One of the recurring pleasures in my life is finding dormant women, by which I mean those who are attractive enough and may have had a bit of sexual action in the past but have allowed it to slip into the background. They are the mother or grandmother, the teacher, the librarian, the bus driver, the university lecturer. They are defined by their occupation, and the fact that they are fully functioning females has become obscured. Perhaps this is because they have chosen to bury it, or perhaps it’s because men – and other women – fail to see what is underneath.
The episode I’m going to tell you about involves a middle-aged Chinese woman named May, whose life revolved around the little supermarket she ran in a suburb of a southern English town. I don’t know how her family came to be there, but the Chinese are enterprising people and there are shops like May’s all over the world. They are open every day from early till late, even on public holidays, and you get the impression that business is all they live for. That was certainly how I saw May. She was aged 50-something, I would say, although guessing a woman’s age is something I’m no good at. She was average height and slim, but so wrapped in clothes and overalls that you couldn’t get much idea of her shape. Her eyes were small and tight, but she had big cheeks and the sort of mouth that is sometimes called “generous”, with full, expressive lips. She didn’t smile much and didn’t respond to my early attempts to get a reaction from her.
The shop was staffed most of the time by May herself, with occasional cover by a young man who I assumed was her son. They sold all sorts of stuff; out front it was all fruit and vegetables but when you delved into it, there were wines and spirits and then toiletries. And right at the back there were things you might find in a hardware store, from door handles to those little ignition things that make fluorescent tubes work. May knew where everything was. I would walk in there brandishing the item I needed replaced, look at her hopefully and she would say, “Yes, yes,” and lead me to the shelf where the exact thing awaited me. I would thank her elaborately, flirtily, but she didn’t respond.
Recently separated, I had moved into a cheap little flat around the corner, and as I worked from home, my social circle was small and the range of women for me to fantasise about was limited. I grew excessively dependent on May to provide the little glimmers of femininity that sparked my hope that my life wasn’t over.
What May thought of me I had no idea, because she was so inscrutable. That’s a word often applied to the Chinese and in this case, at least, it was accurate. Whatever was going on in May’s head stayed in May’s head and what I was permitted to see was a rigorously screened minimum. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a raging storm of emotions and desires in there.
I toyed with ideas like sauntering in there one day and, provided there was no one else around, confiding quietly that I wanted to lick her arse. What was the worst that could happen? But a few minutes later I would realise the worst that could happen was that she could summon her son and three or four other family members and have me beaten up. And maybe arrested. So maybe I should take the conventional route and ask her out.
My big break came one day when I found her in one of the huge proper supermarkets, either shopping for herself or getting things to put on her shelves with a suitable mark-up. She was looking at the body washes.
I sidled up and said, “Hello,” and she grunted. I picked up the first bottle I saw and showed it to her.
“This stuff is good,” I said, just for something to say. She looked at me intently for the first time and looked back at the bottle, then at me again. I realised it was Vagisil, specially formulated for women and supposedly gentle with their private parts, hence the name.
I blushed fiercely, something I hadn’t done in years but which had once been the bane of my life.
“Not for you, I think,” May said.
“Maybe for you?” I countered, trying to wrest back some control of the situation. She looked me in the eye with a mixture of reproach and pity. I put it back on the shelf and walked away, mumbling to myself.
Five minutes later I was looking at the wines, trying to divine the blessed level at which low price and good quality met, when I became aware of somebody standing behind me. I had been there a minute or two and somebody probably wanted to look at what I was blocking.
“Excuse me,” she said, pushing towards the shelf. It was May and as she pushed she rubbed her chest against me. She took a bottle of Australian white and showed it to me. “Is good?” she asked. An avalanche of fear and trepidation fell from my chest to my bowels as I realised she was being nice to me. Not just polite, but friendly, sympathetic, encouraging, trying to atone for the recent incident which had not been her fault anyway.
“What are you going to drink it with?” I asked, suddenly the expert and trying too hard to help.
“My own recipe,” she said. “Bean sprouts, Chinese chestnuts, beef, ginger and… chorizo.” She hesitated over the last word as if it were a lie.
“Nice,” I said.
“You like that?” she asked. Lady, I thought, I would eat that with my fingers from the cleft of your buttocks.
“Sounds great,” I replied.
“Tonight?” she asked nervously. I looked at her for clarification. “You not busy?” she continued. Was I dreaming or was she inviting me to eat with her?
“I’m not busy,” I stumbled.
“My apartment,” she said quietly, averting her eyes as if she had made a mistake but it was too late to change it.
“I would love to,” I said, picking up the baton of positivity.
“Which wine?” she persisted. I gestured to the sparkling wines and said, “I’ll bring something good.”
Showered to pristine condition, I dressed smart/casual and put on a blast of my best cologne before heading for the flat above the shop where May lived alone, she said. Her son lived on the floor above but he kept himself to himself.
She was cooking when I arrived, looking like an utterly respectable grandma in big, baggy light cotton trousers and a cavernous white t-shirt. Bland American rock played quietly in the background as she served the food, and we made slow but warm conversation. Her husband had died two years earlier and her three older children lived in different towns, striving to establish themselves in careers that didn’t involve shops or restaurants.
Under the table, May rested her knee against mine from quite early on, but I made no attempt to turn up the intensity until we had finished eating and were sitting together on the settee, looking at family photographs. I felt out of my depth, a foreigner in my own country, unsure as to what protocols, if any, were to be followed.
May seemed to understand. As we clinked glasses with the champagne which I had brought but we had saved for last, she twinkled her eyes at me and gave something of herself for the first time, then looked away again.
“You are a respectable man,” she said approvingly. “But you are nervous, I think. You want to progress but don’t know if… if I want you to kiss me.” I put my hand on her knee and she put hers on top. “You can kiss me,” she said, putting both of our glasses on the low table. I put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her lips and she drew me closer, kissing softly, tenderly, but giving me her tongue to play with.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I am a mature woman. I have four children. I had a husband. Chinese people have sex too.” With that, she slid her right hand up my thigh and placed it on my bulge. I didn’t know if this was her usual style or if she was just keen to get on with things and knew she would have to lead the way. “Two years,” she said sadly. “A long time.”
I in turn slid my hand up her leg and nuzzled her mound with my knuckles. She gave a quiet whimper.
“Come to my bedroom,” she said, standing up and leading me by the hand.
It was a busily decorated room with lots of pink satin and little quilted chairs. I couldn’t believe we had come this far in such a short time. From inscrutable, uncommunicative shopkeeper to middle-aged temptress in a matter of hours.
When May stopped and turned to me, gazing into my eyes, I knew it was time to relax and accept her generosity: the offer of her body for our mutual enjoyment. I pulled her top over her head and untied the drawstring of her trousers, which sailed to the floor to reveal big, old-lady pants. As our faces wrangled together, our tongues like a bag of snakes, she removed her bra and two small breasts appeared, with prominent nipples but tiny areolas. I bent down and sucked one, then the other as she unbuttoned and removed my shirt, then started on my chinos. Thus encouraged, I plunged my hand into her pants and enjoyed the fact that there was so much room in them. I stroked her pubic hair and slipped a finger into her hole and she whimpered again, then smiled and stepped back, fell to her knees and pulled my trousers and underpants down in one movement. As I stepped out of them she took my cock in her mouth and smiled up at me.
“You are a nice man,” she said. “I will do this for you.”
It was only when May lay on the bed that I saw how pale her body was. It was as if her skin had never seen the light of day, as if she had never stretched out in the sun. The pallor gave her a look of utter innocence, as if the sun was not the only thing that had never seen her body. I felt privileged to be there, naked with this very private woman, having been granted permission to roam free on the soft, silky expanse of skin that lay before me.
I kissed her neck and raised her left arm so I could lick her armpit. She made a little sound that seemed like surprise squeezed out by appreciation, and her hips wiggled. She writhed happily as my tongue made its way down to her navel and from there around the ticklish parts either side of her pubis. Then I was between her legs, licking her inner thighs and smelling her vagina before sucking the little lips and slurping her juices. She parted her legs to give me better access and I licked her fabulous pussy – fabulous not in a unique way but in the fact that it was perfect, fragrant, slippery and very private. For all her talk of children and husband, I sensed that few men had ever been where I was at that moment.
I licked her further back and she arched backwards to expose more of the hallowed ground of her womanhood. Eventually, my tongue was strolling along the banks of her bottom, and I expected her to clam up, but she didn’t. She was making small noises and when I pushed my tongue into her crack she jumped and said “Ooh,” or some Chinese equivalent.
“British people do this?” she asked quite seriously.
“I like it,” I replied. “With a very nice woman.” This seemed to satisfy her and she relaxed and let me do it to her. This English man was licking her in the most private, most controversial of places, and she wasn’t sure she should like it, but she obviously did.
With this approval established, I turned her over and onto her knees so I could lick her in my preferred position. She accepted her role gladly now, enjoying the thrill of my tongue in her arse and the feeling of being worshipped in a divine, if debauched, way.
May enjoyed her first anilingual orgasm with a long, happy wail, and her body went loose as she lapped up the ooze of feel-good chemicals that flooded her veins. Then she wanted me inside her.
She got into position on her back, legs wide apart and raised, knees bent.
“You fuck me now,” she said unnecessarily but enjoying the role of sex goddess.
We kissed tenderly and passionately while we fucked, and it combined the sensual human element with the urgent, irresistible animal act. We fucked energetically, hard and determined, and I grabbed her shoulders to pull her down onto my invading pole. She whimpered with delight and cried out, “Yes, yes, oh, ohhhhhh…” as another orgasm swept her away. I pumped my seed into her and she pulled me closer and kissed me even more deeply as this important part of the transaction was completed successfully. Not only did a man desire her, but she still had the power to make him cum inside her. She was still a woman, not just an ageing person. She was still beautiful, still sexy, and the cavalcade of younger women and downright girls had not, after all, stolen all the magic.
