by Krissy Kneen
James Bacon kept at his labour for another ten thrusts or maybe more, before withdrawing entirely. Susanna watched him turn to sit on the bed beside the prostrate prostitute. Her legs still wide, the lips still thin, redder now from all the activity that had been played out there. The heightened shrieks ceased instantly. She propped herself up on her elbows and raised an eyebrow at the hunched back of her current partner.
‘I suppose there is a reason I have never paid for sex,’ he told her, nursing the subsiding erection in his lap. Susanna had seen Aaron’s penis on many occasions in the minutes after their electronic couplings, the engorged flesh retreating into its tender blanket of skin. This was a similar event; but then, she supposed, all penises deflate in much the same way. A sigh of disappointment, excitement retreating. She could not tell even now if this was Aaron in the flesh or just plain James Bacon from apartment 9F.
‘You’re still on the meter, honey.’ The woman closed her legs and pushed herself up to a sitting position beside him. Her hand crept into his lap; circled the tender animal nestled there. ‘I’ll give you a blow job if you like. You’ve got ten minutes left, might as well not waste them.’
James Bacon shook his head. ‘I think I’m spent. Or at least,’ he laughed, ‘will not spend. An interesting experiment for me, but I think I’m just not that kind of guy. No offence, I hope. It was lovely while it lasted but…I have learned a lesson I suppose. I guess I’ll stick to internet sex from now on.’
The woman shrugged. She had done her job conscientiously, and she had her money. She got dressed in a cheerful, professional manner. He took her hand and pressed his lips to her fingertips. Gave her a lingering look, from the top of her pretty head to the bottom of her lethal red heels. He shook his head. ‘My, you are fine though. You are very fine. Good luck with the rest of your evening.’
She winked. ‘No luck involved, love. And no need to see me out.’ She turned and Susanna heard the muffled sound of her heels on the carpet, followed by the satisfying thud of the front door.
The cheeky smile that James Bacon had been sporting fell from his face so suddenly that it was as if a second Mr Bacon had suddenly materialised in unit 9F, this one as morose as the other had been chirpy. The new James put his hands up to his face and covered it entirely. Susanna could see nothing of him but the tip of his nose; it was taking large heavy breaths that filled out his chest.
His chest was something she had not yet focused on. Of course she knew Aaron’s chest, could have drawn it from memory, the size and shape of his nipples, the modest covering of soft hair. James Bacon also had a few hairs, the same dark brown as on his head, with the same gentle curl as those on his scrotum and trailing down the inside of his thighs.
But there was something not right. Susanna could not put her finger on it. Perhaps it was the sad spread of his nipples, lying so disappointingly flat against the soft skin there. Or maybe it was just the folds of flesh, the creasing of his slumped body; perhaps it was a mood that marked him as different from her Aaron. But certainly she began to nurse her doubts.
The young man took one breath after another. When he removed his hands he seemed just as before, the calm, slightly amused exterior returned. He reached into his lap and removed the condom that still clung to him despite the loss of his sexual appetite.
He shifted back onto the bed. He crossed his knees. Cock and balls, this is what Susanna saw. Cock and balls resting quietly and without urgency. Susanna felt another little jet of saliva shoot into her mouth, a response to hunger, a response to need. There were no more than four paces between her hiding place and his seat on the bed. In a matter of seconds his cock or his balls could be between her lips.
She remembered the slightly aquatic taste of male flesh, years distant now, but still just as sharp in memory. She remembered the seaside tang, the weedy musk, the slippery texture of pre-come that turned a cock into a delicacy—a shiitake mushroom in some viscous, piquant sauce.
She was caught again: between her need to take him in her mouth and the now quite distracting urge to pee.
James Bacon reached for his laptop. It had been lying on the table beside his bed and he perched it now on top of his pillow. He stretched out across the bed, lying on his side with his head perched up on the pedestal of his one hand, he turned the computer on with the other and waited. She watched him grip his flaccid penis in that gentle fist.
A reprise. That was a pleasant surprise, but how Susanna wished she could pause as she sometimes did in her late-night sessions with Aaron. Wait for me just a moment, and Aaron answering with an x that was a kiss.
Always, my Susie-su, x, but it would suit me better to go with you to the bathroom and sit the laptop on the sink. It would break my only rule, but the thought of you stretched wide, the abandon of your warm stream—I would devour the image as one knocks back vodka, with all the rough energy of a Russian peasant: the thought of your waters splashing against my thighs. Surely we know each other well enough by now. If only I could enter you with your bladder full and throbbing around my cock. If only I could remain inside you to enjoy the hot stream, your pleasure and relief trickling down over my balls. Think Susie-su: our final nod to decorum spent, you and I could fling ourselves into debauchery together if only you would take me with you when you go.
She would type: Be right back, and take the time to relieve herself alone. He had said once that only when she allowed him in to this final forbidden pool would the two of them truly become one. Till then they would be co-travellers, fond but separate.
Of course she had been tempted, her devotion to her Aaron had crossed over to a place that was wild and desperate and all-consuming. But she was still just Susanna in the day, quiet Susanna, shy, proper Susanna, and she had found it impossible to take the final debasing step.
James Bacon touched himself without urgency. The action on the laptop must have begun to interest him in a more immediate way, because he moved the computer back to its place on the bedside table where it would be safe from tipping and spills. He sat up.
Anyone peering into his boudoir through the tiny keyhole of his webcam would see the ubiquitous torso, the stomach, chest and nipples, the everyman hand and the steady rise of a penis that was just right: not so large as to frighten and not so small as to be no use at all. He stroked himself with such calm control that Susanna found her fingers travelling back to that moist opening once more. She was desperate to pee but the need only seemed to add to her desire. She pressed her thumb against her urethra and instantly her clitoris became a thick nub of erect flesh under the steady pressure. Three of her fingers were engulfed up to the knuckles, the fourth awkwardly pushed inside her at an angle, filling the space, stretching the wet flesh as wide as the mouth of a hungry fish.
She watched his right hand working on himself, an easy massage. His left hand reached up and stroked his chest and then, in a gesture that almost finished Susanna, he held his fingers to his nose, the delicate aroma of the prostitute still on them. He closed his eyes. Susanna saw his penis leap gently in his hand and then he regained control; she regained control. She held her hand utterly still to stop herself from falling over the edge of the void that gaped before her.
James Bacon seemed to be a few steps away from his ultimate excitement. He reached out with his hand, trailing the delicate eau de putain onto his computer keyboard, and, with a click of his finger, transported himself to another place, no doubt to sample some other visual treat. The gentle back and forth of his fist continued. This time he held the scented hand under his nose and breathed more deeply. Then, when he had sucked in his fill of musk and pheromones, he slipped one of his fingers into his mouth and slid it out again.
Susanna watched the string of spit tracing the journey to his lips. Her own tongue flicked out hungrily, her own lips moist now, her mouth aching with want. It seemed that she could taste the temptress, the pretty whore. It seemed that Susanna herself could detect the flavour of cunt in the air.
Sh
e was close, too close. She stilled her hand once more and concentrated instead on the exquisite pleasure-pain of her bladder. The thought of your warm urine splashing against my thighs…
She saw his penis twitch once more, a squirt of pre-come trickling down the glans. She watched him take the juice and add it to the slick layer of wetness, a snail-trail of sexual congress marking the place the woman had so recently anointed.
It was too much to bear. Susanna felt the sudden jet of warm urine trickle out around the stopper of her thumb. She felt its trail across her crotch, and flow down her thighs to pool in his shoes, James Bacon’s shoes, which were laid out neatly beneath her wide-spread thighs. She tried to hold in the flow, but the tensing of her pelvic floor only helped ease her towards the crest of her pleasure. She felt the pulsing begin. She felt her fingers crushed within the masticating jaws of ecstasy, the juices from one source mingling with the juices from another.
Just when she was reaching the very summit of her joy the cupboard door was rudely flung open. James Bacon stood before her, the bounce of his cock so suddenly within reach of her face. She saw herself as he would see her, her dress pushed up to reveal the lewd spread of her legs, her hand buried almost completely in the wet gape of her sex, the trickle of piss reaching its most furious flow, her lips moist and chafed by the restless worrying of her teeth, one breast lifted from its little resting place, the nipple protruding from the chaste neckline of her cotton dress.
She looked up into his face, surprised, concerned; but then with that dreamy melting unfocused dip of the eyes that indicates the inevitable approach of an orgasm.
‘Oh god help me,’ he said in a gravelly sigh. Then, with a laugh, ‘It seems my shoes have been baptised by the most sexy of sacred waters. From the body of an angel, no less.’
His penis twitched twice, a fat finger beckoning to her and she answered with a downward tilting of her head, her lips parting, the scent of his excitement, and, more strongly, the scent of her: the taste of her vagina on his cock. Susanna felt the last throbs of pleasure shudder through her and felt the sudden jet of heat in her mouth, the taste of Bacon at the back of her tongue, the salty tang of it trickling down her throat.
This was not Aaron, her Aaron of the late night communion. This was a stranger, someone beautiful but new. And when she eased back, took breath, gazed up at him, her cheeks flushed, her clothes damp and awry, suddenly it didn’t matter to her that this man was not Aaron at all.
James Bacon reached down and plucked her, doll-like, from her sated repose. He touched her chin and held her gently to him. He eased her mouth towards his.
A kiss. The second man she had ever kissed. A kiss that tasted of sweat and sex and a delicate mingling of male and female desire. Susanna abandoned herself to the kiss, and when she finally pulled away and took one trembling breath after another, he tenderly pushed an errant lock of hair away from her dark and smoky eyes.
‘Hello, my cupboard angel,’ he said. ‘My name is James Bacon.’
And, shyly, the startled post-coital Susanna of the silent daytime world opened her pretty kissed lips, and said hello.
The other girls talked about sex at school. Leda listened but she didn’t really understand. She laughed when they laughed. She hid her mouth behind her hand and sniggered at what she assumed were jokes. She never understood them.
Babies came from sex. Sex was a farmer who grew the babies the way you might grow marijuana, covertly, hidden among the rampant foliage of a mythic jungle. She imagined the babies ripening, babies grown like aubergines, the skin split open during birth, the juice dripping from the fissure and the baby itself crawling free, slicked by the blood of the fruit.
Perhaps it was because of this misunderstanding that things developed the way they did with Paul.
Leda had grown up beside him. Paul was there in early memory, a vague dream of waking after crying. She had been left, splayed out on the floor of her bedroom. Maybe there had been some kind of toddler tantrum before this, but it was gone from the sketch she retained in memory. The image in her head had her waking, exhausted, her face sticky with dried mucus and tears, and the smell of Paul beside her.
The comforting, damp-carpet smell of his fur pressed against her flank, his wet nose wedged under her chin. When she stirred, Paul turned and licked her cheek and she pressed her face into his collar and had never felt this kind of love before, not love for her mother or father or even her brother. This was a kind of love that was given and accepted easily.
In this memory she whispers the words, ‘I love you’ over and over into the soft coat of her companion. Perhaps she did not put the words together: perhaps it was the sentiment and not the language, but either way, she knew that the puppy pressed closer and licked her ear. In her memory she knew exactly what Paul was saying to her. ‘I love you. I will always love you. Watch me stand at your back and defend you against the world.’
Paul was like a brother, then; but unlike her actual brother, Paul was not cruelly removed from her bedroom on her tenth birthday.
Leda was a nervous child, frightened of the dark and all the mythic creatures that hid or might hide in its velvet folds. Her brother Joshua kept her safe from the night, counting down with her from one hundred as the sunlight faded and the dark crept in.
But on the day she turned ten, Josh was taken from her. Young ladies need privacy, her father told her, neglecting to mention what she might need privacy for. If Josh had been set up in the room next door they might still have communicated in the twilight. A system of scratches and knocks on the wall, perhaps. But he was removed from the house entirely, banished to the basement, and Leda was left alone with only the German shepherd for company.
Paul was a comfort to her. She moved him from his mattress on the floor up onto her single bed. His warmth, his steady breathing, the familiar smell of shampoo in his fur, the alchemy of all these elements together cast a spell to keep the terrors of the dark at bay.
Because of her innocence, Leda did not associate Paul’s restlessness with anything sexual. Indeed, the first time it happened she was asleep. She woke with surprise to a furtive shaking, a poltergeist rattling her bed. Her fear was brief but acute and by the time she realised it was only Paul, her heart was racing and she was wide awake.
While she slept, Paul had shifted his position, climbed onto the hillock of the blankets. The bed was rattling in the same rhythm as the wagging of his tail and Leda knew it was something to do with pleasure, just as his wagging tail was an expression of joy. She wrapped her arms around his furred shoulders until the motion of the bed subsided. She let him lick her chin and bent her head to kiss his forehead, that comforting scent. She nuzzled his neck and when the dog shifted from on top of her she hugged his powerful body until the regularity of his breathing eased her into sleep.
Paul was her constant companion. After all these years, he still waited patiently for her return from school, testing her mood with a joyful tongue pressed against her cheek. On her happy days they would take his lead and race down to the beach where Leda would chase him from one rock pool to another, the two of them eventually falling in a giggling, panting heap. When she was sad, Paul would nudge her towards their bedroom and curl up beside her on the sheets. The rhythm of his breathing calmed her. He liked to nuzzle into the back of her neck.
Sometimes the normal pressures of family life would cause the children to shout at each other, fighting over the dishes or the taking out of garbage, or just in frustration. Then Paul would stand beside Leda, and when Joshua raised his voice at her the dog would growl and lift a corner of his lip, baring just a hint of fang. Leda knew that if she needed him Paul would be there without question. At times they were like twins, lying muzzle to mouth, Leda whispering her secrets, Paul licking her nose gently to show he understood.
As the years passed, Paul’s night-time restlessness continued, and Leda began to look forward to these moments of attention: the sheer animal joy as Paul trembled with pleasure a
bove her, the intimacy of the cuddling and kissing that followed.
To Leda, it was a matter of simple bodily pleasure. She did not associate any of it with any particular part of the body until the drawing was passed to her by a girl at school. It was a crude representation, a simple line drawing, the erection too large for the lap it sprang from, the ejaculate arcing high into the air, the expression on the stick-boy’s face more of surprise than pleasure, but it was the first time Leda had ever thought about the differences between a boy and a girl.
The drawing raised more questions than answers. That night as she sat at the dinner table, Leda was aware for the first time that something defined her brother as different from herself. He passed her the salad bowl and her eyes glanced past it, towards the dark mystery of his groin. She fumbled the bowl, almost dropped it. Her father raised an eyebrow; her father with his worn brown suit and his own secrets nestled under the napkin draped delicately over his lap.
That night, when Paul began the gentle clawing of the blankets Leda sat up in bed. She had often seen the extra bit of furred flesh that clung to his belly and thought nothing of it. But when the dog began to jerk his hips and thrust against the bedclothes she took the weight of his paws and lifted him up to look more closely at the protrusion there. The slip of livid skin poked in and out in time to the movement of the big dog’s hips, a slippery red worm. She held out her fingers and Paul pushed himself into the cup of her palm. Soft, slick, a pleasant enough sensation; but when Paul picked up his pace and pushed so hard against her hand that Leda fell back under the heft of him, she began to feel her heart beat faster; an excited little tremble in her fingers. She held tight to the thickening flesh in her hand and when the warm dampness sprayed onto her fingers she felt a warm damp spread between her own thighs, as if in sympathy.
