It was a snarl that would make the toughest cower. My fascination with her appearance is now a blood-chilling panic.

“Open your bag,” she growled.

Fuck.

Fixated on the safety pin through her nose and frozen to the spot, she peered in. The jangling guitar and spat vocals were the urgency to my embarrassment. Paralysed, I burned with shame for being caught and revealing my secret fetish.

Thou shall not steal.

“You thieving little fucker. Manager’s office, now!”

She slammed the shop door and flipped the sign to closed. Grabbing my wrist and yanking it, I marched with her. Bargaining internally, the swirling excuses dissolved in my adrenaline-poisoned mind. Dropped onto a harsh plastic chair, surrounded by tired white-painted walls, my nemesis perched on the desk. They dressed like this to shock and appal. I knew what she was and could not face her inevitable fury.

I did what any immature teenager would do and dissolved into tears. Eighteen, with my life ahead of me, she would call for a Gendarme. My parents would be furious, and I would lose my hard-won independence.

Her hand went under my chin, and a harsh thumb pinched it. Lifting my head, I expected her vilification and ridicule, and I would rather deal with a cold, detached policeman.

“So…” she sneered, “what are we going to do with you?”

With glowering eyes, the air was ladened with static, and I was exposed. Snivelling, her painted cat’s eyes narrowed into mine. Looking at her lips, they were curled, not with a sadistic satisfaction, but with a wicked smile.

“You like that dress so much that you would steal it and risk being caught?”

It was a solitary and reticent nod of agreement.

“Okay, Blue. Wear it for me.”

-=-

I am Therese, and nothing special. I am neither intelligent nor beautiful. Instead, I am unremarkable and anonymous. De Beauvoir wrote about female emancipation, and I am too stupid to deserve it. I live in the soot-stained city of Paris, and its faded grandeur is a symptom of sixty years of strife. If the Fifties and Sixties offered a reprieve and the promise of a new Belle Epoque, the Seventies are the miserable hangover. My parent’s generation wrung out every last drop of what this poor city had left to offer. They had the coquettishness of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, and we got cheesy Alain-fucking-Delon with Dalida. Sorry, Dalida, I love you, but he sold you short.

I dress like my parents, listen to their music, and my boyfriend is someone they approve of. I work in a menial job as a constituent of the vast majority. I am one of the ordinary worker bees, and society has its expectations of me.

My boyfriend, Jean-Luc has a degree; he is smart, clever, and handsome. He has a spark inside that will get him noticed and take him places. I have seen his roaming eye when we are out together, and it is a familiar story. I catch him, pretend to ignore it, and he tells me he loves me. If I have that fiery Parisian sense of independence, it remains dormant and unused. I know my place.

If I knew what disaffected meant, I would be it. All can see my unhappiness; I overeat, which is my only comfort. I would marry Jean-Luc, be his broodmare and doting housewife, getting fatter and more undesirable. I will tolerate the inevitable affairs and wallow in chain-smoking bitterness as my best years pass by.

It is the best I can hope for.

-=-

Being reduced to my underwear is humiliating, and it bites into my overfed carcass. At least I avoid arrest. The air has that sharp bite that only Spring provides. My breathing staggers as she hoists the zip at the back. Capturing my frame in tight black fabric with its shiny leather harness, I chose the wrong size, and stolen clothes constrain me.

Looking me up and down again, I am meat.

“My name is Puck,” and she leers at me. “It rhymes with ‘fuck’.”

I understand enough English and nod thoughtfully, “Therese.”

Flicking my hair with disdain, “No, you are Blue because of your eyes.”

Walking around me, my discomfort is obvious, yet she insists. Measuring me up and down, her side glance immolates my acute awkwardness.

“Not bad, Blue. You do have a figure underneath those terrible clothes,” she smacks my ass, “You have plenty to hang on to.”

Puck keeps doing this, knocking me off balance. She is a Punk, taller and would be elegant if it was not for the bright vermillion makeup and those heavily painted eyes. Her lurid green macrame top is torn, holed, and sits at a severe diagonal across her midriff. A black t-shirt underneath exclaims FUCK in faded, cracked lettering. She likes that word. Tartan trousers with too many zips and heavy ex-Army boots clomp around my quivering body.

A tilt of her head seers her gaze into the back of my mind. Shaved down the sides and middle of her head, her remaining hair rises as two pink shark fins. It dawns on me that this overt attention has an ulterior motive, exaggerating my plight.

Oh fuck, she might be a lesbian.

She grabs the harness, and I lurch forward; by the sound of her breathing, she is too close. Mine hitches, and I know what she wants, exposing my intense anxiety.

Puck lingers on my lips, and I close my mouth. The texture of them on mine revolts me, and my mind wants to push her away. They suck, press, and then suck again. My arms should come to my rescue, but they do not. She is not Jean-Luc, I am unfaithful, a thief, but I am not a lesbian. At the culmination of my distress, it is there in the distance, so deep and almost unfathomable. I can hear it as a voice growing louder and louder. Her hands upon me are not the firm shovels that take; instead, they caress with an evocative tenderness. I am cajoled and softening; I know she is a woman, and… and… I do not give a fuck.

Je m’en fous.

This is the juxtaposition to her visual severity. I am thawing, and this inner calling is deafening. My arousal surges, opening my mouth as my hostility melts away. I am falling into a bottomless and infinite desire, whimpering and riding on these exciting waves of lust.

Driven by instinct, my hands hold her lithe waist, and we fold into an ever-shifting embrace. Her caress is confident, and mine follows as a crash course of trial and error. Taboos shatter like panes of glass, her flexing curves slide against mine, and our breasts crush together. It is very wrong, and I want it to be.

Puck snorts, and I am so light as her fingers undo the last vestiges of my reluctance. Fuck, she knows the power of that erogenous caress of my elbow. She lingers on the soft underside of my arm. Placing her hand on my breast, I drag it down and hold it there. Its massage presses my lips to hers with an incensed passion.

Finally, she departs, leaving me trembling and panting.

Fondling my breast, she smirks, “Is this the first time a woman has kissed you?”

Biting my lip, I nod. I yearn for Puck to find my nipple, but so far, without success.

“Fresh meat, then. I knew you were a dyke as soon as I saw you.”

These sensations are the illumination at the end of my long tunnel. As a cocktail of novelty, tenderness and passion, my immolation scorches my boundaries. Puck is a Punk, and they enjoy violating those. I pull on her, and our rushed breathing gathers pace as a symptom of our hunger. Our mouths open, tongues sliding and goading, and our hands scour our bodies. A curve, a grasp of soft flesh, feeling her shiver as I caress her forearm. She gives me a soft moan as I experience the spring of her breast and the cushion of her behind. Puck is writhing against my thigh, and the idea of tasting her cunt, is the motive force powering my hips.

I pull her hand to my crotch, and she clasps it. With doe eyes, there is my silent cry for help, and from the cloying heat, she knows what I need.

She leans back and perches on the edge of the desk. Pulling down her trousers, Puck eases her panties to one side, and the compulsion possesses me. Nervous, our eyes meet as my white-hot blood surges. I am between her knees, mesmerised by her glistening folds; the musk of her sex is intoxicating. Pulling me towards it, my mouth cups her sex, and her grip on my hair keeps me there.

“Eat it, bitch!” she rasps.

Eat? I will devour, tasting her bittersweet juices and pleading with novice eyes. Eagerness, not experience, will have to provide her release, lapping hungrily at her heavenly cunt.

-=-

Say goodbye to your eighteen-year-old slave.

Why? It was a place, the Chalet du Lac, and the explosion of energy still resonates in my soul. I was there with Puck, and I still am. She is not the severe shop assistant now; we are lovers, and I have thought of nothing else for days. Amongst the three thousand, we numbered less than fifty. We all moved as one, jumping, clinging and pulling at each other, and no one would stop the sheer force of our will. Oh, some came looking for trouble, the Teddy Boys, and we showed them.

Everyone saw our passion, and everyone witnessed our lust. All the intensity of two women going at it, tongues, lips, and grasping hands, accompanied by jeers, cheers and whoops. We had sex at her dingy squat, unbridled, raw and animal fucking. Her fingers were a blur, that pointed tongue demonic, and I gave as good as I got. We thrashed together, panting and yelping, with two sticky cunts mashed together in a final act that shrieked the place down.

I got home at three in the morning, and my furious parents will never get through to me again. They had their fun in Sixty-Eight and left me with my grandparents for six weeks.

Red food dye stains the bathroom sink and my hair. The air is heavy with hairspray. It is a bouffant styled from a picture of Jordan, my new goddess. My mother’s dressmaking scissors rest on the bed. There is an empty box of safety pins, and my makeup bag bulges with black and candy pink. It rests alongside a copy of Melody Maker and a review of the Sex Pistols on that totemic night. It is a present for Puck, and I hope she can translate it for me. Rummaging in the back of my wardrobe, I find my Army surplus boots.

The stolen bondage dress is now ragged and glimmers with steel, and I find the fishnet stockings alarming. I destroyed my old life as a wilful act, painted in vibrant pink; I am a punk rocker, and so is Sheena. They will not miss the brown and tatty suitcase. What little I choose to keep from my wardrobe is cut and dyed.

I leave a brief note. I have nothing more to say: Fuck you, Johnny Hallyday. Fuck you, mother, father, and especially Jean-Luc.

-=-

Propped against the wall, my head lolls with a gasp. My groin is a smear of red and black, and her haunting eyes look up into mine. It lurches within, peels of distant thunder gathering strength towards another peaky crescendo. The prickle of shaved hair in my hand, my legs wide apart as Puck’s tongue dives into my folds again.

I am a glow, a spirit, and my body is the husk that provides pleasure. In my mind, stimulated by millions of nerve endings, it enjoys the flare of Puck’s hips. Her ass quivers as Dog thrusts into her. He was a street corner pick-up, and Puck always took the direct route. The lash of her tongue and its blunt point worms under my clitoral hood, forcing my body to awaken and writhe. Dog grins, and my weighted eyes delight in showing him my pleasure.

Watery January sunbeams streak over our naked bodies, their hue revealing how we struggle in the long shadows. A shove pushes her against my mons, and the rasp of her eager tongue makes me yelp loudly. For a skinny fucker, Dog knows how to do us good. His porcelain, sun-starved skin is blotchy, and we have worked him over once each already. His seed is cold and watery, drying on my wobbling tits.

What else is there to do other than boredom? Fucking comes for free, and fucking like this is a treasure worth more than all the jewellery in Vendome. Puck croaks, her eyebrows high and juice-soaked lips are glistening. Tiny crowfeet reveal themselves in the corner of her eyes when she exclaims her little death with shaking legs and trembling breasts. All his sinews are tight, and his stuttering body betrays him. I grin, witnessing the slashes of pearly seed all over her ass and back.

Puck dives back in with renewed relish as our gangly lover sidles over; I revel in the taste of their cum from his waning cock in my mouth. A long arm reaches my breast; how they love those. Scissoring its nipple, they know my weakness when I shiver, tense, and squeal through the big one that will sate me for now.

We are a tangle of bodies, and I pant, sandwiched between them. Puck’s arm and Dog’s leg over my body signify their possession. Lowering her hand, her fingers toy with the soft bush of my cunt.

“Hungry?” Puck murmurs.

“Uh huh,” we reply.

We always are, and these are all the words we can manage in our exhaustion. Puck calls him Dog because he is loyal; we are a contented three and fuck like this for hours. They have taught me well during that long, hot summer. Like the layers of an onion, they awakened all my desires.

Christmas Day was a festival of filth, and we gorged on what we stole or what the shops threw out when they closed. We fucked all day until we could not move, strung out in a sex and alcohol-induced stupor.

Puck clasps my hip and eases against me for warmth.

Nonsense, Therese, these are good child-bearing hips.

I shudder. I expelled my formidable mother from my life, yet, she haunts me. Being hungry has its compensation; I have lost fifteen kilos and emerged as a swan from a dumpy teenager. My wobbly ass has melted away, my stomach is flat, and I have a waist. Yet I have kept my breasts. The fulsome more-than-a-handfuls with Puck and Dog slathered all over them when the mood takes us.

With a large room in this shared squat, there is a padlock on our door, not that anything is worth stealing. We pay no rent and have no electricity, but from a tiny sink, there is plenty of cold running water. We have covered the mildewed walls with posters and own a massive mattress of undetermined origins, exercising its tired springs vigorously. Some bed linen is our creature comfort with blankets, and the room came with an assortment of chairs, a table, and a tall wardrobe. The battered gas space heater should be condemned and contains our prized possession… a propane bottle. It is bitterly cold without it.

We live in old Marais, and if there was a tumour at the city’s heart, this is the place. It is a filthy hotbed of rebel artists, musicians, squats, and pure creativity. It is a place only Punks dare to venture, and this is our sanctuary. The street corner is our meeting place, and we are a commune.

Fuck you, Jean-Paul Sartre… you bourgeois cunt.

Puck and I share shifts at the shop, and we are not paid much. Dog earns money too, but we have learned not to ask where that comes from. His earnings are sporadic, and when it arrives, we blow it on feasts, alcohol and gig tickets.

Washed and the sticky makeup removed from my nether regions, we are dressed. Dog, in his studded leather jacket, takes on his inflammatory, shit-spewing persona. Staring into the speckled mirror, I contour my sharper features with a smudge of black mixed with red. My hair is a crop of missiles, spikes launching skywards in the brightest pinks and purples.

Puck snarls, and I am the bored, disinterested one. Catching her practising, I giggle. She melts and joins in. Embraced together, she leans her head on my shoulder.

“Come on, Blue. Dog has money and gig tickets.”

“Oooh,” I purr, “Who for?”

“Stinky Toys and Metal Urbain.”

A ripple of excitement compels me to squeeze her.

For many, this is squalor, yet this is our palace. We inspire revulsion, and I see beauty. They hate us, and we love this. I am happy, the happiest I have ever been, for every second of every day.

-=-

At a café, we feast on bread, soup, and Chicken Provençal. Dog dribbles sauce down his chin, reducing us to gales of laughter, horrifying the other patrons. We stuff the replenished bread from the basket into our pockets; this is tomorrow’s breakfast.

The three of us amble along the boulevard with a renewed swagger. Holding Puck’s hand, we swing our arms. Heading to Le Bataclan and swigging cheap vin de table, others cross the road to avoid us; some sneer and a few smile. Dog launches a volley of expletives at someone that could not finish what they started. Yet, five minutes later, he tears across the road to help an elderly gentleman cross it. The old man is unperturbed, amused perhaps, complimenting him on his multi-coloured mohican. Dog winks and gives a thumbs-up at a small child with a face full of fascination, the only human brave enough to be inquisitive.

We have come a long way since the Chalet du Lac, where we were few in number. Now, we are a movement. The President banned outdoor rock concerts, and we ignored him. They are afraid and impotent to stop us. We killed Bambi and the mediocrity of the Seventies. We did not volunteer to be outcasts; they made us into this. Now, we will rub their noses in their effluent and pick up the revolution our parents fucked up.

The anticipation in this grand building is palpable. As the supporting act starts, we are ignited and seethe as a mass. Jostling, grabbing, as a human wave that swells and heaves like a turbulent sea. It is visceral, pained cries as lyrics, staccato words punctuated by bass, enliven by relentless spiky guitar and incessant pounding drums. It is raw and unfiltered, and we fizz with energy in this cauldron.

The snap of strobe lighting catches searing images as photographs for posterity. I will never forget them, I swear it to myself, and Dog lofts me onto his shoulders. Swaying my arms, I catch the lead singer’s eyes, and he tips his microphone at me in solidarity. My heart sings with pride as the band launches into a full-on aural assault. He rails at life as if they are his last words on earth.

Hands pull me down, yet I do not fall. Drenched from such an outpouring of energy, the air is humid and scented by sweaty human bodies. We will not cease, as each set is a machine gun loaded with bile and anger. It is a purifying truth only we dare to speak, and we will be seen and heard. An undefeatable bond fuses us together; no one can ignore us, and never will again. We hate the old and want to destroy it. We might not change the world today, but many tomorrows will come.

We are Punk.

It is over too soon, and I am exhausted. I ache within and without. I can still feel Dog inside me, and now my weary body glows from too much dancing.

Our hair has sagged, and we primp each other, sniggering like chimps picking nits from their hair. Enlivened by the zest of the cold night air, we link arms to trudge home. We are overexcited, with our ears still ringing, and confident that Punk will never die.

-=-

Only it did, mortally wounded in New York with a murder, and Sid Vicious was arrested and charged. The newspapers were delighted, with every word dripping with hypocrisy… we were all young once.

In the days to come, allegations of heroin abuse and assault followed, beating his girlfriend and stabbing her to death in their hotel suite. Punk existed to shock, and it crossed a line. We knew the English took it too far. We liked their music and stole their punk style; we knew of their skinheads, their love of swastikas, and their poisonous attitude.

Now we were all tarred with the same brush, each of us a drug-addicted, racist, potential murderer. Thanks, neighbour.

It sucked the energy from us, and the bubble imploded.

I am sitting in the squat; Puck has been withdrawn and quiet for days. I tried to lift her spirits, yet something inside is extinguished. Her shift finished hours ago, it is getting late, and I am worried. We live like this by candlelight during these long nights, and we had plans tonight. I can hear the clomp of boots creaking up the stairs, and my heart lifts. As the door opens, it is Dog.

“Hi,” I offer.

“Hello.”

Throwing a tall flickering shadow against the wall, his Mohican does not stand. His hair is black, swept back and tied. It is the same leather jacket, without badges and safety pins. Underneath is a plain black t-shirt, and his bondage trousers are no more, replaced by black skintight jeans.

I am confused, “Dog?”

“It’s Puck,” and he sighs as if bereaved.

I am lost as he gives me a note with his shaking hand.

Therese, I am very sorry, and I wanted to tell you. I could not because you would quickly change my mind. I cannot do this anymore, and please do not hate me. This decision was not easy, but I have gone home to Montpellier. Life must go on but not in Paris. Please, it was never your fault. What we had was the best thing I have ever done. Forgive me, Elise.

“Elise?” A tear drips onto the page.

Dog shrugs, “Yeah, it is not very punk.”

“Punk is dead,” I am crestfallen, knowing he can see it.

He shrugs again, “Yeah. Someone threw a brick through the shop window today. The owner has had enough.”

“So I am unemployed,” sighing with defeat, “what are we going to do?”

I feel so helpless, sitting on the old chair, gazing at the blue and orange glow from the space heater. Dog is a silhouette and then partially illuminated as he retrieves the tatty suitcase from the top of the wardrobe. He sweeps up its contents and crams them in. Closing it, he stands, watching the silent tears stream down my cheeks.

“My name is Arnoud,” and he offers his hand.

“Therese,” and I take it.

-=-

I know this is different. Gazing into Arnoud’s jade eyes, I am naked in spirit and without clothes. My hair is dyed black to hide the pink and purple. It is a mess, and the shaved parts will grow out. He lives in a modest accommodation, but there is warmth, electric light, and hot water. A tiny apartment for two, impossible for three.

A hand reaches out, caressing my face, and I lean into it. I have seen that look before… a nascent love and Arnoud is worth ten of Jean-Luc. Crouched, he places his lips upon mine, and this is not for teenage kicks. It makes me more determined to put my emotions into each one and lay my heart bare before him.

If I grieve for Puck, for this, I do not.

“Arnoud…”

He places his finger against my lips, “Do not say it first.”

I frown, and he kisses it away.

“I love you, Therese.”

Easing against him, his warm body quivers suddenly to my touch. My emotions are there as my lips press to his, folding more and more feeling into this heady mix. It rushes from me, barely controlled, surging as a tactile pressure to his lips, over and over, descending into an ecstatic madness. It might be called sexual chemistry, and I am nineteen. It is a phrase without meaning, something impossible to understand without experience. Yet, there is an instinct between us, a silent telepathy, and he is a step ahead. He leads by an implicit caress; it shepherds and guides me to my knees.

Oh, his cock, an elegant curve of heft and strength. He knows how much I enjoy this, licking, stroking, torturing the corpulent head with my long mischievous tongue. I might be selfish, devour it to the point of his insanity and ride the life from him. No, I want Arnoud trembling and tormented; only then will I feign the helpless feminine. It is not a test, and he is beyond that. It is a role for us to share, a temporary situation because he knows I can be his tigress. I have sat him on enough chairs and ridden him to mutual climax many times.

This is different, not sex, not fucking, and I might cringe at such a notion. But, Punk is dead, and this is what it is - making love.

It is an expedition, and he is buried in my folds. Clasping the back of his head, I am liquid as his tongue stabs. He stokes the embers as a wet poker, and I am ablaze, clamouring for him, calling out his new name as my back arches. Clasping at the fresh sheets, bathed in warmth and illuminated by incandescent light – he has to see me like this. Heartfelt emotions spice the physical pleasure. Their potency makes me lurch, crunch tight and burn brightly as its incendiary power steals my soul. My passionate cry is the loudest from many before it, and this rapturous orgasm is more than the multitude he has given me.

The sweep of him inside me will not easily placate the overwhelming need to have him there. We move without concern; it is automatic and pure instinct. We are seasoned lovers experiencing the familiarity of the old with so much new to explore. I cannot contain this need; I will not bottle this up and deny my desires. I am worthy of this; he knows of my hopes and dreams.

When I was much younger, I wanted to be a Princess, to be romanced and adored by the handsome Prince. I did not know it, but last summer was my ‘once upon a time’, and this could be my ‘happily ever after’. As we move together, clasping for purchase, groaning on the surfeit of mutual pleasure, my relish for that dream is our inspiration. Arnoud labours, and he relents with my encouragement. Astride him, he sees it in my eyes and feels it as I bear down on his perfect shaft, squeezing our interlaced fingers.

He might only be good for two, maybe three orgasms. I gift him so many, and I cannot help it. This is how he has captured me. I can look into him, through his eyes as windows to a kindly soul. I know who he is; I understand his art and passions. It was not Punk, and there is the contradiction and complexity inside the man that I have come to adore.

We are so hot that we perspire and skid towards every conclusion. There is no tick-and-tock of time; nothing else matters as the world continues without us. I carry Arnoud inside me, and we are almost exhausted when he rises over my panting body.

My toes point, and I rock against him, clasping his forearms as my last movements. The flames might grow dim, yet he thrusts with purpose, clattering against me. The moment is now, and I have shown him my feelings. He might doubt my words, but he would never question this act.

“I love you, Arnoud.”

As he collapses into my embrace, the intense pulses throb deep inside. He has given me everything.

-=-

“I hate you!”

With a flick of her hair, she turns for the lounge door and slams it. I afford myself a quiet smirk, and so does Arnoud. He holds my hand, and there is that familiar mischief in his eyes. Light streams in through the open French windows, the scent of cut grass and birdsong is a welcome reprieve from the bustle of city life.

“I am so sorry.”

Anais is flustered, and I wave her concerned look away.

“Please… every teenager has to rebel. It is perfectly natural.”

“Was I this bad growing up?”

“After an outburst like that, you lied to us about where you were going.”

If her memories were a filing cabinet, it took time for the draw to open and close, “The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.”

Arnoud nods, smiling, “Yes, a rock concert. You had us worried sick.”

Anais looks uncomfortable with a nervous smile as if I might admonish her again. She gestures upstairs.

“I should go and see how she is,” she surmises. “Besides, it is incredibly rude, especially in front of her grandparents.”

I laugh, “Oh, I have heard worse.”

Arnoud joins in, and I turn to face him with a glimmer in my eyes, “Wouldn’t you say so, Dog?”