The Blue Guide

by Carrie Williams

  ‘Now for the main course,’ he announced, looking up into my eyes, and again I felt an immense thrill ripple up through my body as he began jabbing at my labia with his tongue, probing them with his mouth as he had the seafood. I closed my eyes and envisaged my own vulva, its pinks and purples recalling the flesh tones of the prawns, its juices winking like shellfish on a fishmonger’s slab.

  I was startled from my weird vision by a sudden icy blast, and opened my eyes to see that Daniel had drenched my pussy with half a glass of Chablis. I sat up, giggling, and pulled him up towards me. Understanding, he rolled over onto his back and this time it was my turn to smear him with butter, which I delved out of the little bowl and massaged slowly, deeply, into his chest, working each muscle group with my fingers until they began to soften like the butter. Then, taking another pat of the creamy yellow substance between my palms, I began to coat his cock thoroughly, thickly, leaving not a square millimetre uncovered. I slathered it around his balls, across his perineum and around his arsehole too. His hips were grinding away as if the sensations were becoming almost too intense for him, and low moans escaped from between his parted lips. His head was thrown back, but I could see that his eyes were open and that he was staring through one of the little round windows that gave onto the night.

  As he pleaded with me to straddle him, I thrust one finger up his arse, as far as it would go, in one clean motion. He yelped, and torrents of come began pumping out of him, splashing onto his upper belly and trickling down his sides onto the polished wood of the table.

  When he was done, and lay gasping, I brought my mouth to him and slowly coaxed his cock back to life, caressing his flesh with the tip of my tongue until I felt him begin to tighten and strain for me again. Then I sat up and lowered myself onto him, and his hands closed around my hips. My pussy devoured him so avidly that I was afraid for a moment I was going to suck him up whole. I rocked back and forth, eyes closed, hands clasping my breasts, trying to establish a quiet, measured rhythm, to keep hold of the moment. His hands on each side of me steadied me, were complicit in attempting to maintain the momentum, to stave off what was inevitable – what was desired but perhaps, in some part of us, feared. But the vigour of his climax had excited me too much, and each time my clit ground against him, I came a step closer to losing it. Before long, I couldn’t hold my climax back. I came violently, howling up into the empty space of that lovely dome like a she-wolf calling out into the dark.

  ‘Jesus,’ I heard him mutter as we lay spent in each others’ arms, amidst the remnants of our barely eaten meal and all the posh crockery and gleaming silver. Then, after a while, Daniel rose and, sliding into his bathrobe, went off into the bedroom. He returned to tell me he’d run me a deep hot bath.

  I soaked for an hour or so, letting the water caress my skin that still tingled from Daniel’s touch and the frenzy that he had unleashed in me. A little television stuck on a bendy stalk was tuned into CNN news but the sound was down and the disasters and dramas that were being recounted by its coiffed presenters might as well have been taking place on the moon for all they impinged on me. I felt completely unconnected with reality.

  When I climbed out, Daniel was in bed, propped up against a pile of pillows, hopping through the channels on a larger TV set.

  ‘I’m looking for a decent old movie we can watch,’ he said. ‘Here,’ he added, passing me a mug from the bedside table. ‘I had some hot chocolate brought up for us.’

  I was asleep before I had chance to drink it, and I’m not sure whether he found a good film to watch or not. All I know is that when I woke in his arms in the grey light of dawn, I had fallen more than a little for Daniel Lubowski.

  3

  WE SHARED BREAKFAST in bed, laughing as we smeared each other with fresh berries and Greek yogurt, as we stained the pristine white sheets with a mixture of crushed raspberries and our own liquors. Dan marvelled as I lay back and spread myself wide for him, holding my pussy open as if for his inspection. Exclaiming at its juiciness, he brought his hand slowly to me, slid three fingers in and and then moved them in and out slowly, entering me a little more deeply each time until I was trying to sit up, reaching for his cock, begging him to come into me. Knowing that I was on the brink, he carried on teasing me until I couldn’t take any more and was up and pushing him back onto the bed. Turning around, I lowered myself onto his dick with my back to him, taking him up to the hilt, then leaning forwards so that he had a close-up view of my arse. He grabbed my cheeks violently, began pushing me forwards and then pulling me back. When it seemed we were both on the cusp of an orgasm, he sat up and pushed me forwards at the same time as he maneouvred himself onto his knees. As if repaying me for the compliment of the previous evening, he inserted his thumb into my sphincter.

  With one hand outspread on the leather headboard to steady myself against his onslaught, I reached between my legs and pressed my clitoris, letting my fingers remain still for a few moments, for as long as I could bear it, knowing that the second I began strumming at myself the fireworks would flash through me, searing me. But even before I began, Dan had reached around me and removed my fingers, replacing them with his own. For a minute or two he peppered my clit with the lightest and most fleeting of touches, as if a butterfly was swooping in on me and then away. Then he mashed his fingertips into me, and as he massaged my clit up and down along my pubic bone, one finger on each side of the little pink nub, I could tell he was listening for my verbal cues, working out what best pleased me. When he hit the spot, his index and middle fingers jiggling me from side to side, he re-intensified the plunging action of his cock and it was as if, in my climax, I was being carried away by some primeval force, as if a tornado or hurricane was sweeping through the room, ravaging me.

  Yelling, Dan pulled back and out of me, and I fell forwards onto the bed, tears in my eyes. The feeling was almost mystical, that of being one with the universe – a Buddhist sense, I suppose, of blending in with everything around one, of being an indissoluble part of a greater whole. I let myself float for a while, not even stirring when I felt Dan lean forwards and stroke my hair, plant a kiss on my cheek, pull the duvet up around my shoulders.

  When I woke it was ten o’clock, and a note on the bedside cabinet informed me that he had gone to a meeting and would pick me up in a taxi downstairs at one o’clock to take us on our second tour. In the meantime, I was to relax and order whatever I wanted from room service.

  I switched the TV on but barely watched as I flicked through the hotel directory, where I noticed that there was a swimming pool on site. After ringing down to check that they sold swimsuits for guests who had forgotten theirs, I slipped into my bathrobe and waffle slippers and headed down to the basement in the lift. There I spent an hour alternating between lap swimming and just drifting about, the classical music that was being piped underwater helping to sustain the sense of otherworldliness that had taken hold of me.

  After another bath and some coffee in the Dome Suite, I was in the lobby ready for Daniel, who soon pulled up in a taxi outside and waved me to join him. As we headed west, he told me he’d been in a meeting with an up-and-coming young director who had worked on music videos for Björk and some other Icelandic artists and whom he was trying to lure into working on something a little more mainstream. He was pleased with the outcome, thought he’d made a breakthrough with the guy. Doodling on the window with his finger as we rounded Hyde Park Corner and I pointed out the majestic Wellington Arch, he explained to me that his dream was to subvert Hollywood from within, to attract the kind of avant-garde overseas talent that would put a halt to the creeping blandness of commercial American film making.

  We slipped along the southern edge of Hyde Park, past the Royal Albert Hall and Albert Memorial, and then traced a course through various minor streets of Kensington to reach Earl’s Court. It’s a run-down area of backpackers’ hotels and Australian themed bars, and we lingered only long enough to take a look at Kensington Mansions on Trebovir Ro
ad, which Roman Polanski had used as the exterior for Catherine Deneuve’s flat in his film Repulsion in 1965. I didn’t need to tell Daniel that the amazing expanding apartment itself was actually a studio set.

  We headed back through South Kensington to Thurloe Place, where a number of locations used in the film have remained remarkably unchanged, including the beauty salon where Deneuve’s character Carol works, still a hairdresser and beauty therapist’s, the Hoop & Toy pub, and Dino’s Italian café, where we went and ordered fish and chips in homage to the scene where Carol eats with her would-be boyfriend. When the waitress jotted down what we wanted, Dan asked her a few questions and was touchingly pleased to find out that the French actress also used to come here to eat during breaks from shooting.

  ‘Imagine that,’ he said dreamily. ‘Catherine Deneuve might have sat at this very table.’ I looked at his faraway gaze and realised that even Hollywood producers can be starry-eyed.

  As we waited for our food, we chatted about the movie, which I had watched a few nights before in preparation for the tour. Conversely to the Hitchcock film, this deals with a woman murdering men, but the repulsion of the title is not the viewer’s so much as Carol’s, who, it is insinuated, has been abused and is thus unable to deal with sexual advances by men. The most fascinating thing for him, Dan explained, was how different viewers came to such different conclusions about Carol and her motivations. Most agree that she is sexually repressed because of childhood events, but where many people say that she is entirely sexless, Dan believed that, on the contrary, she is consumed by sexual urges that she just doesn’t know how to handle because of her fear of men.

  ‘Everything points to her being both disgusted and turned on by the same things,’ he explained as he lit a cigarette and took a swig of the cheap red wine we’d ordered. I was surprised but strangely pleased to note that he didn’t feel he had to spend money to impress me, that he wasn’t a snob.

  ‘Like with the boyfriend’s razor and toothbrush, and the vest that she sniffs,’ he continued. He leaned in towards me, lowered his voice a little. ‘I’m interested – do you think she masturbates in the movie?’

  I cast my mind back, tried to think. ‘Not that it jumped out at me,’ I replied. ‘Why, do you?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ he said. ‘Right after when she walks in on her sister’s boyfriend shaving. It’s very subtle, very ambiguous. You just see her face, trembling a little, and then her face pucker a bit as if in distaste, and then the camera pans out and she makes a weird movement with her hand and flicks her fingers as if shaking water away, as if trying to wash away her feelings of being dirty. In fact, I think it’s implied numerous times throughout the film.’

  Huge platefuls of fish and chips arrived and we ate with gusto, continuing to discuss the many layers and ambiguities of the film, and then talking about other Polanski films, from classics such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant to the execrable if diverting Bitter Moon and The Ninth Gate. When we’d finished the food and the carafe of wine, Dan blew his cheeks out and rolled his eyes.

  ‘I think I need a few tours round the block,’ he said. ‘I’m stuffed.’

  I laughed. ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘How about a walk in Hyde Park? It’s just a couple of minutes away.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ he replied, standing up and pushing his seat back, signalling to the waitress that we needed our bill.

  Outside, we crossed the thundering Cromwell Road and walked up past the Natural History Museum and Science Museum I’d visited with so many American teenagers. At the top of Exhibition Road, we entered the park. I was half inclined to take Dan to the Serpentine Gallery: his talk about films enthralled me and I suspected he might be equally fascinating and insightful when it came to art, especially contemporary art. But he seemed to be enjoying being outdoors, so I let it go and we carried on down to the Serpentine lake at the heart of the park. Although it wasn’t yet the summer season, a number of people were out on the water, in paddle boats or rowing boats. Dan looked at me.

  ‘How about we go for spin?’ he said.

  I smiled. I’m ashamed to say that in all my years in London, in all my time as a tour guide, I had never yet boated on the Serpentine. How could I refuse?

  We crossed to the other side of the lake, to the boathouses, where we paid a small deposit and set out in our craft. Daniel insisted on rowing, peeling off his navy-blue John Smedley sweater to reveal his powerful, lightly tanned arms.

  ‘Just relax and enjoy yourself,’ he said, and I lay back and let the mild late spring air caress me, watching the clouds thread their way across a luminescent sky. This, I said to myself, was bliss.

  I must have dozed off, for the next thing I knew Daniel was leaning over me, saying something in a soft voice.

  ‘. . . a bit cold?’ was all I made out. I followed his line of vision down to my breasts and saw that my nipples were erect and protruding through my light woollen top. Knowing he was looking at them made them harden still further.

  I glanced about us. Daniel had steered us into the bank, and we were parked up beneath the overhanging branches of a willow tree. I gazed up at him, pulled my top up over my head, then reached round to free my breasts from my bra, kicking my shoes off at the same time. He laid his palms on my boobs but didn’t take his eyes from mine. Then he swept his hands down over my belly to my skirt and pants. Lifting up my bum, he pulled them both down until I was naked before him, or almost – all that remained on me were my hold-up stockings, the kind that stay up without the need for suspenders. With one finger he traced the slim neat line of my pubic hair.

  I stood up now, and indicated that he should lie down. When he did, I yanked at his trouser flies, then reached inside and closed my hand around his meaty responsive cock. He shut his eyes, rested his head back against the bottom of the boat, lips opening and closing almost imperceptibly as if he were muttering something to himself, or perhaps even praying. Maybe for him, just as there had been for me that morning, there was something almost religious about our fucking.

  Pulling his cock out through his zipper, I took it into my mouth, rolled it around for a while then began jabbing at the base of his glans with my tongue while giving his scrotum a good firm squeeze with one hand. He went crazy, twitching and shuddering and letting out a strange low groan from the back of his throat. Beneath him, the boat rocked precariously with his movement, and with my free hand I grabbed instinctively for the side. We both began laughing, and suddenly I felt like a character in a Benny Hill sketch. What the hell were we doing here anyway, when a more than comfortable bed beckoned back at Daniel’s suite?

  ‘What can I do to turn you on?’ said Daniel quietly, as if reading my mind, knowing that the mood had got lost a little. ‘What’s your favourite fantasy?’

  I squirmed a little, suddenly shy in spite of the things we’d been doing to each other’s bodies over the past twenty-four hours or so. Sometimes it’s harder to talk about sex than it is to just get on with it. And I was fearful of revealing too much of myself to Daniel emotionally when we had known each other for such a short space of time.

  Sensing my reticence, he smiled encouragingly. ‘How about this?’ he said, and reaching over he placed one hand on either side of my thigh and drew one of my stockings down over my leg and foot. Holding one end in each hand, he pulled the nylon taut in front of him, looking at me questioningly but, I thought, with tenderness. I knew he didn’t want to hurt me. All he wanted was for me to experience new ways of being happy.

  I lay back again, rolled over onto my belly and crossed my wrists behind me, looking over my shoulder as he bound me with the wispy stocking – tightly, but not worryingly so. I trusted him implicitly. If, at that moment, he’d have told me he was going to throw me overboard but insisted that I shouldn’t worry because he would rescue me, I’d have gone along with him. Focused though I was on what was about to happen to me now, on what and how I was going to feel, his own pleasure was very much in my mind too. Whatever it t
ook to turn this man on, I would do.

  My hands were bound now, and I lay there, naked save for the stocking on my leg and at my wrists, tingling with anticipation. It was exquisite torture for me not to be able to bring my hands to my cunt or my tits, to attend to the itch in my groin or the fizz of my nipples. I imagined him leaving me there all night, burning to be touched, with no hope of satisfaction. Would I be mad by morning? Could a person lose their mind this way?

  Happily, Dan was still there, and after a few minutes of letting me stew in my own juices, he prised the cheeks of my backside apart and brought his face to me. Licking my sphincter like a dog, he made sure I was amply lubed. Two fingers were pushed into my arse in an exploratory mission, then three. Over my shoulder I watched him wank himself to maximum stiffness, then, at a point where he deemed both of us ready, he brought the bulb of his cock to my entrance. He let it rest there for a few minutes, and I felt the silky polished skin of his head as it snuffled against my hole like some small burrowing creature. Impatient, I had the overwhelming urge to stretch my arms back behind me so I could hold his hips in place with my hands and force myself back onto him, impale myself. Only I couldn’t because of the damned stocking.

  ‘Oh God, please – just fuck me,’ I heard myself moan, and I was shocked by the ferocity of my desire. ‘Please Dan, I can’t take this.’

  Acquiescing at last, he drove into me, slowly but powerfully, one hand clamped on my breast beneath me. My pussy ground against the wood of the boat as we moved back and forth, but not uncomfortably – in fact, the way my clit rubbed against its damp surface, the friction that was generated, soon had me on the verge of climax. I managed to stave it off until I felt Dan was nearing his, and then I closed my eyes and gave myself over to a darkness deeper than night.