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From: "Bradley Stoke" <bradley_stoke@hushmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Degrees of Intimacy (8/8) {Bradley Stoke} (MF)
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Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 09:10:05 -0400
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Title: {ASSM} Degrees of Intimacy (8/8) {Bradley Stoke} (MF)
Author: Bradley Stoke
Part: Chapter 8 of 8
Keywords: (MF)
Short Summary: Camden: A North London suburb famous for its
market and canals.

Degrees of Intimacy
===================

Resume of whole novel
=====================

Eight characters, eight places, eight degrees of separation, and
eight degrees of intimacy. This novella is inspired by the film
La Ronde that similarly follows a circular trail of lovers, but
this time in the twenty-first century and much more explicit in
content. All eight chapters can be read in isolation, but the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.


For More : http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Bradley_Stoke/www

[This story has been previously published on Ruthie's Club
(www.ruthiesclub.com) where it was edited by the much
missed Ruthie and illustrated by Tzratzk.]



Story Description
=================

Camden: A North London suburb famous for its market and canals.
Marianne is staying with Phillippa and David, still inconsolable
from the tragic loss of her husband. She finds an unlikely ally
in Hamid.


Chapter Eight - Camden
======================

Marianne never used to smoke. It just wasn't something
you ever did in New York. So much had changed in the last
year that it was natural to accept the cigarette Phillippa
offered her. It was far from the first she'd had today or even
the last few weeks.

She balanced the length of the British cigarette on her
lower lip, her upper lip holding it in place, while drawing in
determinedly on the flame from Phillippa's cigarette lighter.
'Fag' they called it over here in London, England, she
reflected, almost smiling, something she had so much
difficulty in doing any more.

"So, you don't know when you're going back to work?"
wondered Phillippa. "I mean you're welcome to stay here as
long as you like, of course, but don't you know just how
long?"

Marianne blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke and watched
it disperse about the room. She sat back on the huge leather
sofa and balanced her elbow on the armrest, her cigarette
pointed up to the unnecessarily high ceiling.

"The doctor doesn't know. She says that a trip like this to
London, England, might do the trick. Get out of the
apartment. Get away from all the memories of Simon and
that horrible horrible day! But depression isn't something
you get over like a cold. It takes some people longer than
others."

"It must be dreadful for you. We were shocked enough
when we watched it on TV as it happened. It was afternoon
for us, of course, but morning for you. You'd probably only
just got to the office when it happened. Though knowing
you yanks you'd probably been in the office hours already."

"I wasn't in the office," said Marianne slowly and carefully.

And then, it happened again. Her eyes erupted suddenly,
with no forewarning, into an explosion of tears. Her face
crumpled with the impact of her sorrow and the
embarrassment that even now, after all these many months,
she was unable to control her emotions. And she, a woman
who was once one of the sternest and most formidable
negotiators in her department!

However hard she tried, it always happened. Something
would trigger it off again. Couldn't it just go away? Why
did she have to forever carry this guilt and remorse around
with her? Even though, of course, it wasn't she who had
been at the controls of those Boeing 747s. Even though she
was in no way culpable in the events that led to her
husband's death. And his body never to be found or
positively identified.

If only she had let her desires get the better of her on
another day and not on the one day that was etched not only
in her memory, but that of everyone in the world. A day
now codified as two numbers whose very mention, even in
the most innocent of circumstances, would invariably
trigger the same tears she was struggling at this moment to
suppress.

Phillippa carefully removed Marianne's just-lit cigarette
from her hand and placed it cautiously on the ash-tray.
Then she sat on the sofa next to her friend and bent her
head onto her bare breast so that Marianne's nose was
buried just by the reddened areola around the nipple. This
wasn't the first time Phillippa had comforted Marianne in
this way. She was, after all, like her husband,
extraordinarily tactile for a Brit, but Marianne was still not
wholly relaxed in the habitual nudity or near-nudity in
which her friends disported themselves in their huge North
London maisonette.

Although Marianne was accustomed to Phillippa's way of
consoling her, it was still odd for her tears to drip directly
onto her friend's bare skin, which was losing its summer tan
and becoming quite pale in the late autumn coolness. It was
also somehow more comforting than resting her cheek on
the material of a dress or blouse, no hard buttons or
stitching to rub against her face, while Phillippa supported
Marianne's stouter body, clothed more modestly in jeans
and a sweatshirt, and gently stroked her recently cut hair.

"The pain just doesn't go away!" Marianne sobbed. "I
thought it would. But even here, an ocean away from
Manhattan, whenever I think... whenever my mind
returns... at the smallest..."

"Don't worry! Don't worry about anything!" said Phillippa
comfortingly, rocking back and forth gently on the huge
sofa, a rhythm that must have reminded both of them of the
maternal affection neither had the fortune to bestow on
children of their own.

Marianne noticed how close her lips and nose were to
Phillippa's nipple. It was thin and quite definitely stiff on a
small, but pert, bosom. She looked up at Phillippa who
gazed down at her almost lovingly.

"You can suck it, you know," said Phillippa. "I don't mind.
In fact, I'd love it if you did! I'm sure it would do you
good."

"No," said Marianne softly. "You know I'm not that kind of
a girl..."

Phillippa sighed. "I know. But sucking a nipple isn't sex,
you know. It'd make you feel good."

In actual fact, Phillippa's almost inappropriate act of
compassion already cheered Marianne up. Maybe in a
woman less sexually promiscuous and less indiscriminate
she might have accepted the offer. Perhaps a woman's
nipple would bestow again the comfort that her own
mother's had provided when she was a suckling babe in
arms. But she didn't want to give Phillippa ideas as to her
affection toward her that she might regret later. She valued
her friendship with her British friend too much to allow it
to become something that would never work and for which
she had no interest in pursuing.

Would she have felt the same way if a man had shown her
affection in such a way? She might have been more certain
of her sexual desires, but no less reluctant to pursue a
physical relationship even with men since her husband
died. And this despite having had obvious opportunities,
not only with Gareth, but also, and very openly, with
David, Phillippa's husband and Marianne's ex-lover from
many years previously.

Marianne let her head fall down onto Phillippa's lap, well
away from both the nipples and the shaved bareness of the
crotch between her legs. The two women made no
comment while Marianne's head rested on an upper thigh
and Phillippa continued to stroke and pat her expensively
coiffured hair.

In the background, Marianne could hear the soft sound of
jazz music pulse from the huge speakers that stood on
either side of the wide television screen. From the bedroom
in the floor above, she could hear the steady thump of a
headrest against the wall as David and his colleague
continued the lovemaking that had excluded Phillippa from
her connubial bed all night. Apparently, Maurice didn't feel
comfortable having sex in the company of a woman, so
from discretion and also the desire, no doubt, of ensuring
the success of David's latest project, she had slept in the
bed in another spare bedroom next to the one that had
almost become Marianne's home this last week or so.

When Marianne focused on the sound of two men making
love it seemed almost as natural as the passion more often
expressed between David and Phillippa, and sometimes
their other friends. Despite that, a part of her still didn't
want to imagine David, the man she'd shared a room with
as a student in the halls of residence, up there on the huge
bed fucking, or being fucked by, a man who looked so
much like a hairy gorilla. This was an opinion she held
even though Maurice had a twinkle in his dark brown eyes
that reminded her so very much of poor Simon.

And then Marianne burst into tears once more, her
manicured nails digging into the flesh of Phillippa's bare
thighs and her body heaving with irrepressible grief.

When she next saw Maurice, an hour or so later, the
twinkle in his eyes was hidden behind wire-frame
spectacles. He wore a corduroy jacket over a check shirt
where thick strands of chest hair peeped out from under the
open collar. He popped his head into the living room and
waved nervously at Phillippa and Marianne who sat on the
sofa watching a Sunday afternoon news programme. He
hovered only a brief moment, perhaps startled to see that
Phillippa was still wholly naked, a cigarette dangling from
one hand.

"I'll be off then!" he shouted.

"Not till after another kiss!" announced David's voice
firmly from the hallway.

Marianne found it difficult to concentrate on the discussion
between Donald Rumsfeld and some British newscaster
while she could also hear Maurice and David snogging
loudly and energetically in the hallway, interesting though
the discussion was on the threat Saddam Hussein posed to
world peace. She wasn't exactly sure what part the man had
played in the circumstances that led to her husband's death
and her abrupt widowhood, but if he was in any way
culpable she was sure he deserved whatever was coming
his way.

Eventually, the front door closed and David entered the
room, just as naked as his wife, his penis still semi-erect.

"How was it dear?" Phillippa asked, looking up from the
television.

"You must have heard, sweetheart. Maurice doesn't half
squeak when you prod him. And there's a man whose rear
passage you could drive a train through!" He laughed
indulgently. "I think we've got the whole thing in the bag,
Phil. We'll be signing the contract tomorrow!"

"That's fucking magic!" cried Phillippa, jumping up off the
sofa and over to her husband to kiss him on the cheek. "Do
you want to celebrate?" she asked giving his penis a little
squeeze.

"Not yet, love!" David remarked, disengaging himself and
plomping onto a leather armchair. "I'm well and truly
knackered! My prick's had more punishment than you can
ever imagine! So, what's on the telly?"

"Just fucking Donald Rumsfeld!" Phillippa exclaimed.
"What a plonker! Now they wanna do Iraq, would you
believe!"

Marianne felt distinctly uncomfortable as Phillippa and
David made comments regarding the crusade on terrorism,
keeping her eyes glued on the television and resisting the
temptation to express her very different opinions. David
and Phillippa were great friends, but couldn't they see that
extreme acts of terrorism deserved equally extreme
retribution? Even the ones that took place in Israel.

"So, Marianne, what plans have you got for tonight?"
David asked, while Phillippa lit up a cigarette and offered
one to their guest.

"None," said Marianne, blowing smoke out of her mouth.

"Well, I think we're gonna visit a friend of ours. Hamid.
He's studying for an MBA at the University of Kingston or
some other polytechnic they've upgraded to uni status. He's
been a bit down since coming to England, so we've been
trying to cheer him up, haven't we, Phil?"

Phillippa nodded her head. "He's become like a monk,
though. We've suggested loud and clear that he loosen up a
bit, but he doesn't seem up for it anymore!"

"Pity!" David sighed. "A good fuck he was, too! So,
Marianne, you game? We'll be meeting him at the Tyburn
at Marble Arch. There are a few good Lebanese restaurants
round there."

"Is Hamid Lebanese?" Marianne wondered.

"No. Moroccan," Phillippa answered. "From Marrakech.
We met him last year when we did our grand tour."

"I see," nodded Marianne.

She wasn't sure what to say. She couldn't very well use as
an excuse the thing that most troubled her to turn down an
invitation for a night out. She was sure that a couple of
liberal Brits with their unsympathetic views on American
policy would think her a racist if she were to confess that
she wasn't quite yet ready to meet an Arab. She'd never met
one before, not knowingly, but now that her husband had
been murdered by a group of fanatical Arabs, she wasn't
sure she could easily restrain either her sorrow or her anger.

And Morocco? Weren't several of the terrorists on the
planes that hit the Twin Towers from Morocco? She was
sure of it.

She was actually quite charmed by Hamid when she met
him in the pub. He immediately jumped up from his seat to
buy a round of drinks for Marianne and her friends, now, at
long last, properly dressed and quite lively despite the long
delay on the Central Line. He was probably in his mid-
twenties with smart black hair, light brown skin, and a
playful smile on his lips.

As their conversation proceeded, she was aware of how
much more attention Hamid was paying her than her two
friends and she sensed a sadness in him. He was easily
distracted and would sometimes break off in the middle of
a sentence to stare into space before returning to whatever
subject they had been discussing.

He was especially excited by the fact that Marianne came
from New York, a city he'd never visited but had always
intended to. He asked sympathetic questions on the lasting
legacy of the cataclysmic events of the previous year and
shared her concern that the outrage be properly
commemorated on the site of Ground Zero. It almost
seemed that he was about to weep as Marianne described
the many tributes left around the perimeter of the site. The
fading photographs of dead fire-fighters. The banners and
messages sent to the nearby church from all around the
United States and the rest of the world. The teddy-bears
and toys left by children who knew no other way to express
the strength of their emotion.

The rest of the evening was spent in a Lebanese restaurant
where Hamid displayed his knowledge of the food on the
menu, ordering everyone's meal in Arabic, and telling
amusing stories about life in Morocco. If Arabs were all
like Hamid, they could certainly be disarmingly charming.
When Hamid suggested to her as they parted at the tube
station, just opposite the impressive building after which
Marble Arch station was named, she gladly assented to
meet him on another day.

It was the first evening she could remember in which she
was able to cast out of her mind the sorrow she carried with
her all the time. Perhaps it was because Hamid was so soft-
spoken and sympathetic. Perhaps it was that his
observations on the bizarre habits of the English were so
perceptive.

Phillippa squeezed Marianne's hand tightly in hers as the
train thundered and shuddered through the tunnels towards
Tottenham Court Road and the Northern Line.

"I'm so glad you and Hamid got on so well. We were
worried that, you know, him being an Arab and
everything.. But it all went so well! When are you seeing
him again?"

"Tuesday," Marianne replied, unable to disguise the smile
on her face.

"He's a good man, Hamid," David remarked. "But don't
expect any more from him than a chat. It's like he's taken
some kind of vow of chastity."

This actually suited Marianne. She was sure she wasn't
ready for anything more than friendship. She was pleased,
too, when they kept their rendezvous at Hampstead that the
evening did not end with a crude attempt at seduction., Nor
did the next couple of encounters, both of which were in
Camden near the flat he was renting at ridiculous expense
only half a mile or so from where Phillippa and David
lived.

Perhaps it was because the promise of sex had not been
mentioned at all and that their conversations had steered so
completely away from the subject, that when Hamid
actually suggested she come back to his flat she accepted
his offer. It seemed that he genuinely liked her as a person,
despite the fact she was nearly ten years his senior. Their
conversations over wine and falafel in the restaurants were
relaxed and sympathetic. It was difficult for Marianne to
persuade Hamid to accept even part-payment for the
restaurant bills; although it was unlikely he had anything
like the material wealth she was expecting from the
insurance companies when they finally processed her case.

When Marianne leaned up to kiss Hamid on the lips, he
seemed genuinely startled as if he had never thought that
this holiday friendship could become anything greater. He
stood back, flustered and ill at ease. Then he smiled, that
sadness still lingering in his eyes, and returned her kiss. It
wasn't the most passionate kiss Marianne had ever received
and it was very brief, but it was enough for her to know that
the evening would not finish on a cup of coffee and a few
joints.

Hamid's flat was tidy and sparse. There was a small
television, a laptop computer on a desk surrounded by
books and folders, and several pictures of people Marianne
assumed to be his family. They drank tea rather than coffee
and the joint Hamid rolled was much less potent than the
ones Phillippa was so intent on sharing.

When it was stubbed out and the two of them removed their
clothes, there was a gentle shyness about him. Almost an
awkwardness in his movements.

"You must excuse me," he said softly, removing his
underpants, the last item of clothing either of them
divested. "It's been a very long time since..."

"Me, too!" Marianne confessed, happy she hadn't lost her
sexual passion after all.

Hamid's progress about her body was almost in total
reverse to that of Gareth, the last person with whom
Marianne had sex. He started at her mouth and gradually
made his way downwards, over her flattened breasts, over
the flap covering her navel, expressing real pleasure in the
slight bulge of her stomach and then his tongue finally
made contact with her clitoris, which Marianne was pleased
he stimulated slowly and carefully.

Marianne had always been slightly self-conscious about
how much noise she made when making love. Not all
women, she knew, expressed their passion so vocally, but it
was, for her, proof of the intensity of her sexual desires.
When, bit by bit, she heard herself squeal and gasp, it was a
return to her old self that she sometimes worried might be
gone forever.

Hamid sat up on his knees, knowing for sure how aroused
she was from the squelchiness of her vagina as he pushed
his fingers in and out, and produced a condom that must
have been very close at hand. Marianne watched as he
pinched its end in his fingers and gradually unrolled it
down the length of his erect penis which, like Simon's, was
also circumcised. This pleased her. It had never seemed
right when she and David were an item at King's College,
that he had that useless nipple of flesh at the end of his
penis, although she had come to learn in her subsequent
and concurrent sexual encounters that circumcised penises
were rare in the United Kingdom.

Hamid didn't neglect Marianne's breasts and face as he
thrust into her. His tongue and fingers stimulated her on all
her tender points, while her buttocks reciprocated his
thrusts, her voice exploding into those reassuring short
shrieks that built up to louder and more urgent cries as he
became steadily more energetic.

Eventually, Marianne knew he had released himself, but
not after over half an hour of love-making during which
time they had shifted from him being above her to she over
him, pressing down onto his erect penis while his hands
massaged her bosom.

And then their bodies parted. The two of them slumped
together on Hamid's bed. Hamid gently withdrew the
condom from his penis and Marianne could see his
circumcised penis again, only this time much more
shrivelled.

She smiled and gently stroked the deflated glans.

"So, Arabs are circumcised as well. Is it religious?"

"No. Not really. Not like with Jews," replied Hamid. "Are
you a Jew? You've got a Jewish surname."

"Cohen? Yes, it is Jewish. But I'm not a Jew. It was my
husband who was."

"Husband?" asked Hamid, suddenly looking startled. He
leaned up on the bed on one shoulder and looked down at
Marianne beside him. "Are you married?"

"Well, yes. Or rather, no."

"I don't understand. Are you separated? Divorced?"

"No," replied Marianne slowly, feeling something break
within her. Oh shit! Shit! "He's dead."

"Dead?"

"He was working in the North Tower. You know, in the
World Trade Center. He was there when it happened."

"He was one of those who..."

"Yes, he was," Marianne affirmed. And then she couldn't
hold it back at all. The tears burst to the surface. And
perhaps because she was already loosened by the result of
just having had sex, she cried more vocally and more
wretchedly than she had for many weeks.

"He died. He was killed by the bastard... bastard... He was
one of those... And I was... I feel so very, so very..."

Hamid held her sobbing body to his equally naked body,
gaining comfort somehow from this shared misery. He
wrapped his arms around her back and felt the tears rise in
his own eyes as they did on so many occasions this last
year.

But for him, this was the first time he had cried in the
presence of anyone outside his immediate family. He was
ashamed, as any man should be, for expressing his
emotions so nakedly and so pathetically when surely the
impact of that tragic event should have lessened somewhat
by now.

When he'd first learnt of the destruction of the World Trade
Center, his foreboding about his brother's involvement
made his own horror much deeper and more intense than
that of his friends. He was angry, angrier than he thought
possible, when some people cheered the event as a kind of
Islamic revenge on the evils met upon the Palestinians.
There were people, real people, involved in that horror,
who in no way deserved to die on a day when their only
crime was to have gone to work.

But he also felt a guilt that he had alerted no one of his
fears on the day he last spoke to his brother, six months
before. That feeling of guilt worsened when it was
confirmed that his brother was indeed one of the
perpetrators of that crime. It was he who was amongst
those terrorists who had booked a flight on the plane that
hit the South Tower so soon after the first collision.

He had to endure many questions and interrogations about
his brother's role in the crime. First from the local
Moroccan police and then, with subtlety and persistence,
from the mysterious Americans who detained him and the
rest of his family. At the end of it, his father was forced to
sell his business and the family name was no longer to be
associated with the factory Hamid had known all his life.

Hamid could no longer tolerate the weight of guilt that
tormented him. He finally confessed to his surprisingly
sympathetic American interrogators that he hadn't notified
anyone of his fear that his brother was engaged in some
dreadful plot. And then he felt guilt that he had, in some
way, betrayed the confidence of a brother who was now
just cinders in a city he had never visited.

Marianne was surprised by the intensity of Hamid's sorrow.
In some strange way, it seemed almost to exceed even her
own. She and Hamid rocked together on the narrow bed,
their tears commingling, while Marianne reflected that
perhaps Hamid too had lost someone on that dreadful day.
She never suspected how very different was the role played
by the object of Hamid's loss to her own.

"There! There!" she repeated again and again, astonished to
find such an unlikely ally in grief.

But she was also happy that it could be expressed in such
an intimate way. Although she had no idea how few
degrees of separation there were between the perpetrator
and the victims of that awful tragedy, she certainly
appreciated the degree of intimacy she felt for Hamid at
that moment.


For More : http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Bradley_Stoke/www

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