I take off my underwear, he shuffles out of his briefs, and I perch on the sofa and watch him fiddle about with the condom for longer than he should. I don’t help, I just watch, and when he’s done, I straddle him. He tries to put it in me and misses, mashing the blunt head of his dick into my thighs before I smack his hand away and guide it in myself. I tell him not to move, though I doubt he could, with my weight on his hips. He’s breathing heavily, his eyes shut tight. I run my hand up his chest, through the hair, and settle my palm on his neck. I squeeze it. I squeeze it hard, with both hands, and I let go when he turns purple.
‘Um,’ he says.
‘Just try it,’ I say. Then I shush him. I shush him, and I squeeze his neck again, moving my hips, because I feel him going soft inside of me. He squeaks, and he gurgles, and I let go when he bats at my wrists. He takes great gulps of air, and splutters, and doesn’t fight when I start choking him again. I can feel him twitching; I can feel the sharp knot of his Adam’s apple wriggling against my palm.
He’s small, purple, stiff, and silent. There’s a moment when I think I might have knocked him out, but his eyes flutter back open as soon as I let go. He starts coughing, and I keep riding him. I slap his cheek.
‘Hey. You good?’ I ask. He nods, still coughing. ‘Gimme a thumbs up.’ I get a thumbs up. I’ve been moving hard and fast enough that we’ve travelled across the living room. The checkout boy’s head is now up by his radiator, and my knees are stinging. His eyes are streaming. The shaky, sudden breath he takes could be a cough, or a sob. When I go to grab his neck again, he grabs my wrists, and pushes them away, and slaps my hands. I smack his face. He could be lifting his hips to meet mine, or he could be trying to throw me off. He’s still hard. He’s crying and coughing.
‘Please get off,’ he says. He wipes his eyes on the back of his wrists, and shoves me. I lose my balance. We both hiss when he slips out of me, and I bang my tailbone on the floor.
‘Ow!’ I snap. ‘You said you were good. You… The thumbs up, and everything!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he snivels. He hugs his knees to his chest. ‘I’m sorry. I thought I was fine, but I wasn’t. I’m sorry. Don’t… Please don’t hate me.’ I’m getting up to grab my underwear, and he asks me to come back, catching my leg with his little hand. ‘Please? I’m sorry. Come back.’ So, I come back, and I sit next to him on the floor. ‘I’m sorry.’ He grabs my breast with one hand, and moves around, so he can slip his fingers between the lips of my cunt. ‘I’m sorry.’ I try to remember his face while it was purple and tune out the sound of his snotty nose by my ear. ‘I just want you to feel good,’ he says. ‘Is this good?’ The angle is awkward, and I’m embarrassed for him, but I nod. Despite myself, I nod. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he says.
He pets my hair when I finish. I hate it. I pull back, clearing my throat, and making a successful grab for my underwear this time.
While I’m dressing, he’s all like, so do you want to get pizza, do you want another drink, he stands in the kitchen and wipes off his dick with a tea towel, and dumps a filled condom in the bin. I didn’t notice him come.
‘You must be hungry. I’m starving,’ he says.
‘Nah.’ I clear my throat again. ‘I might go?’
‘Oh. Okay,’ he says. He’s washing his hands. ‘I could drive you home?’
‘I’m good,’ I say.
The Uber driver agrees that I’ve had a weird evening, and while I’m drafting a post-mortem to send to Flo, I get a few texts from Eddie from Tesco.
Hey!
Hope you’re okay.
Sorry it got weird.
The more you apologise the weirder it gets.
Okay.
I don’t know what to say because I feel like I should be apologising.
Thank you?
FRANK
I’ve been putting off going back to the archive because I know which bit is next. I get an email from Jamie with a soft deadline when I tell her I’ve been too busy to go through my archives in full. As long as you’ve got some bits to us by September, it’s fine!
I can see myself putting it off – dragging it out to the last minute, so I get myself halfway down a bottle of red, then crack on. The box for most of second and third year of uni is next, which means I have to go through Frank’s box. I give up on my glass and drink straight from the bottle.
An email. I pull my hand from the box lid, and lunge for my phone.
Dear Ms Sturges,
My name is Dennis. You gave me your card on the bus around three weeks ago. I have looked at your portfolio and I am interested in being involved with your work. Due to your prolificacy, and the fact you mentioned you scout lots of men a week in your bio – I have attached an image of myself to jog your memory.
Kind regards,
Dennis
‘Ms Sturges’ is oddly formal. And PC. I use Miss, personally, because Ms always has a ‘divorced thirty-five-year-old boho-chic cat-lady’ smell to it.
To my surprise, the attached photo is not a dick pic.
It is a charming image of an older man – a suit – smiling shyly and standing against a plain white wall. The photo is slightly out of focus and taken with a low-spec front-facing smartphone camera. He has stubble, greying hair and what I assume is a Dad Bod hiding under that shirt. He has one dimple and kind of a domesticated, northern Jon Hamm look to him. I have no memory of him. I’ve always taken a scattergun approach to scouting, and it’s rare for me to remember them, unless they contact me immediately.
I’m almost disappointed by how brief the email is. It doesn’t require a long response, so I just send a boilerplate email.
Good Evening Dennis,
Of course I remember you. Attached is my address, as well as parking and public transport information. Are evenings and weekends best for you? If so – I am free all week.
Irina
I think he’ll chicken out. Suits always do.
I’ve lost steam. The bottle is empty, and a new one is uncorked before I break into the boxes.
At first glance, the pictures of Frank actually don’t stick out at all, except for being a tad more conservative than my output at the time.
You know how every uni has one of those lecturers. Like, they step in front of a PowerPoint presentation and open their mouth, and you can hear knickers dropping all over the lecture theatre.
That was Frank. Frank Steel. Not her real name, obviously. Christened Francesca Leigh, she dropped her much-loathed parents’ surname in favour of something she just liked the sound of, paired with her preferred masculine moniker.
She was from Manchester – a guest lecturer they wheeled in once or twice a term to tell us about feminist photography and Judith Butler and queer theory and shit. I have a distinct memory of her ‘Introduction to Michel Foucault’ lecture, writing ‘I’d let her Discipline and Punish me’ in my notebook. She’d occasionally come in for a few days to deliver one-to-one tutorials. You had to sign up for them – spots always went in a flash. I’d wanted one since first year but didn’t get one till January of second. I bragged, really rubbed it in to whoever would listen. Weird for me. Even me at twenty-one, and I was weird at twenty-one.