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

Bradley Stoke



Marrakech
=========

The minaret's shadow was short and distinct in the early 
afternoon sun. The blackness spread over the pavement 
obscuring a figure that staggered as if drunk as it dodged 
past a group of young women dressed in djalabas, their 
faces hidden under the hoods.

Of course, Hamid wasn't drunk. He'd not had a drop to 
drink, although this was something he intended to remedy 
fairly soon. But the conversation he'd just had with his 
brother had troubled him so much he might as well be 
drunk. Yet it was difficult for him to be sure exactly why it 
had affected him so radically.

He passed a beggar: a young woman with a small child in 
her lap. Instinctively, Hamid dipped into his jeans pocket to 
retrieve a dirham which he placed in her open palm. His 
mind was less on her expressions of gratitude than on his 
concerns about his brother, to whom he'd spoken so very 
rarely these last few years. He wasn't even sure where, or 
even from which continent, his brother had made his phone 
call. 

It was bad enough that the conversation had to be at the 
post office and at a specific time whose convenience was in 
no way determined by Hamid's working hours at all. Hamid 
worked as a manager at their father's factory, so it was 
somewhat easier to get away. A day off today was scarcely 
the best timing, but when he'd received that postcard with 
the American stamp and postmark he had no choice but to 
cancel the meeting he'd arranged with the supplier and take 
an unscheduled day's leave. And that for three hours of 
sitting in a post office anxiously waiting for the call to 
come through. Typical that his brother was always late, not 
that he could afford the time to be angry with him in the 
few minutes they at last talked.

He turned the street corner to face the March sun glaring 
brilliantly ahead of him. He screwed up his eyes, regretting 
that he'd forgotten his sunglasses and very nearly bumped 
into a tourist walking in the opposite direction. 

And what had that conversation consisted of? Praises of 
Allah and his greatness. Curses against Ariel Sharon and 
the Zionist oppression of the Palestinians. And curses in 
almost equal measure against the Great Satan, America, 
and its recently elected president. 

So predictable and really rather unnecessary. It wasn't the 
sort of fanatical conversation Hamid had given up a day's 
work to have to hear.

And then, just before he put the phone down, his brother 
said, and Hamid believed him, that he would probably 
never see him again until their souls were counted, and that 
he, his brother, would very soon depart the world of mortal 
temptation. His death, he said, would be a glorious one 
whose impact would be felt forever.

And then, as if he had said too much already, and with no 
warning, the telephone connection was abruptly truncated.

Hamid passed by a café in whose window he could see 
Omar and two of his friends. Although he wasn't in the 
mood at just that time there was no way he could pretend 
not to have seen Omar's broad smile and his downward arm 
gestures to join him and his company. With more care than 
he usually took, Hamid composed his face into a broad 
smile and pushed open the plate glass door.

"Salam Allakum!" he greeted his friend.

"Allakum Salam!" Omar replied. "How're you? Taking a 
day off?"

"A good day for it," Hamid replied, pushing forward a seat 
to join Omar's company just inside the front door. The rich 
aroma of hash smoke was all he needed to guess why Omar 
hadn't chosen to sit out on the street where most of the 
café's clientele were gathered. 

Omar's friend, Sadik, passed the joint to him under the 
table. 

Hamid could hardly refuse. He accepted the proffered item 
and took a long toke while smiling at his already distinctly 
stoned companions. The rush of marijuana to the brain was 
not as welcome as it normally was, but it helped him to 
relax.

"Kif from the Rif," explained Omar's other friend. "Good 
stuff!"

"Allah be praised!" agreed Hamid with a grin, passing it on 
to Omar.

The four of them sat together in the shade of the café, 
surrounded by the sound of Algerian rai, while a television 
burbled, ignored, in the corner where a newscaster was 
detailing some atrocity or other that the Israelis had 
perpetrated in Palestine.

Hamid's mind was only superficially on the chatter that 
went on amongst his friends, happy that it was about 
nothing more than football, while his mind agitatedly 
replayed the details of his conversation with his brother.

Hamid certainly hoped that they'd meet somewhere less 
ethereal than the final judgment, but he was troubled by 
everything about those final words. Since his brother's 
departure on the Haj, and the occasion Hamid first met the 
new friends his brother had made on that pilgrimage, it was 
as if Hamid had acquired a new brother. One Hamid barely 
recognised as the brother with whom he had played games 
in the courtyard of their parents' home.

"You look thoughtful, Hamid," commented Omar. 
"Anything troubling you?"

"Nothing. Nothing," said Hamid, perhaps a little too 
hastily.

Omar leaned forward, letting his friends continue their 
blow-by-blow account of the weekend's match in the 
stadium.

"Don't be foolish, Hamid. I know you too well. I can see 
you're troubled. Is it Fatima?"

Fatima? Hamid's fiancée whom he was more and more sure 
he would never marry. He was thrown by the question into 
honesty.

"No. It's my brother. I've just been on the phone to him."

"Allah! I knew it! Where is he now? Is he still in Pakistan?"

"I don't know," Hamid said with uncertainty, but keeping 
his voice low. "He might be in Afghanistan. He might be 
back in Jeddah. He might even be in America."

"America?" piped in a stoned Sadik. "I've always wanted to 
go to America. Hamburgers. Hot dogs. And women with 
the biggest arses in the world!"

"There's no football in America," Omar reminded Sadik.

"The primitives!" Sadik exclaimed. "But the girls have still 
got good arses!"

Sadik returned to his conversation, noting the look of 
urgency on Omar's face.

"I always liked your brother, Hamid," Omar continued in a 
low voice. "But last time we met he was so weird. He's got 
Allah big time! He's not joined the Muslim brotherhood, 
has he?"

"I don't think so. It's another outfit. One based in Saudi 
Arabia. But it's got links with the Taliban."

"Allah!" Omar swore. "They give Islam a bad name. I 
heard they don't even allow music. And the women! You 
can't see their arses. You can't see their hair. You can't even 
see their faces!"

"Afghanistan's worse than Saudi Arabia. It gives me the 
shivers."

"So, is your brother a Talibani?"

"I don't think so."

"He doesn't shave. He doesn't drink. He dresses like some 
kind of peasant. And he's always going on about Allah. I 
mean, Allah be praised, I'm a Muslim. Although I don't go 
to the mosque, I observe Ramadan like the best of them. 
But there are limits, aren't there?"

"I don't understand it. My brother never used to be so 
devout. It was weird him even going on the Haj. I thought it 
was just because he liked the idea of being a Hajji. And 
now..."

"Have you spoken to him recently?"

"Just now."

"And how is he?"

"I don't know. I don't know," muttered Hamid in anguish. "I 
just wish he'd come home, leave all those fanatics behind, 
and take up his duties in my father's firm."

Hamid badly needed some air. The hit from the kif was 
probably not what he needed just now. He made his 
excuses and pushed open the door of the café, leaving the 
air-conditioned interior for the warm March air.

What he needed now was a drink. 

And more than that, a woman. That would take his mind 
off things. 

And where better to go than a tourist hotel bar where the 
higher quality whores worked? A bit more expensive than 
those in the medina, but well worth the extra few dirhams; 
though he knew he'd never have to pay as much as a tourist 
would for their services. Especially, the French, German 
and American tourists. They always had to pay that little bit 
more for a taste of North African sex.

Hamid wandered off, still staggering, but now with the 
excuse of a few well-inhaled tokes, glad that there was at 
least a mile to the Chems which was the only tourist hotel 
he was certain of both being allowed in and finding a 
woman who would sate his inappropriate lust.

Hassan, the doorman, greeted him like the old friend he 
was as Hamid sailed through the entrance into the plush 
reception area where several young Dutch tourists were 
struggling with their motley collection of suitcases. He 
waved an open palm at Khadija at the reception desk who 
was struggling to understand a Russian's complaint and 
strolled into the hotel bar, a huge room facing onto the 
hotel's swimming pool and next to various small boutiques 
selling carpets and the appalling tourist tack that no 
Moroccan would ever buy.

Hamid looked around him. Where were the whores? 

The Chems had a fairly discreet policy with regards to 
prostitutes plying their trade at the hotel. As long as they 
were not obviously on the game and tipped the hotel staff 
generously, their presence, if not explicitly welcomed, was 
at least tolerated. In fact, only the most observant tourist 
would guess that the smartly dressed Moroccan women 
who looked more Western than Islamic were anything other 
than the hotel guests they pretended to be.

Normally Hamid would easily have spotted a Chems 
whore. She'd either be sitting by herself at the bar, 
seemingly bored but with eyes glancing about agitatedly, or 
she'd be sitting with her friends laughing and joking but 
still keeping an intent gaze on the comings and goings 
around her. Hamid could see two women who were almost 
certainly engaged in business, but he'd lost his opportunity. 
They were both laughing and giggling in the company of 
two very fat middle-aged German men.

Hamid sighed. Well, a drink would have to do. But at 
several times the price he would normally need to pay, he 
was rather peeved that this might after all end up as being 
all the Chems had on offer tonight.

He warmly greeted Ahmed, the barman, and ordered a 
bottle of expensive German lager. In the style of a 
Westerner, he accepted the bottle as it came with a slice of 
lime squeezed down its neck. Then he sat on the barstool, 
swivelled it round and surveyed the world about him.

His thoughts were beginning to sink back to the morass of 
worry about his brother, recalling again and again those 
final apocalyptic words, when he noticed, hidden behind 
the menu and cocktail list placed at the corner of the bar, a 
woman his brisk survey had earlier not taken in.

He stood up and strode towards her, pleased to see she was 
unaccompanied. She was older than him, perhaps in her 
early thirties, wearing only a one-piece swimsuit and 
smoking a recently lit cigarette balanced in an upturned 
hand at the end of a slim and lightly tanned arm.

He hesitated slightly before making his move. What 
language did she speak? Was she German? French? She 
certainly wasn't American. No American would seem so at 
ease sitting by herself. Perhaps she was Russian. They were 
such mysterious people, with a similar half-amused 
expression on their faces. And the women were famous for 
their enthusiastic sexuality, although having only once 
tasted foreign flesh, and that a slightly podgy Belgian girl 
he'd picked up at the Jemaa El Fna, he had nothing with 
which to confirm this theory. 

When you don't know, try English. All foreigners speak 
English.

Fortunately English was a subject in which he'd excelled at 
the expensive private lycée he'd attended, so Hamid 
relished the opportunity to speak the language of the 
American R&B singers he enjoyed listening to.

Where to begin?

Hamid noticed an empty bottle of Stork just by her half full 
glass of beer. He smiled and caught the woman's eyes.

"I see you like our Moroccan beer," he remarked.

The woman started at being addressed by a stranger, but 
she quickly regained her composure. A supercilious smile 
returned to her reddened lips.

"Yeah. I'll try anything once."

Hamid stood next to her. He didn't recognise the accent, but 
he guessed she was English. Most of the least identifiable 
accents came from England.

"Have you tried any Moroccan wines? They really are 
excellent."

"I wouldn't say that, love. Most of the stuff I've drunk here 
has been distinctly unremarkable."

Hamid persisted. "Most tourists, especially English ones, 
don't realise what a great wine-growing country Morocco 
is."

The woman smiled again and brushed a hand through her 
light brown shoulder-length hair. She raised her cigarette to 
her mouth and puffed out a cloud of smoke.

"They say that when the French were here, they considered 
North African wine to be better than their own vintage."

"Well, it wasn't the shit I've had to drink they were talking 
about," she commented, flicking the end of her cigarette 
into the ashtray. "Are you hitting on me?"

Hamid blanched.

"Hitting on you? I don't understand." 

"Don't act soft. You obviously speak good English. Are 
you hitting on me? In fact, that's a bloody stupid question, 
isn't it? You obviously are. You Moroccans are so fucking 
obvious."

Hamid was quite suddenly downhearted. This wasn't the 
sort of conversation he was hoping for. He looked down at 
his bottle of Heineken.

"Don't look so bashful, love. I don't mind, I really don't. 
Why don't you pull up a stool and don't be so fucking wet? 
I'm quite flattered really. You're not a gigolo, are you?"

"No," Hamid replied, alarmed at the directness of the 
question, but sitting down nonetheless on a stool that had 
been previously placed at a discreet distance from the 
English woman. "I'm a manager. I work in my father's 
bottling factory."

"I didn't think you were. Shame, in a way. If Moroccan 
men are like Moroccan women they'd be well worth the 
expense."

The woman leaned over to shake Hamid's hand. He was 
uncharacteristically nervous with this woman. Her 
handshake was firm. Not at all as limp as he'd expected. 

"My name's Phillippa. I live in Camden, North London, but 
I originally come from Manchester."

"Manchester? Where Manchester United come from?"

"Yeah. You follow football, do you? Everywhere we go 
everyone's heard of Manchester United. It's as if that's all 
Manchester ever had going for it. What's your name, love? 
You're not another Mohammed, are you?"

"No. Close. It's Hamid."

"Hamid, eh? Nice to meet you, Hamid. So what are you 
doing here? You're not trying to persuade me to buy a 
fucking carpet, are you? I've had enough of carpet shops 
and mint tea to see me for the rest of my days."

"No. Not at all. Though a friend of mine does work in a 
carpet shop."

"And you'll take us back to see him, will you?" Phillippa 
laughed. 

Then noticing Hamid's downcast face, she sighed.

"Look, love. I don't mean to be rude. It's just you get sorta 
wise to the game when you've been in this country a few 
weeks. You're just after the talent, aren't you? And there's 
some good looking girls here, aren't there?"

"Well, yes. Moroccan girls are very pretty."

"I'll say! David and I sampled one of the local business 
girls last night. She's not here now. Maybe we wore her 
out, poor thing."

Hamid coughed. What was this strange woman saying? 
Perhaps he should change the subject. He studied Phillippa, 
his eyes opening wider than he intended as he looked her 
up and down. She'd clearly not been wearing a swimsuit to 
enjoy the pool where a huge man was paddling backwards 
and forwards on his back like some species of whale, his 
stomach round and bulging in the bright glare of the 
chlorinated water. Her mascara was unsmudged and there 
was no lankness in her straight hair.

"Relax, love. David and I don't believe in just sampling 
your beers and your grotty wine. Or your tajines, kif and 
mint tea. We like more intimate pastimes as well."

"And David? Is he a friend of yours?"

"He's my husband. And talking of whom, look who's just 
made his way from the sunbed!"

Hamid turned his head to see a man wearing only baggy 
swimming trunks, with a cloth bag slung over his shoulder. 
He was a tall, thin man, about the same height as Hamid, 
with a freckled complexion and relatively short hair. He 
smiled at Phillippa and Hamid as he approached.

"You don't waste your time, darling," he said before kissing 
his wife tenderly on the lips. "Who's the young man? Such 
a splendid looking fellow!"

"Hamid," said the object of his praise, proffering an 
outstretched hand.

David shook the hand warmly. "Pleased to meet you, 
Hamid. I see you've got to know my darling wife. You're 
not selling carpets, are you?"

"Not this one, Dave. He's been hitting on me. Isn't that 
sweet?"

"Saves you making the effort, dear. What would you like, 
Hamid? Another Heineken?"

Hamid nodded. What had he let himself in for?

The three of them settled together on some sofas by the 
window, looking out onto the pool where the fat German 
was still paddling back and forth, while some children 
kicked the water with bare dangling feet at the pool edge. 

David worked as a producer for a television station in 
Central London and was now between projects. Phillippa 
was a children's story writer who was able to fit her work 
around her other interests. And these interests were now 
taken up by a tour of Morocco in a hired four-wheel drive 
the two of them had driven from Tangiers along the coast, 
past Rabat, Casablanca and El Jadida. They were now 
taking in the cooler, more desolate landscapes of the Atlas, 
having enjoyed days in Meknes and Fes. Although they 
were only tourists with just a smattering of French between 
them and as good as no knowledge at all of Arabic or 
Berber, Hamid envied their ability to navigate around the 
kingdom and facilitate themselves of the sensual pleasures 
for which the Westernmost reach of the Arabic world was 
famous.

"India's more spiritual, but the sex is more one-sided," 
David opined. "The girls just lie there while you fuck away. 
Moroccan girls have got a lot more spirit!"

"I'll fucking say!" Phillippa agreed. "I've almost learnt a 
new thing or two. And it's not as if your shit's any more 
potent than the charas we sampled out there amongst the 
maharajahs and saddhus."

Hamid knew there was plenty of vice and hedonism in the 
West. He'd seen the movies, and envied the Americans and 
Europeans for the ease they always had in availing 
themselves of drugs like cocaine and ecstasy, not to 
mention alcohol. And if women were quite as easy in real 
life as they were in the movies, there'd surely be no need to 
resort to prostitutes. But this couple seemed to find their 
hedonistic thrills in countries like India, Thailand and 
Eastern Europe that Hamid had never before been aware of 
as centres of drugs, sex or even rock and roll.

"The parties in Goa!" exclaimed Phillippa. "Made me feel 
like a teenager again! Maybe not as wild as Ibiza, but fuck! 
the trance stuff is so fucking sexy. And the Westerners 
there in the hippy communities, there's no fucking limit to 
their imagination!"

It seemed inevitable after a few beers that Hamid should 
accompany Phillippa and David to their hotel room, which 
was rather more plush than any Hamid had ever stayed in 
his business trips to Casablanca or Agadir. And as soon as 
the door was shut, out came a selection of sachets and CDs 
about which Hamid really had to restrain himself from 
betraying his relative ignorance. There were several types 
of hash and grass, not to mention some powders that may 
have been cocaine, but might have been other more 
mysterious compounds not normally imported into 
Morocco. And Hamid was treated to some very strange 
swirling percussive music that after a few tokes off 
Phillippa's expertly rolled joints came to seem peculiarly 
beguiling and intricate. There was surely a great deal more 
to Western music than the songs he heard on the radio.

Hamid's head was humming, while his foot stomped 
rhythmically on the thick pile carpet to the beat coming 
from the portable stereo David had set up below the 
television. And this television was broadcasting images that 
were surely only accessible from the huge satellite dishes 
outside the hotel and provided admittance to a world of 
relatively impartial news and flagrantly un-Islamic images 
normally denied him.

When the sex began, it seemed as wholly natural and 
inevitable as the last joint had been when Phillippa passed 
it to him or the last line of white powder David had 
chopped out with his credit card on the mirror they had 
taken off the wall. It was just another episode in an 
escalating series of sensual pleasures.

Hamid didn't recall seeing Phillippa slipping off her 
swimsuit to stand naked in front of him as he perched on 
the edge of the hotel bed. But there she was, slim and nude, 
her pubic hair shaved off and a small chain dangling from a 
ring threaded through her labia. Her nipples were pert and 
hard. The areola merged into her suntanned skin. She bent 
over, pressed her lips against Hamid's, and grabbed his 
erect penis through his loose trousers.

Soon Hamid was as naked as she was, remembering this 
time to kick off his cotton socks. He stood above Phillippa 
as she took his penis into her mouth and gobbled at it with 
long deep thrusts of her neck, saliva seeping out of the 
corners of her mouth and sticking to his circumcised glans. 
And behind her was David, also naked, freckles on his 
shoulders and a patch of dark brown hair on his chest. He 
nibbled her ear while also pinching a nipple between a 
finger and thumb. 

David's attention wasn't only focused on his wife, even as 
she grabbed his erect penis and pumped it up and down in 
slow leisurely strokes, each time cupping its tip and giving 
it a slight squeeze. He bent over and kissed Hamid on the 
mouth, glad to see their Moroccan companion reciprocate.

This wasn't the first time Hamid had made love to a man, 
although never before in the company of a woman. He and 
Omar had played together several times when they were 
young boys who shared classes in the lycée. Although he 
and his closest friends no longer pursued this physical 
affection, or even made reference to it, there had been 
several other men with whom on occasion, usually after a 
heavy session of kif or alcohol, he would tumble together 
on the bed and they would enjoy the pleasure of their 
commingled bodies. 

This affection had gone a great way, although he had only 
once before practised anal penetration, and then not as a 
recipient. He realised, with very little experience to 
compare it to, that a man's arse was not the same as a 
woman's, being tighter and more taut. And, furthermore, 
the degree of pleasure his partner expressed was rather 
more genuinely ecstatic than the few prostitutes whose anus 
he had penetrated for an extra premium.

Hamid almost exploded with ejaculation as David's tongue 
licked his anus and Phillippa pumped his penis with her 
mouth, but, recognising what was about to happen, Hamid 
felt David's fingers pinch him between the penis and the 
anus, and this threat of premature release passed without 
incident.

Soon the three of them were on the bed, three bodies 
entwined, in a mass of conjoining flesh, sometimes with 
Hamid's penis in Phillippa's vagina and sometimes David's. 
Bit by bit the passion brushed away all remaining 
inhibitions. David entered Phillippa's anus while Hamid 
continued to ply at the front, their testicles bashing against 
each other as they did so. This was a curiously stimulating 
experience, a little like, but much more arousing than, 
having a woman flick at his testicles with her fingers. Just 
as that also hurt, but in a stimulating way, so did this, 
somehow pushing up his penis into a hugeness Hamid had 
never been aware his rather ordinary penis could attain.

It was no surprise to Hamid when David entered his anus. 
After all, David had prepared him by dripping saliva into it, 
while Hamid pushed into Phillippa who lay on her back 
gasping "Fuck! Fuck! Oh yes! Fuck!" over and over again. 
It was a tighter and more painful entry than Hamid had 
imagined it could be. It initially made him feel slightly sick 
as, thrust by thrust, David's similarly ordinarily 
proportioned penis penetrated deeper and deeper into him. 

And then an experience he'd never imagined before. 
Something inside him, a physical thing like the woman's G-
spot he'd once read about in an imported men's magazine, 
was responding with genuine pleasure to each slow and 
painful thrust.

Hamid didn't know whose cries of ecstasy were loudest. 
Was it David, as he growled and gasped while thrusting 
away, one hand on Hamid's back and the other fondling his 
wife's bosom? Was it Phillippa who was slippery and damp 
from the perspiration of intercourse, a sheen of sweat 
reflected from the flickering television screen? Was it the 
female voice accompanying the heavy contorted techno 
beats with an undecipherable cry that came from the 
stereo? Or was it Hamid, who experienced an intensity of 
passion and ejaculation he'd never believed possible, 
feeling that until that time he had in truth been a virgin? A 
cry stimulated as David pushed against his prostate gland 
and Hamid pushed his penis deep deep inside Phillippa's 
vaginal canal. And marked by a double explosion of semen. 
One inside Phillippa and dripping out of her vagina onto 
her labial rings. And the other inside Hamid, a sudden 
squelch of warm creaminess deep inside where normally 
the only soft bodies were those Hamid excreted.

"Fuck! That was magic!" exclaimed Phillippa as the three 
sated lovers lay naked on the huge hotel mattress, sharing 
cigarettes and a huge joint that Phillippa had prepared on an 
earlier occasion, sweat and semen stains now drying on 
their skin.

Hamid nodded. He glanced at David's slack penis, which 
rested on the carpet of hair on the man's thigh. There were 
small brown flecks at its tip where the foreskin was 
crumpled and a small tear of semen was slowly easing out.

Then the room was filled with another sound, louder than 
the techno thumps, which came from the muezzin's 
amplified evening call to prayer. 

"Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!" it announced, stretching the 
name of Allah so long that the final declaration of His 
greatness was almost an afterthought. 

Inevitably, thoughts of Allah brought Hamid's mind back to 
his concerns for his brother. At this moment, if he was on 
the same time zone, though he most probably was not, his 
brother would be prostrating himself on the floor of a 
mosque or on a prayer mat and proclaiming his own praise 
to Allah.

Hamid wondered what his brother would be asking of 
Allah at that moment. Would it be a prayer for success in 
whatever mad apocalyptic mission he had hinted to Hamid 
on the telephone? And what would this madness be?

Hamid shivered.

This was one thing he was sure he would rather never 
know.

Whatever it was that his brother was intending to do, 
Hamid was sure it would not be good.




Taroudannt 
==========

Phillippa flicked the ash at the end of her cigarette onto the 
dusty earth outside the window. She watched it fall from 
where she sat on the passenger seat of the rented four-
wheel drive and contemplated its dispersal in the slight 
breeze.

She inhaled another centimetre of cigarette and reluctantly 
tossed the butt onto the earth where it smouldered. It burnt 
off its final centimetre of ash before extinguishing itself. 
She regarded it sadly and wondered whether she might 
have to light up another to fend off her boredom. She 
glanced up at the people in the walled town. Some of them 
wore djalabas. Some wore jeans and tee-shirts. And one 
wore the very stiff and awkward-fitting uniform of a hotel 
porter. Phillippa was still not sure whether his services 
might be needed.

And then David emerged from inside the hotel foyer. 
Phillippa could see it wasn't good news.

"They're fully booked, too!" he announced as he jumped 
into the driver's seat.

"Fuck! You're taking the piss, aren't you?"

David sighed. "I wish I was."

"This is the fourth fucking hotel in this fucking town! And 
that was only a fucking two-star. We've done the five, four 
and three stars. What's left? A fucking manger?"

"I dunno," David sighed. "Anyway, there's no other hotel in 
this town with even one star. I don't know what it is. 
Maybe, the fucking package tours have taken all the 
rooms."

"I can't fucking believe it! What do we do? Drive to the 
next town?"

"I don't think we can. We're fucking miles from anywhere. 
And anyway it'll be after midnight before we get anywhere. 
All that's left is that hippy place mentioned in Lonely 
Planet."

"Hippy place!" sighed Phillippa. "You've got to be out of 
your mind. I don't want to sleep in a room full of 
cockroaches and a bog that doesn't flush."

"The choice is we sleep in the car."

"Fucking hell! You're kidding, right?"

David sighed again. He gripped the wheel. It was obvious 
to Phillippa that after that long drive over the mountains, 
the last thing he relished was to drive to another town. Shit! 
If they'd left Marrakech a few hours earlier, they might 
have stood a chance of making it all the way to Agadir.

"Okay!" she relented. "The hippy place, it is. Surely they'll 
have some rooms vacant."

David pushed his key into the ignition and backed the 
vehicle out of the parking bay. Working as a team, the 
couple navigated to the Atlas, a place that was described by 
Lonely Planet as funky but basic, but after having taken a 
few of the guidebook's recommendations in the past this 
testimonial did not fill either of them with any great hope. 

It was all Hamid's fault. Well, not so much his fault as 
theirs for not wanting him to leave so soon after this their 
third night together. Hamid had really come into his own 
when he'd lost that weird melancholy of his. Phillippa still 
relished the memory of his prick in her arse with David's in 
her mouth. She'd just about got used to the taste of his 
circumcised penis with that strange hardness that the fully 
exposed glans had developed.

"Well, this time there must be some rooms," Phillippa 
commented outside the Atlas as David readied to get out of 
the car. "No one would want to stay in this dump unless 
they had to."

Indeed, the Atlas really wasn't at all prepossessing. It 
reminded Phillippa of those places she'd stayed in India 
when she'd gone backpacking in her student days. Those 
were dives that only an enormous amount of dope could 
make tolerable. They were worse even than those shitty 
places in the Australian outback, and without the certainty 
of a huge amount of dope and beer to lessen the discomfort.

"We're in luck!" announced David when he emerged from 
the hotel foyer, this time with no stiffly suited porters in 
visible attendance. "They had several rooms free, actually, 
but I slipped the girl at the desk a few dirhams so we might 
just get a decent one."

"I fucking hope so!" Phillippa snorted. "I'm fucking 
knackered!" 

If this was the best room in the house, then fuck knows 
what the others were like, Phillippa groaned as she 
plumped herself on the sagging mattress whose springs 
twanged under her weight. The en suite toilet and shower 
were divided from the rest of the room by a thick curtain. 
The framed portraits of badly painted mountains didn't 
disguise at all the dinginess of the plastered walls. Like 
everywhere in Morocco, the floor was covered by cold 
tiles, but these were cracked and almost certainly infested 
with the most disgusting germs. Phillippa knew that any 
moment now, one of those horrible cockroaches would 
appear, probably from the shower, and scamper noisily 
across the floor, its antennae flickering cheekily as it did so. 
She opened her packet of cigarettes, only three left now, 
and lit one up.

"What do we do now?" she asked blowing a cloud of 
smoke about the room.

David sighed again.

"We unpack. We smoke a joint. And we see what's going 
down in the bar."

"Bar? Does a shit-hole like this have a bar?"

"Yeah. I saw a sign pointing to it when we came in."

"I didn't see it."

"Well, it wasn't obvious. It was kinda painted on a bit of 
old wood, you know, fashioned into an arrow. But it 
showed definite promise."

"Okay. Sounds promising. But if it's crap, I vote we go to 
the five-star for a beer. Or even one of those crappy 
Moroccan wines."

"I'd rather have crappy beer than crappy wine," David 
replied throwing a suitcase onto the bed and watching it 
bounce up and down.

"Whatever!"

When they arrived in the bar, slightly mellower after their 
shared joint, they found they weren't the only people there. 
Several of the clientele were Moroccan men. No Moroccan 
women, so not an obvious place to find a prostitute. Most 
of the people gathered around on the battered banquettes in 
the dingy shadowy light underneath the fading tourist tat 
nailed to the wall were clearly Western. And yes, judging 
from the ethnic clothes many of them wore and the plethora 
of facial jury, if not hippy exactly, certainly in that 
tradition. Despite having once been not too unlike them 
herself in appearance, Phillippa felt quite ill at ease.

Four battered cane armchairs of the type Moroccans 
seemed to like so much surrounded a couple of empty 
wooden tables. One of those chairs was occupied by an 
attractive young woman. Perhaps this evening wouldn't be 
such a dead loss, after all!

"What are you having?" David asked, gesturing his head 
towards the bar where a Moroccan man with untypically 
long hair was serving. 

"A beer. Any kind of fucking beer. And try and get some 
cigs as well."

As David strode off, Phillippa approached the table she'd 
previously spotted. Although she and David had dressed 
down in relatively casual clothes, she couldn't help feeling 
almost overdressed in this place. But sod them! She wasn't 
in her twenties any more!

"You don't mind if we sit here, love?" she asked, as she 
plonked herself in one of the cane chairs.

The young woman she addressed was intent on writing a 
letter and was visibly startled to be spoken to. She nodded 
her head.

"Yes. Why not?" she said in a distinctly North European 
accent, and then bowed her head and returned to her 
writing.

Phillippa snarled. What was the point of seeking company 
if it just ignored her? She lit another cigarette, her last, and 
hoped her husband wouldn't disappoint her with regards to 
her nicotine requirements. She flicked the ash into the huge 
pottery ashtray in the middle of the table and regarded the 
young woman. She had long hennaed hair that fanned over 
her shoulders and wore an interesting mixture of ethnic 
clothes that Phillippa could see included only a few 
Moroccan items. Indian beads, a West African tie-dyed tee-
shirt, and a brightly coloured ankle-length skirt that could 
have come from anywhere in the developing world. She 
wore flat-heeled sandals and her toenails were painted in 
crude red enamel.

"Where do you come from, love?" she asked.

The young woman raised her head. She must have been in 
her mid-twenties with freckles that spread out and merged 
on her richly tanned skin. There was a ring through one of 
her eyebrows and another through a nostril. She wore no 
make-up at all and huge dangling ear-rings fell out from 
underneath her bush of reddened hair.

"Excuse me?"

"Which country do you come from? Are you Dutch?"

"No, I don't come from Germany. I am Danische, er, 
Danish."

"Danish? Copenhagen?"

"Kristianer," she nodded. And then she lowered her head 
again to continue writing.

Shit! Was that all she had to say for herself, Phillippa 
wondered.

David wandered back carrying two bottles, two small 
glasses and, Phillippa was pleased to see, two packets of 
Marlboro Lite. 

"Well, it's better than Casa Bleu," sniffed Phillippa taking 
the cigarettes off her husband, who didn't smoke. "Or 
worse, Gauloise."

"They make shit rolling tobacco," affirmed David. He bent 
his head towards the young woman and raised a querying  
eyebrow. 

Phillippa shrugged.

Then David touched her gently on the knee and pointed at 
the bar hehind her. Phillippa turned her head, but the smell 
already alerted her to what he was referring to. The barman 
was sharing a joint with a couple of Moroccan men, one 
quite old in a djalaba, who were standing at the bar. 
Phillippa smiled.

She dug into her pocket, and pulled out a sachet and a 
packet of king-size Rizlas.

"At least we don't have to go back to our room," she said 
with a smile.

As she busied herself in assembling the joint, she noticed 
the young woman watching her fingers as she crumbled 
some of Morocco's finest into the pulled-thin contents of a 
Marlboro cigarette.

"It's from the Rif," Phillippa said.

"The Rif?"

"Hash-growing area of Morocco. Somewhere in the North. 
Never been there."

"I've been there," the young woman remarked. "But that 
looks very good. Better than the hash I bought."

"A friend of ours in Marrakech got it for us," Phillippa 
replied, remembering Hamid's rather shy smile.

"You've been to Marrakech?"

"Just drove down from there this morning. Over the Tizi-n-
Test."

"It's a beautiful road."

"It was cloudy when we came down," David commented. 
"We didn't see anything until we'd driven through it. Not so 
much fun driving, though. What's your name?"

"My name? Marla."

"David and Phillippa. We're from London. Have you ever 
been there?"

"No. Never."

And then Marla dropped her head down and continued 
writing.

Shit! Phillippa sighed. She thought they were getting 
somewhere. Anyway, you couldn't tell with these hippy 
girls. Some of them were pretty uptight. But at least she 
knew Marla smoked dope.

In fact, it was only after they'd shared the joint between 
them that Marla opened up at all. She pushed her hair off 
her face and smoked it in a very strange way, cupping her 
fist and holding it between her forefingers. 

"That's all right, love," remarked Phillippa as the joint was 
passed to David. "We've not got Hepatitis or anything!"

"But you don't know if I might," remarked Marla with a 
smile. "Anyway, I like it cool. I don't smoke cigarettes, so 
the smoke hurts my lungs."

"It does me, too," smiled David, mimicking Marla's pose 
and inhaling deeply from the hole between his thumb and 
fingers.

The conversation began haltingly, but bit by bit Phillippa 
established that Marla was travelling around Morocco by 
herself on public transport following an itinerary taken 
from her Danish-language guidebook. She had been touring 
with a male friend, but they'd had a quarrel in Meknes and 
had chosen to go their separate ways. During her journey, 
she'd mostly been staying in places rather like the Atlas and 
was fairly contemptuous of the more expensive places 
Phillippa and David preferred.

"You never meet anyone in places like that," she opined.

"Well, at least there's no television here," remarked David. 
"Everywhere you go there's a TV. And they're always 
showing another atrocity in Palestine. That fucking Sharon! 
He's a real cunt."

"I mean," agreed Phillippa, "if he thinks he's going to 
resolve the intifada by driving tanks into the Gaza strip, he 
must be fucking mad! It's a real hornet nest he's stirring. 
Fuck knows where it'll end!"

Normally when David and Phillippa expressed their 
opinions in front of hippy types they expected a 
sympathetic response. After all, if anything united those of 
liberal opinion it was a general disgust of Israel's atrocities, 
but Phillippa noticed that Marla looked distinctly 
uncomfortable.

"I don't know," she said. "If you consider what the Israeli 
people think when their buses get blown up by suicide 
bombers, it isn't so clear."

"It's obviously an over-reaction!" David sniffed.

"That's not what it seems in Israel…"

Phillippa could see this edging towards a quarrel, so she 
placed a hand gently on David's before he launched into his 
usual rant about Palestinian rights.

"Have you lived in Israel, love?" she asked.

Marla nodded. "I worked in a kibbutz for six months. It's 
the least I could do!"

"Are you Jewish?" David wondered.

Marla nodded. "There aren't many of us left in Denmark. 
The fucking Nazi bastards! They killed everyone. And 
those they didn't kill… My grandfather! He was in a camp. 
His right hand is totally crushed. And he was right-handed, 
too. And my grandmother… She was only a young girl! 
The bastards treated my grandparents like shit. That is why 
Israel is so important to us. And after all the… after the 
fucking fucking… after the holocaust… you can't say to the 
Israeli people that it's wrong to defend themselves against 
their enemies!"

David and Phillippa were silenced. Phillippa could see that 
her husband dearly wanted to express his own views: that 
the Israelis were behaving no better than the Nazis, that the 
Palestinians had a right to self-determination, and that those 
who didn't learn from history were condemned to repeat it. 
Phillippa, however, had other things on her mind.

The subject of conversation steered away from this 
sensitive topic as the three of them compared notes of the 
various sights of Morocco. Phillippa was glad that Marla 
had forgotten the brief note of contention. When Marla left 
to go to the toilet, Phillippa stood up and followed her, 
smiling slightly as she noticed how Marla was staggering a 
little after the effect of the Kif and the beer that David kept 
replenished. And she didn't follow Marla because she also 
needed a leak. She'd already taken care of that.

Marla was startled to see Phillippa standing outside the 
toilet when she emerged, after flushing the latrine several 
times before it finally let the toilet paper sink out of sight. 
She was even more startled when, without warning, 
Phillippa took Marla's head in her hands, grasping her 
behind the ears, and pressed Marla's lips against her own. 
Phillippa achieved what she wanted when she noticed 
Marla's eyes flash in that unmistakeable way that indicated 
a suddenly awakened desire. Phillippa was too intelligent to 
squander her advantage by following through with her 
tongue. She placed an open palm on Marla's crotch and 
briefly nuzzled her jaw and ear, before pulling herself off 
with an apologetic grin.

"I'm sorry, love," Phillippa said coquettishly. "I just don't 
know what came over me!"

She left a flustered Marla and entered the loo where she sat 
on the toilet seat, thankfully one built on the British rather 
than the French model, and spent her time smoking a 
cigarette and reflecting on the signs of reciprocal lust that 
Marla had betrayed. That was good! She relished the 
memory of Marla's earring brushing against her nose and 
the girl's hot breath on her cheek. And, of course, that 
sparkle in her eyes when they parted. Marla was plainly 
someone who understood the pleasures of another woman's 
body, although it might not be her usual preference.

Finally, she flushed the cigarette in the bowl, it having 
served the purpose of blocking out the dreadful stale smell 
of urine. She flushed the latrine and returned to David and 
Marla who were chatting animatedly about, of all things, 
the qualifiers for next year's World Cup. Bloody football! 
That was one interest of David's Phillippa could never 
understand.

Eventually, it was obvious that the barman was occupied in 
the rather unsubtle business of closing the bar to business. 
In the meantime, Phillippa had pushed her advantage, 
slowly and cautiously. A hand placed on Marla's knee. A 
squeeze of her hand. A kiss on her cheek when she'd said 
something that Phillippa found especially touching. And 
then the long hand-holding that was so natural in a country 
where men friends would wander around so obviously 
showing their affection in that way (although Hamid had 
disabused her of the notion that this necessarily meant 
anything of more carnal intimacy).

"Well, it's time for bed," said Phillippa, still holding 
Marla's hand. "Are you coming with us?"

Marla looked quite taken aback. "You mean to your room?"

"Yes."

"For sex?"

"If you want?"

"The two of you?"

"David's very gentle. Aren't you, dear?"

David smiled in that way he had practised so many times. It 
indicated a degree of sympathy that didn't obscure his 
intent, but suggested enough vulnerability that it almost 
always worked.

"Is he goyim?" asked Marla.

"Goyim? You mean gentile. Yeah, David's not a Jew. 
Neither am I. What difference does that make?"

"So, he's not circumcised."

"No. Does that bother you?"

Marla hesitated.

"Have you never made love with a man and a woman 
before?" David asked. "It's fun, you know. Twice the fun, 
in fact."

"But you're not circumcised, are you?" Marla asked again.

"No. Does that trouble you? Or is it just the idea of having 
sex with a couple?"

"It's not that. I did it once, no twice, in Kristianer. It was 
okay. But I don't like men who are not... who are 
uncircumcised."

"Is it a big deal?" David wondered, betraying his hurt. "It's 
all the same under the foreskin."

"I don't like uncircumcised men. It doesn't seem right."

Phillippa and David were dumbfounded. David looked at 
Phillippa. Phillippa frowned at David and squeezed Marla's 
hand a little tighter. David shrugged his shoulders.

"I'll talk to the barman," he said at last. "He'll know where I 
can pick up a prostitute."

"Are you sure, love?" asked Phillippa.

"They always know. And anyway, if he doesn't know, I'll 
find one. There's bound to be a girl, or a boy for that 
matter, who does trade in this town."

David kissed Phillippa lovingly on the lips and then strode 
off purposefully towards the bar. He was very soon in 
animated conversation with the barman who waved his 
arms around as if giving directions.

"You don't mind, do you?" wondered Marla, her hand still 
in Phillippa's.

"No. He knows the deal. He doesn't mind."

"Not me and you. Him. You don't mind him seeing a 
prostitute?"

"Of course not. He always uses a condom."

"But he's your husband. He's going to have sex with a 
prostitute."

Phillippa frowned and squeezed Marla's hand in hers.

"I really do not mind what my husband does. He can fuck 
any girl he likes. He can fuck two or three at the same time, 
if he wants to. He can fuck a boy or he can fuck a girl. I 
don't mind. And he doesn't mind who I fuck either. The 
only stipulation is that he uses a condom. We have regular 
check-ups, but the last fucking thing I want is to catch 
fucking AIDS off my husband. That'd really fuck up our 
love life!"

When they had made their way up the stairs, Marla was 
impressed with Phillippa's bedroom. She sat on the bed and 
spread her arms behind her.

"Your room's huge! It's much bigger than mine. And you've 
got an en suite bathroom. I didn't know they had those in 
this hotel."

Phillippa smiled. Perhaps David's tip to the receptionist had 
been more effective than she'd thought. But there was 
business to attend to. And she could see she'd have to be 
prompt or all enthusiasm would soon be gone. With only a 
few swift movements, she pulled off all her clothes, but 
decided against letting them drop to the floor. She didn't 
want to find that a cockroach had crawled around inside 
them. She placed them on the small cane armchair by the 
window that looked out onto the small dust-blown square. 
She then sat naked on the bed next to Marla and took her 
hand. She lifted it up and pressed her lips to the fingers and 
knuckles.

Phillippa had got used to the women she bedded being 
relatively inexperienced. It was a fact of life that most 
women were more accustomed to having sex with a man 
than with another woman. And with no David to help here, 
she didn't have the advantage of his own subtle way of 
making a woman feel at ease with what for many women 
was a novel experience. But as Phillippa knew, these 
women had just not had the benefit of a tutor of quite her 
experience or skill.

She soon graduated her attention from the hand to the face 
and buried her tongue in Marla's mouth. She felt the 
reciprocating tongue probe nervously at first, and then 
become steadily bolder around her teeth and gums.

Patience was all you needed. They had all the time in the 
world. And one thing that Phillippa most savoured about 
making love with another woman was just how long and 
leisurely it could be. Today, what she most wanted was 
precisely that gentle slow build-up. Inevitably, her sex 
sessions with Hamid and David had become very frantic 
and vigorous ever so soon. What do you expect with two 
men, both of whose pricks were proudly erect and both 
eager to penetrate her?

Marla was finally naked after a slow disrobing, each item 
of clothing, most especially her cotton knickers, eased off 
with both fingers and tongue, taking in the smells and taste 
of the flesh around them. She revealed herself to be a 
slender young thing, her head ever so slightly too large in 
relation to her shoulders. Her breasts had a slight droop, the 
areola around her nipples nearly a quarter of the size of her 
medium small breasts. Phillippa took a nipple in her mouth, 
the soft down of the chest slightly dark even against the 
tanned skin, evidence of nude sunbathing in the recent past, 
while her fingers twiddled with the prominent clitoris.

When Marla came, she did so violently and urgently, twice 
the number and frequency of orgasm that Phillippa was 
able to achieve. Her whole body shuddered with each 
spasm of ecstasy, her taut chest juddering, the muscles 
distinctly contracting with each one. Phillippa envied her 
that. Her more mature body disguised the spasms that were 
mostly expressed by falsetto gasps that built up and up and 
released themselves with a sympathetic tightening of the 
muscles in her thighs. In fact, so sensitive was Marla that 
all Phillippa needed to do was tug with her teeth at the 
small ring pierced through her eyebrow for Marla's body to 
arch beneath her stomach and press forcefully onto the 
fingers pushed into her vagina and the thumb eased into her 
anus.

The couple slowed down and parted, Phillippa's arm around 
Marla's shoulders and a hand placed on her pierced navel. 
Marla put a hand on Phillippa's and pulled a strand of 
hennaed hair in her other hand. She smiled at Phillippa.

"Did you enjoy that?" Phillippa asked.

Marla was too overwhelmed to do anything than nod with 
her still excited smile. Phillippa didn't need to ask, but she 
was sure that this intensity of orgasm was a novel 
experience for Marla. Perhaps the men she'd fucked had 
been too eager to give her the time she needed to bring 
herself to the level of orgasm that was almost routine for 
Phillippa.

She looked towards the window, the curtain being too 
flimsy to hide the glow of the streetlights outside. At this 
moment, she couldn't help wondering where David was. 
He'd almost certainly found someone. Perhaps it was a 
prostitute. Maybe he'd found a Moroccan man who would 
indulge David's passion for cock in his mouth. It was even 
possible that he'd stumbled across another tourist, maybe 
one of the young men and women who'd also been in the 
bar. If he had, it would scarcely be the first time. Phillippa 
was already looking forward to hearing her husband's 
account of his nocturnal adventures.

She smiled at Marla, who returned the smile. That twinkle 
in her eyes was impossible to ignore. She put a probing 
finger in the mouth of Marla's still very moist vagina, the 
long brown hairs of which were flattened by sweat and the 
grinding of their tribadism. 

She pressed her mouth to Marla's and let her finger sink 
deeper inside. There was more to come! In one way, she 
was not at all envious of her husband. No man had the 
capacity for prolonged lovemaking that Phillippa could 
enjoy with a woman.




Tangiers
========

The waves crashed against the jetty. The same waves, 
Marla reflected, that might have crashed against the 
Gibraltan shore on the other side of the straits, waves that 
were as much Atlantic as they were Mediterranean. Each 
wave fierce and restful at the same time, built up slowly 
and steadily out at sea to break sometimes on themselves 
and sometimes against the concrete jetty that projected into 
the open water.

She glanced down at the postcard on her lap, the same one 
she'd started writing half an hour ago and had still not got 
beyond the initial sentence where she told her parents about 
how friendly Moroccans were. It wasn't, of course, their 
friendliness that most concerned her (she didn't want to tell 
her parents too much about how some of this friendship 
was real and some was just a means to an end). No. The 
friendship that most haunted her, even now, more than a 
week later, was what she'd experienced at the Atlas Hotel 
in Taroudannt.

Was she really a lesbian?

She'd always known she was bisexual. The first time in 
Kristianer with Helga and Rolf. That was one thing. But 
they were all drunk and very very stoned and the 
lovemaking was not totally successful. Helga had even 
fallen asleep with Marla's tongue still licking her thick 
pubic bush. The second time wasn't so much a reprise as a 
total disaster, when it was Rolf this time who was unable to 
fulfil his role in the trio. Men were always so eager to begin 
with, but you could never be sure they could sustain the 
enthusiasm.

And the second time in the kibbutz, with Isabella, the 
Brazilian girl, whose friendship had somehow developed 
into something altogether more intimate. Theirs had been a 
relationship more marked by moments of tenderness than 
ones of abandon and uncontrolled passion. Isabella tried so 
hard to hide the relationship from everyone else in the 
kibbutz, even sometimes pretending she hardly knew 
Marla, who was aware that what Isabella most wanted was 
for the two of them to retreat to her bed and lie together. 
Maybe just hold hands. Maybe just kiss each other's face 
and breasts. And, so few times that each time was wholly 
memorable, to explore the pubic region that burned so 
fiercely.

But none of this was anything compared to the passion 
Marla had enjoyed with that English woman in the Middle 
Atlas. In fact, not one encounter, with either man or 
woman, bore fair comparison to the intensity of the passion 
Marla experienced that day. She was so frightened of 
spoiling that memory, she deliberately avoided Phillippa 
and David the following day and set off by as early a bus as 
she could to El Jadida, whilst the couple no doubt 
continued driving on to Agadir.

The memory of those orgasms was intense not only in her 
mind, but the mere recollection burnt just as intensely 
between her legs. How could sex be so intense? So 
overwhelming? So totally beyond what Marla had ever 
associated with sex before?

Was Marla a lesbian? 

She was still sure it was men she most desired. Even now, 
with the memory of Phillippa's fingers and thumb so 
vividly imprinted on her vagina and anus, it was the image 
of a man and the hope of achieving similar satisfaction with 
one that was uppermost in her mind.

"Elles sont belles, n'est-ce pas?"  Marla heard.

 "Pardon?"

"Les vagues. Elles sont très belles!" repeated the young 
man who stood above her as she sat cross-legged by the 
edge of the jetty.

"I speak English, you know," said Marla with a smile. The 
young man's French accent was truly execrable. He was 
slim, with baggy khaki shorts that came nearly to his knees, 
open-toed sandals, and a tee-shirt that celebrated the Pacha 
nightclub in Ibiza.

"You do? I thought you might be French or Belgian or 
summat."

"Not Moroccan?"

"No. Not Moroccan. You don't look Moroccan. Where 
d'you come from? Switzerland or Austria or something?"

"Denmark."

"Oh! I'd never have guessed!" he said, crouching down 
beside her. "I'm sorry for butting in, like, but I saw you 
were by yourself. I thought you might want company."

"Really?" said Marla, with a smile. This young man 
couldn't be much more than twenty, almost a boy really, 
with a chin that was still relatively smooth and hair that had 
grown out a bit from whatever style it was originally 
supposed to have been. He seemed quite harmless. And he 
had such a sweet smile.

"Yeah! I mean, I've been sorta wandering about, like, not 
doing much and I saw you. So I thought, well, you know, I 
thought..."

"Yes," said Marla, putting the hand that held her ball pen 
onto her lap. "The waves are beautiful. I could watch them 
for hours. They are very restful. And you? Where do you 
come from? I don't recognise the accent. Are you 
Australian? A New Zealander?"

"Am I fuck!" he said, rather surprised. "Do I sound like an 
Ozzie? No, I'm English, me. I come from Newcastle." He 
noticed Marla's blank expression. "It's in the North. 
Near Scotland. In fact, it's a sort of Viking place. It was you 
Danes that we Geordies originate from."

"Oh yes," said Marla. That was fascinating. She knew her 
history. She knew England had once been part of the 
Danish Empire, but it was very curious to meet an 
Englishman who was part of the same heritage as her, if in 
a rather indirect way. "I'm Marla, by the way."

"Paul," the young man said, reaching out a hand at the end 
of his skinny bare arm and shaking hers in an unpractised 
way. "Pleased to meet you, like."

"Are you here on holiday by yourself?"

"Naw! But me mates are in the hotel room still. They've 
both got the trots. It's like Delhi Belly, only this being 
Morocco and all I guess you have to call it something else. 
It was the bloody couscous and stuff we had in the 
restaurant last night."

"But you've not got the same problem?" remarked Marla. 
Her English was always very good, but she had difficulty 
understanding much more than half of what Paul was 
saying. She surmised that Paul's friends must have eaten 
something that disagreed with them.

"Well, yeah! I'm a vegetarian, like, so I didn't have none of 
the chicken and mutton and stuff. You don't get the trots 
from vegetables mostly."

"Vegetarian?" 

This seemed most unlikely. Most of Marla's vegetarian 
friends dressed in ways that proclaimed their social 
conscience that was totally unlike this young man. He 
didn't look the sort who would relish lentils or organic rice. 
Marla sympathised. When it was possible, she much 
preferred her food to be kosher, though halal was 
acceptable.

"Aye," he said, looking almost embarrassed. "I'm not some 
sorta hippy, like. Though I smoke blow like the best of 
them. I dunno why. I just sorta gone off eating meat. I 
guess I must be soft, me."

"Soft?"

"Aye! Not hard, like. I sorta look at meat and I think about 
the animals, you know, the sheep and cows and pigs and 
all. And then I just don't fancy it. So, I must be soft as shite, 
me."

Marla found this terribly endearing. Although he betrayed a 
certain degree of boldness by breaking into her reverie in 
the way he had, there was still something rather shy and 
awkward about him. He fiddled with the waist of his huge 
shorts and smiled readily and easily. But his eyes contrived 
to focus on hers for only as long as it was strictly polite to 
do so.

"And have you and your friends been travelling around 
Morocco?"

"Well, not really. We just came for a couple of days in 
Tangiers. We're going on to Ibiza for the clubs later, but we 
thought we'd see what Africa's like. But it's not proper 
Africa, is it? They're all Arabs and the like here. And 
there's no zebras and elephants and lions and stuff."

"It's still Africa."

"Guess it is. But I'd like to see real Africa some time. You 
know, go on a safari or something. There's summat about 
big animals I've always liked."

"And your friends? Do they like animals?"

"Nah! They don't give a fuck about stuff like that. They'd 
rather smoke blow and drop E and go to nightclubs and 
dance and stuff. Not that I don't like doing that and all. And 
they're good mates, like. So what are you doing in 
Morocco?"

"Touring. Seeing the country."

"Oh! And where've you been?"

"Everywhere," Marla boasted. "Fez. Marrakech. Meknes. 
Casablanca. Rabat. All over."

"Hoo! You and your mates, like?"

"No, just me."

"Just you? You're by yourself, like?"

Marla nodded. She could see Paul was slightly 
uncomfortable with that information. He knelt down next to 
her. 

"So, what are these places like? You must be a brave lass to 
go to all those places."

Marla smiled and gave an account of the places she'd 
visited, the sights she'd toured, the carpet shops she'd been 
to. She told him how difficult it was sometimes to shake off 
the persistent attention of Moroccan men in the Kasbahs 
and medinas, and how there always seemed to be someone 
who wanted to be her friend and tour guide. She recounted 
the ruses she used to escape from their attention, but 
spluttered when she was sure he used the word 'cunnilingus' 
in one of his nodded interjections.

"Sorry? What was that?" she asked, for the first time aware 
that he was in some sense a potential sexual partner.

"You're a canny lass!"

"A what?"

"Canny lass. Smart girl, like. Geordie expression."

"Oh."

Marla was enjoying Paul's attention. She was touched by 
how, whenever she caught his eyes looking at her in a 
clearly appraising way, he visibly blushed and looked 
away. Although he was soft-spoken, Marla wasn't at all 
sure how much that was to do with his peculiar English 
dialect or if it would be the same whatever his native 
tongue.

"Shall we go for a coffee?" she asked.

"A coffee?" wondered Paul, the freckles on his face 
deepening again with his ready blush. "But I hardly know 
you, like."

"To a café. There are a few near the Kasbah."

"Oh, in a café. Aye, of course. We've been drinking that 
weird Moroccan tea. Mint tea. It's reet sweet, like."

"I prefer coffee. Café cassé. Or café au lait."

"Yeah. I could do with a cuppa, me."

 They sat outside a café at a table on the pavement. The waiter 
swivelled the huge parasol so they were both in the shade of the 
fierce North African sun. Paul seemed ill at ease but insisted on 
buying the drinks. He struggled with his schoolboy French while 
the waiter nodded and seemed to understand. Marla couldn't help 
smiling at his pronunciation, but chose to make no remark.

 "You pay afterwards," she advised him as he fumbled for 
some dirhams.

"Oh! Of course. Like you do in France and Spain, like."

After the coffees, they wandered into the Kasbah. Marla 
enjoyed herself as she helped Paul haggle over a scented 
cedar box that he took a fancy to, easily reducing the cost 
to about a fifth what was originally requested.

"You're a reet canny lass!" Paul exclaimed.

That expression again. Marla giggled. As she contemplated 
Paul's startled face she resolved in her mind to take this 
young man in hand. She had some condoms she'd brought 
over from Denmark. Perhaps she could find out for sure 
whether she really was a lesbian. If she was one, why 
would she find herself so attracted to Paul? She liked his 
smile. She liked the way he occasionally ran his fingers 
through his hair to push it off his forehead. She liked his 
gaucheness and that unforced charm that came from his 
heart and not his head.

"Have you got a girlfriend, Paul?" she asked as the two of 
them left the winding claustrophobic maze of stalls and re-
emerged into the open square through one of the doorways 
to the Kasbah.

"A girlfriend? Naw! Not now I haven't. It's not I'm a poof, 
like. I used to go out with a lass. Trish. Reet bonny lass she 
was, but we split up months ago. But I've dated a few birds 
since, like."

"I see," said Marla. She took Paul's hand in hers for the first 
time, the one that wasn't carrying the plastic bag with the 
cedar box, the canvas sandals he'd bought for his mam, and 
the stone carved into the shape of a small bird he'd bought 
for his sister. He looked genuinely startled, but he squeezed 
her hand appreciatively.

"I didn't think you..." he said with a hoarse voice. "It 
wasn't what I was thinking about at all, like..."

"I know," said Marla with a smile, turning round to face 
him and kissing him tenderly on the lips. 

She glanced down to see, even through the baggy thick 
cotton of his shorts, that her affection was pretty much 
reciprocated in the way men just couldn't help expressing.

"Are you circumcised?" she asked. At last! She'd managed 
to ask the question that had been increasingly troubling her.

"Circumcised?" Paul asked. "Does it bother you, like? I 
know a lot of lasses don't like a bloke to be circumcised. 
How did you guess?"

"So, you are circumcised?"

"You're reet clivver, aren't you? I didn't think anyone could 
spot things like that. Is it the way I walk, like?"

"No. No. It's not that."

"I don't know why my parents did it. I s'pose they thought 
there were good medical reasons for it, like. Penile cancer 
or whatever. Trish didn't mind, but one lass I knew, she 
really hated it."

"She did?"

"She said it was reet off-putting. Is that what you think, 
Marla?"

"No, not at all," said Marla, kissing Paul rather more 
vigorously on the lips. She kept her tongue behind her lips 
and was gratified to see Paul's lips part in obvious 
anticipation. "In fact, I prefer it that way."

"You do?"

"I'm staying at a small hotel here. The Hotel Atlantic it's 
called, although all I can see from the window is a shop 
selling gas bottles and a broken-down bus. It's not far at 
all."

"Isn't it?"

"No."

"Erm. Shouldn't we go to a chemist first?"

"Chemist?"

"Get some johnnies, like."

"Johnnies?" Marla wondered, falling in love with Paul's 
obvious embarrassment.

"Condoms. You know. Be on the safe side."

"No. I'm quite well prepared."

Paul laughed with evident relief. "You're a real canny lass!" 
he said, squeezing her hand tight.

That expression again! Marla laughed and reciprocated his 
grip, tempted to put her other hand on the bulge she could 
see under his shorts. But no! Not in the open air. Not in 
Morocco.

She could sense Paul's nervousness as she walked with him 
past the reception desk of the old French hotel and made 
their way up the ancient crumbling staircase to her room on 
the second floor. She squeezed his hand, only letting go to 
fumble for the key to her room she kept in her shoulder 
bag.

Once inside, before there was any chance of Paul's amour 
abating, she turned round and pushed her lips against his, 
this time letting her mouth open to admit his tongue. It was 
a much nicer tasting kiss than the one she'd last enjoyed 
with Phillippa. There was none of that overwhelming 
stench of nicotine that almost put her off on that occasion. 
She relished the slight roughness of his facial stubble on 
her chin. Now she thought about it, the lack of stubble was 
just one of the many things about Sapphic love that both 
attracted and slightly bothered her.

Paul was certainly no virgin, but he was still relatively 
awkward. When he focused on just kissing, he became 
much more assured, but she noticed he kept his eyes closed 
as if he was imagining she was someone else. That was 
understandable. That was something she used to do when 
she started having sex with other people after her year-long 
relationship with Knut finally came to its messy end. Paul 
was still recovering from the end of his relationship with 
the Trish he'd alluded to.

Paul was clearly uncertain how to bring his expression of 
passion to the next phase and Marla's jaw began to ache 
from the effort of kissing. She was sure she knew all she 
needed to know about Paul's fillings and the slight chip on 
his lower incisor. She eased her teeth onto his tongue and 
bit it slightly.

"Yow!" Paul said, pulling his face off hers.

"Take your clothes off, Paul," Marla commanded.

"Now?"

"Well, of course. Don't worry. I'll take mine off too."

"Oh! Okay!"

Paul pulled off his tee-shirt and shorts to reveal the very 
amusing boxer shorts he wore emblazoned with cartoon 
pictures from South Park. Marla divested herself rather 
more speedily and tossed her clothes on the armchair. She 
was careful that they shouldn't land on the floor where 
cockroaches could crawl inside them.

Paul hesitated and looked around the room for the first time 
before finally pulling down his boxer shorts, his penis so 
obviously stirring inside.

"You've got a real bonny room. Much nicer than the one 
I'm sharing with me mates."

"Never mind the room," said Marla, slightly impatiently 
and lying on the bed, totally nude, one knee raised and her 
other leg stretched out. "Off with your pants!"

"You're a reet bonny lass!" exclaimed Paul, finally raising 
his eyes from his discarded boxer shorts and for the first 
time really exploring Marla's body. She was pleased to see 
that Paul's remark didn't seem at all rehearsed. 

"Bonny?" asked Marla, not knowing but guessing it meant 
the same as the French word bonne.

"Beautiful!" Paul said, slightly melting as if frightened this 
unexpected opportunity for sex might yet pass him by. 
"Bonny is Geordie for beautiful."

"And you're a 'bonny' man yourself, Paul!" Marla reassured 
him, stretching her arms out to grab him to her bosom.

Their lovemaking was clumsy and fumbling to begin with. 
Paul had none of the self-assurance either of Phillippa or of 
many of the men whom Marla had made love to. But as he 
gradually became more confident, he became more fluid 
and passionate, his mouth exploring her breasts and 
shoulders, his teeth nibbling her ear, while below his erect 
penis prodded against Marla's thighs hesitant as to whether 
he should enter.

He leaned back, raising his head with a broad grin, his eyes 
open wide and staring into Marla's and his fingers probing 
around in the hair between her legs.

"Hoo! You're reet wet, lass!" Paul exclaimed, a finger 
probing Marla's vagina, his thumb pressing on her clitoris.

Marla grabbed the sealed condom she had remembered to 
place close at hand on the bedside table and passed it over 
to Paul. "And you're very hard, Paul."

"Hard! Aye! I am that!" Paul said with a smile, unwrapping 
the condom and with practised skill tugging it over his 
glans. He squeezed the nipple as he stretched the 
prophylactic over a penis that Marla was pleased to see was 
amongst the largest she'd seen in real life. And circumcised 
too, as Marla was delighted to confirm. 

At first, Marla was also anxious as Paul thrust in and out of 
her. Would she enjoy heterosexual sex again? Was she now 
a changed woman? Gradually, as Paul became more 
focused on the moment, she too became less and less 
worried and relished the very different sensation of a man's 
lovemaking. It was less tactile and more carnal than a 
woman's as he surrendered to a rhythm that was not of his 
choosing. A man might not have the intimate insight of 
how a woman might feel, as Phillippa clearly had, but his 
role from an opposite direction, not really understanding 
the pleasure he was giving, and perhaps slightly guilty at 
the pleasure he received, was a role with which Marla felt 
comfortable. It was like putting on an old jumper after 
trying out a new sweater and remembering again what it 
was she used to like about it. Not perfect, but somehow 
more comfy and reassuring.

Paul wasn't a bad lover. His relationship with Trish had 
certainly taught him respect for a woman's feelings. He 
resisted not once, but more than once, the spurt of 
ejaculation Marla could feel ready to explode within the 
condom's nipple inside her, slowing down his thrusts before 
the critical moment. He was appreciative of her own 
rhythm which gradually grew as her reservations about 
heterosexual love dissipated, and soon gave vent to the 
small gasps and shudders that denoted to her not orgasm 
exactly, but something near enough for her to be satisfied.

Eventually they collapsed, one on top of the other, sweat 
running through the sparse hairs on Paul's chest and 
streaming into the pool of perspiration between Marla's 
breasts. Paul tugged off the condom and dropped it into the 
huge pottery ashtray, a blob of semen captured in the 
swollen nipple. Like all men after the event, Paul was 
exhausted, wanting only to rest in Marla's arms, which she 
was happy to let him do. Her mind conversed silently with 
itself as she wondered whether this impromptu sexual 
encounter had actually proven anything to her.

In the commune in Kristianer where she lived, it was 
relatively easy for Marla to find sexual partners whenever 
she chose, but she was always reluctant to take full 
advantage of this license. Although she didn't want to make 
this too clear to her friends, this was less the fear of earning 
a reputation for promiscuity than a kind of fastidiousness. 
She didn't find all men attractive. In fact, it was really only 
a minority who really attracted her at all. And it was men 
with the same kind of faint vulnerability she recognised in 
Paul that were most attractive to her.

She bent over and kissed Paul tenderly on the cheek.

He started and looked up.

"Eeh, lass!" he exclaimed with a laugh. And then, he asked 
the question Marla had been secretly dreading. "Will we be 
seeing each other again, like?"

Marla pondered over this. What had been good about her 
encounter with Phillippa was partly its briefness, that it 
hadn't been spoiled by any later less memorable reprises. 
Although now this current lovemaking served another 
purpose, to reassure her that her sexual identity was still 
secure, she wasn't sure she wanted to spoil this encounter 
with the memory of later ones. Particularly, Marla 
reflected, if this entailed having to meet Paul's friends who 
by the evening might well have recovered sufficiently from 
their alimentary ailments to accompany him. She wasn't 
sure she wanted to entertain more than one Geordie in one 
day.

"I need an early night," Marla lied. "I've got a bus to catch 
tomorrow."

"Oh!" said Paul, clearly disappointed. "Where are you 
going?"

"Erm..." Marla said, wondering what plausible destination 
she could invent. "Tetouan. I've not been there before. I've 
heard it's worth a visit."

"Tet Wan? Eeh aye! I guess you've got your travels to do," 
said Paul bravely, but disguising his disappointment badly. 

Marla took his face in her hands and swivelled it round 
toward her. There was a kind of moistness in his eyes that 
confirmed the strength of his newly awakened emotions 
towards her. "But that's tomorrow, Paul. We still have time 
today."

"We do?" 

"You may have noticed that I have more than one condom 
on the bedside table," Marla announced with a smile, 
placing a finger on the unsheathed glans of Paul's visibly 
stirring penis.



Ibiza
=====

Paul's forehead juddered against the thick glass of the 
window as the bus sped over the uneven sunbaked tarmac, 
forcing him to jerk his head back. He studied the trees and 
villas the bus passed on this longer dash between stops, all 
brightly illuminated by the late morning Mediterranean sun. 
He rubbed his forehead uneasily and let it slump again onto 
the glass.

At least he wasn't feeling like shit this morning, like he did 
most mornings on his three week stay in Ibiza. He had done 
well to go easy the night before, his body and head 
complaining after the punishment he and his friends had 
inflicted on themselves in the pursuit of pleasure. His mates 
were still back in the room they shared in the pensione just 
outside the town. He could imagine Baz still in bed with 
Tina and Dave with Sue, the girls they had got off with last 
night. Paul had been less lucky. The girl he'd focused on 
had collapsed in a pool of vomit and had to be helped back 
to her hotel by her friends, while he tailed behind Baz and 
Dave and their fresh conquests. Their score rate was always 
more impressive when they held back on the booze, though 
the general haze of Ecstasy and blow took away most of 
their inhibitions with women.

Paul had consumed enough booze and blow to help him fall 
asleep in his lonely bed where he could hear Baz and Dave 
making love with Tina and Sue. Fortunately, they weren't 
nearly as noisy as on that other night when Paul had also 
scored, but it was Baz that time who had to doze off alone. 

Their Ibiza holiday was going well. After only one week, 
their relative score rates, which they often liked to 
compare, was nothing to be ashamed of. Eight nights so far, 
and each of them had scored with at least five lasses apiece. 
It mightn't be that romantic having to fuck in the same 
room as your mates, but they had to be careful with cash. 
The pensione they found not long after arriving on the 
island was dead cheap. This meant they had plenty left to 
spend on nightclubs, drugs and booze.

Paul, no more than his mates, didn't want to go too wild. 
The money they'd saved in their year off working in offices 
and factories before going to university, he to Manchester 
and Baz and Dave to Leeds and Sussex respectively, would 
be needed to supplement their student loans. That was one 
millstone Paul didn't relish carrying about with him while 
studying Engineering and Physics. But Ibiza was generally 
real cheap, except for the nightclubs of course. They'd done 
the main clubs. Pacha. Manumission. Café Del Mar. Most 
evenings, they went to rather cheaper clubs where the DJs 
might be less famous but the music was just as banging. Or 
seemed to be when you were tanked up and E'd out.

Paul glanced over at the middle-aged Spanish woman he'd 
haltingly asked to alert him to the stop his Spanish was far 
too rudimentary to pronounce especially well. Most of the 
time, you didn't need to speak a word of Spanish, which 
was just as well, really. Languages had never been his 
strong point. He hoped though she didn't guess why he 
wanted to get off at this stop. In fact, he hoped he could 
avoid telling Baz and Dave just where he was going. He 
hoped they might think he'd lucked out again as he did in 
Tangiers with that Danish lass. Baz never stopped telling 
him he was a real spawny get, which tickled him. It was 
usually Dave who pulled the birds the most successfully.

He wished he'd kept in touch with Marla. They'd swapped 
e-mail addresses, but Paul sensed that any mail he sent her 
wouldn't be answered with quite the alacrity he always 
showed when something new appeared in his inbox that 
wasn't spam. She was a bonny lass. Not as much so as 
Trish, but bonny nonetheless.

The woman smiled at him from across the bus and gestured 
to him.

"Is this the stop?" Paul asked as the bus slowed down.

"Si!" 

Paul staggered out of the bus. "Cheers mate!" he said to the 
bus driver, who made no comment. He wondered if it was 
just because Spanish drivers didn't acknowledge you like 
they did back in Newcastle or if he guessed why Paul 
should choose such an out-of-the-way place to disembark.

As the bus drove off, a cloud of dust blowing in its wake, 
Paul fumbled in his rucksack for the Lonely Planet guide 
he'd brought with him. If this was the bus stop, then he still 
had quite a walk to get where he wanted to go.

It had always been a secret ambition of his, one he'd never 
confessed to anyone except Trish, let alone Baz and Dave, 
to go to a nudist beach. He knew there were a few on Ibiza 
and now just seemed the right time to see what one was 
like. He wondered if that meant he was some kind of perv. 
Maybe it wasn't a pervy thing to go round starkers, but a lot 
of nudists were supposed to be real cranky. And Paul 
wasn't sure he wanted to go because he wanted to enjoy the 
open air au naturel or because he just wanted to gawp at 
naked women, but he was committed now. He couldn't very 
well go back without doing what he'd come to do. Even 
though he'd later have to invent some excuse that he'd been 
wandering round the markets to justify his absence to Baz 
and Dave. If they told his other mates back home, well, 
he'd be laughed out of the Stag and Hounds. And maybe 
the New Inn and all.

Paul followed the signs to 'La Playa' which he guessed 
meant 'beach', but you wouldn't have guessed that as the 
trail led him through thick brush and over rocks. Finally, 
perhaps a mile or so later, he was at last at what was a 
beach. But was it a nudist one? 

Paul nervously walked along, glancing at bathers dressed in 
normal swimsuits. Just past an official looking sign he 
could see bodies in the distance which, squint as he could, 
displayed no evidence of bathing costumes. Paul waited 
until he'd passed a few naked bodies, mostly couples, some 
with children and some rather old, before he decided that, 
yes, this was definitely a nudist beach.

He felt slightly excited as he took off his shorts and tee-
shirt, the new one he'd bought at Manumission, and stuffed 
them into his rucksack, wearing now only his designer 
sunglasses and the espadrilles he'd bought for next to 
nothing at the market. He hoped his excitement wasn't 
express by the penis that swung between his legs, one he 
had no need to be ashamed of, but was so easily aroused. 
And there was a lot to arouse it.

Somehow, even ordinary women looked so much better in 
the nude. And yes, not only were they topless, which was 
no big deal, but he could see the hairy patches of pubic hair 
magnified in his mind out of all proportion to the bodies 
that sported them. Even the plump girls didn't look bad. He 
was slightly disturbed by his feelings when he saw two 
naked girls, probably not even twelve years old. He wasn't 
some kind of paedophile, was he? That wasn't right. He 
averted his gaze to distract his mind from inappropriate 
thoughts, wondering now whether what was most pervy 
wasn't so much going about starkers, which he was sure 
was no big deal (though it seemed so not so long ago), but 
that he couldn't take his eyes off the women. 

In actual fact, there were more naked men than women, but 
when you'd seen one limp cock in a bush of hair you'd seen 
them all. He just wished that some of the women weren't 
accompanied by either men or children. There was no 
chance for him to get to know them, And that, as Paul got 
steadily bored with walking along the coarse sand, the sea 
crashing on the shore and hidden from any roads or houses 
by thickets of palm trees and rocks, was surely the point of 
this exercise. Much as he liked beaches, he'd had more than 
a week of them now and this beach was nothing special, 
beyond being a bit secluded. He'd spent many hours dozing 
with Baz and Dave on much nicer beaches than this, only 
with a towel and a Science Fiction novel to keep him 
company.

Paul wasn't sure what he expected to gain from talking to a 
naked woman on the beach, any more than he was sure why 
he was there in the first place, but it seemed the natural 
thing to do. And there at last, almost totally obscured by the 
huge boulders around her, Paul saw an unaccompanied 
woman. As he approached her, he was sure she was a 
bonny lass. She certainly wasn't fat, although certainly not 
thin, and she had a very impressive pair of breasts. Paul 
didn't think of himself as a tit-man, although when he and 
his mates discussed what it was that they liked most about 
women, he'd never quite decided if he might not be. He 
didn't have Dave's attraction for arses or Baz's for thighs, 
and he was self-aware enough to know that a pretty face, 
however bonny, wasn't enough without a good 
accompanying package.

Experience had told him that whenever an opportunity was 
presented, the right thing to do was to dive in. When he was 
younger and his mates started seeing girls, he had been so 
painfully nervous he never got anywhere. Then his mate, 
Dave, gave him good advice as to what to do. It doesn't 
matter what you say, he told him, just say something. And 
don't worry about how crap it sounds. A lass isn't really 
listening to the words anyway.

"It's a good thing you've got a shade up in this sun, like!" 
said Paul, pointing at the sunshade that sheltered most of 
the woman's body.

Until then, Paul had really only seen her back and the 
pendulous bosom as her body twisted round to rest her 
buttocks on a huge beach towel. He'd noticed that her dyed-
blonde hair was short, not severely so, but off the ears. Her 
skin was a medium golden brown rather than the deeper, 
almost chocolate brown, of those people who made a 
religion out of sunbathing. The eyes behind her small steel-
framed sunglasses peered into a slim novel by someone 
called Jeanette Winterton, whom he'd never heard of 
before. But when she turned her head around to look at him 
as he stood a yard or so away from her, he now noticed that 
she wasn't a young lass at all.

She wasn't old exactly. Well, younger than his Mam which 
was Paul's benchmark of middle-age, but not that many 
years younger. Maturity had made her breasts pendulous, 
her arms thicker than the stick-thinness of a younger 
woman's arm, and her stomach less flat. In fact, she might 
even have had lines on her face, but Paul couldn't be sure in 
the shadow of the sunshade.

"I'm sorry?" she asked in a voice that had lost every hint of 
girlishness.

"The sunshade, like. It's a good thing you've got one in this 
bright sun and all."

"You're a Geordie, aren't you?" she asked with an amused 
smile, turning her body round to face him. She looked him 
up and down dispassionately.

"Aye," said Paul weakly, suddenly feeling very naked, his 
penis now such a prominent thing between his legs but one 
he knew it was far too late to try and hide behind his hands. 
And now he could see her in all her nudity, he felt a sudden 
frisson as he regarded her crotch. She hadn't even a little 
patch of pubic hair there. Not even the little stripe adorned 
by porn stars and strippers, like the ones at Manumission. 
And, unlike those children, equally bald in that region, 
whose crotches had disturbed him so much and made him 
evade his eyes partly from respect and partly from fear of 
his own desires, this was not the tidy smooth vulva of a 
London statue. The lips of the vagina spilled out and were 
clearly visible, as golden tanned as her breasts and the rest 
of her body. No white patches, unlike the rather obvious 
one he exposed between his waist and lower thighs.

"And you're alone, are you?" she asked. "You're not with 
some friends hiding behind a rock laughing at you while 
you chat up a strange English woman on the beach?"

Paul blushed. Was he making a fool of himself? "Naw! 
There's nobody. There's now't but me, like. I just saw you 
sitting there, all alone, like..."

"And you thought you'd chat with me, is that it?"

"Aye. I'm sorry if I've pissed you off, like," he said 
crestfallen and blushing in that way he still couldn't control. 
Just as he had with that Danish lass in Morocco. "I'll just 
leave you, like. I shouldn't have disturbed you."

"Don't be silly!" the woman laughed with some kind of 
Southern accent. Not a London accent, perhaps, though 
Paul was no expert in these matters. Maybe Home 
Counties. "I don't mind. As long as you don't think I'm a 
likely catch, if you know what I mean."

"A catch?" Paul wondered.

"Well, whatever you youngsters call it these days," she 
said. "Look! Sit down. I don't mind. I'm by myself. My ...
er ... friend, she's sleeping off a hard night at the moment, 
so I thought I'd wander over to the nudist beach. Catch up 
on a bit of reading. Improve my tan. As long as you don't 
get any silly ideas, I really have no quarrel."

Paul sat down nervously beside her. Perhaps this wasn't 
such a good idea. He looked around the beach, where the 
next nearest company was quite a way off. "Naw! I wasn't 
going to ... you know ... I'm not really that kind of guy. 
Not really." Although, when he was with Baz and Dave, 
and the girls were so obviously up for it, there was no 
doubt in his mind that he could be and, in fact, almost 
certainly was that kind of guy. But here, alone, with a 
woman more than fifteen years older than him, he was 
definitely not lying.

"I see," said the woman, placing her paperback face down 
on the towel. Paul noticed for the first time that the 
illustration on the cover was of a quite sexy young woman. 
"My name's Jayne, by the way."

"Paul."

"Paul the Geordie," Jayne laughed. "Almost every region of 
Britain is represented here in Ibiza. Why's that?"

"It's the clubs, like," Paul said. "That's why me and me 
mates are here."

"You like dancing, do you?"

"Oh aye! Going to nightclubs and dancing. That's the biz."

"And what music do you listen to? Is it this house music 
that they play?"

"Well, some house. Mostly hard house. But I like trance, 
me. But I'm not too fussy. I'll dance to anything if it's got a 
good beat. You know, garage, progressive, drum & bass, 
even R&B."

"Really?" Jayne asked, leaning over with a smile, that 
shaven crotch less than two feet away from Paul's limp 
penis.

Paul breathed in deeply. This reminded him of the 
unexpected consequences of his encounter with Marla. 
What the fuck had he let himself in for?

"Are you a nudist, like?" he asked.

She nodded. "Are you, Paul? Surely you must be to come to 
a beach like this."

"Not really," confessed Paul, trying hard to keep his eyes 
off Jayne's shaven crotch, but not sure where else to look. 
He could see his reflection in Jayne's sunglasses as surely 
as she could see her own in his. "I thought I'd just see what 
it's like."

"I'm not a card-carrying nudist. I don't belong to any 
naturist organisations. But I like to be naked. And do you 
have a girlfriend?"

"What here? On the beach?"

"Well, anywhere?"

"Not really. Though I did a few months back. Do you have 
a boyfriend?" He asked this to deflect the conversation 
away from the subject of his single status.

"No. In fact, I've never really had a boyfriend."

"No?" wondered Paul, feeling quite sorry for the lass. She 
wasn't bad looking and she didn't seem especially shy. 
"Why's that, like?"

"I don't really want one. Men don't appeal to me very 
much."

"Oh!" said Paul, feeling even more sorry for her. This 
reminded him of what Trish told him the first time he 
persuaded her to go out with him. Perhaps Jayne was like 
that for the same reasons.

"That's what my girlfriend said at first," he told her. 

"She did?" Jayne asked, with a genuine expression of 
interest. "But she changed her mind, did she?"

"It took a long time," Paul admitted. Somehow, it didn't 
feel so bad talking about such things with an older woman. 
"We'd been going out together nearly a year. She let me 
kiss her and touch her up and all, but whenever I suggested 
doing anything more she got all upset and sometimes 
angry."

"Was it because she preferred women?"

"Women?" wondered Paul, who'd never thought of that 
before. "Naw! She wasn't a lezzie... a lesbian. It was her 
Dad that made her like that."

"Her Dad?" asked Jayne, with a slight catch in her voice 
that suggested genuine concern.

"She didn't tell me about it for months. But she made hints 
I didn't really understand, like. In fact, we'd been going out 
for ages, and we sorta pretended we'd been, you know, 
doing it, so our mates wouldn't think we were queer or ow't, 
and then she told me all about her Dad. He'd left her Mam a 
couple of years before and she'd never really told me why. 
But it was because... it was all because of her..."

Paul paused as the memory of Trish's confession replayed 
itself in his mind. She cried so much while she told him. 
She was hardly able to complete a sentence before 
spluttering into tears. 

"Was her father abusing her, Paul?" asked Jayne in a low 
sympathetic voice and placed a hand very lightly on his 
bare shoulder.

Paul squeezed his eyes. He was glad for the sunglasses 
now. Not only did they keep out the glare of the sun, their 
presence meant Jayne couldn't see the moisture in his eyes 
behind them. He really was soft as shite, even now. He still 
felt really angry on Trish's behalf. And yet Trish's father 
had never seemed a bad bloke, often going down the same 
pub as Paul's Dad and his pals. 

He nodded his head. "Not once. Not even only a couple of 
times. But all the time! And getting Trish never to tell her 
Mam, like. Ever since she was real young."

"How young?"

"I dunno. It started when she were just a bairn. But he had 
real sex with her when she was not even yet eleven, like. 
And he kept doing it till Trish told the school councillor 
about it when she was fourteen."

"Why did she leave it so late?"

"I guess she didn't want to get her Dad locked up or 
summat. You know what it's like when you're young. 
Family first and all. But she was always moody at school. 
And got into trouble all the time. Getting into fights, 
bunking off school, not doing her homework and things. 
And when the councillor spoke to her, she sorta let it all 
spurt out, like. And that was why her Dad had to leave 
home."

"She'd never told her mother?"

"Her Dad told her not to. That it would upset her, like. And 
that she shouldn't upset her Mam."

"And what did you feel like when she told you?"

"I dunno. Real weird, I suppose. But it wasn't long after 
that, we sorta got it on together. But we only sorta did so 
for a few months. And then she decided not to see me any 
more, like."

Paul thought back to those two or three months when he 
and Trish were real lovers. It was strange. He wasn't a 
virgin before her, but she was his only proper regular 
girlfriend. And when, a few days after her confession, Trish 
said she'd decided they could have sex together, it was real 
weird doing it with her. But after the first few slightly 
embarrassing tries, their relationship became incredibly 
passionate. And it was obvious that Trish knew a great deal 
about sex.

Those first few times, she was really reserved. It was as if 
she thought sex was something you did with your eyes 
closed, on your back, sort of waiting for it to be all over. 
But then she somehow exploded into an ecstasy and 
passion that frightened Paul. It was a sudden release. And 
for the next couple of months, Paul and Trish had the best 
sex he could imagine anyone ever having. Every time they 
made love, he just wanted to stay inside her. She made 
every effort to keep him there, although because she 
insisted he use a condom, and she never took the pill or got 
a diaphragm, they got through quite a few packets every 
week. 

And then, on the phone, not in person, she told him she'd 
decided they shouldn't see each other again. 

And that was that.

No warning. No sign that anything was wrong the last time 
they'd made love, their bodies clinging together, sweat 
sticking to their conjoined skin. They had the same relaxed 
conversation afterwards, when they both joked together and 
caressed each other's still-burning flesh. And then, on the 
phone, a curt announcement that they were no longer a 
couple, a decision that didn't change at all despite all his 
pleading and subsequent phone calls. And no evidence that 
there was another boyfriend who'd superseded him in her 
affections. 

Jayne put her arms around his shoulder.

"Gosh!" she said. "Your penis is very big!"

"It is?" said Paul, startled. 

And indeed it was. Thinking about Trish and their 
lovemaking had somehow brought it to life, without him 
even being aware of it. It wasn't fully erect. Not standing up 
like a soldier, as Trish used to describe it, but definitely not 
limp. A three-quarter swelling lifted it up at an angle to his 
outstretched legs. Shit! If he'd not been nude, if he'd been 
wearing shorts, then no one would've noticed!

Then Jayne did an incredible thing. Paul's eyes bulged out 
of their sockets as she grasped his penis in her right hand 
and pulled it up the whole length to his exposed purple 
glans.

"It's very warm!" she commented. "Is it just the sun? And 
ooh! It's getting stiffer!"

"It is!" exclaimed Paul, aware of it pumping up to full 
erectness, its shadow across his chest.

"I've never touched a penis before," Jayne confessed. "Are 
they all like yours?"

"More or less," said Paul, but aware that his was rather 
prouder than most, including Dave's, which he'd glimpsed a 
couple of days ago when he was prodding that slightly 
tubby girl, Sharon.

Jayne moved her hand up and down the shaft of his penis, 
from the bush of hair at the base, his testicles now hard and 
aching, and up to the tip. Her fingers were warm, but they 
were also firm and gripped quite tightly.

"Is this what I do?" she asked, looking into Paul's face with 
a quizzical smile quite unlike the uncomfortable expression 
that contorted his mouth.

"Yes! Yes!" Paul said. "A bit faster, like."

Jayne concurred, her hand jerking up and down, whilst her 
other hand moved down to her crotch where she let a finger 
probe into its ragged lips, perhaps to stimulate her clitoris.

The two said nothing, except for Paul's involuntary gasps, 
as Jayne pumped her hand vigorously, Paul's buttocks 
tightening and spasms shooting through his taut stomach. 
Up and down. Occasionally, she capped his glans, which 
swelled hugely at the end of his shaft. Paul squeezed his 
eyes shut, his thoughts returning again to Trish and those 
many months before they had proper sex, when she jerked 
his penis in much the same way, not wholly confident in 
what she was doing. And when he opened his eyes, there 
was Jayne again, regarding his penis with almost academic 
interest.

She took her other hand from her crotch and squeezed 
Paul's testicles. Ooh! That hurt! And then Jayne used two 
hands, one pushing up and down, while the other squeezed 
it at the base.

Inevitably, his penis released itself. A globule of semen 
shot out and spat onto the hair on his thigh. That was 
followed by a series of smaller spurts, warm and creamy 
and trailing down Paul's penis onto the grip of Jayne's hand.

"It almost burns!" Jayne exclaimed, removing her hand and 
studying the milky liquid on her fingers. She rubbed it into 
the sand and looked up at Paul's face. "You don't mind, do 
you? I just wanted to see what it would do."

"You did?" said Paul, feeling both grateful and somehow 
anguished that this act of intimacy was for no other reason 
than to satisfy her curiosity.

Jayne nodded.

The two of them lay side by side on the warm sand under 
Jayne's sunshade; Paul's penis now flopped uselessly on his 
thigh, the semen cracking on his sunburnt flesh and the 
glans no longer so swollen. His balls felt sore, but Paul was 
loath to touch them.

Then Jayne stood up and picked up her novel. She stuffed it 
into her shoulder bag without a word. Paul watched as she 
silently folded up her towel and took down the sunshade. 
She stood above him, the bag over her shoulder, towel over 
her arm, and the sunshade in her other hand.

"Well, it's been nice meeting you, Paul," she said, in a 
slightly breathy and possibly embarrassed voice. "But I 
must be going. Cath, my friend, she'll be wondering where 
I am. I suppose you'll just continue resting here, won't 
you?"

Although this was expressed as a statement, Paul 
understood this as a request. He smiled at Jayne, knowing 
that as soon as she had walked far enough in the distance, 
he'd want to head back to the bus stop again. "I guess I 
will," he agreed.

"Well, goodbye, then," said Jayne. She shook his hand and 
left.

Paul watched as she strode along the beach, her full 
buttocks swaying with her tread, her heavy breasts 
occasionally visible as she wound past other sunbathers. As 
she disappeared from sight, the whole of the encounter 
became more and more improbable in his mind. Did it 
really happen? Had he just dreamt it? 

He looked out to sea where a ship was passing slowly by. A 
few children played in the waves, splashing water at each 
other and laughing in that unselfconscious way only 
children can do. He let his mind wander to his plans for the 
evening. Perhaps he'd drop an E, snort some speed and all, 
and make a real night of it.

But not yet, he thought, a sudden weariness overwhelming 
him. Just a few more minutes resting naked in the sun and 
he'd be ready. He'd forgotten just how tired he could get. 
And besides he rather wanted to relish his memories of 
Trish a little longer before facing the prospect of chasing 
skirt. 

But even as he became excited at the prospect of another 
night of Mediterranean hedonism, he knew if he had the 
choice between her and any one of the lasses he'd shagged 
the last week, he would have chosen Trish every time.



Islington
=========

Jayne's tongue lapped back and forth on Cath's parted 
vulva, moistening yet further that clitoris whose hardness 
was so familiar to her and savoured the comforting odours 
from within. Two fingers thrust in and out of the wet and 
welcoming vagina, occasionally twisting her hand to brush 
the knuckles and her smaller two fingers on the sweat-
sodden pubic hairs. Cath gasped as her body spasmed to 
Jayne's ministrations, one foot kicking out and bashing 
against the headrest of the shared bed.

Jayne reciprocated her gasp as Cath's smaller fist pushed all 
four of the fingers of her right hand into Jayne's equally 
receptive vagina, her thumb stroking against Jayne's own 
aroused clitoris. Jayne could feel the rubber sinuousness of 
her tongue on the folds above her clitoris, shaved so close 
that Cath had no difficulty in finding exactly what her 
tongue sought out. 

Cath did not shave her pubic hairs, but this never troubled 
Jayne. She was willing to shave her pubes as Cath once 
requested, happy to keep them shaved for as long as darling 
Cath wanted it that way. In any case, she rather relished the 
daily routine of shaving, which she did as often as she 
could in full view of her younger lover. It was as surely a 
token of the love she felt for Cath as any ring, and in its 
carnality a much more honest one. 

Jayne raised her head and removed her hand from Cath's 
pubes. A particularly long brown hair had got trapped 
between her teeth. She tugged it out and her mouth returned 
greedily to her feast of carnal scents. Her tongue dipped in 
as deep as it could into Cath's spread open pussy, flicking it 
up on occasion to lick against Cath's little knob of a clitoris. 
All the while, Cath's pubic hair pressed into Jayne's nostrils 
and tickled her chin. Jayne was sure that the hair down here 
was longer than that on her head, but as a matter of taste 
she was glad that her lover had never thought to coat her 
pubic hairs with the thick gel that kept her otherwise unruly 
dark brown hair in place.

At last, the two lovers separated. 

Jayne sat on one side, her heavy breasts falling down onto 
her stomach and one arm around Cath's waist. Her lover 
was much thinner than her, just as she was so much 
younger, just twenty-five years old but, Jayne was sure, 
looking much younger. And this was because she was so 
very thin. Her breasts were mostly nipple raised on a much 
less prominent bosom, her waist still very slender, and her 
arms and legs nearly child-like in their almost total lack of 
extraneous fat. Jayne was so lucky to have such a beautiful 
lover. What had she ever done to deserve such good 
fortune?

"Fuck, Jayne!" Cath exclaimed, flicking the ash from her 
cigarette into the ashtray she had placed beside her 
outstretched leg, the other crooked and pressed onto Jayne's 
womanly thigh. "If you thought by seducing me you'd stop 
me going out and seeing my mates, you must have known it 
wasn't going to work."

Jayne sighed. That wasn't the intention at all. When she'd 
seen Cath sitting there in the armchair watching Eastenders 
on television, naked as always, as Jayne was too, she'd just 
responded to yet another of her spasms of desire. It seemed 
natural, seeing that there was no cigarette alight at that 
moment, to stand behind her lover and squeeze her to her 
bosom. And Cath, as always, was just as keen as she was to 
leave the petty arguments and quarrels of the soap opera to 
join Jayne in their shared bed, the recently made sheets 
pulled roughly to one side.

"So, you're going out this evening, Cath?" wondered Jayne, 
who also wondered why it was Cath thought she kept such 
a keen track of her lover's movements.

"Yeah! We're going to a club, me, Penny and Julie. You 
know the one, the Pink Pussycat."

"Didn't it used to be called Munchies?"

"That was fucking ages ago."

"And why should I be bothered about you going out to a 
night club, sweetest?" Jayne asked meekly, knowing 
precisely why.

"You just want me to be a fucking one-woman woman, 
Jayne. You don't like it when I have sex with my friends or 
with anyone I pick up at the clubs. You're greedy! You just 
want me for your fucking self!"

Jayne couldn't deny the truth of that last assertion. She very 
much did want Cath for herself. She was undeniably 
jealous of her lover, though Cath's occasional dalliances 
never seemed to lessen the love she expressed towards her 
older partner. But now, of course, Jayne had lost the moral 
high ground, since she foolishly confessed to masturbating 
that sweet boy on the Ibiza beach during their summer 
holiday. She didn't know what had possessed her that time. 
Not desire for the boy, she was sure of that, but his obvious 
distress regarding his abused girlfriend had affected her 
strangely and, she had to admit, she had always harboured a 
secret curiosity about male genitals.

Although the confession had brought nothing but tears, 
Jayne was actually rather pleased that Cath had taken it so 
badly. Cath still reminded her of her 'handjob' as she called 
it, but Jayne was quite gratified there was some reciprocal 
jealousy in their relationship. Not that this in any way 
seemed to lessen Cath's desire to augment her experience of 
Sapphic love beyond that they expressed for each other.

"So, don't you fucking try stopping me, Jayne. If I want to 
get my tongue on Julie's clit or my fist up Penny's pussy, 
that's my fucking business. And if there's some other girl 
tonight, femme, butch or undecided, it's just what I want to 
do."

"Well, as long as you don't bring your catches home, Cath," 
said Jayne in what she thought was a conciliatory manner, 
but instantly regretted her words.

"And why the fuck, can't I? Fuck you, Jayne! You just want 
to trap me. Hold me close to your motherly bosom. I'm not 
your fucking daughter! I'm a fucking grown woman, with 
fucking real desires. And we've never had one of those 
exclusive relationships. If I want to fuck another woman, 
that's just what I want to do."

Jayne sighed again. She raised her arm from Cath's waist 
and ran her fingers through the thick gel in Cath's short 
hair, significantly shorter than Jayne's own quite short cut. 

"I love you, Cath," she said. "I love you more than anyone 
else I've ever loved. But can't you see why I might not be 
so happy thinking of another woman's body pressed to 
yours? Or another woman's fingers and tongue where mine 
have just been?"

"Or me doing the same thing, you mean?" sneered Cath. 
"Fucking get used to it, right! That's just what I'm about. If 
you don't like it, find some lover who'll stick to you like 
some heterosexual wifey."

Jayne sometimes thought that was exactly what she'd 
prefer. Most of her gay friends of her own age had more or 
less settled down. There were no extra-partner relationships 
that muddied their relationships. At no time in Jayne's life 
had any of her previous partners had been so openly 
unfaithful. Sure, there were the few occasions of infidelity. 
Veronica, whom she'd lived with for more than five years, 
often bore evidence of scratches and strange bruises that 
gave evidence of dalliances beyond Jayne's loving arms, 
but at least she'd had the courtesy to deny anything had 
happened. Jayne had been unfaithful once or twice, when 
she was in her early twenties, when the excitement of 
Sapphic love was still new and urgent to her, and she was 
hungry for more than what a steady relationship could 
offer. But there was something very different about Cath's 
blatancy. Perhaps it was just that Jayne was getting too old 
to really understand how a younger woman might feel. Or 
maybe the younger generation were just less inhibited than 
women were in her youth.

Cath got up from the bed and moved over to the dressing 
table that dominated one end of the bedroom. She pulled up 
a chair and sorted out the make-up she'd apply. Like Jayne, 
Cath didn't wear a great deal of make-up. Some natural-
looking lipstick and perhaps some discreet eyeliner. Neither 
woman viewed herself as a femme, but then neither were 
they exactly butch.

Jayne got up and stood behind Cath. She put her arms 
around Cath's slender shoulders and nuzzled her nose in 
Cath's short hair. The smell was totally different from that 
in Cath's pubes, that was for sure. But Jayne enjoyed both 
very different scents.

"You know I love you, Cath. I don't mean to ever make you 
feel restricted in any way."

"You're just saying that, Jayne. I know you hate it. And I've 
got my eyes on a real pretty girl. Lyena, she's called. I think 
she might be Russian or something. She was at the Pink 
Pussycat last time I was there. She's got the most delicious 
smile. Her hair's a bit long, but it's a kind of russet brown. 
And her accent's real sweet. I want to put my nose right 
between her legs."

"You do?" asked Jayne. Why did Cath have to torment her 
so?

"I want her fist right up me. Her hands are tiny. Her fingers 
kinda taper but her fingernails are short. I checked that. I'll 
even let her prod my arse. Would you like that, Jayne? 
Lyena's fingers up my arse?"

"You know I'd rather you didn't," said Jayne, nuzzling 
Cath's pixie-like ears. They were ever so slightly pointed 
and she loved the folds inside them. She let her tongue 
wander onto one of the small earrings Cath wore.

"Well, fuck you, Jayne," said Cath. "Because that's exactly 
what I want to do. And if she's not got a place for us to go 
back to, we'll come back here, whatever you think, and 
we'll fuck in the living room. That'll keep you fucking 
awake!"

"You wouldn't, would you Cath?" Jayne asked, hardly able 
to hide her alarm.

"That's exactly what we'll do," said Cath, clearly relishing 
Jayne's discomfort. "We'll lie across the sofa, nude, of 
course, and I'll get out that purple dildo, the extra big one, 
and she'll put it all the way inside me. And you better hear 
me come! In fact, everyone in the fucking block will hear 
me come!"

Jayne removed her arms from Cath's neck. There was no 
reasoning with the girl. They'd agreed long ago that Cath 
could do what she wanted as long as she didn't risk 
bringing any diseases into their relationship (not that it was 
likely) and kept it out of the connubial household. Cath was 
just bating her. She feared she might bring up the subject of 
Ibiza and handjobs again. And the only reason the subject 
had ever come up was when Jayne was telling Cath about 
the abuse Paul's girlfriend had suffered. The implications of 
it rather frightened her, although she had known the odd 
woman who'd been abused when they were younger. But 
then, many abused women were so traumatised that lesbian 
sex was the only kind they would ever again contemplate.

"You see, Jayne. You just wait and see!" Cath said, putting 
on her clothes. On went a short top that revealed all of her 
waist almost down to her crotch, moleskin trousers that 
stopped somewhat short of her ankles, followed by a small 
nylon jacket that came to her navel but even when zipped 
up did nothing to hide the slimness of her waist. Last of all, 
she put on some booties that made Jayne sigh as she 
thought of Cath's beautiful toes hidden inside the leather.

Jayne remained naked as Cath left the flat. A dressing 
gown hung near the doorway just in case there was a 
surprise visitor. The last thing either Jayne or Cath ever 
wanted was for some strange man to see them nude. That 
would be humiliating! But as Jayne sometimes fantasised 
and Cath sometimes speculated, she wasn't sure she'd mind 
so much if that single mum from the first floor came by, 
even if she was accompanied by one of her snotty-nosed 
children. 

And when Cath was gone, the memory persisting of Cath's 
parting speculations of just how easy it would be for Lyena 
and her to get it together, Jayne was alone, naked. Much as 
she liked having the flat to herself, she much preferred 
Cath's presence, however noisy and restless she was. And 
now what should she do? Watch television? Read a book? 
Put on a record and do that sewing she'd put off for so 
long?

Jayne riffled through the CDs, finally pulling out that St 
Germaine album she liked, with its relaxing jazz samples, 
hidden amongst Cath's collection of garage, deep house and 
female singer-songwriters. She found the pile of cardigans, 
blouses and trousers she'd neglected to repair for so long 
and busied herself on the sofa.

All the while she thought of Cath and her time at the Pink 
Pussycat. In the early days of their relationship, Jayne 
made an effort to accompany Cath on her evenings out, but 
the pall of smoke, the loud noise, and the raucous company 
was no longer to her taste. Age crept up on you so 
sneakingly! There were so few records to which she and 
Cath could dance together. Modern dance music was 
altogether too fast and percussive for her now. And Cath's 
complaint that Jayne was just getting in the way and 
making it difficult for her to get off with other women 
always rather hurt. Despite her reluctance, Jayne had come 
to accept that if she were to have a lover so much younger 
than her, it was necessary to be rather more indulgent than 
her heart dictated.

As much as Jayne loved Cath, there were occasions when 
she looked forward to these evenings alone. Cath could 
sometimes get so tiresome, especially when she was 
unhappy about something at work that troubled her or when 
she complained about how very ordinary her childhood in 
Solihull had been. It was no more ordinary than Jayne's 
childhood in Guildford, but it had taken less time for Cath 
to recognise her sexuality. Whereas Jayne had mostly been 
just puzzled, maybe bemused, by her lack of interest in 
boys, Cath's discovery had been much more revelatory and 
more troublesome to her than had Jayne's. And Jayne hated 
it when Cath bated her about her infidelities. How often did 
Jayne have to reassure her that she understood and, 
although she didn't like it exactly, wasn't going to present 
an obstacle to Cath's voracious hunger for female flesh?

Jayne finished her sewing and turned on the TV. The St 
Germaine album had long ago finished, but Jayne wasn't 
bothered to replace it with another. She flicked through the 
channels and settled on a TV drama set in America that 
featured a relationship between a man and a woman. Jayne 
wished there was more drama that featured the 
relationships she understood, though there were the 
occasional aspects of heterosexual relationships that 
seemed relatively similar. Generally, she much preferred 
dramas that told the story from a woman's point of view.

She wasn't sure her curiosity about men was wholly 
satisfied by her 'handjob' with Paul. There was no emotion 
involved, but she did find the sight of an erect penis 
strangely exciting. When she and Cath had used those 
penis-shaped dildos, she often wondered just how much it 
was like the real thing. She still didn't know, of course. It 
was one thing to hold a penis, even to see its semen spurt 
out through that tiny hole at the end. What did straight girls 
make of all that creamy stuff? It smelt so odd, but, like the 
penis itself, it was very warm. She wondered whether one 
day she might satisfy her curiosity further and actually let a 
man's penis penetrate her. He'd have to use a condom, of 
course, and it would have to be a special kind of man, 
perhaps a bisexual; one who understood that she had no 
interest in a man beyond them being a machine to satisfy 
her curiosity.

The very perversity of the thought made her feel quite 
warm between her legs, so she stroked her clitoris while 
watching the film. There was even a scene where the man 
and woman took their clothes off and simulated some kind 
of sex. There were no penises on display, of course. 
Certainly not erect ones. Would she be as enthusiastic as 
the woman in the film? Jayne somehow doubted it, 
although the thought of something like Paul's penis 
entering her definitely excited her. If only there was a way 
to enjoy a penis without the additional consideration of it 
being attached to a man.

Jayne stayed up beyond midnight. It was, after all, a 
Thursday night. Only one day to the weekend when she and 
Cath might take the car out of Islington, maybe out of 
London altogether, and head off to somewhere green and 
rural. She imagined the blue skies and green fields and 
speculated whether there might be a time she could 
persuade Cath to leave the city behind. Maybe they could 
move to Surrey, maybe even Guildford, far enough away 
not to actually live in London, but still able to commute to 
their respective jobs: she to the publishing house where she 
worked as an editor and Cath to the software house.

Jayne was watching an especially mindless Channel 4 quiz 
show when she heard the front door slam shut. Cath entered 
the living room still in her top and trousers, the jacket flung 
onto the back of the armchair she plopped into. Jayne could 
see the expression of disappointment on her lover's young 
face.

"Lyena only went off with fucking Julie!" she exclaimed 
bitterly. "And Penny picked up this girl with plaits. Some 
kind of Dutch girl."

Jayne picked up the remote and turned off the TV. She 
smiled at her lover as she fumbled into a packet and pulled 
out a cigarette. She lit it and flicked ash into the ashtray 
they'd bought in the Ibiza market.

"How are you, Cath sweetheart?" Jayne asked.

"Fucking pissed off is what I am!" Cath replied. "What's 
fucking wrong with me, Jayne? Why don't I score as easily 
as Julie or Penny? Or Emily or Judith, for that matter?"

Jayne could see that Cath had drunk more than the two or 
three glasses of wine she was normally comfortable with. 
More than that and she tended to get maudlin and irritable. 

"You don't do too badly," Jayne said reassuringly.

"No, I don't. I'm fucking useless. Aren't I, Jayne? I'm just a 
fucking failure."

"You do better than I did when I was your age."

"Fuck!" said Cath irritably, flicking her ash contemptuously 
into the astray so that the column of ash nearly separated 
from the body of the cigarette. "That's no fucking 
comparison. At least I got you though, Jayne. You love me, 
don't you?"

"Yes," said Jayne standing up and walking towards her 
lover, whose clothes would so soon come off her and the 
two retreat to bed to resume the lovemaking they'd enjoyed 
a few hours later. "That is one thing you can always be sure 
of!" 




Clapham
=======

 "She's a cow! A real fucking cow!" Prissy exclaimed, 
blowing smoke into the air of the pub where the wisping 
blue vapour was sucked into the smoke extractor. "I don't 
know why I stick with her!"

"Me too!" agreed Cath. "My Jayne's so fucking uptight. All 
she fucking wants to do is sit in and watch telly."

"So, you ditching her then, Cath?" Emily wondered. "You 
know, like you said you would?"

Cath coughed. She didn't really want to diss her lover like 
that. After all, Jayne had been real sweet to her today. And 
last night, when they were in bed together, Cath knew it 
was love she felt for her older partner. But then if there was 
any girl whose knickers she'd like to pull down and whose 
pussy she'd adore putting her tongue to, it was Emily.

"Yeah!" she said, not really convincing even herself, and 
flicking the ash from her ciggie into the ashtray. "Yeah, I 
reckon I will. But she still licks clit like a champion."

"So does my Tina," agreed Prissy, smiling at her two 
friends, balancing her cigarette between her forefinger and 
thumb. "But she's a fucking cow, all the same." She looked 
at Emily with a sneery smile. "So you still between lovers, 
sweetheart?"

"Yeah!" said Emily, brushing her fingers through her short 
hair so that it stood up in the thick gel. "But that doesn't 
stop my love life. No fucking way! I'm having more fun 
now than I ever had when I was with Marlene. I don't miss 
a day since I ditched her. She still phones me up and all. I 
guess she wants her k. d. lang CDs back, but, fuck it, she's 
not gonna have them. Nor her Polly Harveys."

"What's it like talking to her?" wondered Cath, afraid that 
her interest might betray her own true feelings for Jayne. 
"You'n'her were real close. A real item. You'd been living 
together for years!"

"Well, she gets real blubbery on the phone. Still cries and 
everything. Like a fucking baby. She's a fucking 
embarrassment. I don't regret ditching her at all. And it's 
great having the flat to myself again. I can invite back 
whoever I like. Y'ought to put your money where your 
mouth is, Cath. Ditch Jayne. I mean, she must be fucking 
forty or something!"

"Thirty-seven next month," said Cath, almost instantly 
aware that this concern about her partner's birthday said 
more than she'd intended. She didn't want Emily to think 
she didn't want to go back with her to her newly vacated 
flat.

"Well, whatever! She's too fucking old for you. And it's not 
like when you got your own place you don't get pussy. I 
mean, you know that Sally…"

"Sally!" Prissy exclaimed with a laugh. "You didn't, did 
you? She'n'Pat, I thought they were welded at the hips!"

"Fucking femme fanny! Good she was. And d'you know, 
she's got this cute little ring in her clit and guess what 
else?"

"What? She got pierced nipples as well?"

"No. A tattoo just over her shaved pussy."

"A tattoo! Fucking hell!" Prissy remarked, leaning forward, 
her face ever so close to Emily's. This irritated Cath who 
wanted to be the one getting that intimate. And who wanted 
to be the one who placed a hand on Emily's thigh almost 
bursting to get free from those deliciously tight jeans. 

"It's kind of like a love token. It's a tattoo that reads 'Pat' in 
kind of Gothic script. They must have been together since 
they were goths or something."

"I remember that! Fucking black jumpers and eye-liner and 
everything!" Cath said.

"You were a bit like that once, if I recall," said Prissy, with 
not such a pleasant smile. "You used to be into all that goth 
shit."

"Yeah! Well, that was years ago!" said Cath, fuming from 
Prissy's unsubtle reminder.

"Whatever!" said Emily, who wanted the conversation 
steered back to her sexual triumphs. "So, it wasn't just Sally 
I ate out. It was also Pat as well. And fucking tasty, it was 
too!"

"Oh! You lucky bitch!" Prissy shrieked. "I've always 
wanted a taste of Sally. She's such a pretty girl! Wooh! 
Those lips of hers! It makes my pussy drip just thinking 
about her."

Emily placed a reciprocating hand on Prissy's bare knee 
below the culottes she wore. "It's not dripped down this 
far!" she said with a conspiratorial laugh.

"It wouldn't take much to get me moist, sweetie!" Prissy 
said. She took her hand off Emily's thigh, pressed it hard on 
her hand and dug the fingers into the thick flesh.

Shit! Cath could see where this was going. When Emily 
had phoned up to say she was going down to the Half 
Moon in Clapham and could Cath come along, she'd made 
no mention of Prissy being there. All that wasted 
anticipation on the tube, stop after stop on the Northern 
Line, for what? She wished she'd not been so nasty now to 
Jayne when they'd parted. It looked like she was going to 
have another evening where she'd return to her lover only 
to admit there really was no one else in her life than Jayne 
and her beautiful breasts.

Well, fuck it! Cath grimaced as she pulled out another 
cigarette, now feeling quite excluded while Prissy and 
Emily continued their rather detailed account of Emily's 
lovemaking. She loved Jayne. She might be twelve years or 
so older, but theirs was a love worth more than an evening 
in Emily's bed. However much she rationalised about it, she 
still felt deprived of the fun she'd promised herself and the 
prospect of which she'd so enjoyed taunting Jayne with.

She surveyed the pub around her. Why had Emily insisted 
on coming to a place like this where three young women 
with short hair and uncompromising swagger would only 
look out of place? It wasn't that Emily was in any sense 
ashamed of her sexual preference, but this was no dyke bar. 
Most of the clientele were men, and the few women were 
generally in mixed company. In fact, the only other group 
of women unaccompanied by brutish men, sitting in front 
of their Bacardis and Coke, were probably the least 
sympathetic of anyone to Cath and her friends. She stubbed 
out her cigarette and let her ears focus again on Emily's 
boasting, this time about some cute girl she'd seduced on 
the Central Line.

"It was only when I kissed her she knew what the game 
was," she laughed. "Sometimes a girl just can't see what's 
coming however bloody obvious you think it is!"

"And did you?" Prissy wondered.

"It was fucking touch and go, I can tell you! I could see she 
was wet. Well, you can, can't you? But I had to be subtle. 
Push too hard and a girl runs away. But, yeah, it only took a 
few drinks in the New Inn and having to listen to her moans 
about her fucking boyfriend, and we were back at my place. 
Not the best pussy I've tasted, but better than my vibrator."

Would Cath get to taste Emily's vagina? It seemed 
increasingly unlikely. She remembered Marlene's 
comments about how Emily shaved it sometimes. Would 
Emily be shaving it now? Or was she sporting a full bush? 
It didn't look like Cath would ever find out.

"'Scuse us!" Cath announced heading off to the loo. 
Perhaps if she brushed her short hair, maybe re-applied that 
natural-look lipstick that gave her lips that seductive pout, 
Emily might see that of she and Prissy, it was Cath who 
was the most deserving.

Her hopes rose as she admired herself in the toilet mirror. 
She'd made such an effort. That new micro-check shirt 
she'd bought. The hip-hugging jeans she'd spent nearly a 
hundred quid on. The leather jacket with the silk lining that 
she only wore on special occasions. 

It was obvious when she returned to the bar that it was 
going to be Prissy, not she, who would get to know Emily 
better tonight.

"You don't mind, do you?" said Emily with a barely 
disguised smirk, "but I feel real tired. You know, these late 
nights can really fuck you up!"

"And I only live down the road," said Prissy. "Shame 
you've got such a long trek back up North. You really 
ought to move down here some time. South London's really 
happening, you know."

"'Specially round Battersea. When you ditch Jayne, give it a 
chance. It'll be worth it!"

Cath was left alone in the bar, vulnerable and lonely, 
watching Prissy and Emily leave together, not caring at all 
what people thought of them as they put their arms around 
each other. With the last dregs of her wine, Cath was 
beginning to care very much what the other people in the 
bar thought of her. Could they see the mortification burning 
off her cheeks?

She pulled out a cigarette and hid herself behind the 
comforting veil of smoke while she fumed in equal 
measures of disappointment and uncertainty as to what to 
do now. It seemed too early to head back to Clapham 
Common tube station and the Northern Line.

She glared at the women on the other side of the bar as one 
of them poured more coke from her bottle into the small 
glass. She couldn't very well show herself up in front of 
them, could she? She'd have another drink, just to show 
how little she gave a fuck for being abandoned by her 
friends. Perhaps they'd think she was waiting for another 
friend. 

If only!

Cath stood up and wandered to the bar which was 
thankfully quite empty and ordered another glass of sweet 
white wine from the geeky looking barman. She glanced 
nervously at her leather jacket slung over the chair by the 
table where she'd been sitting. Perhaps those women would 
be useful, after all, by keeping an eye on it.

"I'll pay for that and I'll have a single bourbon as well while 
you're about it," a man's voice announced.

Cath turned her head, her first instinct to decline the offer. 
Men and she didn't mix, especially one who spoke in such 
an obvious American accent. He looked at the man who'd 
made the offer. He was in his mid-thirties, stocky, sporting 
a grey check jacket and no tie in the buttoned-down collar 
of his brush cotton shirt. Cath, who had an eye for these 
things, could see that nothing he wore came cheap.

"Gee! I hope you don't mind me buying you a drink," he 
said with a broad smile, "but I'm an American, as you must 
have guessed, a New Yorker, and that's just how we do 
things. So, don't feel obliged to do more than take your 
drink and sit down. I won't hassle you if you don't want me 
to."

"New York?" asked Cath, despite herself. She'd always 
wanted to go there, but there'd never been an excuse. Jayne 
much preferred heading south for the sun. But what tickled 
her was his accent.

"Yeah. New York. Best city in the world. 'Cepting London, 
of course."

Cath smiled despite herself. It was just like in the movies. 
'Noo Yawk'. The American accent was so funny.

"Yeah, I'm here on business. A lot of business, mind you. 
My company's kept me here for a couple of months sorting 
things out for them. It's a drag living away from home. So, 
you a Londoner?"

"Yeah," said Cath, hesitating between returning to her seat 
and the fact that there was bugger all for her to do when she 
got there. She hoped this guy wouldn't spot the slight Brum 
accent she'd never quite managed to lose in all the years 
she'd been in the capital. But an American wouldn't know 
the difference, would he?

"Great city, London. And Clapham's not bad either. This 
where you live?"

"Islington, really. North London."

"Gee! I've never been there. I'm sure it's a real cool part of 
town. By the way, my name's Gareth. What's yours?"

"Cath."

"Well, Cath, I don't really want to bother you if you don't 
want me to, if you're waiting for a friend and all. I'm just a 
lonely yank in town who doesn't know anyone. But it's 
been real good meeting you."

He took the glass of whisky that the barman offered him 
and handed over a note.

"Have a drink on me, bud." he said to the barman and 
handed Cath the glass of wine.

"Not the best vintage," he continued as Cath picked up the 
glass and took a small sip. "You sure you don't want 
anything better?"

Cath didn't really know that much about wine. She didn't 
drink much normally. "It's fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

There was an awkward pause while Cath wondered what to 
do. Just returning to her seat seemed wrong. Gareth smiled 
and half-turned away. It couldn't do any harm to be polite 
could it? It didn't look like he was trying to pick her up or 
anything. He'd get a real shock if he thought she was a 
likely prospect!

"So, where d'you come from in New York?" she asked.

Gareth turned back, a broad grin on her face. 

"Manhattan. Lower West Side. I've got a great view from 
my apartment. Do you know New York?"

Cath shook her head. "What's it like?"

"Well, now you're asking," Gareth said with a smile.

He launched into an enthusiastic account of a city that 
fascinated Cath. It certainly wasn't only skyscrapers and car 
chases and Central Park. There was so much to the city. 
The financial district where he worked. The park where he 
jogged every day when he could find the time. The very 
many and varied restaurants. The museums and art 
galleries. The department stores and theatres. The 
Rockefeller Center. The Empire State Building. And, most 
of all, the night life. It was mad. A night life far wilder than 
Jayne had ever allowed her to have.

And then, Cath didn't know how it happened, the 
conversation centred not on New York and the fabulous 
views from above, looking down at it from the top of the 
South Tower at the World Trade Center, but on her. And 
now it was Cath, not Gareth, who was doing most of the 
talking. And it was like a sudden relief to be able to talk 
about herself to someone who didn't know her at all, about 
things she found difficult to talk about with friends and just 
as difficult with Jayne. 

The conversation wandered along with Cath and Gareth 
back to where her leather jacket remained untouched on the 
back of the seat. Gradually, Cath found herself talking 
about her love life and her discontentment with the 
limitations on her freedom. Having an older lover really 
stymied her style. When she went out to nightclubs she 
couldn't really go with her lover and she found it difficult to 
be as free with her body as she'd like to be. But for some 
reason, although she was specific about Jayne's age and the 
way she seemed to get more pleasure from reading books 
and watching television than snorting lines or dropping 
pills, she was consciously vague about her lover's sex. Or 
even that of the people she chose to have sex with.

"So, you like a line, do you?" Gareth wondered when he 
returned with another glass of white wine, a rather better 
quality label than she usually drank. "I take it you mean 
coke?"

"Yeah. Charlie. Ching. Whatever!" Cath boasted, though in 
truth she rarely partook. But she wasn't going to let on.

"I just happen to have some quality Colombian I brought 
over with me," Gareth remarked with a smile. "I'm not a 
cokehead before you say anything. I just like the odd line. 
It helps a busy day go by better."

"Colombian?"

"It's good stuff," Gareth reassured her. "But you were 
saying? That deadline you're working toward?"

Cath returned to her account of the software system she 
was helping to install, naturally inflating her role in its 
delivery. As a very junior programmer, or 'software 
engineer' as Gareth flatteringly termed it, she really had a 
minor part to play. All the while at the back of her mind she 
was wondering about Gareth's quality Colombian. It would 
really piss off Jayne if Cath had a line or two. She was 
always snotty about any of the drugs Cath took. Even 
smoking dope in the house was something Cath had to be 
diplomatic about. She could really boast to her friends what 
it was like to snort quality coke. She was sure they'd no 
more real idea what that might mean than she had.

Gareth smiled all the while. Occasionally he interjected an 
encouraging comment, deliberately accentuating his 
apparent naïveté. His green eyes sparkled and his smile lit 
up a face that as Cath's vision became more clouded with 
alcohol (how many glasses had she drunk now?) became 
steadily more reliable and attractive. Cath puffed away at 
cigarette after cigarette, Gareth steadily sipping his bourbon 
and refusing the offer of a cigarette himself. 

He noticed that Cath's glass was empty. He indicated it 
with a finger.

"I'm staying in a condo, company let, a flat the company 
uses to house its executives when in London, just round the 
corner from here. It's only five minutes walk. If you like I'll 
let you sample some of Colombia's finest."

Cath paused. Was this guy hitting on her? She was 
normally wary with men. After all, they were the enemy, 
weren't they? But it wasn't as if he'd been trying anything 
on, was he? And there was plenty of time till the last tube 
home.

"Yeah! Why not? Let's see what Colombia's got to offer." 

Cath was very impressed by Gareth's flat when they got 
there. It wasn't cheap, that was for sure. It had a really 
grand reception area. And when he opened the door, she 
could see the place was huge. Everything was just that bit 
more splendid than she was used to. A massive living room 
with a widescreen television. A plush leather sofa and 
armchairs in the living room. And on the walls were framed 
pictures of English landscapes and views of London. 

"If you don't mind, Cath, could you take your shoes off? 
The carpet, you know."

"Oh okay!" Cath agreed, slipping off her moccasins and 
walking across the thick, luscious pile carpet to the sofa 
onto which she slumped, her head still fuzzed with wine.

Gareth knelt by the small glass table next to the sofa and 
began chopping up a line of cocaine with an American 
Express platinum credit card. He did it with expert 
promptness, gathering the white powder into four long thin 
lines. He smiled at Cath and rolled a crisp twenty pound 
note into a neat straw.

"You first," he offered.

Cath knelt down and snorted the line through the note. She 
felt it burn the side of her thin nostrils and the grains pass 
through the back of her throat. She coughed. Fuck! It was a 
good hit! Almost instantly she got that weird buzz of clarity 
that obliterated the fuzziness of alcohol. Although her 
thoughts now seemed to be in a clear focus she was aware 
they were really no less scattered than before.

Gareth snorted a line himself with the note and passed it 
back to Cath. She picked it up, and now with her left 
nostril, which was a somehow less effective hoover, she 
snorted it down, stopping briefly half way and then 
recommencing. Overwhelmed by the impact, she collapsed 
back on the sofa, somehow unable to do anything more 
coherent, let alone resume the conversation that had 
stopped mid-sentence before they entered the flat.

She laid back, a ciggie in her hand, but mostly burning out 
by itself, its ash dropping in pristine cylinders into the huge 
ashtray Gareth offered her. As she lay there she became 
gradually aware of a tickling sensation on her left foot. 
What the fuck? She looked down, along the leg of her 
denim jeans, to see Gareth holding her foot in his hands in 
exactly the pose she imagined Prince Charming would do 
while evaluating Cinderella's foot.

"You have beautiful feet, you know," he remarked with a 
smile.

"Do I?"

"Beautiful! I've always admired a good foot."

He placed his lips on her big toe.

Cath shivered. But was it from fear, apprehension or 
something else?

Emboldened, Gareth kissed each toe, one by one, beginning 
with the big toe and working his way down, slowly and 
with no haste, to the smallest toe.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"No. It's nice," Cath slurred. 

It was true. Her senses felt somehow magnified and there 
was something very sensuous about those lips on such a 
sensitive part of her body. It was a part that Jayne rarely 
explored, and certainly not with the relish with which 
Gareth continued. Now on each toe of her right foot. And 
then with his tongue on the web between each toe. 
Gradually, slowly and surely, he took each toe into his lips, 
his tongue in and around the nails, the whole of her big toe 
inside his mouth: a dry and unthreatening fellatio of the 
toes. That sensation together with the effects of alcohol and 
cocaine was tickling another part of her, a part she was sure 
would never get stimulated tonight. Unless, that was, she 
managed to get home before Jayne fell asleep and she 
nestled under the duvet next to her, their naked bodies to be 
entwined in their slumbers.

Fuck it! What was she letting herself in for? Not since she 
was a kid, long before she was certain of her sexual 
predisposition, with Mark, who was even more nervous 
than she, and who made a total mess of the whole thing, 
had she experienced any part of a man touch any part of 
her.

"Are you all right?" Gareth asked, as Cath gave vent to an 
involuntary shudder.

Cath nodded. Somehow, despite the coke, she just couldn't 
articulate in words how she felt.

"I've got a condom, you know."

"A what?"

"A condom."

Cath paused, frozen. What was this guy saying? This wasn't 
right at all. She was a lesbian. It was women she adored. 
Not some hairy Neanderthal brute. She should just draw it 
to a close now. Get out. Go home. But, on the other hand, 
fuck it! This would really fuck up Jayne. Especially after 
Jayne had confessed to her that tearful, hysterical night 
what she'd done on the beach in Ibiza. Fuck her! Two could 
play that game. And Gareth wasn't a bad looking catch 
really. For a bloke, that is. 

And it wasn't like she was going to be making love with 
Emily, anyway.

"Yeah!" said Cath languidly. "Whatever. Why the fuck 
not?"

She tugged off her jeans, a more difficult exercise than she 
remembered from last time she'd spent the night with 
anyone other than Jayne, and then unbuttoned her shirt. She 
sat on the sofa in only her cotton knickers and bra while 
Gareth stripped down to his crisp white boxer shorts.

"The bedroom," he suggested, nodding to an open door.

"Yeah, right!" agreed Cath, undoing her bra and dropping it 
to the ground as she followed Gareth.

Gareth took his boxers off and laid them neatly by the side 
of the bed. She slipped off her knickers to lie on the sheets 
on the huge mattress, its duvet pushed to one side. She was 
now totally naked, her thick thatch of pubic hair on full 
display, as she regarded Gareth. It was the first time she'd 
seen a naked man in the flesh for an extremely long time. 
Not since she was a kid, really. And this was quite an odd 
sight. A trim form, but a waist as wide as a chest adorned 
with a bush of curly hair, hairy legs and, strangest of all, an 
erect penis where normally Cath expected to see nothing at 
all.

Thankfully it wasn't that large. Or was it? Cath was ill-
informed in that respect. Nothing, anyway, compared to the 
strap-on she and Jayne sometimes used. And nothing at all 
compared to the dildo they kept in the cupboard for extra 
special occasions. It was strange to see something 
connected physically with the body and twitching in such a 
peculiar way.

She let her head fall back on the pillow and let her thoughts 
wander as she felt Gareth recommence slowly and with no 
rush his circuit of her body from her toes to her crotch. His 
lips puckered and kissed their way up her thighs and 
burrowed into the hair around her vagina.

When Gareth finally penetrated her, it almost came as a 
surprise. Cath had become so accustomed to his tongue, 
lips and fingers as they stroked and lapped over her that 
she'd almost forgotten where the end of all this foreplay 
was meant to lead. On the journey she became looser, moist 
even, enjoying the nibbling of her coke-enhanced clitoris, 
glad he kept his tongue and stubbled chin away from her 
face.

It was a different sensation to strap-on sex. The penis was 
so warm and had a kind of plasticity that no dildo ever had. 
Her vulva had become so sensitive that she fancied she 
could even feel the veins on his penis throbbing as it slid 
back and forth so easily in her moist inner caverns. 

Was she enjoying it? 

Perhaps. Though she preferred to keep her eyes off Gareth, 
reminded as she was just who was fucking her, imagining 
to herself not only Emily's body, naked and smooth, seeing 
at last those perky breasts that contrasted so much with 
Cath's smaller, large nippled ones, but also, as so often 
when she was unfaithful, Jayne's body and those breasts 
that fell so heavily on hers in the throes of their passion.

Then her body lost all tension and she pulled herself up and 
grasped Gareth around the chest, his arms sympathetically 
grabbing her shoulders as that familiar release of animal 
passion returned. Her thrusts reciprocated his, just as they 
did when Jayne pushed that realistic, perhaps idealistic, 
plastic toy inside her. For a few moments she didn't care 
who was fucking her, man or woman, as she surrendered 
herself to animal passion.

At last, they parted and Cath watched with amused interest 
as Gareth removed the silvery condom from his now much 
smaller penis, a string of semen trailing from his foreskin to 
the aperture that had once been so tight on the erect 
member. It hadn't been as smooth as that with Mark. In 
fact, on that occasion, it was only the second or third 
condom he'd unwrapped that had ever served any useful 
function at all.

She lay back and studied the ceiling, which was not nearly 
as high above her head as the one in Cath and Jayne's flat in 
Islington. Nor was there that glorious rose around the light 
shade that she and Jayne loved to discuss as they lay back 
after their exertions.

As she usually did after making love, Cath began talking 
about so many things. The women in the pub who she 
thought had been sneering at her. The way she felt so 
cheated when Emily and Prissy had left her with only the 
company of a few sips of wine and a packet of cigarettes. 
The differences between the huge bed that dominated this 
correspondingly large bedroom and the one in her own 
bedroom. As she chatted she became increasingly aware 
that it was more a monologue than a dialogue she was 
engaged in. Unlike Jayne, or indeed most of the women 
she'd made love to, Gareth was almost entirely silent. He 
lay on his back, his arm around Cath's thin shoulders, only 
occasionally grunting in response.

Fuck! That wasn't right. Almost the best part of making 
love was the excited conversation afterwards that so often 
led to a reprise, or a series of them, of the lovemaking that 
preceded them.

"I need a fag," Cath announced.

"Go ahead!" Gareth murmured, slumped in apparent 
exhaustion.

"Okay!" said Cath wandering into the lounge still naked 
and relishing the texture of pile carpet between her toes.

As she sat on the sofa, contemplating whether it wasn't too 
late for her to catch a tube home or to spend the night in 
Gareth's decidedly welcoming bed, she also wondered 
whether this moment of heterosexual love might indicate 
that, after all, she should be less discriminating in future 
about the gender of whomsoever she made love with.

Although she concluded she should cut her losses and 
spend the night with Gareth, more to worry Jayne than 
from any sexual desire, it was the sight of a man's body 
naked with a now useless penis flopped on a thigh that 
resolved it for her.

Men might be fun when the going was good, but they were 
fucking useless afterwards.




New York
========

Marianne wasn't the slimmest woman Gareth had ever 
made love with. In fact, as she unclasped her bra to let her 
heavy bosom fall loose, Gareth studied her full stomach 
with some hesitation. She wasn't fat exactly, not even 
plump, but by no measurement could she be described as 
slim.

It wasn't as if Gareth could complain. Despite those few 
hours a week he found to attend the gym, he had definitely 
lost the slim figure he still sometimes imagined was just a 
temporary loss. He pulled down his boxers. His penis, not 
yet fully erect, never would be unless he lost his self-
consciousness about the stomach that had forced him to 
accept a fifty inch waist-size on his discarded suit trousers.

Outside the window, Gareth could hear the roar of the 
Manhattan traffic some twenty or so stories below. He 
fancied he could hear more sirens than usual, but this 
caused him no concern. New York was a busy city. There 
was always something happening somewhere or other. It 
was best never to worry too much about it.

After the last month or so since touching down at JFK, he 
had only gradually got back into stride. The long meetings, 
the overflowing mailbox, the documents he had to prepare 
only now seemed the natural routine of his working life. 
Besides the projects whose looming deadlines justified his 
handsome salary, and generous annual bonus, there was at 
least one project that he had at last brought to closure. And 
this was, of course, his pursuit of Marianne.

Finally, those evenings in the bar after work, sitting with 
her and other colleagues, and those sometimes not 
especially subtle hints, had come to this. Something he was 
sure justified making up the excuse of having to take one of 
his estranged wife's daughters to the clinic and thereby take 
the Tuesday morning off. But, of course, instead of driving 
across the Brooklyn Bridge, he steered his BMW over to 
the Upper East Side to fulfil his rendezvous with Marianne.

Marianne lay down on her back on the huge bed she 
normally shared with her husband. She supported her back 
on her shoulders. Her breasts flopped down onto her belly. 
Her dyed-blonde hair was immaculate as always. Her round 
face was the only part of her in any sense dressed with light 
purple lipstick, subtly applied highlighter, and the equally 
subtle application of mascara around her wide blue eyes. 

Those eyes were so fucking sexy Gareth reflected, his penis 
stirring in joyful anticipation, especially now that Marianne 
was so obviously looking forward to unrestrained sex.

Gareth had a routine he followed with any new conquest. 
He would start at the feet and work his way, inch by inch, 
kiss by kiss, up the length of the leg. Although this progress 
was slow and steady, he knew that by the time he reached 
Marianne's vagina, it would be moist and welcoming. 

As his puckering mouth ascended the calves, gently sucked 
and licked the round knees, and then slobbered along the 
expanse of thigh, he could hear that familiar chorus of 
gasps as Marianne became increasingly aroused. He gazed 
up at her face, his nose now only inches away from the full, 
untrimmed mass of her light brown pubic hair. She arched 
her head back, her hair falling back onto the pillow, while 
from the corner of his eye he could see a picture of 
Marianne and her husband smiling contentedly from a 
photograph by the bedside table lamp. 

This was the first time Gareth had ever seen an image of 
Simon. There really wasn't the time to study it properly. Far 
more urgent business was on hand. Just as Gareth normally 
would, Simon was at this moment almost certainly wearing 
an expensive suit in keeping with the luxury of his 
apartment and his status in the Lower Manhattan brokerage 
where he worked. In the photograph he was wearing a polo 
shirt and slacks, his confident assured smile matching that 
of his wife around whose waist he wrapped a bare arm.

One thing Gareth was certain of, although he was spared 
the embarrassment of actually seeing it in the photograph, 
was that unlike him, Simon would have a circumcised 
penis. That much was obvious from the surname he shared 
with his wife.

Marianne's vagina had a rich, welcoming smell when 
Gareth buried his nose into it, his hands supporting his 
weight on her outstretched thighs. The taste was equally 
arousing as his tongue guided itself around the folds and 
creases of her vulva. His tongue discovered her clitoris 
before his eyes did, a hard knob of arousal buried under the 
most complicated of all her complex contours. His 
forefinger pushed into the vagina, easily engulfed by its 
moistness. One by one, two, three and then four fingers, 
thrust backwards and forwards, and orchestrated a series of 
gasps from Marianne above. 

The progress of Gareth's mouth from the vagina, over the 
navel, around the crenulations of her nipples and finally to 
her mouth and its expertly capped teeth was just as 
leisurely and steady as his earlier progress from the ankle. 
All the while, he kept a finger or two inside the warm 
cavern of her vagina, twitching her clitoris and pushing his 
fingers back and forth. Marianne gasped and panted with 
growing passion, her polished fingernails digging into 
Gareth's broad back. And just as Marianne was clearly 
ready for action, so too was Gareth, his penis throbbing and 
pulsing and ready for the plunge.

At last, he was inside, and the two of them thrust their 
crotches up against each other in a steadily growing curve 
of passion, one that after many partners and many similar 
encounters, Gareth knew he could delay from the final 
moment of release for many minutes more.

And then the phone rang.

"Shit!" Marianne cried. "Who the fuck can that be?"

"Ignore it!" hissed Gareth.

Whatever it was, there was more urgent business to attend 
to.

The phone rang all six times and then Gareth heard 
Marianne's voice crackle from the answer-phone explaining 
that she and Simon were not able to take the call at the 
moment, but if the caller left a number...

And then her voice stopped abruptly as the respondent 
hung up. 

Despite the interruption, Gareth was too expert to let this 
deflate his prowess and within a minute, he and Marianne 
were fucking again, more energetically than ever. Gareth 
now learnt something about Marianne he would never have 
suspected and that was the extent of her vocal passion. Her 
gasps became shrieks that ascended in volume and pitch 
with each of Gareth's thrusts. 

She was a screamer. 

It was a good thing, after all, that they had arranged to meet 
in Marianne's apartment rather than retreat back to the 
office after a glass or two of wine, as Gareth once 
contemplated.

Then Gareth heard another sound, quite piercing but 
definitely melodic. It wasn't from outside, though he was 
conscious of the echoes of sirens and automobile horns 
rising from the streets below. Rather noisier than below his 
own apartment, that was for sure. And it was too high-
pitched to be the sound of a stereo blasting from an 
adjoining apartment.

"Fuck!" Marianne gasped, stretching her arm over to the 
bedside table, Gareth's penis still deep inside her. "Now it's 
the cell phone. I should've just turned it off!"

"Just ignore it!" Gareth snarled. 

He was just about losing patience with these interruptions.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Marianne cried agitatedly. "Get your 
dick out of me! It's fucking Simon!"

Gareth hated doing that. It was almost physically painful to 
snatch his penis out from where it was so fully embedded, 
his erection as stiff as it could ever be. Clearly, it wasn't 
that pleasant for Marianne either, who gasped with a 
painful grimace, snatched the cell phone from the table, and 
pressed it to her ear.

Gareth sat back on the mattress, cross-legged, his penis 
twitching in attendance, while Marianne sat on the side of 
the bed nodding her head and occasionally shaking it, 
making occasional monosyllabic utterances.

"So, you'll be back early then!" she confirmed, just before 
turning off the cell phone and replacing it on the table.

"Your husband's coming home, is he?" Gareth asked, 
wondering whether he should now just leave. He had, after 
all, achieved almost everything he'd intended to do. Not 
absolutely everything, of course, but almost.

"He doesn't know," said Marianne, looking startled. "He 
doesn't really know what's happening. There's been a kind 
of explosion in the other tower. Not the one he works in, 
but the North Tower. No one knows what's happened. 
Apparently there's smoke coming out of it. He's been told 
to stay at his desk. They think it's the best place to stay. 
Apparently, it's safer than outside if there's something like 
that explosion they had a few years ago in the underground 
car park."

"So, he'll be staying at work then?" wondered Gareth 
hopefully.

"Who knows," Marianne remarked. "No one knows what to 
do. Simon's been phoning emergency services for advice, 
but they're always engaged. The management advise 
staying at their desks. After all, what's happened in the 
other tower can't be happening in both of them, can it?"

"I guess not!"

Marianne put the cell phone down and bit her lip. She 
looked up at Gareth and noticed his erect penis protruding 
almost incongruously between his crossed knees. 

She giggled.

"Well, he won't be back for an hour or so, even if they do 
evacuate the building," she remarked. "What can we do 
while we're waiting?"

"I know exactly what I want to do!" said Gareth 
determinedly, with a wicked smile on his face.

Re-entry was not as smooth as had been the original entry. 
Marianne was obviously quite tense, though there was 
enough residual moistness for the feat to be achieved with 
no pain to either of them. He thrust back and forth, only 
gradually building up the rhythm, mindful of what it was 
sometimes like when the fucking was interrupted in mid-
stroke and remembering too well the times it had killed all 
the passion.

Then Marianne said, whilst not responding at all with her 
body as Gareth had hoped, "It'll be on the box, won't it?"

"What?" Gareth answered, barely able to disguise his 
annoyance.

"Something like that, an explosion in the World Trade 
Center, it'll be on television, won't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so!"

"Then let's turn on the TV," Marianne said.

Gareth pretended not to hear her. His rhythm was 
beginning to take precedence over anything else.

"Look! Fucking get off me, will you!" said Marianne with 
annoyance. "We're putting on the fucking box whatever 
you fucking think!"

"Oh! Okay," said Gareth reluctantly, his penis popping out 
with a slight eructation, just about audible over the distant 
traffic noise.

The two of them then sat naked on the side of the bed. 
Marianne located the remote control and aimed it at the 
television.

For a moment, they looked with disbelief at the picture on 
the screen which was of a huge tower with smoke billowing 
out just two-thirds the way from the bottom.

"It's not a science fiction movie, is it?" asked Marianne in 
an urgent whisper. "It's the real fucking deal, isn't it?"

Gareth nodded. This couldn't be happening! And not now! 
This was America in the fucking twenty-first century. This 
was the real world. Whatever was happening and being 
televised couldn't be real, could it?

But, of course, it was.

"Shit! This is serious!" said Gareth, as the unsteady lens of 
the television cameras were intercut with images of 
newsreaders and a stream of data tickertaped under the 
screen. Flight 11. 8:48 a.m. Details still awaiting. The 
North Tower. 

"This isn't real!" Marianne exclaimed. "Those poor people. 
And what's that? What is that?"

Gareth felt a sudden very sick feeling grip his stomach as 
the image replayed itself in his mind. It was someone 
falling out of the window. Or if not a person, exactly what a 
person would look like if it plummeted from the window of 
a 110-storey building.

"I need a piss," Gareth announced. 

He stood up and strode across the pinewood floor towards 
the en-suite bathroom, his head turning back with horror, 
half-hoping and half-fearing that he might see more of that 
horrific scene. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, not 
really sure if he wanted to pee at all, but certain that he 
needed some space to himself. Did he feel like puking? 
There was a very real sickness in his gut, but it wasn't 
translating into anything more material.

He gazed at his reflection.  He was a good-looking guy. He 
knew that. His success rate was evidence enough of that. 
The girls he'd picked up and fucked. Even that dyke chick 
in the South London pub. Not the first dyke he'd notched 
up, but one worth the effort. But what should he do now? 
What he wanted to do was find a decent excuse and split. 
He'd done what he'd come to do, after all. Now, he could 
jump back into the BMW and drive back across town. He 
felt sorry for Marianne, of course, but her husband would 
be back soon. And Gareth almost envied him the story he 
had to tell his wife.

And then he heard a shriek from the adjacent room. A 
shriek that chilled him in a way he'd never imagined one 
could. Something that all those horror movies he'd watched 
had never really prepared him for. It burst out suddenly and 
violently, rose high and then choked on itself before 
returning with gulps. In Gareth's imagination, it was as if 
Marianne had just been attacked by a figure in an almost 
comical mask, but he knew it was something quite different 
and something almost certainly associated with whatever it 
was that was happening downtown.

He dashed out of the bathroom, his pretence of needing a 
piss totally forgotten, to see Marianne choking on her tears 
as she watched the television, its volume raised to an 
entirely unnatural volume.

"The cunts! The fucking cunts! The motherfuckers!" 
Marianne gasped.

"What? What?"

"The South... The South Tower... Another..."

Gareth had never known an experience like this before. At 
the back of his mind, he'd assumed that a plane hitting a 
sky-scraper in Manhattan could only be an unfortunate 
accident. Horrible. Unfortunate. But understandable. 
Things like that could happen. It had happened to the 
Empire State Building, after all. But two planes! Whatever 
it was, it couldn't be an accident!

There was no pretence at concern that drove Gareth to put 
his arm around the naked, sobbing, huddled Marianne as he 
watched the screen with horror that was so great he 
wondered if it was humanly possible for Marianne to feel 
any worse. The newsreaders and tickertape told the same 
story. Another plane. This time filmed. Again and again, he 
saw the image replayed by the television studio of a huge 
Boeing 747, Flight 175 as he later discovered, fly straight 
into the North Tower, the very one where the cuckolded 
Simon was working, but fortunately not on the 90th floor.

"I've got to phone Simon!" said Marianne, suddenly 
sobering up. "Check that he's all right!"

Gareth nodded. This clearly took precedence over anything 
else. He felt suddenly conscious of his nakedness and that 
of Marianne, but he was unable to do anything quite as 
trivial as put clothes back on. He sat on the bed, his 
knuckles pushed against his teeth, while the billowing 
clouds of black smoke emerged from the recently hit 
building, mingling with those of the North Tower.

"Shit! Shit! Shit" he murmured again and again. Was there 
nothing more profound you could say when things like this 
happened?

"It's engaged!" shrieked Marianne, throwing her cell phone 
violently onto the mattress. "It's fucking engaged! Fuck! 
Fuck!"

And then she once again shrieked out loud, a piercing cry 
that added to Gareth's misery and also to his 
embarrassment. His clothes? Should he?

And then the cell phone rang again. Marianne snatched it 
up and held it to her ear. Gareth had enough presence of 
mind, and this somehow steadied his own shattered nerves, 
to lower the volume of the television, while Marianne 
nodded her head and gasped "Yes! Yes! Of course!" at 
regular intervals.

"I love you!" she said suddenly.

What?

"I do! I love you, Simon! Please please please... just get 
home..."

And then Marianne sat there, reluctant to put the cell phone 
down, although Gareth sensed the call had finished. She 
lowered it slowly towards her lap and gazed at it as if 
hypnotised, her face a crumpled mess of misery, her 
mascara just a smudge of tears.

"He's on the 105th floor. They don't know what to do. 
There's smoke everywhere. They're heading to the roof. It's 
the only place to go."

"Surely a helicopter will pick them up."

"It must do! It must!"

What do you do in times like this? Gareth knew how to 
play women when it came to seduction, but comforting 
them? What do you do? He put a reassuring arm around 
Marianne's bare shoulders. Instinctively she nuzzled close 
to him, her eyes focused on the television and its images of 
firefighters and billowing black smoke.

And then she abruptly pushed him off with enough 
violence that it bruised his chest.

"Just keep your fucking hands off me, you bastard!" she 
shrieked before exploding into another torrent of tears.

Oh shit! Now what? 

Marianne punched furiously at the cell phone buttons.

"What's happening? Are you all right?" she yelled 
hysterically into the mouthpiece.

Marianne returned to a conversation that Gareth 
desperately pretended not to hear while his attention was 
split between the relative comfort of newsreaders and the 
gasps of disjointed interjections from Marianne. She put the 
cell phone down.

"It's not easy getting up the stairs. It's real crowded. 
Simon's had to get off the phone to help someone from a 
lower floor who's burnt. He says it's horrible. Her skin's 
boiling or something. It's a fucking nightmare. Oh! Ohh! I 
so want to talk to Simon!"

It was no use. Gareth had to return to the bathroom. He 
staggered across the room, hesitated by the pile of clothes 
and slipped on his boxers, before taking them off again in 
the bathroom where he stood in front of the latrine. From 
the bedroom he could hear Marianne's agonised cries while 
he stood, wobbling, above the sight of a latrine into which 
his penis was stubbornly refusing to relieve itself.

And then he remembered that image of the falling body. In 
his mind's eye he imagined it tumbling, rolling and flailing 
as it bounced against the unforgiving vertical hardness of 
the tower to eventually land on the ground below.

He choked and a small stream of spew ejected itself from 
his chest and drooled down his chin. 

He choked a bit more, kneeling on the ground in front of 
the toilet bowl, coughing up, with no result, as the vivid 
image in his mind recurred of a splattered human body, 
perhaps like a fly on his car windscreen, hitting the ground 
surrounded by fire engines.

At last he staggered back, carefully tugging his boxers back 
on. The task of dressing himself when he returned 
distracted his eyes from looking at Marianne. When clothed 
he finally did so, to see her sitting in her dressing gown, the 
cell phone against her ear, and the clear evidence on the 
white towelling that she too had relieved herself of the 
contents of her stomach.

"I love you! I love you!" she repeated over and over again 
while her eyes focused on the billowing smoke on the 
television screen.

And then, suddenly, it happened. 

Marianne and Gareth looked at the television with the same 
horror as, in what seemed like slow motion, the North 
Tower crumbled and collapsed, like a man punched in the 
chest. It was more like those controlled explosions that 
provided so much entertainment when a city block needed 
clearing, but this time not controlled at all. This time, the 
explosion took with it the lives of so many innocent men 
and women and so many brave firefighters whose 
dedication and courage had beamed out reassurance in 
these last few minutes. 

Marianne lowered the cell phone. It had gone dead.

And then, as the South Tower collapsed, floor after floor 
falling on the floor below, Marianne herself followed the 
same gradual descent, her body losing all its meaning and 
purpose.

Then Gareth was alone. Marianne sprawled unconscious 
next to him, the shock of her sudden loss too much for her 
to bear.

Shit!




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.

