Raven (14 page)

We spent a fervent hour or so together and Jake, for all his impressive brawn, was gentle and considerate as we romped around in various enjoyable positions. Afterwards, as he put his shirt back on, he said he was glad I didn't turn out to be one of those kinky married women who gets guys over for sex so that her husband can watch. It had never happened to him but he'd heard about it and ‘You can never tell,' he said with a wink.

‘It was brave of you to come over, Jake.'

‘And brave of you to let me.'

I perched on his lap as we waited in the kitchen for his cab to arrive. ‘Do you realise there's a condom on the floor?' he said, pointing to a spot under the kitchen table.

I bent down to take a look and was mortified (although fortunately the condom appeared to be unused). ‘God, how embarrassing! What must you think?'

Jake laughed. ‘I don't think anything. Don't worry about it.'

‘I have absolutely
no
idea how it got there. I assure you I haven't been doing
anything
in the kitchen.' Both statements were true. And ever after, wrack my brains as I might to figure out who had dropped the offending item under my kitchen table and when, I could never come up with any sort of answer. But it made me feel grubby.

*

Sara and I are in the sitting room with a bottle of red wine and an array of nibbles spread out on the coffee table between us. She's curled up in the armchair; I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor. I love our confidential girly catch-ups…even though I know what's coming. She has never heard of Tinder and I am explaining how it all works. And how it has been working for me personally, over the past week. It's only been one week and I have packed in so much Tinderness already!

‘So you just give this guy your address,' says Sara, ‘this enormous rugby-player who could squeeze the life out of you with two fingers, a guy you've never even
met
, and invite him over one night when there's no one else around.'

‘Um, that's pretty much it,' I say with a sheepish grin.

‘No one around to save you if he decides to attack.'

I dip a small piece of pitta bread into the houmous and munch on it. ‘Nope.'

Sara shakes her head, hopelessly. ‘What if he'd brought half a dozen of his great hulking mates along to gang-bang you, before trashing the house and stealing your stuff?'

‘Oh I knew he wouldn't do any of that.' I have to offer some rationale, so after a moment's consideration I say: ‘He went to public school and lives with his parents in South Ken. You should hear him, he sounds like Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice.'

Sara groans. ‘You're a worry,' she says, before topping up her wine glass and taking a gulp.

‘I'll be more cautious next time. Honest, I will.'

*

I was as good as my word. Heeding all the sensible warnings, I arranged to meet the next TB in a crowded public place, safe neutral territory. My address had remained top secret. Paradoxically, this assignation was with 27-year-old Benjamin, from whom the nation's womenfolk had little to fear. For a start he was only marginally taller than me and slight of build, not at all the physical type, and what with all my swimming-toned muscles, I could have easily grappled him to the ground in any rape attempt and sat on him until the cops arrived. But Benjamin wasn't the sort to rape anybody. He was an anxious Jewish ‘creative' and part-time stand-up comic who did the rounds of the small comedy venues. The Woody Allen of Golders Green.

Not surprisingly, on first sight I was disappointed by the extreme contrast with my sex god, Jake. But I soon discovered over cocktails at a noisy West Hampstead bar that, slight and nervy though he was, Benjamin was entertaining company.

He had a day job as an advertising copywriter which he hated. ‘Ugh. So stressful,' he said.

‘What, and standing up in front of a room full of rowdy, boozed-up people and having to make them laugh isn't?'

‘Actually I find it less nerve-wracking to deal with some nasty drunken heckler than with my bastard of a boss at work.'

I nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah I hear you. I had some fearsome bosses at the Daily Mail, back in the day. Especially the Editor. I'd rather be pelted with rotten tomatoes and booed off every stage in town than have him tell me I'm a useless cunt.'

‘So are you a useless cunt?'

‘No!' I threw him a wounded look. ‘I've been using it and it's worked every time.'

‘Ha ha! Good to know.' And he raised his glass to me.

The longer we sat there talking the plainer it became that humour and intelligence can be as much of a turn-on as a great body and movie-star looks. And what with the bar crowd being so loud, making our repartee at times difficult to hear, I suggested that we continue the evening back at my place. Benjamin didn't put up a fight.

I sensed that he was less sure of himself grasping a woman in bed than a mike on the comedy club circuit. That, I presumed, was why he chose an older woman like me on Tinder. And also, perhaps, because the young women had been letting him down and he craved a change. He told me his girlfriend had left him two months earlier, a blow which had knocked his self-confidence. I asked whether he still missed her.

‘I miss some things about her,' he said. And after a pause: ‘She used to wake me up every morning with a blow job.'

‘Bloody hell. That's beyond the call of duty.'

‘A guy can get used to it.'

‘I'll bet. Well, you won't get that sort of room service here.'

‘Would you run to a cup of tea, then?'

‘You got it.'

Benjamin stayed the night and we slept fitfully, stirring and fidgeting. He had told me he was a lousy sleeper, which fitted in with his Woody Allen-ish persona.

The next morning as I drove him to the train station he mentioned that he had a gig that night, at a small venue somewhere on the outskirts of London.

‘Maybe I'll come along. I'd like to see you strut your stuff. I'll be the heckler at the back.'

We had a brief good-bye kiss and I said it would be nice to see him again sometime, on or off the stage.

Later I thought of texting him to ‘break a leg' that night at his gig. But at his age, he might be unfamiliar with the theatrical saying and take it as a cruel and unwarranted jibe. You can never tell with young people. It's best to refrain from employing such old-school expressions.

I wondered whether our encounter – it was Benjamin's first with an older woman – would one day find its way into his comedy routine.

‘So, what about these older women, cougars, they call them? You know, horny middle-aged women who've been around the block and really know how to give you a good time. I don't know about you guys out there but I've always had a fantasy about them. Oh yeah, the stuff of wet dreams. Anyway, one day I decide to give it a go and sign up on Tinder. And there are all these hot young chicks of 22, 23, and I'm going “no, no, no”, then I see my old primary school teacher and I go “
finally!”…'

I just hoped I would be out there in the audience, laughing away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Tinder was a playground, and as in any playground, there were some kids who didn't play nice. Zac, for instance, was a bumptious prick (I use that word for a reason) with scant respect for his elders and betters. Very early on in our messaging he told me he loved a ‘really good long BJ'. It was the most important and most enjoyable part of sex for him and he always got what he wanted.

‘I'm sure that as a cougar your experience will prevail in that,' he said. And he added that if I wasn't prepared to do it, as far as he was concerned it was a ‘deal-breaker'.

I replied that, first of all, I didn't like being labelled a cougar. A cougar was a wild cat, a predator, whereas I believed only in relations between gladly consenting adults and had never preyed on anyone. And didn't cougars wear red lipstick and have long painted talons? Nothing at all like me. I was more of a pussycat, really. So much more simpatico.

As for his favourite practice, I told Zac it wasn't something I took lightly or did for everyone, ‘only for someone I have feelings for'. I also tried to make him understand that going to bed with someone wasn't about being ‘serviced'. A mature, experienced lover derived as much pleasure from giving as from receiving, maybe even more.
That
was real class.

‘That's just a sucker in my opinion,' he retorted. ‘Nothing classy about it. That's about desperation. Older men are so desperate for sex they'd do anything to get laid. Maybe you'd better stick to your older men, golden oldie.'

Golden oldie? Rude little shit.

Okay, let's take a moment here to consider the blow job. I don't wish to keep alluding to Sex in the City's Samantha Jones, but the woman had something cogent to say on pretty much every sex-related subject. I would refer you to her celebrated speech in Season three, Episode nine:

‘You men have no idea what we're dealing with down there. Teeth placement, and jaw stress, and suction, and gag reflex, and all the while bobbing up and down, moaning and trying to breathe through our noses. Easy? Honey, they don't call it a job for nothing!'

Exactly. Unless you're a hooker, all this work is something you only do for a person you care about. And I didn't care for Zac, not one little bit.

Clearly this well-built, dark-haired 28-year-old, working for a bank in the City and living in smart Maida Vale, thought that any woman – and perhaps especially a more ‘eager-to-please' older woman – ought to feel privileged to service his pulsating member. Admittedly it was an impressive specimen; he texted me a photo of it (oh yes, another day, another dick).

But I sent him one final message before deleting his Tinder profile: ‘It's a shame we don't see eye to eye on these matters, Zac. Under the circumstances I think we'd better go our separate ways. Have a nice life! By the way, that's cougar for fuck off.'

*

The blow job figured high on the to-do list of another Tinder boy, the baby of the bunch, 19-year-old student Stevie. The idea of my engaging in rumpy-pumpy with a teenager was both alarming and titillating in equal measure. (Oh all right, it was more titillating than alarming.) This was not only because the gender-reversal age difference would be so monumental as to stand a good chance of making it into the Guinness Book of Records – he was forty-two years younger – but because I had never in my life had sex with a teenager. As mentioned earlier in this book, I was late entering the sex scene, having retained my virginity until the age of nineteen. And every man I slept with was older than me, not that I slept with many before marrying at twenty-two.

So Stevie could fill this gap for me, and by the sound of it he was keen to apply for the job. His photos showed a cute, slim boy with swept-back brown hair. He would do nicely.

He put his cards on the table at the start.

STEVIE: I've never had a blow job. Truth.

ME: Really? I thought you kids started all that stuff so early these days.

STEVIE: Not me. I'm a good boy.

ME: Are you really 19?

STEVIE: Yeah.

ME: They'll arrest me for cradle snatching.

STEVIE: I'll give you something to cradle! I like older women. I'm naughty like that.

ME: How old was the oldest woman you've been to bed with?

STEVIE: 56.

ME: And she didn't give you a BJ?

STEVIE: Nope. I just fucked her senseless.

ME: Well done.

STEVIE: Would you wine and dine me first?

ME: Hey, I'm not your sugar mommy. But I'll stand you a drink sometime.

STEVIE: Okay and I'll treat you to a kiss. More if you promise to be gentle.

ME: Love your sense of humour, baby.

STEVIE: Can you keep up with me in the sac?

ME: I reckon so. And BTW, that's spelt sack.

It had all started so hopefully. But I'd forgotten how unreliable teenagers can be. They always have some excuse for not getting on with the tasks at hand. One of Stevie's excuses was that as an impecunious student he had little money for travelling expenses, and he lived an hour's train journey out of London.

We messaged each other now and then but never seemed to get any closer to doing the deed. I sent him the lingerie shot, to speed things up a bit. ‘I can't wait to be inside that!' Stevie texted. But he did wait. And wait. Until finally I was compelled to give up on him. Honestly, you'd think I was asking him to tidy his room or mow the lawn.

*

Meanwhile Tom was keen to reconvene. In the days following our tryst (on that memorable Tinder double-whammy night) he texted me to announce that he was ‘horny as hell' and asking whether he could come over. I said I was busy for a week or so but we could fix a date for after that. ‘Can you behave until then?' I teased.

‘Yes, I'm sure I can manage that. Can you?'

‘No! Ha ha…'

‘You had any sex since being with me?'

‘Might have done. But I'd like to be with you again.'

‘Shame we have to use a condom though.'

‘We'll see, maybe not.'

‘Got to be careful with you. You sleep around.'

I didn't like the sound of that. ‘Sleep around? It's true you're not the only one I've been intimate with in recent times. But that's not what you'd want anyway, is it? Look, I enjoyed our time together so keep thinking of that until we see each other again. Be good, baby.'

‘I don't know why you're telling me to be good when you aren't.'

His petulant tone annoyed me. ‘Grow up, sweetie. I'm not your girlfriend.'

A week later I texted him to see whether he'd calmed down a bit. Actually, I rather fancied another roll in the hay with the comely young man. But when he replied it was to tell me that he was now ‘sort of seeing someone', so things could get complicated.

‘That's good, sweetie,' I replied. ‘I hope she's nice to you. You're a lovely boy and deserve it. Get in touch with me again if there is ever anything I can do.'

‘Thanks, that's nice of you. Still wanna fuck?'

‘Ha ha…of course. But you're seeing someone!'

‘I'm sure I can keep you a secret.'

‘How very French!'

He then described in X-rated detail what he intended to do when he next saw me. ‘Are you free tomorrow night? I'm supposed to be taking this girl out but I'll see if I can get out of it.'

‘Oh, now I feel bad for her. Give her a chance and see how it goes.'

Crazy mixed-up kid. He was right, things had got a bit too complicated. Didn't need petulance or possessiveness. Those were for
relationships
. He couldn't handle me and I felt he was one Tinder boy who might be better off dating a girl of his own age.

We exchanged a few more messages at a later point, but he reverted to asking for sexy snapshots, as if he hadn't already seen all of me there was to see. ‘Please, no more childish games,' I told him. And with that I put him into the box marked ‘used Tinder matches'. In the Raven's opinion, there was no point prolonging anything that had stopped being fun.

*

Jon was the TB I most wanted to hear from, but he made no contact. With the tenderness of his touch he had reached something in me which was buried far below the surface and which I didn't even like to think about. It was a sentiment without a name, but had something to do, perhaps, with the need to feel cherished. And what a waste of time it was to moon over that! I had already stiffened my sinews against the likelihood of my never experiencing ‘love' again, whatever that meant, if it meant anything at all. I'd had no lasting luck in that department, so it was safer to banish all soft, hopeful vulnerable emotions.

But the hour or so I had spent with Jon reminded me that they were still there. I knew I hadn't imagined it. And although, obviously, the impromptu connection between us was nothing to do with actual love or cherishing, it was a compelling, irresistible facsimile.

I never did hear from him again. He didn't share my sentiments and I hadn't expected him to. Why should he? He had a future ahead of him, with its infinite promise and possibilities. For Jon, ours had merely been an enjoyable sexual encounter. Spontaneous fun. Tinder was awash with such opportunities for an engaging young man like him.

And if he had sensed, even faintly, what he had awakened in me, all the more reason for him to move on.

*

I moved on too, as things were kicking off with another TB. Damian's main photo showed a good-looking hunk with tattooed arms and caddish grin. He might as well have had ‘fuck me, baby' stamped on those muscles, above the fire-breathing dragons or whatever they were. Damian, a power plant technician, struck me as an exciting sample of rough trade.

It all started encouragingly enough. On receiving my calling card, i.e. the by now well-travelled M & S lingerie shot, he messaged: ‘When can I run my tongue down that body of yours?' A most acceptable opening gambit. Then: ‘Have you always had a thing for young men?'

‘Except for when I was young. Then I went for older men.'

He went on: ‘Well I've got a real thing for women of your age.'

‘Win win!'

‘Yeah. It's rare to get an older woman into young men. I've been with a few but not often enough.'

‘How old?'

‘The oldest was 60 so you would take the honours. It turns me on knowing that you want my stamina and could handle what I've got to give. I get bored by young women who just lie there doing nothing. I like someone who can take the lead.'

I wasn't so sure I wanted to take the lead most of the time, but I didn't mention that. ‘Sure I can lead if you like. Grrrr!!'

‘I keep looking at your picture. You sure you're 61?'

‘I think so.'

Then he revved it up a bit. ‘What are you like down there, shaved or not? I like it not.'

‘Uh-oh…'

‘Ha, never mind! Can't wait to taste you.'

‘Likewise.'

‘And feel you up against my body.'

‘I'm pretty keen to wrap myself around you too, sexy boy.'

Then his mental peregrinations strayed into top-shelf territory as he envisaged the specifics we might indulge in
à deux
.

Sara leapt back onto my shoulder at that moment, wearing her disapproving frown. I was doing it again!

‘Wait a minute,' I messaged Damian. ‘You've done due diligence on me [he'd been scrupulous, checking me out on Facebook, LinkedIn and Wikipedia] but I don't know much about you. Are you dangerous?'

‘Very dangerous…but only if you want me to be.'

That was good enough for me. We set up a rendezvous for one evening later in the week. He worked about an hour's drive from London and we arranged for him to come straight to my place, natch, as it was so secluded and there would be nobody to rescue me should he turn out to be the energy industry's very own tattooed terror, scourge of womankind.

But I heard nothing more from him and when the day of our assignation arrived and I still had received no confirmation by lunchtime I thought I had better message him. It was early evening when he finally replied, saying he was still tied up at work. He would get back to me within an hour.

When he texted again it was to ask whether we could re-arrange for Saturday, a couple of days later. He still had work to do and wanted to get it out of the way. Naturally I smelled a rat. A super-horny guy like that wouldn't blow me out because of
work
.

‘Can't you see me tonight? I'm all geared up for it. It's such a let-down to put it off.'

‘I couldn't make it tonight anyway. The motorway's jammed because of an accident!' (Oh, so now it was a traffic problem.) ‘But I'll make it up to you on Saturday, promise.'

I never even replied.

One day he's champing at the bit (or the butt) and the next he is all patience and the conscientious overtime worker, and I'm supposed to believe that? Call me a cynic, but I think I know men well enough by now to surmise that he had found some other piece of ass on which to lavish his attentions that night. Men, rascals? Let's not get started…

I'll say one thing, though. It startled me how blatantly shameless they could be. Witness Asian Tinder boy Rajesh. Tall and with striking, film-star looks. Naturally I ‘liked' him and was chuffed when we were ‘matched'. Then he sent a message, which said only ‘DTF?'

‘What's DTF?' I asked.

‘Google it.'

I did, and it stood for ‘down to fuck', a new slang term referring to those women who were game for casual sex. Ah, cutting to the chase. No niceties. ‘Possibly,' I replied. ‘But you'll need more finesse than that with someone like me.'

‘Ha ha. Sorry. How are you today, madam?'

‘That's better. So what about you? DTF?'

‘Yeah. I'm in a relationship but always like exploring other options out there.'

The flagrant cheat! ‘How would your girlfriend feel about you being on Tinder?'