The Not So Invisible Woman (14 page)

'What about going out with him?' she said. 'He seems like he has real potential: builder, sexy, big cock. He sounds right up your street.'

Just as I hung up from Janie, my phone rang. It was my human strippergram, calling to say hello and to tell me how work went the night before. We'd spent a few hours together earlier that day, when he'd come round to fix a leaky tap, then he'd gone off to perform at three hen nights in a row. He collapsed into bed with one of his exes at four the next morning, he said.

To most girls, that call would have been a reality check, but it just made me laugh. I'd never considered Rump Shaker boyfriend material, and I didn't mind that he slept with other women or that his life was a bit complicated. I knew I'd see him again, when the time was right for some mutual fun, and that was enough.

About two weeks into our tête-à-tête relationship, Max invited me over for Sunday lunch at his house in West London. The prize on the menu was pheasant, which he boasted of shooting a few days earlier on the estate of some titled friends. Between the twin lures of roast pheasant and society gossip, he had me.

The bird turned out to be a bit dry, but after sharing two bottles of Margaux, I wasn't exactly parched.

'I've been thinking,' Max said suddenly, 'that our first break should be a weekend trip to Chicago.' He asked what my schedule was like.

I told him, for starters, that I couldn't get away that easily. I had two kids in school and, unlike his monied-up friends, no domestics to pick up the slack. As for my two kids-free weekends coming up that month, they were booked already.

It was time I made clear I was not looking for a serious boyfriend.

'But wouldn't you
like
a serious boyfriend?' Max asked.

'Not really, not right now,' I said. 'I'm having fun just juggling.'

'Well,
I
don't do the "crash and burn", dahling,' he said. 'I want an
adult
relationship. Do you know what that means?'

I thought I did, but I knew he was going to tell me anyway. Our conversations were strictly one-way affairs. He talked, I listened. And listened and listened. I wouldn't have, normally, had he and his boarding-school accent not been so amusing.

'I don't mind your dalliances, Suzanne,' Max said. 'Just don't make me jealous.'

His words surprised me. Apparently he had decided on a relationship without consulting me. This is a first, I thought.

'Clarify your intentions,' I said.

'I'm not interested in having more babies, or in our doing the laundry together. And we can't be platonic,' he said. 'I just want someone with whom I can spend the weekend, preferably away. That means nice holidays, nice hotels . . .'

'Sounds perfect,' I said, and I meant it. It did sound perfect. Except there was one small problem: I wasn't sure whether I fancied my meal ticket.

Max opened a third bottle of Margaux and suggested we 'move upstairs'.

I held a glass of wine in one hand and gripped the railing with the other, as Max took my arm and led me up the stairs. We walked into his bedroom and I almost tripped on the books and clothing that littered the floor. I saw eyeglasses, pills, more books, old newspapers, an overflowing ashtray and cufflinks. And that was just the side table. This wasn't organised chaos; nothing looked intentionally placed, like in a design magazine. This was just a mess, and it wasn't romantic.

Max kissed me hard in the doorway, then began ripping off his clothes, contributing new piles to the floor. Almost immediately we were on the bed having sex. There wasn't much foreplay, not even much kissing. He just rolled me over and tried taking me from behind, doggie style.

I crouched, at his request, on all fours, and stared at the patterns on the grey-and-black duvet cover.

'Could you please tilt your bottom up just a little bit higher?' Max asked, ever so politely.

I complied.

'Just a few inches more?'

Again, I complied, arching my back like a cat. I got the sense he wasn't hugely experienced. He didn't know how to give me any pleasure, and didn't seem particularly interested in offering any. If he had been with a lot women, it certainly didn't show as, sooner or later, one of them would have taught him the golden rule of good sex: ladies first.

Although I'd had a porn-star fantasy for years, this wasn't the one. In my brain, I was with a hot black guy with a ruler-length dick while a Richard Gere lookalike shouted do-this, do-that directions from the sidelines. Here was a 54-year-old white man with a skinny five-incher asking me, politely, what to do, but instead of fulfilling my fantasy, he was just making me work.

After about a half-hour in the cat position, it hurt, and not in a good way. The skin on my elbows felt raw after too much time in one position. Too much time, because Max couldn't keep it up.

'Would you like me to take a Viagra?' he asked once the obstacle to our lovemaking became clear to both of us.

'Yeah, sure.' I tried to sound game, though I really wanted to go. The throbbing elbows were a painful reminder of their existence. Usually, I spent my time in bed pursuing pleasure, not feeling pain.

'I'm really sorry,' said Max. 'I normally have no problem getting hard.'

I mumbled the usual assurances.

'I find you a bit intimidating, to be honest,' he confessed, before taking a stab at a joke. 'I'm sure I can't be the first man to say that!'

'You're not.'

I was reminded of Tom, an edgy actor-comedian who'd told me the same thing not so long before. We'd met through business, and after our work meeting he'd invited me out to dinner. We flirted through appetizers and the main course, but put our pudding off. A few days later, we booked a cheap North London B & B for some lunch-time fun. But despite his own reputation, he found mine harder to handle.

He'd picked up my book after meeting me and quickly caught on to my big-cock fetish. He'd boasted about his size over dinner, but that was before reading about some of the men I'd been with. Too late, he realised his cock wasn't that spectacular after all.

I spent most of that afternoon stroking Tom's cock whilst stroking his ego. I sucked his perfectly fine above-average cock to keep him hard enough to fuck me in the short bursts before more tongue action was required. A sweaty 45 minutes later, we both managed to climax, but it was one of the more challenging sessions I'd ever had.

Until I met Max, that is.

The Viagra didn't do the trick.

'I really must go,' I said, after giving the Viagra the requisite twenty minutes to kick in. I explained that I needed to collect my children from their father's house. My kids-free weekend was over, as was my affair with a 54-year-old toff. When I heard the front door close behind me, I felt relief. The feeling surprised me, but I could not deny its message.

I rang Max the next day to tell him I didn't want to see him again.

'I just don't think it's going to work out,' I said. 'I thought it best to just tell you before, you know . . .' Before you book any weekend trips to Chicago, is what I wanted to say.

'Oh, I feel quite forlorn, Suzanne,' said Max. 'I was just going to ring you up to tell you how much I liked you.' He said nothing about our sexual non-experience.

The omission brought to mind my experience fucking Oliver, a film director two years Max's junior. He was another private-school-educated guy with a posh voice who didn't make me come and hadn't seem bothered. I'd found him sexy on the street but a bust in bed. So focused on the goal of coming, he forgot that was my goal, too.

Although I could see the attraction that came with the older-guy package – power, confidence, money – I'd yet to meet an older man with whom I felt a real connection. I wondered if, having achieved a certain status, they'd grown selfish and didn't care about their partner's pleasure. Or maybe they'd just never learned the basics, having slept with women who never opened their mouths to express their needs. I didn't understand how a guy could pass the half-century mark and not have figured it out.

Perhaps I was doing something wrong; perhaps it was my fault I didn't click with these guys. I called my friend Paula. A gorgeous 38-year-old singer with long brown hair, sexy Germanic features and a slim curvy body, she could have had her pick. And she picked as her husband a man in his mid-sixties. After he died, she took up with a 62-year-old.

'What do you see in these older guys?' I asked her.

'They just seem to know what to do,' she said. 'They're more sensuous, more loving. Sex isn't about a race for them.'

Easy for her to say. In my experience, just getting to the starting line was an accomplishment.

Paul came by today,' Pat said one day when I popped over for a cup of tea. 'Remember him? Cute, Scottish guy, skinny?' I recognised the name instantly, even without the description.

I'd first seen him two years earlier at a birthday party for Pat. He'd stuck in my brain ever since, unlike Max, who flew out of my head about as quickly as he'd landed there.

Pat's party was held at Guanabara, a Brazilian club in Covent Garden, and the place was so full of hip young Latinos swivelling their hips and wiggling their asses, I felt like a foreigner who had accidentally landed in Rio de Janeiro.

I'd just gone blonde again and, middle-aged to boot, knew fitting in would be a challenge, so I'd worn a long black ruched skirt that looked vaguely Spanish, with a tight red top knotted around my midriff. I couldn't be Latina but I could do sexy.

And I did feel sexy as Jack spun me round on the dance floor and kissed me between songs. That didn't stop me noticing Paul, though. He stood out because he was another fair Anglo in a sea of dark-haired hotties, and because he was my type – lanky and undernourished looking, with high cheekbones and short blond hair just beginning to go grey. He was about six-feet tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and had the kind of human-hanger body that made anything he wore look good. He was wearing a 1940s-style double-breasted blue suit with a flat cap and brogues. He was arty and handsome and carried himself with the confident air of an original.

'Who's the guy in the cap?' I asked Pat. 'I've not met him before.'

'That's Paul,' she said. 'He has a girlfriend,' she added, as if reading my mind.

'OK,' I said. 'He's cute, though. What does he do?'

'He runs an animation company in the West End. Pretty successful, actually. I've known him for years.'

Cute and tall and thin and arty and rich. And taken. Damn.

Jack interrupted my reverie. 'Ready for another dance?' he asked, grabbing my hand without waiting for an answer. As I walked towards the dance floor, I mentally filed Paul under 'Save for Later'.

I must have misfiled him under 'Forget Him', because that's just what I did, for two years. Then one day Pat tossed his name into a sentence.

'Paul came by today. I thought he wanted to see me, but instead he kept looking at your fucking book the whole time.' Pat told me he spotted
The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker
on her coffee table, and asked to borrow it.

'Begged to borrow it, actually,' she said. 'I told him to buy his own. Hope you don't mind. Boost the sales and all.'

'Paul,' I said, momentarily diverted from the aphrodisiac of commerce. 'The cute guy from your Brazilian birthday party.'

'That's the one,' she said. 'He was asking about you, too. Wanted to know if you were single.'

'I thought he had a girlfriend.'

'Not any more,' she said. 'They broke up about a year ago.'

She let that fact sink in, then told me he'd also asked for my number.

'I hope you gave it to him,' I said. 'He's gorgeous.'

'I thought I should ask you first. Guess
that
was unnecessary.'

'No, that's fine. Thanks, darling. Appreciate it,' I said.

I waited a nanosecond, so as not to sound too eager. 'You don't happen to have his number, do you?'

She did, and an hour later Paul and I had a date for later that evening. I invited him to join me for a night out with some pals. One of my girlfriends, Lucy, a singer/songwriter, was showcasing her music at Pop, a club in Soho, and had invited some friends along for support.

Paul walked into the club wearing a blue pinstriped suit over a white cotton T-shirt and a grey-and-blue tweed flat cap. He smiled when he saw me, and kissed me on both cheeks as he joined the table.

I didn't usually subject a first date to a night out with my mates, but I knew Paul would fit in. Based on that first night I met him, I knew he was easy going and smiley and clearly wasn't someone who couldn't handle strangers.

Except for the change of wardrobe, he looked no different from when I'd seen him two years earlier.

'Hi, stranger,' I said, looking into his big blue eyes. 'Good to see you again.' I knew he knew I meant it.

When the show ended at ten, the last place I wanted to go was home, at least alone. I proposed a visit to my home away from home. 'Shall we go to Soho House and get a bite to eat?' I said. 'I'm starving.'

Too late, I realised the wording of my request didn't leave much room for a 'no', but in any case Paul seemed happy to stay by my side. So we drove to the House, took a seat at the Circle Bar, and ordered some chips and a couple of Pinot Grigios.

'I saw your book at Pat's,' he said, as we manoeuvred in to a couple of seats. 'Congratulations.'

'Thanks. I'm really pleased I wrote it,' I said. 'Although now I have to live with the repercussions. A lot of guys are afraid that if they talk to me, they'll end up in my second book. You're a brave man.'

'Now I have to read it,' he said. 'Do you have a copy you could lend me?'

'Probably, somewhere. Who knows?' I said, wondering if he wanted a loaner as an excuse to see me again, or if he was my second-worst nightmare, after tiny cocks: tight. 'It's only four pounds on Amazon, Paul. Go on, splurge!'

'But I'd rather have one signed by you, Suzanne. You're sort of famous now.'

There was something in Paul's tone that made me question his motives. Did he want me? Did he want to be with me because I was the author of an erotic memoir? I decided not to ponder and just go with the moment. I had wanted to meet this guy for two years, and now here he was, sipping a glass of wine across from me, ever so handsomely. If he was with me only so he could brag to his mates about having a drink with some chick who wrote about all the guys she'd fucked, so be it.

We ate our chips and sipped our wine until I noticed it was well past midnight. As it was a school night, I had already bypassed my mental curfew by a couple of hours.

'I really have to go,' I said. 'Maybe we can meet up on the weekend if you're around?'

'That sounds great,' he said. 'Can I walk you to your car?'

What a gent: attractive and gentlemanly.

My car was parked down a cul-de-sac off of Rathbone Place, itself a small road off Oxford Street. The street was deserted aside from my lone car.

As we reached the car Paul turned to kiss me, but instead of reaching for my lips, as I'd expected, he kissed my neck, leaving tiny butterfly kisses that barely touched my skin but tingled where his lips had made contact. He had one hand around my waist, pulling me towards him, whilst the other rested against the back of my head. His lips brushed across my neck from side to side. I had never been kissed like that before, and the effect was intoxicating. I tried to anticipate his next move, tilting my head, easing the collar of my sheepskin coat onto my shoulders, presenting the full length of my neck to him. I enjoyed the tenderness. It was lovely and intimate and unexpected. I didn't want him to stop.

'Turn around,' he said at last.

I obeyed and stood facing my car. I heard traffic in the distance, but the lights of the surrounding buildings were off, and a dim glow from a street lamp fifty yards away reminded us that we were not the only people in this world. I should be going, I thought, I have to get up early.

But I didn't want to leave Paul. I lay my head on the car's roof and dropped my shoulders to ease the coat off my back. It fell to the ground, a calculated theatrical gesture and no less sexy for it, I knew.

'You are terrible,' he said, laughing.

I felt his hands lift my hair, his lips touch the back of my neck, the warmth of his breath. His lips and tongue skated across the skin. I felt vulnerable and exposed, my neck suddenly feeling like the most intimate part of my body, Paul pressed into my back and moved his mouth across the nape of my neck.

The sound of distant footsteps interrupted Paul's kisses. I felt him pull away from me. The footsteps grew fainter almost as soon as we noticed them, and Paul returned to my neck.

'You have a beautiful neck,' he whispered into my skin. 'I'm shaking all over.'

I moaned in reply.

'Why didn't we get together two years ago?' he said.

'Probably because you had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend,' I said, turning around. 'Just a theory.'

He smiled. Then we kissed. Paul's tongue darted around my mouth and brushed against my teeth and tongue. His kisses were soft and wet and made my head spin. This didn't feel like the beginning of a one-night stand. It felt special. I felt special. I'd waited two years to meet this spectacular man, and suddenly we were both available and interested. Finding a boyfriend was not a priority at that point in my life; after all, I was still seeing Greg and Brendan and Carl and Sam on a rotating basis. I didn't think I wanted a boyfriend, but I knew I wanted Paul. I was glad this was not a one-night stand. I had to see him again.

I said goodbye and got in the car. I drove away, watching Paul in my rear-view mirror.

The next day Paul rang my office. 'About that book,' he said. 'Can I come by and pick it up?'

'I'm not sure I want you to read it,' I said. 'I'm not sure it's a good idea that you know so much about me.'

At Soho House the night before, Paul had called himself a 'one-woman man'. He'd never cheated, he said, never had group sex, never done anything he thought was kinky. He said he liked the feeling of intimacy. He was 48 and had been having sex since he was 14. In those thirty-plus years, he had slept with fewer than ten women. His relationships tended to last for years, the very opposite of my one-night stands. In my head, I calculated that he'd had in his entire life as many partners as I went through in a month. We were complete opposites.

'No, I really want to read it,' he said. 'I know I can go out and buy it, but I'd rather get one from you.'

An hour later, he bicycled to my office and I handed over my last copy.

'I really appreciate you giving me this,' he said. 'You got the kids this weekend?'

'Yes,' I said. I looked at him, held his gaze. 'But I'm all yours next weekend.'

Three days later, we met at the Prince Albert, a pub near his flat in Hackney.

'Wow,' he said. 'The book. It was amazing.'

I felt embarrassed.

'I mean it, really,' he said. 'I don't know how you could go with some of those guys, though. Some of them were bloody assholes.'

I tried to explain that, at the time, I didn't really see them that way, didn't conduct personality tests in advance. 'I was horny,' I said. 'They were there.'

'I couldn't do that,' he said. 'But those guys, a lot of them ... they weren't even boyfriends.'

'Let's have a drink, Paul,' I said. I got the sense Paul didn't quite get me, which was surprising since he'd just read 240 pages about my life. I didn't have sex with men because I hoped they would become boyfriends. I had sex with men because that was what I enjoyed.

We had a few more rounds, and then it was closing time.

'Would you like to come back to mine?' Paul asked. 'I have some vodka and a joint.'

We walked the few streets over to his flat, then sat side by side on a long wooden bench that was pushed up against an eight-foot wooden table that looked like something out of an old school canteen. The decor was minimalist but comfy, with black-and-white photos on the walls, a big oil painting over a cream-coloured sofa and a long table that served as the centrepiece of the room. Paul lived in a converted synagogue, and his flat featured high ceilings and a large open-plan living space, with the bath and bedroom off of it. It was cool and comfortable. We smoked the joint and started kissing. Just like the first time we'd kissed by the car, I began to feel lightheaded. After a few minutes, I actually thought I might faint. I laughed at the thought and pulled away from him.

'I think I'm going to have to lie down,' I said. 'I'm not joking. I really think I'm going to faint.'

'I'll come in with you,' he said, amused. Paul walked me to his bedroom.

He sat beside me and unbuttoned my jumper, starting at the neckline and moving down one button at a time. The buttons were small and he had difficulty pushing each one through its tiny hole. I had never unbuttoned the jumper myself, always slipping it over my head, but I enjoyed watching Paul's long slender fingers at work.

'Here,' I said, as he struggled with the final button, 'I'll help you.' I pulled my arms out of the sleeves and flung the jumper onto the floor next to the bed.

Paul moved towards my moulded black-lace bra next. He put his hands around me, then relaxed his embrace to caress my back. Then, in one quick gesture, he skilfully unclasped the three hooks and let the bra straps slide off my shoulders. I thought I heard him gasp as my bra hit the floor, revealing my breasts. He cupped one breast in his hand and gently kissed the nipple, letting his tongue linger for a while before moving onto the other one.

'You have lovely breasts, sweetheart,' he said, softly. I adored his deep voice and the faint Scottish accent that coloured his words. There was something about its pitch and tone I found a complete turn-on. The sound of his voice just drew me in. He used the word 'sweetheart' liberally, and although I know women who cringe at the word and some who find it patronising, I found it charming. Being with a man who had had only ten sex partners his entire life made me feel girlish, like I still had lots of growing up to do. He knew how to work a bra strap, but he still had an air of innocence about him.

Paul moved his hands down my waist and tried to unfasten a tacky belt I was wearing as a joke. It was gold and had a heart-shaped buckle studded with red, white and blue crystals set in the pattern of the American flag.

'I think you're going to have to help me here,' he said, so I did. I unclasped the belt, leaving Paul free to remove my jeans. Soon they joined the other clothing on the floor.

Paul paused to kiss me before sliding his hands down my glittery red knickers, a silly holiday treat I'd bought a few months ago and thought, as I'd dressed for our date, might amuse him.