In at the Deep End

by Kate Davies

  ‘Hey, babes,’ she said. ‘I know we were going for dinner tonight, but Jasper has asked if we want to go to Fuck Everything. Fancy it?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘You’ll love it,’ she said. ‘It’s a really friendly night. And you don’t literally have to fuck everything. We’ll just have sex with each other.’

  ‘In public?’ I asked under my breath, as the Minister of State for Health brushed past me.

  ‘Sorry?’ Sam said.

  ‘Do we have to do it in public?’ I was walking into the office now, past the reporters and television crew smiling despite the rain under transparent umbrellas.

  ‘We don’t have to. We can just watch, if we want. Go on, babes.’

  I said yes.

  ‘I’m going to a sex club tonight,’ I said, as Owen and I waited for our computers to boot up.

  He looked up at me, impressed. ‘No way.’

  ‘Way.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Is it a gay sex club?’

  ‘I think it’s anything goes, actually.’ I opened my notebook and flicked casually to my to-do list, feeling pleased with my exotic sex life.

  Owen stood up and came to stand by my desk. ‘Please let me come?’ he said. He straightened his tie, as though that would make a difference.

  ‘Definitely not,’ I said. ‘I don’t think that would be very good for our friendship.’

  ‘I think it would be excellent for our friendship,’ Owen said. ‘It would be a bonding experience. Tea?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said, and I handed him the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ mug from my desk.

  Owen plodded to the kitchen, and I logged into my computer. I already had an email from Sam: Can’t wait for tonight! Xxxx

  Owen placed my mug, with uncharacteristic carefulness, on my coaster.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  He was still standing next to my desk.

  I looked at him. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘You’re still here.’

  ‘Now can I come?’ he said. ‘I could bring Laura. One of her ex-boyfriends used to tie her up, apparently. She might be into it.’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  As the hours passed I found it harder and harder to concentrate; I kept starting an email and getting distracted when a new one arrived in my inbox and forgetting what I was doing, or clicking on a marketing email and following all the links until Owen caught me looking at a selection of overpriced French socks with fruit on them and said ‘Very sexy!’ before I could minimize my screen.

  I felt so jittery that I ran all the way home from Manor House station to try and get rid of the excess energy. I needed to calm down. I banged open the flat door and turned on the kitchen light, reaching for a bottle of cheap whisky Alice and I bought for a Burns supper once and keep at the back of the cupboard for drinking emergencies. I took a swig straight from the bottle. The dirty-tasting liquid burned away the anxiety and I felt instantly calmer. Maybe a night out at a sex club was what I needed. I was pretty sure it would take my mind off the prospect of working for the Freedom of Information requests team.

  I had a very thorough shower and put on my most flattering underwear and a wrap dress, for easy access. I wasn’t planning on having sex, necessarily, but I didn’t want to wear jeans and rule myself out of the party entirely. This was all an adventure! A brilliant adventure! Most people never experienced things like this in their entire lives. But as I put on my eyeliner, my hand was shaking.

  The club was under a pub down a side street in Kings Cross, defiantly dirty and seedy in amongst the chain cocktail bars and wide pavements and newly planted trees, like a pensioner who refused to sell up in the face of gentrification. I studied the other people waiting to go in; there were two bears in overly tight leather waistcoats, but other than that, everyone just looked like they were queuing up at Tesco for a couple of pints of milk. And then I saw Sam, leaning against the wall near the doorman in leather trousers and a black T-shirt, staring straight at me, unsmiling, waiting for me to notice her.

  I waved, feeling stupid, and she walked up to me, hands in pockets, still not smiling, and kissed me on the neck. ‘Can’t wait to get you inside,’ she muttered into my ear, and I shivered. Half of me was terrified, wondering why I’d let myself be talked into this. But the other half couldn’t wait for her to get me inside, either.

  The club was dark and dank and pretty empty. Clusters of people were standing at the edges, like awkward teenagers waiting for someone to ask them to dance. Just off the main room were three smaller, darker rooms – caves, almost. Occasionally couples would emerge from them, straightening their clothes, smoothing their hair. ‘Those are the playrooms,’ Sam said. ‘Want to go and have a look?’

  I nodded, smiling a little too widely.

  We walked towards the nearest of the three anterooms. Before we’d even got there, we could hear a woman crying out. ‘Someone’s having fun,’ said Sam.

  Jasper was having fun, it turned out, spanking a woman who was lying face down on what looked like a black hospital bed, bum bared, buttocks red. She turned her head as we walked in. It was Polly. She didn’t seem embarrassed, but I definitely was.

  ‘Let’s leave them to it,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Sam said, settling back against the wall, her arms crossed. ‘We can watch for a bit.’ She put an arm around me and then turned towards the others, smiling passively the way you do when you see a particularly good juggler or street dancer near Oxford Circus Tube on your way to buy tights in Topshop.

  I tried to relax; Polly and Jasper didn’t seem fazed by our presence. If anything, they were playing up to us. But I flinched every time Polly cried out. The whole thing felt wrong. It was a bit like squeezing your blackheads, or masturbating, or watching reality television – an absorbing solo activity for a Sunday night. Not something you want to do in front of other people. Definitely not something you wanted to watch someone else doing.

  Sam looked across at me. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing!’ I said, turning back to watch Polly and Jasper.

  Sam was still looking at me. ‘Want to play?’

  I didn’t particularly want to play, not if it involved spanking or being stared at while I tried to orgasm. But I didn’t want to stand there watching other people play, either.

  ‘Come on,’ Sam said, teasing. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘So let’s do it.’ She turned to me and kissed me before I could protest. I closed my eyes and pretended I was in Sam’s flat, and I was actually getting quite into it until I heard another thwack and another cry and my eyes jolted open. Sam’s hands moved from my waist to open the tie of my wraparound dress, but I put a stop to that pretty sharpish. ‘Let’s go to another room,’ I said, as huskily as I could. ‘On our own.’

  She took my hand and led me from the room, winking at Jasper, and walked me through the main dance floor, which was starting to fill up, to another damp cave. I was very pleased to find it empty. There were a variety of ropes hanging from the ceiling. Luckily, Sam didn’t seem particularly interested in those. She didn’t seem interested in warming me up either – maybe she assumed I’d be warmed up after watching the spanking. She clearly was – she just pushed me up against the wall and pulled my dress aside to fuck me.

  I closed my eyes and tried to forget about the weird ropes and the smell of latex and the muffled cries of ‘Yes! Harder!’ Fucking in a public place had always been a fantasy of mine, but I’d never pulled it off successfully. I’d once had sex in the back garden of my house at uni, but the risk of being caught and the cold November air had given the bloke a bit of performance anxiety and it was all a bit floppy and disappointing. There was nothing to get floppy this time – but I’d spent years locking changing room doors and generally not taking my clothes off in front of other people, so taking my underwear off and allowing someone to fuck me in front of complete stran
gers was going to be a bit of an adjustment. Come on, I told myself. Don’t be so English. Try to get into it. The techno music pulsed through me. I focused on Sam’s hot tongue on my clit, and the cool breeze on my nipples, and the thud thud thud of the beat, and it worked, and I started to come – except as everything was building nicely to a climax, the music changed.

  ‘Mr Lover Lover. Ooh,’ crooned Shaggy.

  I tried to stay in the moment but my mind was back at a primary school disco.

  ‘Mr Boombastic, telly-fantastic,’ continued Shaggy, as Sam soldiered valiantly onwards.

  I opened my eyes and took in the damp walls and the curls on Sam’s head, bobbing up and down, and the people on the dance floor, dancing ironically.

  ‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ I said, and just then a woman walked into the room, ignoring Sam completely, and said, ‘Sorry, but we’re shutting the playrooms now? Can you finish up? Thanks!’ She turned around and marched back out as though she did this sort of thing every day, which I suppose she did. That brought me back to myself, and I was suddenly aware that I was half naked.

  I grabbed Sam’s hair to stop her, but that only seemed to turn her on, and then Jasper stuck her head around the door and watched us for a minute, murmuring, ‘Hot,’ and then, ‘We’ll wait for you outside.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  Sam looked up at me. ‘We’re not leaving till you’ve come,’ she said.

  I suppose if I’d insisted she would have stopped. But I can’t be sure, because I didn’t. It seemed easier not to argue.

  I clamped my eyes shut again and for the first and hopefully last time in my life, I came, in public, to a Nineties reggae song.

  21. THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  The sex club was sexier and more fun in retrospect. I told Ella all about it the next day in swing class and it made a funny story, the Shaggy song, and the woman walking in on us, and me watching Sam’s friends spank each other. It felt a bit jarring, talking about playrooms, ropes, etc. at 2 p.m. on a Sunday, as we learned to jive to Cole Porter. A bit like ordering a salad at McDonald’s.

  ‘You do realize you don’t have to have sex in public, just because you’re a lesbian?’ Ella said, as we did a turn out. She was wearing a sequinned waistcoat today. It caught the light as we danced.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘And that most lesbians wouldn’t even know what to do with an enema kit.’ She spun around on the spot, glittering.

  ‘I’m quite happy not knowing, myself,’ I said.

  ‘I just think you’ve gone in at the lesbian deep end,’ said Ella. ‘You should try some lesbian bed death to balance it out.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like so much fun, though,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not,’ said Ella, nodding. ‘Good point.’

  I felt almost cheerful as I walked to work that Monday. I’d started to dread going to work after Tom had told us to ‘look into our options’, my heart rate speeding up the nearer I got to Victoria Street, but the sex club had helped put things in perspective. What I did for a living wasn’t important – it was how I passed the time until I could go out and dance, and fuck, possibly in public. I did far more exciting things every night than most people I knew. I was part of an underground scene. I’d always wanted to be part of an underground scene.

  Owen brought me a cup of tea as soon as I sat down that morning. ‘How was it?’

  ‘How was what?’

  ‘The sex club!’ He was practically rubbing his hands on his thighs.

  ‘A bit dingy.’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘You did, didn’t you? Just with Sam or with strangers, too?’

  ‘Owen! I don’t ask you about your sex life.’

  ‘I promise you, if there was anything interesting to tell you, you’d be the first to hear about it.’

  ‘I thought you were banging Laura.’

  He flicked a paperclip off my desk. ‘She hasn’t texted me since last Friday.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah. I feel like shit.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘You can tell me about the sex club.’

  ‘No.’

  But he looked so crestfallen, I said, ‘The walls were damp. And it was all a lot less exciting than you’re probably imagining.’

  He cheered up a bit at that. ‘You’re a much more interesting lesbian than Carys is.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My sister. She mostly just Instagrams her breakfast. I think you’d like her, though.’

  ‘Why, because we’re both gay?’

  ‘No,’ Owen said, put out. ‘Because you’re both very nice people.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  He gave me a sad sort of smile.

  ‘Have you tried texting her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Laura.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Quite a lot.’

  ‘But she never replies?’

  ‘She did once, yesterday, to say she needed space.’

  ‘And you kept texting her?’

  ‘Not any more. Carys made me delete her number. I wrote it down on a bit of paper and put it in my sock drawer, though, just in case.’

  ‘Good for Carys,’ I said.

  Alice was pretty envious of my sex club experience, too. She and Dave weren’t having sex nearly as often as they had been, it turned out.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘I had a urinary tract infection about a month ago and that threw things off a bit.’

  ‘They’re the worst,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He was a love, he kept buying me cranberry juice, but I couldn’t bear to look at his penis for a while after that. All that friction.’

  ‘Ugh. Don’t.’

  ‘But I need to make more of an effort.’ She looked up at me. ‘He said something about getting married the other day. Again.’ She watched me for my reaction. ‘I said I wasn’t sure,’ she said, almost apologetically. ‘And I asked him whether he wanted to get married, and he said he definitely did and he wasn’t sure he could be with someone who didn’t.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything. But it would be silly to give up a good relationship because of a piece of paper I don’t even believe in, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Dave is great.’

  I held out my glass to cheers her, and when she knocked her glass against mine, a little wine spilled onto her jeans. She licked a finger and mopped it up.

  ‘The thing is, I never saw myself with someone as masculine as Dave. I always thought I’d end up with a camp man who liked opera, or used a lot of hand cream and wore pink ties.’

  ‘A Tory.’

  ‘No! A Green voter, probably, the sort of person who goes on protests about the Arctic. Dave’s just such a man.’

  I nodded. ‘He even has a beard.’

  ‘And when we’re walking down the road, he walks on the outside, because that’s what he thinks men should do, and he holds the door open for me in restaurants.’

  ‘Sam does that too,’ I told her.

  ‘Do you hate it?’ she asked, draining her glass and holding up the empty bottle optimistically as though it might have automatically refilled itself.

  ‘Actually I sort of like it,’ I told her. ‘She wears men’s underwear.’

  ‘No!’ Alice said. ‘Does she wear a bra?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hairy legs?’

  ‘Yes. And pits. But almost hairless downstairs.’

  ‘But she behaves like a gentleman,’ Alice said, crossing her legs. ‘All the trappings of masculinity, but without the weapon of mass destruction. I wish I were a lesbian, sometimes. Apart from having to lick the snail.’

  ‘The snail is integral,’ I said.

  ‘You never have to worry about compromising your principles. Even if you married her and took her name,
you still wouldn’t be giving in to the patriarchy.’ She leaned back against the kitchen door and looked at me. ‘Tell me the truth. Would you think less of me if I got married?’

  I wasn’t sure what to say. To play for time, I walked to the fridge, to find something to eat. There was nothing except an ageing piece of cheddar, brittle at the edges. That would do. I sliced off the dry patches and cut it into chunks.

  ‘That’s gross,’ Alice said as I put a lump of cheese in my mouth. It tasted all right, actually – a little more on the mature side, that was all.

  ‘You ate all the cereal,’ I pointed out.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ she said.

  I crossed my arms. ‘Of course I wouldn’t think less of you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Alice. ‘Because I’d be happy for you, if you got married. I’ve already thought about what I’d say in the speech.’

  ‘You’re making a speech at my wedding now? My wedding to Sam?’

  ‘Of course,’ Alice said, put out, apparently, that I hadn’t included her in my non-existent wedding.

  ‘I don’t think that’s on the cards any time soon,’ I told her. ‘We’re a bit too busy having sex in weird padded rooms in front of her friends.’

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ Alice said, picking up a piece of cheddar between her thumb and forefinger and examining it before putting it in her mouth.

  ‘We’re going to an SM club next weekend,’ I told her.

  Alice grabbed my arm. ‘Oh my God! Really? Could me and Dave come?’

  I looked at her.

  ‘That would be crossing a line, wouldn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘A lot of lines,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s try a new thing this week,’ Nicky said as soon as I was settled in the terrible armchair. ‘I’ve been learning about a new kind of therapy called ACT. It’s a cross between mindfulness and CBT.’

  ‘I didn’t have you down as a mindfulness sort of person,’ I said.

  ‘I like to think I’m constantly surprising.’

  ‘You are,’ I assured her.