You manoeuvre through the black-clad crowd to stand next to me at the bar and, straight away, turn to me to ask why I always stare at you. Ah fuck, I think, he's noticed. And there was me thinking I'd been subtle.
I have seen you a few times before, but only ever here at this goth night, and I suppose I have been staring, although I've tried not to make it obvious. There's something about you that I find incredibly attractive, that makes me want you in the worst possible way, even though, objectively, you're nothing out of the ordinary. Just a bloke, early forties probably, with slightly curly hair neither short nor long, who wears glasses and has a bit of a paunch that you try to hide under a baggy tee shirt, and a leather jacket that you never seem to take off, even though you always dance most of the night - surely you must get hot? You are quite tall, call me shallow, but I have usually gone in for taller men, so there's that. Lots of men are tall, though. Maybe it's the dancing that does it for me. After all, they do say it's a proxy for other types of body movements. I wonder if you take your jacket off to do those. Yes, I admit I have thought about what it might be like to find out.
I kind of shrug, apologise, and blurt out that it's because I fancy you, but not to worry about it because I'm married, so I wouldn't do anything about it even if you were interested, which, obviously, you're not. "Sorry," I say again.
You say, "I never said I wasn't interested."
Before I can formulate any sort of reply, you lean over and whisper in my ear, "give me your number." The way you say it, it sounds like an order, not a request. Then, ever so briefly and lightly, you run the tip of your tongue up my neck for an inch or so, just underneath my earlobe. A thrillingly and devastatingly intimate little gesture, and entirely unexpected.
You straighten up and pull your phone out of your pocket, as though my giving you my number has never been in any doubt. Since the moment you expressed an interest, it probably hasn't, despite what I said about being married. I have indulged in fantasies about something happening between us since the first time I saw you, a risk given my history of infidelity in relationships. I was relying on you simply to never take any notice of me. Your gaining possession of my phone number definitely hasn't been in any doubt whatsoever, after that little tongue flick. I am utterly intrigued by it. I should be appalled, I know.
You pass me the phone and I add my name and digits to your contacts. I feel like you've put a spell on me or something, removing my free will. No, I don't. Stop making excuses, Ruby, I admonish myself. You could easily say no, but you want to say yes.
I hand you the phone back. You say, "thanks," and look at my name on the contact. "I'm John," you tell me. Then you turn away to the barman to order a pint. Before long, you are making your way back to the dance floor.
I no longer want the drink I was planning to buy. In fact, I feel slightly sick. What the fuck am I doing giving my number to someone? Why have I got so little self-control? I thought I was past all this sort of thing. I go to find my friends and tell them I feel really tired, and that I'm going to get a taxi. You are dancing to Joy Division and don't look in my direction. I go home, get into bed with my husband, and think about your tongue.
...
Your first message arrives on a Wednesday afternoon, two-and-a-half weeks later. I'd been disappointed, then relieved, then disappointed, again, not to have heard from you up to this point. I had told myself it was definitely for the best, not particularly convincing myself.
I'm at work and busy when it pings in, so I don't immediately know it's from you, as I just get a little notification on my lock screen saying, 'WhatsApp 1 new message.' After giving you my number, I had taken the precaution of changing my phone settings so that the sender and text of messages don't pop up when they come in, taking steps to cover up my potential crimes, already. Eventually, I have a moment to check. "Hey. It's John from the goth night. Remember me?"
Yes, John, I remember you, I've been having lurid fantasies about you for some time now, that have only intensified since your tongue made contact with my neck. Contact from another person might have felt like a violation.
"Hi, John. Yes, I remember you."
"It was good to meet you." A quick reply, extra brownie points there, John.
"We didn't exactly get to know each other, though. You just took my number." And mildly sexually assaulted me, I don't add. And I liked it, I also don't add.
We start to message back and forth over the next few days. Mundane stuff at first. I learn that you are a couple of years younger than me, recently divorced, and work as a lab technician at the hospital. We try to arrange to meet for a date, but it is proving difficult with me being married. It is tricky for me to get away and I am anxious about someone seeing us in public. We live in a city, but not a large one, and the possibility of bumping into someone one of us knows is high.
Besides, it’s probable that what we both really want is no-strings-attached sex; I am not really interested in doing all the getting-to-know-you, blah, blah, blah, dating thing, and I don’t think that you are, either. Not that I don’t want to be friends with you, it is always nice to have friends, but I had imagined that any friendship that might arise would come out of sexual intimacy, rather than the other way around. The shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach.
Unfortunately, arranging to meet in private seems likely to be as difficult as arranging to meet in public. You are temporarily staying with your parents while you try to buy a house, and, even if they were out, I can’t say I really fancy it on a single bed in your childhood room, a squadron of dusty Airfix planes rotating overhead, watched over by a peeling poster of whoever you thought was hot in 1990—or worse, a sentimental teddy bear. As for me, I live with my husband, who works from home, so is always around, and, besides, I would have qualms about bringing you back to the actual marital bed. Even a no-good, lying, cheating, faithless, little slapper like me has to have some standards. The obvious solution, a hotel room, seems over the top, somehow. At least, neither of us raised it as a possibility. So, for now, we stick to messages, edging around the subject of sex.
One day you send me a dick pic. ‘’Thinking about you,” reads the caption.
I assume you are trying to turn me on. I don't really work visually like that, but you don't know that, at this point. What it might be an opening for, though, is something I find much more exciting - words. Pornography, in the literal sense.
"Glad to see we're keeping it classy," I type, adding an eye-roll emoji and a tears-of-laughter one, showing my age. I read somewhere that no one under thirty uses the tears-of-laughter emoji anymore. It's been a while since I was thirty.
"I didn't think the idea was to keep it classy," you reply. True, that.
"Ha. Probably not. Why don't you tell me what you'd like to do with it?"
"I'd like to put it in you."
OK, John, that's a good start, but I'm going to need details, mate. Descriptions. Looks like I'm going to have to draw you out a bit. "What position do you want me in?"
After ten minutes, the message-in alert flashes on the lock screen. No sound, I pretty much always have my phone on silent. "Doggy style." A man of few words, apparently, but in this case, good ones. I love taking it from behind.
I add a little dog emoji, and one of the winking-tongue-out ones to the reply box, and type, "yes, please. Especially if you slap my arse while you do it." I don't write arse as a word, I use the little peach symbol.
"I should think that could be arranged," comes the reply. Except, we haven’t managed it up to now.
Over the next few days, we go back and forth exchanging descriptions of me straddling you while you lick my nipples, me taking it from behind, you giving me head, me giving you head, sex on sofas, sex over kitchen counters, in your car, outdoors, etc., etc., etc. Most of the more descriptive stuff comes from me (it turns me on to write it as much, if not more than it does to read it), but you join in.
