It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake

by Claire Christian

  ‘No, thank you,’ I tell him. He passes me another shot and we clink our glasses. He makes eye contact and I grin. Niko’s eyes smoulder. I know they smoulder, because my vagina tells me they do.

  ‘What’s that face?’ he asks, staring at me.

  ‘Just—nothing. You have nice eyes,’ I say. I get the bartender’s attention and signal for two more shots.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I know I’ve already told you, but your hair looks great like this. I really like it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The bar is loud, Niko leans in closer. ‘I also really like this skirt.’

  When the second shot arrives, I swallow hard and swing it back. Fuck. Here we go…

  ‘If you were hitting on me you could’ve said something like, it’d look better on my floor though.’

  Niko laughs loudly and swallows his drink, not taking his eyes off my face. I think he’s trying to read my intention. BE SEXY, NONI! NOW! I try to make my eyes smoulder, but I think I just look really drunk.

  ‘Would you like me to hit on you, Noni?’ he asks and my insides squelch.

  ‘Yes,’ I squeak, hoping that’s the right answer.

  Niko smirks. ‘Well, in that case, it would look better on my floor,’ he says. It bloody worked. I smile and squeeze his shoulder and then I immediately head to the bathroom and call Lindell. This is too much bold action for one night. I need backup. He doesn’t answer. I check the time. It’s after 1 a.m. Of course he isn’t answering. You’re on your own, Noni. I look at my phone again, then remember Niko’s business card. I pull it out and stare at the number, biting my lip.

  Want to play a game? I message. Love Noni.

  With you? Of course, he replies straight away.

  Fuck. Okay. Um. Give me an adjective, I type.

  Beautiful, he replies.

  Tell me something beautiful, I text back.

  You, he replies.

  Your turn, I type.

  He takes his time. I watch my phone. Two other teachers come into the bathroom and they screech when they see me. My phone dings. I don’t pay attention to what they’re saying.

  Tell me something sexy, he writes.

  Being kissed on the neck, I type. Here we fucking go!

  Tell me something sexy, I send.

  You, he replies. I flutter from the inside out. My phone dings. Tell me something that turns you on, he adds.

  This, I type. The two other teachers wrap their arms around me and drag me out of the bathroom. I type my next message as we head back into the bar.

  Tell me something you’d like to do.

  Niko is on the other side of the room in a circle of teachers with a beer in one hand and his phone in the other. He smiles at me, then looks down at his phone. I watch him read and type. My phone dings.

  You.

  My smile comes from someplace that’s not my face, it comes from someplace lower. It pulses joy around my body. I walk over to the table where my bag is stashed, pick up my belongings, hug a few people and head over to the group that Niko is standing with.

  ‘I’m off,’ I say as I hug the others. Niko is last. I hug him, breathe him in. He smells so good.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ he whispers in my ear. This is exactly what I hoped he’d do. I nod and walk out of the bar. I stand waiting out the front and within seconds there is a hand in the small of my back that ushers me towards a taxi. The door opens and I slide in, Niko slides in next to me, gives the taxi driver an address, looks at me, grabs my face in both his hands and kisses me—he does all of this like it’s one swift movement. I’m so desperately impressed.

  We kiss in the back of the cab the whole way back to his house. His hand under my skirt and on my thigh—the pencil skirt is so tight his hand can’t go any higher. Oh, god, I wish it could.

  He opens the door of the taxi and takes my hand as I get out. He lives in an apartment building in a part of the city that I could never afford to live in. It requires a swipe card to do anything. Everything is clean black marble. He kisses my neck as we fly up floor after floor in the elevator and I am so turned on I can barely keep it together. He unlocks the door to his unit.

  ‘After you.’

  I walk in. It’s slick. Neat. It smells manly, like aftershave and wood and cleaning products. I sit at a silver stool at the kitchen bench and take my heels off, looking around. This is the kind of decor where everything has a place. There’s a stack of perfectly aligned coffee-table books in the centre of the coffee table. All that’s on my coffee table is a pile of single socks I can’t find the other half to, a stack of unopened mail and an empty wine glass.

  ‘Wine?’ he asks.

  ‘Vodka?’ I reply.

  He opens a cupboard and looks in. ‘Gin?’

  ‘Fine.’

  I walk towards the giant floor-to-ceiling-window, the carpet plush under my feet, and glance at the lights across the river. The view is amazing. I’m glad we came back here and not to my shitty one-bedroom unit where the carpet is threadbare and I’m pretty sure the tenant before me had a cat because sometimes when it’s really sunny it smells like urine. Niko walks up behind me, kisses me on the shoulder and hands me a glass. I take a sip. I watch him walk away, flick on an expensive lamp and sit on his very square couch.

  ‘You are a very sexy woman, Noni.’

  ‘It’s the skirt,’ I mumble.

  ‘It’s not the skirt.’

  ‘It’s the hair then.’ I smile, touching the short lock closest to my forehead. There is certainly no hiding in this skirt, or this haircut.

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s you.’

  I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. There’s a maroon legionnaire’s cap sitting on the coffee table. I pick it up.

  ‘This yours?’

  ‘Of course.’ He laughs. ‘No, it’s my nephew’s. He stays here sometimes.’

  I laugh and put it on. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Still sexy.’

  ‘I think I’m the first person to ever receive that compliment while wearing one of these.’

  Niko holds out his hand, I place mine in his and he pulls me towards him. He stays seated but his hands slide around my hips to the back of my skirt. He unzips it and slowly slides it down. I’m not wearing any underwear. The skirt is so tight you could see every line, so I just didn’t bother.

  ‘Amazing.’ Niko smiles when he realises. I step lightly out of the skirt, kicking it away as he lifts the fabric of my top and kisses my stomach, running his hands up my legs from my ankles to my knees, standing when he gets to my hips. He kisses my chest up to my neck. I kiss his mouth and pull at his shirt, which we both unbutton as quickly as we can.

  He takes my hand and guides me to his bedroom. It’s dark but I can tell his bed is made. I don’t know why that’s sexy, but it is. I lift my top over my head and lie down. Niko kisses me. Every part of me. I squirm with the pleasure of it all. A moan comes from a place that is not my vocal cords. It is all desire. I run my hands over his bare chest down to the waistband of his pants, unbuttoning them. He stands to slip them off and as he does the doona shifts slightly down the bed to reveal a texture I’m not quite used to. Rubbery. Actually, not rubbery. Just rubber. Niko has rubber sheets.

  My brain whirs. I try to stay in my body. In the pleasure. I pull him towards me. We are both naked and he is hard and I am ready, but no matter how many signals I give him, his penis comes nowhere near my vagina. We roll over so I am on top but he rolls me back over and he lies next me, staring into my eyes. It feels all too intimate for drunk, first-time sex so I kiss him as an excellent avoidance strategy, but he pulls away.

  ‘Noni, I’m not really into penetrative sex.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not really my thing.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But we can still have a good time? Yeah?’

  He kisses my neck and runs his fingers down my inner thighs, finding my clitoris, and I guess it feels good but I am way to
o in my own head. The rubber sheets. No penetration. He stops, leans over to his top drawer and pulls out a long rubber string of balls. It looks like the string of ice cubes my mum used to put in punch in the eighties.

  ‘Have you ever used these?’

  I shake my head. It’s a sex toy. I don’t know how I feel about someone pulling out a sex toy the first time. Is this his go-to move? How many women has he used this on? I am instantly out of my body and into my head and I feel my vagina’s metaphorical arms fold and she is shaking her head in disapproval.

  ‘No. I don’t think I want—’

  ‘It’s for me.’

  Oh, it’s for him. Well, that’s okay then, I guess? ‘Is that—’

  ‘They’re anal beads.’

  He wants me to use anal beads. He pushes a switch. They vibrate. They’re vibrating anal beads. This feels like some Christian Grey shit that I am completely unprepared for, and now all I can think about is the location of his sex dungeon.

  ‘We can go slow,’ he says and as he does, a surprise tube of honey has appeared and he is squirting it on my stomach and licking it off and groaning. He puts the beads in his own butt, and with the vibrating of anal beads in my ears and Niko writhing wildly eating honey from my flesh, I stare at the ceiling and think about poo. And then I think about the fact that sometimes people just surprise you. There is no saving this situation for me sexually. No coming back from this distracted array of thoughts. No cumming for me, which is fortunate because he cums loudly, biting my stomach hard, and I squeal.

  ‘Ow.’

  He looks at me soggy, sticky and satisfied. ‘Let’s have a shower.’

  I nod.

  It turns out when it comes to sex I’m quite happy being described as beige. I tell Niko an inarticulate version of this sentiment in the shower. He’s not embarrassed, not even a little bit. I, however, squirm my way through the whole interaction. I’m mortified. I quickly get dressed, watching as he spray-and-wipes his sheets, and I kiss him on the cheek.

  ‘I’m going to go home,’ I tell him. He nods.

  ‘Have a great trip, Noni,’ he says.

  I’m a cliché. I’m sitting on the floor of Lindell’s lounge room while he combs nits from my scalp.

  ‘This is love,’ I tell him.

  ‘I can’t believe you slept with a guy who gave you nits.’ Lindell giggles, stabbing my scalp with the comb.

  ‘He didn’t give me nits, his nephew gave me nits. And I didn’t sleep with him.’

  ‘I still don’t understand how this exchange happened.’

  ‘His nephew’s stuff was in the lounge room, including his legionnaire’s cap. I put it on and made a comment about no one looking sexy in a legionnaire’s cap. It became a thing.’

  ‘Please tell me you had sex while wearing a legionnaire’s cap.’

  ‘Very nearly.’ I seductively swing my nit-shampooed head around and peer at him, smiling.

  ‘Please tell me the legionnaire’s cap got swept off in a moment of passion then,’ he mutters.

  ‘Exactly.’ I raise my eyebrows and we crack up laughing.

  ‘Did you get too drunk and pass out?’ he asks.

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘Why do I feel like you’re holding out on me?’

  ‘Because I am.’

  ‘Why? What happened? Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m just—’ I stop. ‘I don’t know. Embarrassed. I think I’m beige.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In bed. Am I boring?’

  ‘I dunno. I doubt it. Did Niko say something? Did he call you boring? That fuckwit.’

  ‘No. No. Fuck. We didn’t really have sex, or we did, but it was…not what I’d usually do.’

  ‘You need to start using your words immediately.’ He is clinging to my shoulders and staring at me.

  ‘It was messy. He’s into making a mess.’

  I watch Lindell’s face process this, and his eyebrows almost fly off his forehead. ‘What kind of a mess?’

  ‘He had rubber sheets.’

  ‘Shit!’ He bites his lip.

  ‘And he said it like it was no big deal, like, we’re half naked and he just whips out some anal beads and tells me he doesn’t like penetration.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I blathered about like an idiot and we kept going, but my mind was racing with images of clean-up, and then he poured honey all over me, and honey is so sticky—’

  ‘Wait, what about the anal beads?’

  ‘He used them.’

  ‘On you?’

  ‘On himself. And so he’s having a great old time and I’m just thinking about how people surprise you, yes? Then I’m thinking about messes, and then I remembered that time I babysat and Julius pooed everywhere as I was changing his nappy and that was one of the vilest things…’

  Lindell is laughing so hard that tears drip onto the collar of his shirt.

  ‘He just acted like it was no big deal.’

  ‘Well, to him it isn’t.’ He smiles. ‘Has he said anything since?’

  ‘He sent me a message the next day that said, “We good?” and I just sent back a couple of emojis.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘The thumbs up, a poo and a yellow love heart.’

  Lindell loses it laughing again, his head lolled back. ‘Noni!’

  ‘I didn’t know what else to say.’

  It takes him ages to stop laughing. Me too. ‘Well, you have to tell him his nephew has nits.’

  ‘No!’ I put my face in my hands, shaking my head. ‘Nothing about this feels good, you know?’

  ‘Oh, but it feels very, very good for me. What about Molly—any more messages?’

  I hand him my phone and show him the thread of texts. We’ve pretty much been talking every day since she first replied. Nothing too deep. All flirtatious and funny. I watch his face as he reads, and my stomach flips with excitement thinking about Molly, about what’s going to happen with Molly.

  ‘Well this looks promising,’ Lindell says, as he returns to combing nits out of my hair. ‘This doesn’t though.’ He shows me the comb. ‘This is fucking disgusting.’

  12

  The month before I leave is filled with problem-solving and panic attacks. I move out of my unit and store everything at Dad’s. I didn’t want to pay rent for six months, but as I sweated, stacking boxes and listening to Dad tut disapprovingly, I wished I’d just taken the financial hit for ease’s sake.

  Christmas came and went, with lunch with my mum and my stepdad. Mum is the opposite of Dad—she doesn’t vocalise her worry or concern, just faffs about with a constipated look of trepidation on her face. She bought practical gifts, like toothbrush travel cases and makeup bags with drawstrings, and said things like: ‘Still wear a good SPF, because those European rays can trick you into thinking they’re not as dangerous as ours, Noni, but they are. Just because they’re not directly under the giant hole in the sky like we are doesn’t mean they’re not just as violent, and you have such lovely skin. And don’t forget your neck, and the backs of your hands. Everyone forgets their neck and their hands, and well look, they’re the places that give away your age. Here, I’ve got some in my handbag. It’s a fifty-plus one. Take it. I’ll get a new one later.’ I know she means well.

  Dad on the other hand only mentioned my haircut three times, my weight twice, and how I’m making a terrible mistake that I will regret forever because six months away will irrefutably make me unemployable, especially now that I no longer have a mortgage or a Joan, once, over dinner. So you know, he perked up for Christmas. What a gift. I usually have more patience for Mum than Dad, but their energy combined on one day amidst such a big change was a lot, so I faked a migraine and was in bed by 8 p.m. messaging Molly.

  See you soon, darlin, was how she signed off her last message when I was finally ready to sleep. She called me darlin. Merry Christmas indeed.

  The week between Christmas and New Year’s is spent with Lindell,
Graham and the kids. Which highlights how impossible spending six months without them feels. They are family—the family I’ve chosen for myself. The family who get me, who back my choices, who champion my whims and tell me I can do anything. Not only that I can, but that I should, and that it’ll be fantastic. And because they believe in me more than I believe in myself, I start to spiral emotionally when I consider just what the hell I am going to do with them being twelve hours ahead of me.

  ‘What if I need you and you’re asleep and so I make bad and reckless decisions that I regret for my whole life and have to clean up my own messes? Or heaven forbid, just make decisions without your counsel?’ I say to Lindell, who rolls his eyes at my dramatic outburst.

  ‘You’re going to be fine, my girl,’ is all he says.

  And then it’s January, and my life is packed up, and it’s time for Lindell to drive me to the airport. It’s time for my adventure to begin.

  He turns the music down in the car, exhaling loudly. ‘I’m your best mate, so I feel like I have to tell you this,’ he says, clutching the steering wheel tight. ‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. We can turn the car around and go home. And that will be fine. Also, you don’t have to stay there for the whole time either, you can come home anytime you want. Because you are an adult. And you’re capable and smart and brilliant and this isn’t about anyone else, Nons. This is about you and what you want. This is your timeline. Your trip. You have zero obligations, and that’s gonna be fucking rare in your life, yeah? So this is a very specific moment in time that you can just relish. And if it all goes to shit, come home. You don’t have to stick anything out because of some sense of duty to a timeline you have set for yourself. But it’s not going to go to shit. It’s going to be great. Because you’re great. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ is all I say as we both get out of the car in the drop-off zone, because I refuse to let him pay the extortionate airport parking prices. We hug tight.

  ‘I love you so much,’ I tell him.

  ‘And I love you so much,’ he says. ‘Just have a fucking ball and do all of the things, and people, you want to do.’