The raging inferno that was my relationship with Sadie blew itself out when she fell in love with Kira. For a few weeks we were the perfect triangle (see my previous story, Three-course feast.) I was the dependable caucasian man (I think that’s a description they would agree with), Sadie was the fiery BBW and Kira was the subtly sexy, enigmatic Asian woman.
People say that trios never last because two always form a stronger alliance within the three, and they’re probably right. My relationship with Sadie was based purely on sex, although we had been growing close to each other before we had invited Kira in. The trio had worked like a dream at first and we were all crazy about each other, but quickly Sadie wanted Kira all to herself and they began having secret girls-only meets. I knew about them because Kira told me, and she told me because we had our own special relationship, albeit a perfectly innocent meeting of the minds.
We met a couple of times to explore Trinidad, the island country where this all took place. Sadie knew about my friendship with Kira because I had no reason to keep it from her, and she had said it was fine, but she had suspected all along that there was something different happening, and Sadie’s own nature wouldn’t let her believe we weren’t humping in the back of some regional library or having oral sex in the rainforest.
For her part, Kira was bowled over by her first girl-on-girl experience and the force of Sadie’s personality. So they split off into coupledom and I was back at square one, looking for love in all the wrong places. Then one Sunday afternoon at the beach I ran into Sadie’s Aunty Ginny, the pale-skinned, anglicised relative of the black Trini family. I had got along well with Ginny, but had held back from making a move on her because of the beautiful relationship between aunt and niece.
She was sunbathing on her own, reading a book, plastered with factor 75 and so apparently happy with her own company that before I sat next to her on the sand I apologised for disturbing her. As it turned out, she was very glad to see me. Shading her eyes like a sailor about to say, “Land ahoy!” she squinted at me through her big sunglasses and smiled. It was a broad, genuine, happy smile and it occurred to me that she must have smiled it many times over the years at various men who made her feel particularly womanly. Her body was slim and soft, with little ruffles in places that let out the secret that she was over 60.
Nobody likes getting old, no matter what they say, because we can all see that our bodies aren’t as taut, as athletic, as triumphant as they used to be. I was a good few years younger than Ginny but was already starting to go a bit flabby; there is no other honest way to put it. The Adonis of my youth had passed through his prime and come out the other side, largely intact but with the engine dials a few ticks lower. Maybe Sadie and Kira had been my last hurrah with the rollicking, shag-me-till-my-teeth-rattle young women who had sustained me and entertained me thus far.
Anyway, sexy womanhood was still available to me, and here was a prime example. Ginny was like an old photograph of herself, the colour fading and the card a bit creased after spending so much time in a drawer full of pictures, fished out occasionally as a reminder of the great days of the past. You can say that today’s top tennis players are as good as any in history, but you can’t say they are superior to the giants of previous eras.
I think Ginny could see all this running through my mind in the few seconds I gazed at her in wonder and admiration.
“Victor,” she said, as if to wake me. “Sit down.”
I took my beach towel and spread it next to hers, pulled off my t-shirt, and lay in tantalisingly close proximity to this lovely woman. Rejecting her contemporaries’ tendency to wear one-piece outfits to hide a lived-in belly, Ginny was resplendent in a multi-coloured bikini with a design based on tropical plants, trees, and birds. Her tan had deepened since I last saw her and she was burnished like the sun-loving mainly-British woman she was. My eyes took in her glowing shoulders, her freckled chest, and that warm, inviting stomach with its deep navel which must have enjoyed silver pools of male passion over the years.
Her pubic hair was shaven, at least at the top, as I could see because the briefs had ridden down a little, to reveal the white, scratchy shoreline of her feminine beach. My eyes moved past that, down her gentle thighs, which I suddenly ached to kiss and caress.
“Vic,” she said again. I looked up at her face. “So how are things going? I heard you and Sadie split up. That’s a shame, but these things happen.” She smiled with knowing compassion that only age can produce.
I had once had dinner with her at an Indian restaurant when I had been stood up by a woman from the website where Sadie and I had found Kira. Ginny and I had got along very well – almost too well, considering I was involved with her favourite niece. Now, the situation was different, less complicated.
We chatted about her book, a 1970s woman-has-views-on-sex novel called Fear of Flying, which she had read several times before and I had enjoyed years ago.
“Yeah, I do that too,” I said. “It’s like listening to an album; just because you’ve heard it before doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it again. In fact, that’s the reason you go back to it because you know it’s good.”
As I spoke, I found my fingers straying to her body and giving her side a little stroke. She didn’t acknowledge it but she didn’t reject it either. It’s a practice I sometimes indulge in, something of a grey area. There is no conventional wisdom that says a man is entitled to gently stroke a woman’s skin – quite the opposite, in fact. But if you’re already at a certain stage of mutual attraction, and you keep it affectionate and respectful, with the sexual message obscured by conversation or whatever else is going on, and as long as only you and she know about it, most women will allow it.
I ended up inviting her back to my place for dinner. On the way we picked up some mussels and white wine, so I could make us moules mariniere – so simple to do, yet it seems like an achievement, as if you’re actually quite a good cook.
Ginny bought a bottle of expensive champagne. “Well, fuck it,” she explained. “I’ve spent almost nothing while I’ve been here. Haven’t really done anything, and they had another of their parties last week, so I made a few dollars doing the gypsy fortune-telling routine.”
We sat together on the settee until she said, “Show me your music.”
I took her to my desk, where my laptop lay, iTunes open and ready, awaiting instructions.
“All on digital,” Ginny noted.
“’Fraid so,” I said. “I’ve moved so often I can’t afford the luggage space for CDs, never mind vinyl.”
“It’s the way of the world,” Ginny observed.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I like to put it on random and surprise myself with my good taste.”
“Every one a winner,” Ginny said. “Can you have it grouped in genres, though? Have you got a section marked “psychedelic”, for instance?”
“No,” I said, “but I can knock up a quick playlist if you like. You mean British psychedelic?”
“Oh god, yes,” she said quickly. “I don’t mean Quicksilver Messenger Service droning on for 20 minutes. I mean Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds.”
“At your service,” I said, and waved her back to the settee. I spent five minutes selecting a sequence I hoped she would like, not all mind-altering stuff, but from that sort of era.
As I sat down and she passed me the spliff, the Rolling Stones eased us into the spirit of things with 2,000 Light Years From Home and Ginny sighed happily and leaned against me. I stood up and locked the door, closed the blinds and returned to the seat , which Ginny’s presence had turned into a cocoon of sex and femininity. On leaving the beach, she had put a loose khaki shirt and her denim skirt over the bikini and was now lolling there sensuously, her legs slightly apart and the shirt giving me a glimpse of brown, speckled breasts.
We fell immediately into a long, passionate kiss, as the Steve Miller Band gave us Space Cowboy and then Traffic tinkled into the whole John Barleycorn album.
“I want to tell you about my love life,” Ginny said suddenly. “I just want to remind myself that I have had a good time, even if it’s slipping away from me.” I suddenly felt almost a responsibility to this woman; almost, because what I had in mind for the next couple of hours was going to light up all that she was afraid was fading, and nothing would have to be done for effect, to make her feel better. I decided to cut her fears off at the knees.
“Ginny,” I began,sliding my hand up her leg, “Why don’t you take your clothes off and let me lick you all over?”
“Why don’t you take my clothes off,” she said with mock indignation, leaning back so I could get at her briefs. I pulled them down and off over her bare feet. Then her shirt and the bikini top, and she was sitting on my sofa, a fabulous sight in brown and white, warm and succulent. She reached over and pulled down my beach shorts, dispensed with my t-shirt and smiled at me with satisfaction. By the time Traffic had reached track two, Freedom Rider, Ginny was on her knees between my legs, sucking me with a sort of serene intensity that made it seem like a sacred ritual. Her ministrations took us right through to Stranger To Himself and I had to fight the urge to cum in her mouth by concentrating on the crazy, ragged guitar solo.
“You can cum, Victor,” she said softly.
I stroked her head and said, “In a minute. I want you to cum first.” We swapped positions and I licked and sucked her to a writhing, spasming orgasm, then turned her over and licked her arse. When she came again I quickly got up close behind her and wanked into her crack and she hissed like a steam train.
After wiping up and composing herself, she began her story.
“So, unlike you, the boys in my teens were not into foreplay – if what we’ve just done counts as foreplay, because if it does, I don’t know where it’s going to end. There was one, in particular, my steady boyfriend, who kept his finger inside me for hours but didn’t do much with it. I think he just liked to have the smell on his finger the next day.”
“It can last for several days if you don’t wash it,” I interrupted. “Teenage girls have a very long-lasting scent that they seem to lose as they get older.”
“Well I didn’t know that,” Ginny said. “But why doesn’t it surprise me? Why should they have all the advantages?”
“They don’t,” I said. “Girls are not a patch on women. You’ve got to allow them some good points.”
“Don’t patronise me, Victor,” she said with a trace of real irritation. I kissed her strongly and pulled her to her feet.
“I’ll patronise you with my fucking cock,” I said, dangerously close to sparking a genuine altercation. A fire flashed briefly in her eyes and she seemed to calm down as it passed. I pulled her into the bedroom and pushed her onto the bed. She pulled me on top of her and we kissed passionately, unconsciously exchanging complex messages about why we were behaving like this.
“Show me, then,” she said, still aggressive. “Show me what your mighty cock can do for me.” She spread her legs in invitation and I plunged into her with a force I had never used before on any woman. I was going to bang this stupid, deluded, self-pitying woman into reality, into the knowledge that she had nothing to fear and there would always be men who wanted to gorge on her femaleness.
As I pounded her she lifted her legs and began tapping her arsehole with her middle finger.
Knowing we were so oiled up that I could squeeze in there with no problem, I changed position and thrust my cock into her arse. She gave a strange little laugh, as if she had tricked me into it, and then began a low, rhythmic moan which increased in intensity until she gripped me in a crab-like vice and screamed as she came. Then she was quiet.
I rolled off and returned to conscious awareness to the tune of Spooky Tooth’s doom-laden interpretation of I Am The Walrus.
“Sorry,” Ginny said, and stroked my flank by way of explanation.
We took a shower each, separately, and returned to the settee to find the playlist had finished. I took her over to the laptop and showed her how to make another list. I sat and poured more champagne, before taking it into the kitchen, which was just the end of the same room, separated by what people call a breakfast bar. The mussels didn’t require much cleaning, so that was done in a minute, and as I chopped a shallot and some garlic and let them gently fry in butter, Ginny pressed play on her list.
Carole King filled the air with I Feel The Earth Move and Ginny came through, standing close behind me and wrapping her arms around me. Then she chopped some chadon beni, the local equivalent of cilantro, and watched peacefully as I splashed some Muscadet into the tall, fat pan, put the lid on and let it cook just long enough for the shells to open. Ginny applied the finishing touches of a little cream and the chopped herb, and as I shook the pan and stirred it to get the sauce into all the mussels, she sang brightly but sadly along to Joni Mitchell’s I Don’t Know Where I Stand.
Ginny hadn’t finished the long story of her love life, but after the explosion of emotion the thought of it had caused, I felt she was playing the rest out in her music choices. James Taylor told us about Blossom, and how she smiled some sunshine down his way, and then it was back to Joni.
As we sat at the table and toasted our union in champagne, the long, meandering Down To You from Court And Spark told of a complicated relationship. This was followed, as it is on the album, by the wistful musing of Just Like This Train, and as that disappeared into the distance, I felt Ginny flinch at the arrival of Help Me, from the same album. “Help me, I think I’m falling…”
She was a romantic, as I am, and I led her back to the settee and kissed her politely to show I wasn’t taking her selections too literally.
We went back to bed and this time we made love, slowly and gently, gazing into one another’s eyes, before gently detaching and drifting into sleep.
