I pushed down on my heels, arched my back like a drawn bow, and drew him up inside me. He moved like a piston, his breath warm and steady against my ear. Then he gasped for breath. His body stiffened and, that same moment, a shudder of contractions ran through me. I threw my head back and it felt as we climaxed as if a city of lights had lit up across my nervous system. I could see stars behind my closed eyes. I rose weightlessly from the bed and I was aware vaguely of the sun going down, the room where we lay beneath the white canopy turning slowly to shadow.
5
The Game
All writing is autobiography. If I were to write a story about a young black man from an estate in the north of England, my geographical, gender and ethnic opposite, I would provide him with patience and perseverance. I would make him quick on his feet, secretly ambitious, moody, easily manipulated and anxious to appear agreeable.
What happened that day with Roger Devlin I immortalised in a short story that lacked the fine detail that comes with experience; in writing as in life. I neglected to say that after he had severed my hymen and I screamed my way through my first orgasm, he was captivated by the spots of blood speckling the creamy smear on the bedcover. He reached for his camera and I listened as the shutter went snap, snap, snap, the steady beat the same rhythm as when he had made love to me. I laid back, breasts nursed in my palms, thighs wet, the waft of my own scent in a cloud below the white canopy.
It was Bella who came into my mind that moment. She always said people take sex far too seriously. It's just a bit of fun. I felt detached, tranquil, floating like a feather; not merely content, but the shadow of childhood had vanished in the beam of light piercing the room from the balcony. I had shed my virginity and it was rather perfect with a perfect stranger. There were no reproaches. No promises. No future. I instantly understood that sex was an unknown land to be explored, as the man who had once owned the house had explored Borneo for butterflies. Had I allowed Simon Wells to fumble his way inside me, it would have been clumsy, inept, and my journey along the diamond highway to erotica may never have begun.
Roger Devlin stopped taking close-ups and reached for his boxers. He blew out his cheeks.
'You're something else,' he said.
'Am I?'
'Damn right.' He paused. 'A virgin whore! I didn't think I'd ever get to meet one. He pulled on his jeans. 'I hope you're on the pill.'
'I'm not, actually.'
'Well, you ought to be.'
'I didn't plan on, you know...'
'Are you sure about that?'
He blew out his cheeks again and wore that look people have when they are dealing with a puppy that's just peed on the carpet.
'What if you get pregnant?'
'You'll just have to marry me.'
'I don't know what my wife would have to say about that.'
It made it even better somehow. I was the other woman. He buttoned his shirt, pulled on yellow socks, brown brogues that needed a polish; good quality. I watched and he watched me watching him.
'You enjoyed that, didn't you?' he asked, expecting praise, men, I would find, always do. A flush rose over my cheeks.
'Yes, actually.'
'You were dying to take your clothes off.'
'No I wasn't.'
He studied me for a few seconds, shaking his head. 'Well, now you'd better put them back on again.'
I rose reluctantly, padded across the room and stood looking out at the garden from the balcony. I liked being naked. I remained motionless, eyes closed, the sun warming my body.
'Come on, then, I've got a train to catch.'
My clothes were on the chair in front of the row of mirrors that concealed the walk in closets. With the sun behind me, my reflection revealed a version of myself that was different in ways that were subtle and understated. My cheeks were pronounced, rather than gaunt, and there was a serenity about my eyes that looked back as if the girl in the mirror was how I was destined to be and the girl who had woken in her bed that morning was someone else.
'Excuse me, when you've finished standing there admiring yourself.'
The light changed, a cloud must have passed over the sun. I watched in the mirror as he telescoped the legs of the tripod and placed it in the bag, the camcorder with its erotic narrative cased and placed on top. I dressed, then held out my hand.
'I think you have something that belongs to me.'
'I'm going to hang on to them, if you don't mind...'
I shook my head and wondered if he would hang my knickers on the wall as they hang the stuffed heads of stags in the corridor at Daddy's club. As I pulled on my shoes, I was still expecting him to say he was going to make an offer on Black Spires. But he didn't. I locked the house, with his help turning the key. I dropped him at the station, and I never saw Roger Devlin again – although that's not strictly true.
I have seen his naked back and white bottom many times. The video he shot of me barefoot in the garden, climbing the stairs, removing my clothes and spreading my legs was cut into a fifteen-minute film which he posted with a two-minute teaser on a website where, for 99 cents, my face pixelated, you can watch me losing my virginity over and over again.
Did I regret what had happened that day? No. On the contrary. I had taken off my clothes because I had wanted to. I could have told myself I was only trying to sell the house. But that's not true. After my long imprisonment behind the walls of school, I wanted to shrug off the past like a butterfly leaving its cocoon and be who I was, not who I appeared to be in my scarlet blazer, white blouse and blue skirt, the colours of the Union Jack that flew over the tower at Saint Sebastian's.
After being compelled by Mother from the garden into the role of secret agent in her bridge partner's office, I was ready to do something that at the time would have seemed out of character, although, with the benefit of experience, was in reality a facet of myself that had been concealed as if below a layer of dust and just needed a puff of breath to blow it away.
The moment I took off my top, I was on a journey and it felt completely natural to take off everything. When naked you are in a sense reborn. The exams were over. There were no rat-faced nuns spying on me through half-closed doors. No Mother staring through the bedroom window. Flecks of gold hovered in the sunlight; the dust blown from the mirror of my hidden self. There was a humming silence like that feeling you get in your ears when you hold your breath. I was drugged by my own sense of daring and outrageousness, that feeling of letting go, of breaking the taboo.
Ever since that time when I was caught in the showers with Bella, kissing, just kissing, I had wanted to rebel. Now, I knew what I was rebelling against: the holy sisters, Mother, the snares and traps of my class and education. I was born to marry some clone of Simon Wells, breed, have affairs, fight with my daughters and go for long walks with small dogs. Suddenly, I felt free, feverish, defiant. As I ran my panties down my legs, I started to dance, each step as if on a highwire taking me across the abyss from my protected past to an unknown future.
Timing is everything. The first time for a girl is critical: the difference between an A or a B in the exams; the life-changing event that will determine your attitude, perhaps forever. Roger Devlin wanted sex without strings; sex with a young girl because girls make men feel young. What I didn't know, I still didn't know myself, not then, but I had an intuition the moment he slid through the warm waters of my vagina, that this was right for me: sex with a stranger without commitments, with the intensity and detachment I was going to need when I began to chronicle my life as fiction.
The girl I wrote about in the short story was eighteen. Ten years had gone by and I could see now how Roger Devlin had bent me to his will through a combination of perplexing mood swings and words as shrewd and perceptive as any poet. On the journey from Canterbury to Wingham, my thighs on show, my breasts accentuated by the seat belt, he didn't take sly peeks at me, no, he stared out the side window and only spoke to criticise my driving. He made me feel clumsy, immature,
inept. By the time we reached Black Spires, I was sweaty, nervous and, as he seemed so hard to please, I had become disposed to do everything I could in order to please him.
Black Spires was like a set on a film lot, the sky sapphire, the light soft and hazy. The gravel crunched beneath his leather shoes as he walked away from the car. The camcorder whirred.
I make up my mind whether or not I want something by taking pictures.
The eye of the lens was on me. The nuance was unclear. But the elasticity of words, the intricacy of words, the supremacy of words, is like the invisible power of the wind that bends the trees and acts as a drug, a soporific. Why else would priests develop that deep resonant voice that calls to your soul; or tries to?
He looked directly into my eyes.
Just pretend the camera's not there. Can you do that?
By posing the question and my agreeing, we were now complicit.
You have to be strict with door locks, show them who's boss.
The word strict reminded me of school where I found it easier to obey than rebel. He asked if the piano was included, implying that he was serious about buying the house. He then said he hated quibbling over small things.
Those small things were peeled off one by one, starting when we reached the garden.
Take your shoes off, I want to get one of those barefoot in the grass shots.
This was a direction, not a suggestion. He said the camera liked me, that I could be a model and, with those words, like a spell, I played the model. I thrust out my hips, stared back over my shoulder, eyes widened, lips pursed, bottom tensed, the object of desire I tried to create alone in front of the mirror performed for a man with a camera that formed a barrier and a bridge between us. Being barefoot is sensuous; tactile. I was reminded of the gardener staring at me in my bikini, toes tended by the prickling blades of grass, perspiration veneered on my back. The air was motionless. It felt new; unbreathed, and I watched two twirling butterflies on wings the same shade of pink as my skirt.
We climbed the stairs. He didn't tell me to undo my blouse, he asked: Will you do something for me? To which I readily said yes, and once you undo one button, it is only a question of time before you undo them all. He had tapped into my fantasies. He swept aside my social programming and made me conscious of what I believed I wanted or, indeed, did want.
Girls, most girls, want to please. They answer yes to those men who know how to pose the right questions. What I didn't know at the time, and was shocked to learn, is that there is a guide for men who want to seduce women called The Game, an allegedly true memoir of how Neil Strauss, a shy, inhibited guy, turns himself into a smooth-talking womaniser of the Roger Devlin school.
The technique is basically this: when a man meets a woman he desires, he doesn't look directly at her and speaks to her with indifference. Strauss suggests that in this way, the woman grows anxious to please; programmed little Pavlov's dogs that we are. At the appropriate time, he touches her in a casual way (Devlin's hand on my leg in the car), and turns the situation around by giving her something – it's called anchoring – a glass of wine, his phone number, some attention. He pays her a small compliment (the camera likes you) and uses 'trigger' words (will you do something for me?) to show that he is agreeable if she responds positively to his requests.
6
Svengali
There is a lot more to The Game, of course, but the message contained in the book swept into my mind that New Year's Day after lunch at Pinchitos and we returned to my flat.
Tom took my keys to open the door and, after the cold tramp through the frigid streets, I bathed in the warmth pumping from the iron radiators. I had left the heating on and the living room at three in the afternoon was as hot as that summer's day ten years ago. I tossed my coat on a chair and was about to unbutton my jacket.
'Wait,' he said. 'Will you do something for me?'
My breath caught in my throat.
'...what did you say?'
His request had sounded in my ears as if someone had shouted from the past. He was holding out his palms.
'I'm sorry?' he said, and I took a breath.
'I just read your mind, that's all.'
'I'd better be careful what I'm thinking.'
'Yes.' I took a beat. My heart was going pitter-patter, like rain on a window. 'Don't they say we are what we think?'
'Do you believe that?' he asked, and I shrugged.
'I have a friend who reads the Tarot.'
'Did she say you were going to meet a dark handsome stranger?'
'She doesn't like giving me bad news. Anyway,' I said, glancing around the room. 'Who is this handsome stranger?'
He grinned and threw his jacket on top of my own, pinning it down.
'Music,' I suggested, and scrolled down my iPhone: 'Avril Lavigne, Bach, Gypsy Kings, Hotel Costes, KD Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Mozart, Pink Floyd, Tribe 8…'
'Tribe 8?'
'You like them?'
'Never heard of them.'
'It's a dyke band. How about random?'
'Isn't that a compromise?'
'No, it's eclectic.'
'No, it's a compromise. Hotel Costes,' he then said, and I set the iPhone in its dock.
The room vibrated with drums, brass, maracas, a mélange of sound roaming the space.
'So, Tom Bridge, you were saying?' I continued, and he sat in the armchair.
'I said, will you do something for me?'
'You already know I will,' I replied.
He crossed his legs. 'Take your clothes off for me.'
I stared back at him.
'I am a doctor,' he added, and it made me smile.
The thing is, like that day long ago at Black Spires, it was hot and my jeans were sawing into my crotch like a cheese wire. I was desperate to strip off my clothes. Did he know that? Had I beamed out my subliminal desires and he was responding to them?
'You want me to take my clothes off?'
'Yes.'
I raised my shoulders, as if surprised, and tried not to show that I was rather pleased as I unhooked the first of the row of brass buttons on my jacket, one button leading to the next like I was playing an accordion. Being naked for a woman isn't the same as it is for a man; our clothes acquire different associations. We don't dress in clothes, we masquerade in the robes of contrivance: too tight, too small, the contours outlining shapes and displaying slivers of flesh like promises, like the trailers for a film. Nudity is a logical progression.
An idea for a story jumped into my mind, a continuation of my experiences with Roger Devlin. After being seduced, the female protagonist becomes obsessed with the camera watching her during sex and puts the films online – she always wears a mask, of course, and charges customers 99 cents to see the edited movies. She is in league with her web guy, a facsimile of my web guy, Bradley, a boy devoted to barter – he'll fix my laptop for free if I fix the irritation in his blue jeans.
'Bradley, you're twenty-two years old.'
'In my prime, right? You know what, Katie, I could give you a real good seeing to.'
'Bradley, if you put all that testosterone into repairing my machine it wouldn't keep going down on me...'
He did a little shimmy. 'You've got a way with words, Katie, I'll give you that.'
My face must have showed my thoughts; I'm an open book, a blank page.
'What are you thinking about?' Tom asked.
I stared back across the room. 'I'm not telling you,' I replied, and held the jacket out for him to inspect; it was rather gorgeous – a shade of blue that's not quite blue and not quite anything else, cerulean, kingfisher, lazuline.
'Do you like the colour?' I asked, and he didn't answer the question.
'You should wear more green,' he said instead, and paused, 'to match your eyes.'
'Yes, doctor. Would you like me to change my hairstyle as well?'
He smiled. I liked his smile, natural, full-lipped. The low sun edged his face in gold, making it hard to see h
is expression. I dragged the rollneck over my head and shook out my hair. He leaned forward to watch as if he were at the theatre following a scene on stage. I took a step towards him and pointed down at my boots.
'Can you?'
He untied the laces. I lifted my feet in turn so he could remove my boots, which he placed beside the chair. Next my socks, stretching them out and placing them on top of the boots with a neatness I approved of. The snake's head on my belt clasp had blue eyes, to match the jacket, a detail. I released the clasp and writhed like a plume of smoke as I lowered my jeans. I sat on the edge of the sofa to pull the material over my feet, and stood again, barefoot on the carpet.
'You have beautiful feet, they're your best feature,' he said.
'Oh,' I replied.
'Apart from all the other best features, obviously...'
'Too late, give me my socks...'
'Absolutely not.'
'I'm going to console myself counting all my shoes...'
'You can do that, Miss Boyd, in your own time.'
'Bully.'
I twirled in my underwear and was struck by a thought that took me skipping through to the bedroom. There were shoes everywhere, breeding like mice in every corner, in bags and boxes, under the bed, lined on racks at the bottom of the closet where I hide sometimes; ankle boots, riding boots, boots with moons and stars, boots with chains and silver heels, court shoes, ballet pumps, trainers, flip-flops, Jimmy Choo sandals with straps as intricate as a cat's cradle and Jimmy Choo black patent stilettos like objects of wonder in a museum. I must have a hundred pairs of shoes and culling them is like killing baby seals.
Now where was I?
Ah yes, the bottom drawer, which I opened, and stared down at the blank eyes of the mask waiting there as if with secret plans of its own. Just as when you glance at a pair of shoes and it feels as if destiny is at work, when I first saw the mask in a store in Soho, I knew we were meant for each other. My hands reached out as if drawn by the motions of the moon and I slipped the elastic bow over the back of my head. The mask fit to my face as if drawn from a mould, the curve below my eyes shaped to my cheekbones, the angle across my brow like two wings that meet in a coxcomb of tiny black feathers. I turned to the mirror and instantly felt as if I had become somebody else, someone I didn't altogether recognize, but who, I knew, would be able to glide across the dance floor at Pink without need for words or justification. Just as I had concealed the tattoo beneath my hair, in the mask I concealed myself beneath a veil of mystery and anonymity.
Katie In Love: full length erotic romance novel Page 6