In at the Deep End

by Kate Davies

  ‘Sex conventions.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have to wear a lanyard to get into those?’

  ‘A really kinky black one.’

  ‘Right.’ I concentrated on my food while I tried to work out what to say next. ‘And SM – that’s the same as S and M?’

  Sam nodded. ‘People in the scene don’t tend to use the “and”, though,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ I said again.

  Sam looked at me and smiled. ‘Don’t be scared,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not scared,’ I said, looking her in the eye. Which was a lie, but never mind – I was definitely more turned on than terrified.

  ‘The SM community is really friendly,’ Sam said. ‘And no one would ever make you do anything you didn’t want to do. Consent is a big deal.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t get a whip out on a first date or anything,’ I said.

  ‘Is that a request?’

  After we’d eaten, Sam took me for a walk through the streets of Hackney, towards her flat. She stopped at a bench and lit a cigarette.

  ‘You smoke,’ I said unnecessarily.

  She made a face. ‘I tried to give up, but I have an addictive personality.’ There was something sexy about the way she smoked, even though I knew there shouldn’t be. She noticed me looking at her and held out the cigarette for me.

  Why not? I thought. I felt reckless with Sam, as though the rules I usually lived by didn’t apply. I took a drag. It was weirdly delicious, much nicer than I remembered cigarettes being.

  We walked on, past a poster for the BFI, and I had a momentary flashback to my night with Finn; I already felt like a different person from the one who had been on that date. We paused outside Homerton station and Sam put her hands on my shoulders, and turned me to face her, and kissed me. It was a gorgeous kiss – soft and stubble-free.

  Women were definitely, definitely better kissers than men.

  Sam was getting really into it, but I was holding back slightly. You can do this, I told myself. You can totally have sex with her in her dungeon. You are an open-minded, sex-positive woman. Whips are very twenty-first century.

  But she must have tasted my fear because she pulled away.

  ‘Let’s get you home,’ she said, as though she was a kind uncle who’d taken me for a day at the zoo. Not, just to be clear, that any of my uncles has ever kissed me like that.

  ‘I don’t have to go home,’ I said, leaning into her now that she was distancing herself.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said, laughing, ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ And she walked towards the entrance of the Overground, leaving me to follow behind.

  She sat with me till the Overground came, and told me more about her art.

  ‘I did an MFA in New York,’ she told me. ‘Figurative painting is big over there, but most people here are still obsessed with fucking installation art.’ She kicked a chocolate wrapper away from the bench we were sitting on.

  ‘So you paint portraits?’

  She nodded. ‘Of women. From the point of view of the queer female gaze instead of the male gaze.’

  ‘Do you paint full time?’

  She nodded, then shrugged. ‘I’m doing pretty well at the moment, but mostly in the States. I’m represented by this gallery in LA, the Night Gallery?’

  I made an impressed noise, though I’d never heard of it.

  ‘I had a painting in the BP Portrait Award, though, so people here are starting to hear about me. Ingvild Goetz bought one of my paintings. She’s an important German collector,’ she explained, seeing my blank look. ‘Still not represented by a UK gallery, though.’ That, judging by her facial expression, was a sore point.

  ‘Can I see your work?’

  ‘I’m having my first solo show in London soon, so you can see it then. If you play your cards right.’ She nudged me with her hip. ‘Anyway, what about you? Did you always want to work at the Civil Service?’

  I laughed. ‘Has anyone always wanted to work in the Civil Service?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘They have good pension schemes, don’t they?’

  ‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘I used to be a dancer. I broke my ankle and had to give up.’

  She looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ As though she really meant it. ‘I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I couldn’t paint.’

  She understood. I felt a rush of gratitude towards her.

  She put her arm around me. A man with a Fitness First rucksack a little further down the platform looked at us, as though trying to work out our relationship.

  ‘It must be amazing,’ I said, ‘making money from the thing you love to do.’

  ‘I thought it would be,’ she said, ‘but I’m always comparing myself to other people. Like, Jane – she’s represented by this Hackney gallery, Revolution. And her work is such bollocks.’

  ‘It is bollocks.’

  ‘But bollocks is what people care about at the moment.’

  ‘People don’t want bollocks in their houses.’

  ‘I know you don’t, at least,’ she said. ‘Not literal bollocks anyway.’ She winked at me.

  And then, too soon, the train pulled into the platform.

  ‘I’ll be thinking of you all night,’ she said, as the door closed between us.

  I didn’t try winking back; my winking technique is a bit hit and miss. I watched her waving as the train pulled away, my heart pounding, my head rushing.

  She was so fucking sexy.

  My bed felt empty that night. I lay awake, too turned on to sleep, wishing I’d gone home with her. So I unwrapped my dildo and tried it out, imagining Sam using it on me, slamming it into myself with the palm of my hand. It was pretty good; I kept at it till I felt myself getting sore. But I didn’t come.

  I couldn’t get to sleep afterwards. I watched YouTube for a while, trying to soothe my racing mind with make-up tutorials, but I felt more awake than ever. Fuck it, I thought. I’ll text her – just to say thanks, and that I’d had a nice time.

  She texted straight back. Any time babes. It was a pleasure to have such a delicious woman on my arm. Hopefully next time you’ll come back to mine to check out my sketchbook.

  I wasn’t sure I could go out with someone who wrote text messages like that. But I could definitely have sex with them.

  12. A SALTY RIM

  I called Cat the next morning as I lay in bed, to tell her about my date. I could hear loud mariachi music in the background when she picked up the phone.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Wolverhampton,’ she said. ‘Having some tacos with the company.’ She laughed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said. ‘Lacey was just saying something about the period musical. We’re rehearsing in the evenings.’

  ‘You’re going to be in it?’

  ‘Yep. We’re applying for funding.’

  ‘Great!’ I felt a flash of envy. ‘I had a date with Sam last night,’ I said, to remind myself that there were all sorts of good things in my life now.

  ‘Great!’ Cat said, in the same enthusiastic/envious voice. Maybe it was all over with the year-five teacher. ‘Did you bang?’

  ‘No. We kissed, though.’

  ‘Tongues?’

  ‘Tongues.’

  There was a pause, and then Cat said, ‘Yuck.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Oh, not you,’ she said. ‘I’ve just tasted my margarita and it has a salty rim.’

  I was almost an hour early to work that Monday, which was a very strange and wonderful experience. I had my pick of the desks. I didn’t have to offer anyone else a drink, because no one else was there; no one except Tom, that is, who was in Smriti’s office. I felt a sense of smugness as I sipped my tea and read calmly through my inbox. I had been on a very sexy date. I looked through my latest letters and found another one from lovely Eric. I settled back in my chair to read it.

  I was a teenager when I joined th
e RAF, just after the Blitz. I wanted to give the Germans a taste of their own medicine! My mother was beside herself when she found out, and she was right to be; I was the only one of my mates that made it back alive. But she couldn’t have stopped me; you don’t listen to sense when you’re young, do you? I had no idea what I was getting myself into—

  Owen walked in and stopped still when he saw me. ‘Am I late?’

  ‘No,’ I said, putting Eric’s letter down. ‘I’m early!’

  ‘Oh! Right! Wow!’ he said, taking off his bag and sitting down. The ‘wow’ didn’t make me feel brilliant. ‘You look happy,’ he said.

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  ‘Have a good weekend?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, mysteriously.

  ‘What did you get up to?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ But I smiled to let him know I was lying.

  ‘Me and Laura went to Highgate Cemetery. She’s a big fan of Douglas Adams, and he’s buried there. So’s George Eliot. She likes her too.’

  ‘Eclectic taste,’ I said.

  ‘Good taste,’ he said. ‘Highgate Cemetery’s lovely, really. Nice and peaceful. Good for a date.’

  ‘Apart from all the dead people.’

  ‘No, because of all the dead people,’ Owen said. ‘Makes you feel better about dying, I think. And it’s romantic, seeing the couples buried together.’

  Owen sat down at his desk and I went back to my letter from Eric.

  Sorry – this letter’s all doom and gloom, isn’t it? I’m going to make a cup of tea and listen to the wireless to cheer myself up. There’s a lovely 1940s radio station that one of my carers found for me on the Web. It’s marvellous, and it makes a change from Classic FM (can’t bear all those adverts!). Give it a try, next time you need a bit of a lift.

  Yours,

  Eric

  Poor Eric. I thought about his smiling face in the wedding photograph – smiling even though he knew he’d be back in a Lancaster bomber the following day, flying away from his new wife, towards flak and shells and almost certain death. I felt a rush of affection for him. I knew what it was like to feel young and invincible. I didn’t feel like that any more, though. Except when I was with Sam. I typed out a reply to Eric, thanking him for the radio recommendation and telling him that I’d taken up swing dancing. I considered telling him about the Friends of Dorothy – I thought he’d get a kick out of the fact they were named after a Forties euphemism for homosexuals – but I decided against it. He seemed like a liberal man, with his love of the NHS and libraries and public services in general, but he might stop writing to me if he knew I was a friend of Dorothy’s. He was in his nineties, after all.

  Spring had finally turned up in London, fashionably late and a bit reluctant, like a teenager meeting its parents for dinner. I went for a walk in Finsbury Park after work; the birds were singing and the cherry trees were frothy with blossom, far too pretty for the streets of N4. The trees looked like pompoms; they were cheering me on, I decided, in my new lesbian life.

  I took out my phone to Instagram the blossom and realized I’d missed a call from Mum. She had left me a voicemail: ‘Julia, it’s your mother, hi. I’m coming to London on Wednesday for the Blue Badge Guides conference. It’s at that big conference place in Westminster, so near your office. If you can get there for one, I can buy you lunch.’

  I called her back, but Dad picked up the phone.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, when I said hello. ‘Let me go and get your mum.’

  Dad always did this. He wasn’t a fan of phone conversations.

  ‘Wait, Dad. How are you?’

  He was silent for a minute. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m just making conversation,’ I said.

  ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Right! Well, in that case: I’m fine.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Actually, your mother said I should call you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to call anyway.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m homophobic.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Bloody Catholic upbringing. You think you’ve shaken it and it comes out at weird times.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad.’

  ‘And I’ve got a lot on at the moment. Your mother has gone completely mad about the neighbours and their basement, and Geoff has been made head of department, and he’s making life difficult—’

  ‘Really, it’s fine.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good.’ A pause. ‘Still—’

  ‘A lesbian?’

  ‘That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to ask if you’re still keen on Stella Gibbons. I saw a lovely edition of one of her early novels the other day and I thought I might get it for you.’

  ‘Oh! Yes, I still like her.’

  ‘Right. I’ll get it, then.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. You don’t need to do that.’

  ‘Oh, well. You know. I go to a lot of bookshops.’

  Another silence. ‘Mum said she was coming to London on Wednesday,’ I said at last.

  Dad sighed. ‘I knew you were just calling to speak to your mother,’ he said. ‘Jenny!’ he called. ‘Your daughter on the phone!’

  Mum and I had a sandwich in a pub full of grey-haired men in suits drinking pints. I wondered what they did, to be able to drink on a Wednesday lunchtime. They were probably civil servants too, I realized. The rules were just different for them.

  ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to be out of Oxford for a day,’ Mum said, picking the tomato out of her club sandwich. ‘Want to hear the latest about the neighbours?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Well. They’ve hired a landscape gardener who is ripping all the trees out of their garden. There was a pear tree that must have been at least thirty years old. Gone!’

  ‘Terrible,’ I said, taking a bite of my cheese ploughman’s.

  ‘And your father has actually decided to befriend them. The woman turns out to be a fellow at Magdalen – specializes in William Blake. So he keeps inviting her round for tea to talk about socialism in bloody Romantic poetry. The only good thing is, she was round in the kitchen the other day and she could hear how loud the drilling is, and she apologized and promised to make sure they didn’t start before eight in the morning any more.’

  ‘What does the man do?’

  ‘He’s a lawyer in the City. Hence all the money for landscape gardeners.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But you’ll like this – they have a gay son! His name is Harry and he watches a lot of YouTube.’

  ‘Good for Harry.’

  Mum took a sip of her tap water and folded her hands in her lap. ‘How’s that going for you, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Being gay.’ She smiled at me encouragingly.

  ‘Quite well,’ I said. ‘I went on a date with a woman called Sam the other day. We’re going out again at the weekend.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ Mum said, though she looked a little taken aback. Maybe she preferred theoretical lesbianism to actual lesbianism.

  13. AUBERGINE EMOJI

  A second date is a bit like a difficult second album, or novel, I always think. If the first date was good enough to get you to the second, you’re desperately trying to recapture whatever magic you had, and in my experience, ‘magic’ is usually just another word for ‘drunkenness’. Second dates should, like all good sequels, be bigger and better than the first, with higher stakes. So I texted Sam to ask whether she’d like to meet me in a pop-up bar in a Hackney car park. Drinking on an empty stomach in the open air seemed like a stakes upgrade to me.

  But Sam had other ideas. There’s a drag king contest on in Dalston. Fancy it?

  Sure, I replied. I’d always been a big fan of drag queens, but I’d never seen a king before.

  I WhatsApped Cat and Alice to update them. Cat replied first: Get in!

  I texted Ella, too
. She sent me an aubergine emoji and wrote: That’s a dildo, not a dick!

  As I was trying to think of a witty reply, my phone pinged with another message from Sam: We don’t have to stay for the whole thing. I can think of a few things we could do afterwards …

  I decided to borrow Alice’s push-up bra again.

  The drag king show was in a dark, cosy, queer pub called The Glory, on Kingsland Road. By the time I arrived, the place was rammed with trendy-looking lesbians and gay men and genderqueer people, chatting excitedly, calling out to each other across the bar. The silver tinsel curtain at the back of the stage shimmered and rippled as unseen figures behind it moved around. The show was about to start.

  ‘Julia!’

  Sam was sitting at a quiet table at the back. She stood up as I walked towards her, grinning, hands in her pockets.

  I found her almost unbearably attractive.

  ‘What are you drinking?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m buying,’ she said, in a voice that I couldn’t argue with. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Some kind of lager,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  She edged around me to the bar, stooping to kiss my cheek as she passed.

  Sam was still at the bar when the house lights went down and the crowd began to stamp and cheer in anticipation. A man in his forties, who I guessed was the host of the club, took to the stage with a drag king in a leather jacket. They began to sing ‘Under Pressure’, the drag king taking the Freddie Mercury part. He wasn’t wearing anything beneath the jacket; his nipples were covered in plasters, and he had a six-pack contoured onto his stomach. His stubble was quite convincing. He moved like a man.

  Sam came back with two pints and a packet of crisps clenched in her teeth. ‘Good, aren’t they?’ she said, nodding up at the stage.

  ‘Hot, too,’ I said.

  ‘What, Butch Cassidy?’

  ‘That’s the drag king?’

  Sam nodded. ‘Out of drag, her name’s Josie Cassidy. Went on a date with her once. But we both wanted to be in charge, so it didn’t really work.’

  I turned back to the stage. Butch Cassidy was kneeling now, flirting with the women in the front row, reaching down to touch their hands.