‘Are you enjoying this, mummy?’ His face was only an inch from mine.
I closed my eyes. ‘Don’t say that.’ I turned away and squirmed underneath him. ‘I’m not your mummy.’
‘But he wouldn’t stop. ‘You like it, don’t you, mummy?’
‘No,’ I breathed up at him. I found this role-playing unnerving. Raunchy is good. A bit of manhandling is fine. But this mother-son fantasy was not at all fine. It was warped. Christ, we were so not on the same page.
‘I’m your boy, aren’t I? Say I’m you’re boy.’ He put his hand around my throat and squeezed hard. When, after a few seconds, he didn’t let go I tried to prise his fingers off my neck but it wasn’t easy. I was finding it hard to breathe. It was as if he really meant business and that unnerved me.
When he finally loosened his grip I said, trying to be reasonable and calming, ‘Come on Max, you don’t really want to choke me, do you?’
He said nothing after that but kept his hand on my throat a while longer, pressing a little too tightly for comfort, and I pulled at his fingers. At long last he reached his climax, let go of me and fell back on the bed in a sweat.
And as I lay there recovering from these exertions, all I could think was: what the FUCK would Freud make of that? Perhaps Max had already found some creepy women prepared to play the mummy game, women who even enjoyed it, and he thought I wouldn’t mind. Wrong.
Later that night there was another, less edgy session, without the role-playing this time. Then we fell asleep.
Early in the morning I tiptoed downstairs to make myself coffee. I drank it out in the garden, breathing in the cleansing fresh air. I pondered on the dicey doings of the previous night. Wow, I’d really taken a risk this time. How stupid. In future I would have to be more cautious. I dreaded to think what Sara would have to say about this episode.
Max came down a little later, dressed and ready to leave. After gulping down a coffee he said he had better go, it was a long way back to Hackney.
I dropped him off at the tube station and before he got out of my car he gave me a peck on the lips and muttered, ‘I’ll call you’. But he didn’t sound as if he would and I hoped he wouldn’t. As he strode off, wearing his shades, I reflected that although he was a sicko, he was still a hot-looking son of a bitch. I just didn’t want to be the bitch in question.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Vanessa and I were prancing around in the pool, warming up for aqua class. She had asked me how my dating was going and I related my creepy encounter with Max. She studied me, eyes wide, shaking her head disapprovingly with accompanying loud tutting noises. I had expected this, of course. She had already set out for me, weeks earlier, her unbreakable rules for dating. And I’d been breaking them all.
‘Oh dear oh dear. What were you thinking?’
‘I know,’ I said feebly and pursed my lips. ‘I know.’
Vanessa’s iron-clad dating rules were:
1. Never have sex on the first date.
2. Never bring anyone home until you know them well.
3. Never pay for anything (‘or you’ll ruin it for the rest of us!’).
4. Dine only at top restaurants and drink only champagne (‘If they can’t afford Champagne, they can’t afford me’).
5. Never take public transport, only taxis (‘Any man who so much as mentions the tube is out’).
6. If possible, make them remove all their body hair (Vanessa disliked hairy men, particularly in her own bed, where their stray hairs sullied her Egyptian cotton sheets).
With Max, I didn’t know whether she would be more censorious about my having sex on a first date with the Boston Strangler or my picking up the tab for our food and drinks. (Needless to say, Max never did give me the cash, happy for ‘mummy’ to foot the bill. I was glad he didn’t ask me to stump up for a school trip to France, as well.)
Vanessa was dead against the idea of being with much younger men, too, thinking it tasteless and inappropriate. (Well duh!) When I’d told her about Little Pup, age 23, she squealed ‘He’s only a year older than my son!’ and said she might be sick in the pool.
She was an intriguing combination of blousy blonde man-eater and Little Goody Two-Shoes. I liked her a lot and liked comparing notes with her on our internet dating adventures. For every man who ‘viewed’ me online, she was viewed by twenty. Men flocked to her profile in their thousands. I got dozens of winks, she got hundreds. One must never ever underestimate the power of blondeness and bustiness in the sexual imaginings of men. It’s not easy for a petite brunette to keep up.
However, we discovered a certain overlap in the men we had been encountering on the site. Jock, for example had been onto her a few times, trying to entice her into a tryst. She had resisted because she didn’t like his beard. When I told her about my mindless shag-fest with him, she nodded knowingly and said, ‘I’m not at all surprised.’
And then there was BryanG, the 63-year-old engineer from Surrey. After exchanging a few messages, he asked whether we could chat on the phone. He was getting on a bit, but I didn’t want to be ageist. He looked fairly presentable, was tall, had his own hair. Educated. Solvent. So I agreed.
I suspected he might be a tad dull but didn’t realise quite how dull he was until we had our lengthy conversation one day as I was sitting in the shoe department of Marks and Spencer’s at Marble Arch, killing time before an appointment. And when I say killing time, I don’t use the word lightly. That 25 minutes was bludgeoned to death.
As BryanG droned on about his life and times – encompassing his divorce from his wife of thirty-odd years, the respective professions and family lives of his three married children, his demanding job (which took him to many ‘fascinating’ parts of the world) and the sad demise of his mum through dementia – I surveyed the nearby pumps, slingbacks and court shoes, desperate for a little light relief.
Still too kindly for my own good, instead of casting him to the four winds without further ado, I said I was very busy for the next fortnight (the usual bullshit) but that maybe we could have a drink sometime after that. He was satisfied with this and said he’d ring again in due course. Great. Another riveting conversation to look forward to.
Vanessa howled with laughter when I told her about all this as we sweltered in the steam room one day after class. She had already been on two dates with BryanG. ‘Nothing much happened,’ she told me, ‘except that we had a snog. It wasn’t very nice.’
BryanG had wined and dined her at elegant West End restaurants. He had been boring, she said, but ‘the more I drank the easier he was to take’. Anyway, when she informed him after the second date that she didn’t wish to take things further, he went a bit funny, claiming he had already ‘fallen in love’ with her. As Vanessa recounted: ‘He said to me “I’ve invested two expensive dinners in you and paid for your cabs home and now you go and break my heart. I feel I’ve been used!” So I offered to make dinner for him one night to pay him back but he said no, that would only cause him more pain.’
After hearing this story I resolved that under no circumstances would I meet BryanG for a drink or anything else. What if he fell for me too, after ‘investing’ in me, only to find that there would be no return on his investment? I didn’t need a bleating 63-year-old granddad in my life.
Vanessa knew NiceMan personally, as well. Like me, she’d been on a tame afternoon date with him. Except that instead of going to some common-or-garden establishment as we did, he took her for tea at Fortnum’s. Naturally.
‘I liked him,’ she said. ‘But not in that way, obviously. He’s been having a tough time and I gave him some moral support. We’ve texted each other a few times since then. Don’t think I’ll see him again though.’
‘I’ve agreed to go to his place for dinner one night,’ I said. ‘He says he wants to cook me a meal. Isn’t that sweet.’
‘A bad idea,’ said Vanessa. ‘Why did you agree to that?’
‘Well, he’s a decent guy,’ I said. ‘I enjoyed his co
mpany. And I feel a bit sorry for him. So I told him that although there’s no chance of any romantic thing between us, we could just be friends.’
She gave me one of her mildly critical looks. Apparently, I had broken yet another of her golden rules. ‘Never tell a man that you can just be friends. Because if they want to have a real relationship with you, they’ll keep hoping for more.’ She paused before adding meaningfully: ‘You must never give them hope.’
*
The weekend following my misadventure with Max, Little Pup journeyed up from Tooting for another visit. It lifted my heart to see him amble up the drive to my front door, boyish and smiling and straightforward. His hug was like a comfort blanket. Who needed an ‘exciting’ dude with shades and spiky hair, someone at once ‘cool’ and ‘hot’, but whose excitements veered off into the alarming and repugnant?
As before, Pup was gentle and affectionate and attentive. We spent Sunday afternoon in bed, making love, dozing, chatting, laughing. I teased him because we had so few cultural references in common. When ‘Sweet Caroline’ played on the radio I was amazed to find he had never heard of Neil Diamond. So I set him a little culture test.
‘Who was the drummer in the Beatles?’
‘Er…pass.’
I groaned. ‘Which mega pop star from Wales sang “It’s Not Unusual”?’ He looked at me blankly, so I sang the first few bars.
‘Dunno that one.’
‘Christ. Okay, let’s get serious. Which American president was shot in 1963?’
He pondered this for a moment, struggling for a name. ‘Was it…Nixon?’
I giggled and gave his hair a tug. ‘You moppet!’ One really couldn’t underestimate the failings of the English state school system. But nothing would make me think the less of my Pup.
It occurred to me that, while we had grown close in so many ways, I didn’t even know his surname. I hadn’t thought to ask. This was one of the peculiarities of internet dating. You could form an almost instant intimacy with a person, but it had no traditional foundation to it, no ‘back story’. It just came out of nowhere. Out of the ether. Yet, at its best, it was no less gratifying for that.
Once again we had supper in front of the telly. This time, as we polished off most of a carton of Ben & Jerry’s, we watched a DVD of The Graduate. He had actually heard of this sixties classic – wonder of wonders – but never seen it. I told him that the storyline would have a certain relevance to his own life.
When the film was over he remarked that although Mrs Robinson was ‘dead sexy’, he was glad to say I was much nicer than her. And I wasn’t married.
I turned to him. ‘Okay, here’s another question for you. Which famous duo sang “Mrs Robinson”, the film’s theme song?’
He frowned. ‘I’m not playing.’
Sometime in the middle of the night we woke up and I stroked his hair and we started kissing. As he grew roused, he moved on top of me but I told him to wait a moment and reached for the baby oil in my bedside table. Maybe it was time for something different.
Anal sex is one of those love-it-or-hate-it, Marmite-type things. One of my favourite episodes in Sex and the City was on exactly this emotive topic. Demure Charlotte is in a panic because her new boyfriend wants to do anal with her, but she’s never done it before and is apprehensive. So the other three girls offer her guidance on anal sex as they all ride together in the back of a cab. Meanwhile the Sikh cab driver, agog at what he’s hearing, can’t concentrate on his driving.
The analytical Miranda expounds: ‘The question is: if he goes up your butt, will he respect you more or respect you less? That’s the issue.’
Carrie lights a cigarette and when the driver says there’s no smoking in his cab she retorts: ‘Sir, we’re talking up the butt. A cigarette is in order.’
‘Front, back, who cares?’ says racy Samantha. ‘A hole is a hole…and P.S. it’s fabulous.’
God I loved that show.
That night Pup learned a new trick and as we lay beneath the duvet afterwards, tired and content, I asked him if he had found it exciting.
‘If things gets any more exciting,’ he murmured, ‘I might faint.’
I smiled. He could always make me smile. And with that we drifted off to sleep again.
*
Sara’s Aunt Dolly is down in London, visiting us briefly from her home in Northamptonshire. It is Sunday afternoon and she and I are sitting at my dining table, lingering over glasses of wine after a blow-out lunch. Dolly is a congenial, generous-hearted woman, a divorcee of long standing who hasn’t had an easy time of it on the relationship front. Now I am fascinated to learn that she was an early adopter of internet dating, way back in the late-1990s when it was still widely regarded as a questionable fringe activity. ‘You had to be a bit madcap to do it then,’ says Dolly. ‘And I guess I am.’
One of her first online dates was with ‘mothball man’. She recalls the episode. ‘I was living in Sussex at the time and we met for lunch at a restaurant in Crawley. This ageing guy walks in, reeking of mothballs. He wore jeans that were way too tight, with a pot belly hanging over the top, and an awful old-fashioned jacket that he’d obviously had hanging in his wardrobe for decades and taken out for the occasion. And he had these mashed-up teeth.’ She shakes her head in dismay.
‘Ugh!’ I laugh. ‘Could you bear to eat a meal with him?’
‘No, I couldn’t. I stayed for one drink, trying not to gag on the mothball smell. Then I made a quick getaway.’
‘So, a case of creepy in Crawley.’
‘Yes! But I had much creepier date than that, a couple of years later.’ And she tells me about the fellow she agreed to meet for drinks at a murky backstreet club in Northampton. ‘His behaviour was a bit odd from the start. He seemed effeminate. And the more we drank the more weirdly effeminate he became. Then it got very late and we’d both drunk too much, and somehow we ended up back at his place.’
I smile to myself. Dolly and I are more alike than I had realised…
‘As he was making us coffee I looked around his kitchen and noticed a shelf full of bottles of pills. Lots of unfamiliar, suspicious-looking stuff. Also anti-depressants. Anyway, a little later we got into bed and then, as we lay there in the dark, it all came out. How he used to be a woman and had already had the sex-change operation but the transformation wasn’t yet complete. He was still a bit “she”. But he had this new penis and told me he wanted to put it to use with me. Drunk as I was, I knew I ought to get up and leave. But I wasn’t in a state to make my way home. So I told him I was really tired and was it okay if we just went to sleep? He didn’t answer. And thank god he didn’t try anything on with me. I lay in bed nervously, hardly daring to move. And he lay next to me and cried himself to sleep. He was still sleeping when I crept away early in the morning.’
I shudder. How Myra Breckinridge-ish. And I’d thought my Max incident was on the edge.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The evening for the mooted home-cooked dinner at NiceMan’s had arrived. He lived in a tiny terraced house in one of those godforsaken, dismal outer suburbs with absolutely nothing to commend it. A place I had managed to avoid during the course of my four decades of living in London. Until now. To make matters worse, it was drizzling. It took me almost an hour to drive there through the soggy north London backwaters.
He had gone to some trouble to prepare a few hot dishes and we sat at a small table in a corner of the small sitting room (everything was small), carefully laid with condiments and folded napkins and a little vase containing a single flower. (Briefly I played with the idea of asking him to take the vase away, as he had done weeks earlier…)
As we ate he inquired about my recent online dating experiences. I regaled him with my Max story – such good copy, I’d be dining out on it for years to come – and he stared at me, horrified. ‘How could you bring him home? A stranger! That was such a stupid thing to do.’
Yes, well, perhaps so, but after Vanessa’s admonitions and th
e expected rebuke from Sara which followed (‘Really, I can see we’ll have to lock you in a room for your own protection’), I didn’t need another scolding. Especially not from him.
And I knew it wasn’t just about concern for my safety. Behind his words was resentment for the fact that I would gleefully take a raunchy bad-boy like Max home with me, but not a Nice Man like him. And what an old story that is in the annals of male-female dynamics.
He told me he was convinced there were lots of dubious men on the dating site, alongside the fishy women. ‘The men who don’t put a photo up are obviously hiding something. They’re probably married. Or on the run. Ha!’
While recalling a deceitful man I’d had dealings with many years earlier, I used the word ‘cunt’ and his eyes lit up.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘my favourite word…and my favourite place.’ He sounded wistful, like someone without money dreaming of a holiday in the Maldives.
‘I think you should give us a chance,’ he said. ‘We could have a good time together.’
He waited for an answer. I couldn’t think of one. Instead I gave him an apologetic, closed-mouth smile.
Later we squeezed up together on his (very small) settee and watched a comedy show on the telly. He almost lay his arm around my shoulder but fortunately it didn’t quite get there. Then at about ten o’clock I yawned and said I really had to get home. ‘It’s a long haul back to civilisation,’ I said, pretending it was a joke.
He tried to persuade me to stay, but I insisted. On the front doorstep I pecked him on both cheeks and it was with a certain mild relief that I stepped out into the damp night.
He’d been a perfect gent, but I wouldn’t be going down this road again (in both senses). Because Vanessa had been right. You can only be ‘just friends’ with someone who is equally content to be just friends with you. Otherwise you are raising their expectations. And that, in the final analysis, isn’t a nice thing to do.
*
RAVEN: ‘I’ve never been with a black man. I’ve heard wonderful things, though…’
Raven Page 6
