Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker

by Portnoy, Suzanne

  ‘Nice cock. Are you free on Friday night?’ I wrote, giving him my mobile number. He wrote back the next day and invited me to a movie. I’m not meeting a man, I thought. I’m meeting a cock.

  I met him at the Swiss Centre in Leicester Square. Omar looked just like his photo, the clothed photo, anyway – always a pleasant surprise, considering how many vintage pix people post, pre-bald, pre-fat, pre-wrinkles, pre-1995. He was black, about six feet tall and very slim, with short hair and a big smile. He was wearing jeans, a striped shirt and black, square-toed loafers. He looked as relaxed as any man with a foot-long cock would. He saw me and smiled.

  We kissed hello and then he let out a bizarre laugh – high, almost a giggle, almost feminine. Not a turn-on, but then I was looking for a tantric partner, not a full-time boyfriend, and, given the choice, a good cock beats a bad laugh.

  ‘Follow me,’ I said after the movie. ‘I have a bottle of wine at my place. Interested?’

  He was, and got in the car. On the way back to mine he said, ‘So, what do you have in mind?’

  ‘A bath,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking about taking a bath with you. I’m thinking a nice hot bath would be the perfect way to start off the evening. With a joint.’

  ‘I’ve never started with a bath,’ said Omar.

  ‘It’s a tantric thing,’ I explained. ‘Cleansing, relaxing.’

  ‘Tantric, huh?’ Omar arched one eyebrow alluringly. ‘Tell me more.’

  I told him about my lessons and my homework assignment. ‘I could certainly be up for that,’ he said.

  Half an hour later we were in my house, smoking a joint and lying naked in my big bathtub. The water was hot and scented with rose oil. The only light came from two candles, just enough that I could see an extremely impressive cock floating to the surface. Huge, as advertised. It was like a baby’s arm. And then it got bigger. I got wet just looking at it.

  Stretching my toes towards him, I played with it, rubbing my feet up and down the shaft. I wondered how much blood it took to get a cock like that hard. I wondered if he passed out when he came or even before he got there, given how much blood and energy must have gone into making that thing work.

  That huge diversion aside, the bath was relaxing, if a little cramped, and we stayed in the water until it grew cool. Omar didn’t seem to be in a rush, so he’d passed the first tantric test. ‘It’s all about taking your time. There is no rush,’ Jahnet had told me. We each grabbed a towel, dried off and went to my 6'6" super-king-size bed, a bed made for sex. I can do anything on that bed, and have – change positions three times without falling over the side, or sleep with a stranger and forget he’s there. When my husband-to-be and I bought the bed, some fifteen years earlier, the sales assistant told us it was a great bed for starting a family. He should have said, ‘This is a bed built for sex,’ because that’s what it became, especially after the divorce.

  Omar was very slim, but had an athlete’s body and impressive muscle definition – a well-defined six-pack, solid pecs, meaty biceps. But that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I was thinking about what he was going to feel like in my mouth and inside of me. I did not have to wait too long to find out.

  I got on my knees and went between his legs, holding his heavy cock in my hands, almost distracted by my newly red-lacquered fingernails, tarted up just for our date. But not so distracted. He was very hard and very thick. I put him in my mouth and could just about take in the head. I could tease him, but there was no chance of deep throating. So I thought of Jahnet’s advice: ‘Relax, darling. Learn to relax, take your time.’ I relaxed the muscles of my jaw, and the technique seemed to work.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘That’s unbelievably good.’ We reversed positions so that we were lying side by side but with our heads on opposite ends of the bed, his cock in my mouth, his tongue in my pussy. I was very wet.

  I loved fucking Omar. He proved the lyrics to the Maria Muldaur song ‘it ain’t the meat, it’s the motion’ are bullshit. It is the meat; a big cock inside a tight pussy is a fantastic feeling. Omar and I fucked and fucked and fucked that evening. He had incredible stamina. This guy doesn’t know squat about tantric sex, I thought, but he sure knows plenty about self-control. I thought of how I’d fallen off the tantric wagon, and how someone like Omar might get me back on.

  I didn’t think about coming, and it took all my tantric powers not to. Just picturing Omar’s huge cock made me swoon. But I knew my history: once I come, I want to go – it’s over. In that sense, I’m a bit like a man. After coming, I want to roll over and go to sleep. The catch is, if my partner hasn’t come by the time I have, I’m stuck waiting it out, lying back and thinking of England.

  ‘Would you like to fuck me up the ass?’ I said to Omar. I thought that might get him to shoot. I wondered whether I could actually take something quite so large up there.

  ‘Wow, the best blowjob and now anal,’ he said. ‘This is a dream date.’

  I lay on my side to facilitate easier access. Slowly he inched his way up. We took it half-inch by half-inch. Eventually he was there, and happy, as was I. I don’t know if it’s the naughty factor or the fact that the walls between the anus and vagina are so thin, but a penis in my anus feels almost like double penetration – double pleasure. In this case, it soon became double penetration: I grabbed a vibrator from my bedside drawer and rested it on my clit while Omar explored my ass. I built up to an orgasm over the next ten minutes. Omar waited for me to come, and then, pumping me hard, came up my ass. I felt his cock go soft inside me. Then, just before nodding off, I pulled him out and threw the condom in the basket by my bed. It was like yanking a cork out of a wine bottle – his cock fell on to the mattress with a soft thump, an oddly unsexy sound. Suddenly, it brought us back to earth.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ Omar said. ‘I’ve got to be up early in the morning. I’m playing tennis with a mate. Sorry, huh?’

  ‘Don’t be. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow myself,’ I said. ‘Besides, maybe we’ll see each other again. I still have to talk to you about that tantric thing.’ I was halfway back to dreamland when I heard my front door shut.

  I arranged a date for the following day with a cute Irish theatre director named Brendan, another man who contacted me off SwingingHeaven. First, though, I had an appointment with my ex-boyfriend, Jack. We agreed to meet at Primrose Hill Park. It was just around the corner from the Engineer, the fash gastropub where Brendan and I were to meet later. Jack and I spent a couple of hours in the park, some of it playing with his springer spaniel, most of it dissecting Jack’s already failing relationship with his girlfriend.

  This was the ex-girlfriend for whom he’d left me just a few months earlier. He rehashed the minutiae of his relationship about a dozen times, until the excessive detail and repetition caused me to feel grateful he’d dumped me. I am free! I thought.

  There’s something liberating about meeting up with a recent ex and feeling nothing. It’s almost empowering to realise that, after such intimacy and love and yin-yang harmony, the strings no longer are attached to your groin and heart. Jack had the blues, but I felt happy. I was wearing a pale-blue V-neck sleeveless Ghost dress that clung to my body and accentuated my curves, plus a pair of blue denim wedge high-heeled sandals that gave my calves a boost. My hair still held the becoming bounce and shape the hairdresser had concocted a couple of days earlier. I’d put on a little make-up, too, wanting to both impress Jack and also look good for the man who came after him.

  Eventually, it came time to leave Jack to meet Brendan. I was starting to get excited, having half-fantasised about my Irish hottie, half-listened to Jack’s sob story. I looked at my watch.

  ‘Look, Jack, I hate to cut you short, but we’d better make a move,’ I said. ‘I have to meet this guy in fifteen minutes. You want to walk me to the end of the park?’

  ‘Sure, hon.’

  We walked to the edge of Primrose Hill and said goodbye. As I turned the corner on to the street where the pub and Br
endan awaited, Jack shouted after me, ‘You look great. He’s a lucky guy.’

  I walked to the Engineer and recognised Brendan immediately. He was standing at the bar drinking a Guinness. Just shy of six feet and a dashing combo of curly dark hair and blue eyes. I thought, Jackpot. He fixed me with a look I found utterly charming as well as flattering, in that I interpreted its meaning as: ‘Thank God, she looks like her picture.’ He said, ‘Hello, Suzanne’ in a soft Dublin accent that I found sexy.

  ‘Hello. That’ll be a glass of white wine.’

  He laughed. Jackpot.

  We had dinner, or rather I did. Though in one of our pre-meet conversations I’d said, ‘I’ll book a table,’ he somehow hadn’t figured that meant we’d actually be eating. He’d already had his dinner, he said, so, as I ate a warm chicken salad, he drank another Guinness.

  We chatted about our careers. He had one play going to Edinburgh and another transferring to the West End soon. He was in negotiations for a feature film. A rising talent on the theatre scene, I thought. I wonder what else I can make rise. I looked at him over our table, and began picturing the two of us together. He was very serious, very focused on his work. I wondered if he had thirty-eight-year-old-man Syndrome.

  I have an address book full of men in their late thirties, all suffering with the same ailment. They’re all men heading for forty, on the fast track and obsessed with achieving their professional goals before the end of their fourth decade. They are all pretty much the same – workaholics, unmarried and extremely ambitious. If they haven’t found the love of their life by the time they’re thirty-eight, they rationalise; love can wait another few years until they’ve made their mark. These men are impossible to see regularly – always too busy.

  Too busy, that is, until their hormones kick in and they suddenly find themselves horny. That’s when they ring me. I can almost schedule their booty calls on my calendar. After the first date, they’ll ring me two months later. Then two months after that. Eight weeks is about how long they can go without getting laid.

  ‘You’re joking, girl, if you think these guys don’t see anyone else but you,’ said Pat.

  ‘You’re deluded, Suzanne,’ said Bernadette.

  I’m not so sure I am. I’ve learnt to spot 38-year-old-man Syndrome from the first five minutes of the very first date, and, after relegating the men to their category, it works for me. Usually, I don’t want to see these guys any more frequently than they want to see me.

  Brendan, I quickly learnt, fit the profile. ‘I’m postponing a relationship for the time being,’ he said. Seemed an odd thing to admit on a first date, even to someone he met off SwingingHeaven. Doesn’t mean you can’t be an occasional tantric partner, I thought.

  ‘Surely, being surrounded by actresses and wannabes, you have plenty of contenders?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t date actresses,’ he said. ‘You have to be careful in my profession. I don’t want to end up with some mad thespian who thinks I’m going to be her passport to fame.’ He recounted a few tragic tales of woe. ‘I have to be taken seriously. It just wouldn’t look right to date an actress.’

  He was so earnest, so serious. According to his moral code, he would not take advantage of aspiring actresses who might see him as a career move, but he had no problem using a middle-aged woman for sex. That confirmed my diagnosis: thirty-eight-year-old-man Syndrome. It felt a little like having dinner with a student. I felt the urge to pat his head and assure him everything would be all right. As well as the urge to teach him a few facts of life. He must have been the only West End director, straight or gay, who actually used a couch for sitting on.

  ‘Lighten up, Brendan,’ I said. ‘Life really can be fun, you know.’ I thought that, if he’d loosen up a little, he might actually be quite fun. He was cute, a little shy and had a charming smile and those twinkly eyes. I wondered if beneath all the earnestness was an animal.

  ‘I do like to get stoned from time to time,’ he said, as if to prove he really knew how to live it up.

  ‘Lucky you,’ I said. ‘I have a joint at my house – if you’re interested.’ I’d settled into the idea of our spending the rest of the evening at my place.

  ‘Oh. Oh. I hadn’t realised that you expected to have sex with me tonight,’ he said. ‘I thought we were just checking each other out. I wanted to make sure you weren’t a nutter.’ Brendan told me that he had a playwright friend visiting from Ireland and he had to ‘shoot off’ by nine p.m. to meet his mate at Camden Town station. ‘What about next time we skip dinner and I meet you at your place with a bottle of wine and some really good hash?’

  I was disappointed but thought there existed the promise for a future rendezvous. Plus, I still hadn’t yet posed the tantric idea. I wondered if he’d be up to it. He liked his hash, at least, and I assumed he liked sex, at least every eight weeks. But what kind of guy thought that, by answering an ad on a swinging site, he’d be going on a real date?

  We walked to Camden Town Station together, had a quick snog outside the Tube and arranged to meet up soon. He knew how to kiss: good sign. I drove home that night hoping I hadn’t wasted my time – and money, having paid for my salad.

  The next weekend I had an appointment with Andy, the ‘tantric masseur and stud’. Since our previous date at Rio’s, he was my first and only tantric partner. As I discovered after that first time together, he was an expert lover and we had a mind–body connection like none I’d ever experienced with anyone before. Our bodies fitted together – like two pieces of a puzzle, I remember thinking, guiltily, that thought being so unoriginal. And yet, we sure did fit: he could stay hard for hours. For the first time in my life, I experienced the ‘waves of pleasure’ Jahnet had told me about, almost coming, again and again, until finally building to that well-earned climax. He was sensitive and caring.

  Each time we met I would lay two foam mattresses on my sitting-room floor, cover them with an Indian bedspread I’d bought in Goa before my marriage. Andy would take out a massage oil he had specially prepared for me that smelt of ylang ylang, geranium and rose. I’d lie on my stomach and he’d massage my back, easing out the knots in my shoulder and neck before moving down my body. Soon he would be massaging my labia and I would feel myself getting wet. I’d turn over and he would go to work on the rest of me, massaging my breasts, my abdomen, up and down my legs, until finally settling back on my pussy and gently massaging my vagina. Thank you, Jahnet, I’d think.

  After such sensitive touch and loving attention, I would be deeply relaxed and more than ready for him. We would fuck for hours, neither of us thinking about coming, just enjoying the waves of pleasure that make tantric sex so unique. When the energy became too great and both of us felt we were plunging towards orgasm, we would stop. Then we’d settle into the scissor position, our legs entwined, Andy inside me. We would stay in this position for twenty or thirty minutes, perfectly still.

  ‘You must let yourself go,’ Jahnet had instructed, and with Andy and tantric it was easy to comply. I would be transported to an otherworldly place where all that mattered was rhythm and pace and all I felt were endorphins and pleasure. Closeness, too – it was dreamlike, this union of two bodies. In a sense, the tantric goal of pleasure coupled with detachment meant it had something in common with swinging clubs and anonymous sex. It certainly wasn’t about love in either case. But in swinging clubs I got off on getting men off. It wasn’t about my pleasure; it was about the excitement I got from turning on so many men and making them come. It was vampiric, sucking up male energy. Tantric is the opposite: the focus is firmly on me. In tantric sex, men withhold their orgasm in order to please the woman they are with, connecting solely with them, following their rhythm. Partners combine their energies so that both reach the same peaks at the same time – the circle of energy, not just the usual orgasmic payoff.

  Jahnet had taught me enough to get started. Now, practising concepts explored in some books on tantric sex I’d bought, I felt I was making progress with
my homework. I had one partner; I needed another two. If I found my three tantric partners, I believed, I could carry on this way for a very long time.

  Keeping detached – Jahnet’s other homework assignment, along with finding three tantric partners – was easy when I didn’t have an intellectual connection with my tantric partner. And I didn’t have much to say to Andy – we had very little in common, led very different lives and there was a ten year age gap – so I had no desire to speak to him or see him in between our meetings.

  ‘I know we’re supposed to be detached,’ he said once, ‘but sometimes I just want to talk to you.’ He confessed that sometimes he longed for me, but that he was trying to get beyond that. Visualisation exercises apparently helped. ‘I just breathe through the feelings of wanting to be with you. I think it’s working.’

  I didn’t know what to say to my sexy tantric hippy hottie. ‘I’m sorry, Andy. You knew the rules when we met. I just want a tantric partner once a month, and in between our meetings there’s to be no communication,’ I said. Then I used my trump card: ‘That’s Jahnet’s homework.’

  I thought about what Jahnet had said: ‘It may take a dozen men, maybe more, before you find your three.’ I wondered if at some point in my journey Andy might have to go, but for now he was just homework.

  The day before one of Andy’s visits, my son Martin and I were making my bed. He and Alfred had their bags packed by the front door, ready for the car ride that would take them to another weekend with their father.

  ‘Can you help me turn the mattress, honey?’ I asked. The mattress was a monster, impossible to move alone, and even with another body helping me I figured it would probably prove impossible to budge. After fifteen years of use and abuse – a cliché phrase that, in this case, was wholly appropriate because all too true – it had become weighted down with my and other people’s sweat and smegma and blood and history. The stuffing was so tightly compressed now, I could hardly move the mattress an inch even when changing the sheets.