my scorn and tried to make amends.

  “But no, you’re right. It is lovely.”

  He grinned. “I’m Jeff” and drank most of the beer down in one and then grinned again, mischievous and enticing. “Bloody hot in that suit.”

  I smiled, or something. He did not look any smaller now that he was out of the gorilla suit but he did seem friendly and his slightly dishevelled fair curly hair seemed almost boyish. I was really fairly drunk by this stage and when he moved on to some vacuous comment about the pizza (he was only making polite conversation after all) I said I thought gorillas only ate bananas. What a stupid thing to say!