The Mercy of Strange Men: Erotic Stories (7 page)

She snaps from
her reverie and scans the front garden, taking in the moonlit
shapes of the plants and trees that hover among the branches and
spread themselves across the lawn. She notices how the path leading
to the front gate segregates them. Her garden is bushy, dense and
unkempt; messy and wild like Cecilia would be if she let herself.
The area near the front fence is particularly concentrated; it
looks impenetrable.

Cecilia likes
to think that people can see in even though she can’t see out.
Cecilia likes to fantasise that someone’s out there, watching her,
as she pads around her bedroom getting ready for bed; while she
lies on her bed reading at night, naked and carefully arranged to
give her imagined voyeur the best possible view. She’s excited when
she thinks that just by lying there, she might be the object of
fantasy of some silent observer. She watches porn videos with the
sound turned right up and the window open and imagines that the man
she’s invented, the man who’s out there lurking in the bushes on
her front lawn, is watching their own porno inside his head as he
masturbates over her.

She mounts the
windowsill, dangling her legs over onto the cool brick and allows
the air to caress her vulva. She perches with the knowledge that
she could be visible to anyone. Slowly, solemnly, and with great
relish, she begins to touch herself.

Zack wanders
down the street, wondering where his disdain for suburbia has taken
itself tonight. All he sees are endless rows of houses like boxes,
trees, shrubs and concreted driveways. Not even a dog shit on the
nature strip, for fuck’s sake, and yet he can’t bring himself to
feel properly scornful of all the coma-inducing sameness. He
doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s too old for ennui; too
young for a midlife crisis. He feels listless, like there’s no
point to anything. Nothing and no one holds his attention for long.
He hangs his head and watches his feet walk, convincing himself to
be fascinated by the dragging of his footsteps.

He hears a
noise coming from the house he’s walking past, and his head turns
abruptly. It sounds like an animal crying out, and he wades through
the bushes in front of the fence, his curiosity piqued. He is
stunned at what comes into his view: a woman perched on a window
ledge, legs flung wide, head thrown back, body in total surrender
to her fingers as she touches herself, occasionally dipping inside
to retrieve the moisture she is producing in plentiful amounts. He
feels himself grow hard as he takes in her breasts with their erect
nipples, her wide-open legs, and the fingers that play so skilfully
with her own body. His cock throbs as the slick wetness on her
fingers and pussy catches in the moonlight. He unzips and releases
his cock, taking it firmly in his hand for the only time in months
that it hasn’t been to urinate.

Cecilia is
close to perfect bliss. Her body tenses, waiting for the leaps into
ecstasy that it knows is inevitable. She no longer knows or cares
if anyone is watching her; all she can focus on are the sensations
her body is producing. She trembles, then as orgasm hits her body,
rocks hard against the sill, so hard she risks falling into the
garden. A howl of release escapes her throat and a dozen
neighbourhood dogs reply. Her panting is loud and ragged, easily
distinguishable from the front of the garden where Zack comes into
his hand, a hot, pent-up jet.

Simultaneously,
Cecilia and Zack sigh and come down from their clouds.

Simultaneously,
they both accept their normal worlds, each unaware of the great
service they have done the other.

Sabina was the girl who looked at me and decided I
was the kind of challenge she wanted to take on.

We saw each
other fairly frequently; she was a friend of my friend Lou, and so
group drinking sessions tended to throw the two of us together. She
was the kind of woman who generally had the entire room wanting to
take her home and do very bad things both to and with her, without
her even being conscious of it. Sure, she was beautiful – taller
than average, deep olive skin, sparkling black-coffee eyes and a
head of thick, glossy corkscrew ringlets. Plus, she leaned towards
the voluptuous side of curvy, with a glimpse of soft brown cleavage
nearly always visible, and the kind of arse that made a girl want
to grab it and take a bite. But it was more than physical beauty.
She was one of those people who emanate sensuality and sexiness;
never in a way that came across as deliberate, but enough that
women would stare longingly from afar and men would trip over their
feet walking past her en route to the bar.

I always
assumed she was out of my league. In fact, I generally assume
people are out of my league and figure if they want me they'll do
something about it, which isn't exactly proactive but saves me the
embarrassment of rejection. In Sabina's case, though, I assumed she
knew everyone wanted her and that there wasn't any point in making
myself stand out from the crowd. It wasn't so much a
self-flagellating dose of the I'm-not-good-enoughs as it was an
attempt to avoid pointless effort. Why waste time hitting on girls
who were bound to be unresponsive when I could be focusing my
energies on getting drunk, right?

It was an
unseasonably balmy night in April – Melbourne's weather hadn't
realised it was meant to be in autumn – when Lou next organised
drinks. We met up in an intimate little bar in the depths of an
alley in the CBD. It was a Friday night and I'd worked late, so I
was the last to arrive. The others were obviously well past their
first drinks already and Sabina was the only one who didn't seem to
be well down the road to tipsy. I gave everyone the usual greeting
hug. I came to Sabina and paused. I'd never hugged her before – I
didn't consider us that close –but since everyone else in the group
was a good friend, everyone else had received a hug from me. I
didn't want to seem rude by not hugging Sabina too.

Okay, so I
wasn't entirely concerned with altruism and etiquette. I
desperately wanted to touch Sabina, feel that soft warm body
pressed up against mine. I have this thing, though, where I'm
terrified of getting found out when I fancy somebody. Completely
irrationally, I worry that they'll be able to tell I'm interested
if I touch them or stand to close to them, like I think my
pheromones will give me away or something. And since I'm not the
most socially or emotionally adept of people, you can see why that
would cause me anxiety.

Sabina solved
the problem for me by standing up and wrapping her arms around me.
I returned the gesture and found myself involved in what I can only
describe as a full-body hug; she pressed her body firmly against
mine, our curves complementing each other, our breasts flattening
to rest against each other. I had the interesting mental experience
of trying to simultaneously enjoy the moment for what it was, take
in everything so I could remember it later on, and desperately hope
that she couldn't tell I was enjoying the hug a little less
platonically than I should have been. For the thousandth time in my
life I was thankful I was not a man – only this time, rather than
being grateful for not having to, you know, be a man, I was
grateful that I didn't have a penis, because if I did it would have
been making its presence felt against Sabina's lower belly, and
that would have blown my cover. As it was, I felt myself discreetly
moistening the crotch of my knickers.

She held on for
longer than she needed to, which was fine by me. I was trying to
breathe deeply and quietly by now, partly because she'd brought on
a major case of the butterflies and partly because she smelled so
good and I wanted to savour her – the faint chemical but pleasant
odours of hair product and makeup mixed with the natural, vaguely
musky smell of her skin. If she was wearing perfume, it was subtle
and underscored her natural smell perfectly.

She pulled
away, and I had to fight the urge to wrap my arms around her more
tightly and not let go. She smiled at me as she sat down, her eyes
twinkling. I retreated to the other side of the booth, taking a
seat between Lou and Kelly, who rested her head on my shoulder.

The
conversation was flowing as freely as the alcohol and I took small
but quick sips of my beer, unsure of where I wanted to be on the
sobriety scale, not wanting to be the sole sober person at the
table but not wanting to join in the drinking spree just yet.
Sabina sipped a glass of white wine and sat back, taking in the
conversation with the amused eyes of one who loves her friends but
is well aware they have the ability to make complete idiots of
themselves in public. The topic turned to the girl Lou had just
started seeing a couple of weeks ago, whom none of us had met yet
but who intrigued us, if only because she quite obviously made
normally sedate and emotionally cautious Lou go weak at the knees.
We started pumping her for information about this new woman.

‘Does she have
any really annoying personal habits?’ asked Kelly.

‘No!’

‘That just
means there’re none you’ve found out about yet.’

‘Does she have
good taste in music?’ That was Sarah, our resident music snob.

‘Yeah, if by
that you mean, does she share my taste? We’re aaaall about the
acousticky lesbians, baby.’

‘I said
good
music, you walking cliché.’

‘And what might
that be, Madame?’

Kelly could
obviously see where this was going as well as I could – any
argument about music was never a good idea around Sarah, lovely as
she was. Kelly leaned forward and said, ‘look, Lou, I think what we
all really want to know but are pretending we’re too polite to ask
is – what’s she like in bed?’

Lou blushed,
just slightly. ‘She’s good.’ She paused. ‘
Very
good.’

‘DETAILS!’

‘That would be
tacky.’

‘Because we’re
none of us here tacky. Nooo, not at all.’

I put my arm
around her. I knew Lou well enough to sense that, despite her
embarrassment, she did actually want to share with us, and was
going to. You get used to reading someone after being friends with
them for a while. In the case of my friends, I learn to tell when
they really don’t want to talk about their partners, and when
they’re being coy. Lou was being coy.

‘Oh, I’m just
not sure I should. What happens if one of you lets slip when you
meet her?’

‘So we’re
definitely going to meet her?’ I butted in.

‘I didn’t say
that…I just don’t want her being uncomfortable that you guys know
so much.’

‘I’m sure we
all know how to keep our mouths shut, Louise,’ I said, doing my
best fake stern voice. ‘Now spill.’

‘Okay. What do
you want to know?’

‘Everything!’

‘Well.’ Lou
paused and took a swig of beer, considering what to tell us. ‘She’s
very skilled in bed. A great kisser. Wonderful with her hands. And
she works a strap-on like nobody’s business.’

I’d been taking
a sip of my drink, and nearly spat it out.

‘She what?’ I
said. ‘You mean you actually
do
that? I thought one of the
advantages of fucking girls was that you didn’t have to put up with
dicks in at least part of your life?’

Kelly turned to
me. ‘That’s a little bit retroactive, isn’t it, Bree? You’re always
on about how important it is for people to express their sexuality
however they need to.’

‘Yeah, but do
we have to do that by aping heterosexual people?’

‘Ooh, how very
seventies of you. Perhaps we shouldn’t be having sex at all, what
with it being an expression of power over another person and
all.’

‘That’s not
what I meant and you know it, Kelly.’

The
conversation was good-natured enough, but I was losing ground, and
worse, starting to look like a bit of an idiot. In front of Sabina.
I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

‘It just seems
so…unoriginal. Boring. You know, half the time the first thing
straight people ask when they find out I’m into girls is whether we
all use dildos on each other. Because they can’t possibly imagine
sex being satisfying, or even “real sex” without a penis being
involved somehow. And that’s the whole porn thing happening as
well, you know, ‘ooh, we’re fucking each other with a strap-on
while we wait for you to come to us with your big manly penis.’
Strap-on sex is passé. There’s so much we can do to and with each
other but there’s so much focus on that that now even dykes are
obsessed with it.’

‘So now you’re
the arbiter of what’s passé? Ms
Vans-sneakers-are-never-out-of-fashion?’

‘Fuck off,
Renee.’

‘Oh, come on.
I’m just amused. You! Thinking stuff is passé! Who’d have
thought?’

‘Have you ever
been fucked with a strap-on cock, Bree?’

The speaker was
Kelly again, but I looked across the table and met Sabina’s eye.
She was watching me intently.

‘No. But it
hasn’t really captured my imagination. It’s a little too straight
guy fantasy, isn’t it?’

Sabina spoke
up. ‘Not at all. I don’t think straight guys ever fantasise about
real lesbians anyway. I think it gets less erotic for them when
they realise they’re not invited.’

A laugh went up
around the table, and I smiled gratefully at Sabina for defusing
the situation and making me feel a little less under fire. She
smiled back, eyes twinkling.

‘Maybe your
problem with strap-on sex, Bree, is that you haven’t met the right
girl to show you the ropes.’

‘Or the straps,
as it were,’ Renee interjected.

‘Yeah, maybe
that’s it!’ said Lou, eager that both the situation was diffused
and that we were off the topic of her suddenly controversial sex
life, even if it wasn’t her causing the controversy.