Asking For Trouble (8 page)

Silence. In my head, I screamed and cursed.

‘Well then,’ he began, in a signing-off tone. ‘I enjoyed our little chat.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ I said, feigning casual brightness. I struggled to think how I could rescue the situation, how I could ask for more of him without losing face. I didn’t want to appear too keen, especially when he was so infuriatingly cool. An idea came to me and I blurted it out: ‘You should send me a photo.’

‘A photo,’ he echoed. I heard that smile in his voice.

‘Yeah,’ I said hurriedly, trying to make amends for my eagerness. ‘I mean, it’s not fair if we end it here, not fair on me. You know what I look like – at least, I assume you do. I’ve only ever seen you from across the street. I can’t . . . I think of you as a faceless man. It’s not fair. That’s how I’ll have to remember everything – this, the fantasy, the things you –’

‘Is that how it was for you?’ he asked, still smiling. ‘In your imagination, were you buggered by a faceless man?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’re right,’ he replied. ‘It’s not fair. So you want a photo to imagine it all anew?’

‘I’m just curious. I’d like to know –’

‘OK, I’ll send you one. And if you like the look of me, we can meet. Is that a deal?’

‘Sure,’ I said, trying to be offhand.

‘There’s one condition,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to send me a photo of you.’

‘I haven’t got any. Not recent ones. They’re all –’

‘Have you got a camera?’

‘Yes. No. I mean, I have, but it’s fucked. The wind-on thing got jammed. It won’t –’

‘I’ll get one to you. A camera, I mean.’

‘What? Don’t be ridiculous. If you want a photo, I can just go to a booth. I’ll send you four and –

‘No, I don’t want passport nonsense. I want a photo you wouldn’t put on your mantelpiece. I’ll send you a Polaroid.’

‘Of you?’

‘No. I mean I’ll send you a Polaroid camera. Then you can take the picture and get it to me quickly. Deal?’

‘What . . . What sort of picture will you send me?’

‘One I wouldn’t put on my mantelpiece. Deal?’

I hesitated before making my wary reply: ‘OK. Deal. But really, you don’t need to get me a cam–’

‘Bye, Beth,’ he said. ‘See you soon.’

‘Oh, OK,’ I breathed, shocked by his abruptness. ‘Bye.’

FOUR DAYS LATER
I got my camera. The postman brought it – and just seeing my address in Ilya’s handwriting was a thrill.

When I find somebody interesting, for whatever reason, and I don’t know much about them, then the tiniest snippet of information becomes valuable. It was the same at school. I adored a guy in the year above me. I was nothing to him and we never spoke except once, when I seized a chance to say, ‘Oi, you – you’ve dropped your pen.’

But I knew a hell of a lot about him: shoe size, phone number, date of birth, number of goals scored for the school team and – best of all – his timetable, off by heart. I would live for those changing-classroom moments when we’d pass in the chaos of the blue-blazered corridor.

I had a shoebox for storing souvenirs of my fantasy-boy. On the lid I wrote his name (beautifully felt-tipped, of course) and inside I kept my diary (‘Saw him today after double Physics. He had white socks on again. He looked well gorgeous,’ etc.). I had a couple of chocolate wrappers, that I, lovesick in his wake, had scrabbled to
retrieve when he’d chucked them away; I had bus tickets that added up to 21; I had a cigarette butt, although I was never really sure if his lips had touched it; and – oh – I could have had his pen if I hadn’t, in a spasm of hope, shouted after him.

I’m supposed to be older and wiser now, but that teenage neurosis returned when I clasped my package, all wrapped in brown paper. Ilya’s handwriting was a delight – something tangible, more proof that he existed – and it added to the little I knew about him.

I’m no graphologist and I didn’t look for clues in his writing. I was simply satisfied to see it: thin and angular, enigmatically scruffy.

If I’d had a shoebox, I might have kept the wrapping. But, instead, I hurried upstairs to my flat and tore open the parcel. My new bulky camera came with a note. It read:

Tease me. Make sure your photo lands on my doormat this Friday. I’ll make sure you receive mine, same time. No waiting to see what the other one sends. Synchronicity or nothing. If you change your mind, don’t want to send anything, then we’ll just forget everything, past and future. I won’t contact you again. Won’t watch you. Promise. And the camera’s still yours. Enjoy.

Ilya.

Friday. That meant Thursday post, first-class. Morning post to be safe. Unless I posted it by hand. No. Supposing I met him at the door? It would ruin things, make it all awkward. I read his note again. ‘Tease me.’

And I remembered what he’d said on the phone: ‘A photo you wouldn’t put on your mantelpiece.’

I lay naked on my bed, chin cupped in my palms, pondering the lewd photos scattered across the duvet.
They were all of bits of my body: close-ups of an erect nipple; my cleavage in a push-up bra; lots of open-leg shots, some off-centre, some OK. It’s tricky when you can’t use a viewfinder.

I wondered what would land on my doormat Friday morning. He was bound to send me a photo of his erect cock. What else did a bloke have that could be classed as non-mantelpiece fare? What would his prick be like? And would he take the picture from above? Or hold the camera in front?

And what should I send him?

I reckoned my pouting-vulva shots were probably the best. Before my photo session, I’d given myself a vicious bikini line and snipped at my pubes, leaving just a sparse triangle of light-brown hair. I’d also masturbated. So in the snaps my sex lips stood out proud and plump, flushed and glossy.

Yes, I thought, I’ll send him one of those. They were brazen and fearlessly explicit. And he probably thought I wouldn’t dare. He’d taken the lead so far: spying on me, phoning me, encouraging me to talk dirty.

I wasn’t going to carry on playing catch-up. If he wanted to swap intimate photos then I was damned if mine was going to be subtle and coy.

So that’s what I did. I chose my favourite snatch-shot and posted it.

Oh, silly me.

He was bare from the arse upward, his naked back facing me. His olive skin was overlaid with a sheen of dark bronze, and he was perfectly muscled: sinewy, work-strong contours rather than vulgar brawn. His black hair was cut in a grade-two crop and the suggestion of skull beneath was menacingly beautiful. His head was slightly turned, eyes downcast, mouth set in a firm line. You could see an ear, jawline, a high cheekbone, and part of a big hawkish nose.

His left arm was angled at the elbow; his hand was in front of his body. It looked like he was wanking, oblivious to anyone else.

It was, quite simply, the horniest photo of a bloke I’d ever seen. It was so intimate and erotic, so utterly free of any macho ‘get an eyeful of this’ nonsense. And gazing at it made me feel like a voyeur, peeping at a private, blissful moment.

I felt a sudden stab of jealousy. This was not a photo he’d taken himself, not unless he had one of those self-timer things and the patience for a lot of trial and error. Who had taken it? Who else had seen it?

It wasn’t fair. I wanted something that was for my eyes only, something to equal the Polaroid I’d sent him.

The more I looked at Ilya’s picture, the more I began to regret my own gynaecological effort. Right at that moment he’d probably be smirking into my glistening pink crack. How unimaginative of me, how stupidly dull and tasteless. I’d revealed far too much and had given him nothing – just a bog-standard, two-a-penny beaver shot; the kind of thing any old wank mag could provide him with.

Once again he’d outmanoeuvred me, this time with subtlety.

‘Nice photo.’

I smiled ruefully into the receiver. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m better in the flesh.’

‘Likewise,’ he replied. ‘So now what?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You agreed to meet up if my photo appealed. Did it?’

‘Yeah, sure. Though I think you cheated a bit. Compared to me, to my photo. You kept yourself well hidden whereas I was very –’

‘Open.’

‘Ha, ha,’ I said. ‘How amusing. I was going to say honest and upfront. So I think you cheated. I mean, you
might have a great arse and everything but, for all I know, you could have a tiny little prick.’

I wasn’t going to reveal how delicious I found his photo, nor how dismal I found my own. I’d psyched myself up for his phone call and I wanted to appear sassy, so very proud of my gaping-wet-pussy shot.

‘Is that all you’re interested in, Beth? he asked. ‘My prick?’ There was a faintly challenging note to his smiley voice.

‘Yeah,’ I lied. ‘We haven’t really bothered with small talk, have we? It’s been sexual from the word go. Why change a winning formula?’

‘Hmm,’ he said, as if mulling the idea over while not quite believing me. ‘Is that what you want then? For us to be just sex?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Just sex. Pure, unadulterated, meaningless sex.’

I hadn’t really given it much thought up until that point. While I’d thought about him a lot, too much, I hadn’t really thought about ‘us’.

Oh, there’d been a thousand fantastical moments of ‘us’, but they were just isolated incidents. I was constantly playing ‘what if . . .’: What if that’s him at the door? What if I phoned him and said come round and fuck? What if he’s seriously kinky and wants to chain me up and whip me?

But all those ‘what if’s didn’t add up to a greater whole. I hadn’t envisaged anything so concrete as an ‘us’, as a relationship with, for God’s sake, a future. And when Ilya said ‘us’, I felt a pang of disappointment. It sounded so mundane and couplish. I was enjoying our tantalising phone calls and risque photos. I wanted more of the same.

‘I’m not looking for a relationship,’ I continued. ‘I don’t want anything serious or heavy or messy.’

I thought of Martin and of all the pain involved in caring for someone. Could I be detached enough to have
a relationship that was pure sex? Could I shut my brain off from my body? It sounded iffy because already I was fascinated to the point of lunacy by this Ilya guy and we hadn’t even met. But hey, I reassured myself, wasn’t that fascination fuelled by lust? And by Ilya setting himself up as Mr Dark Man of Mystery? Once we got it together, that would all fade. So yes, I decided, an angst-free, no-commitment, sexy good time could be had by all.

How naive I was back then.

‘I just . . . I’m in the mood for a fling,’ I said. ‘A summertime fling.’

‘So autumn’s our cut-off point then?’ he replied matter-of-factly.

Christ, he was talking about finishing and we hadn’t even begun. I could picture him writing ‘the end’ in his diary.

‘Maybe,’ I said, trying to be light. ‘We’ll see how it goes. We might not last that long.’

‘We will,’ he said. ‘I reckon we’ll be good together, Beth. Suggest something. Tell me a fantasy I can help fulfil.’

I fell silent for a while, unusually shy. I’d never bared my sleazy soul to long-term lovers, let alone to someone I’d yet to meet.

‘It doesn’t have to be major league,’ he prompted. ‘Start off small. We can build up if things work out.’

‘OK,’ I said quietly. ‘Then it’s really simple . . . but it’s something I’ve thought quite a lot about in recent days. It’s not really fantasy; it’s more . . . I just want us to fuck. Nothing wild. I mean, I don’t even know what you look like, not properly. A fuck would be a good starting point, don’t you think? No small talk, no big talk. Just a fuck.’

He didn’t reply. Immediately, I feared I’d disappointed him by being far too pedestrian. Was a simple fuck not part of his game-plan? Had I put him off? Did he expect more from me? Was my request like the photo I’d sent him: dull and unimaginative?

I could hear his disapproval in the lengthening silence.

‘You asked me to suggest something,’ I said, defending myself with aggression. ‘And that’s what I suggest. I’m not saying it’s my ultimate fantasy or anything. What’s wrong? Do you only get off on weird stuff? Are you –’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he said levelly. ‘I was just waiting for you to elaborate. You know, a time and a place, that kind of thing.’

‘Oh,’ I said, severely humbled. ‘Oh, OK. Well, what about my place? Say, tomorrow evening? If you’re free, that is.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, a little too chirpily for my liking. ‘No can do. Tuesday night, maybe?’

I curbed a rising anger. Tuesday night was Body Language night. He must have known that. He was fucking me about, playing games.

‘I’m busy,’ I replied curtly.

There was a pause, then he said, ‘Tell you what, let’s forget about arranging a time. I’ll just call on you. If you’re there, you’re there. If you’re not, you’re not.’

My instinctive reaction was ‘no way’. We weren’t talking about a social call here. We were talking about fucking. I didn’t want a surprise attack. I wanted to be armed and dangerous, sweet-smelling and sexy. I couldn’t just fuck at the drop of a zip. Supposing he called at a really unsexy moment, when I’d just staggered up the hill from the supermarket? Or when I had a face pack on? Or people round?

His suggestion would condemn me to living in a continuum of ‘what if’s. What if he buzzed me in the next second? Or the next? Or the next?

But I was pretty much living like that already; and besides, I probably
could
just fuck at the drop of a zip. My lust was set on long, slow simmer. It wouldn’t take much to bring it up to boil.

So perhaps I should exploit that and turn those foolish fancy ‘what if’s into reality.

Go for it, Beth, I told myself. Live dangerously. Anyway, if his timing’s bad, you don’t have to answer the door.

‘I’ll keep an eye on your window,’ he said. ‘If it looks like you’ve got company or –’

‘OK,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘The ball’s in your court. Call on me sometime.’

‘Great. I will,’ he replied. ‘It’ll be within the next fortnight.’

I wanted to shout: ‘Within the next four minutes!’ But I just said, ‘OK, fine. See you when I see you.’

When he’d gone, I masturbated to ‘what if’s.