I despise beautiful women.
Okay, maybe that is a teensy bit of an overstatement but I wanted to grab your attention and if I’d written ‘I have problems developing and maintaining friendships with beautiful women’ then, well, I can feel the collective yawn from here. So now that I do have your attention, perhaps you’d be happy enough to wander along this path a little further with me. I do promise that by the end there will be a beautiful woman and sexual escapades, so we do both have that to look forward to.
Not the nightclub tartlet, all trout lips and trowelled makeup, swaying seduction less soaked in alcohol. Not the Kardashianite wannabe, with her squat swollen arse and Instagram fakery. Not the bimbo, shrink-wrapped into her dress with her breasts uplifted and proferred like a jiggling pair of blancmange. And not even the modern-day Diana coquettishly teasing through batted lashes. Not them. I don’t despise them; well, not for their beauty alone.
Deep within the pit of my stomach there is a seething, gelatinous black mass. This is where the tar babies live. They are the guardians of all the hurt, all the slights, all the malevolence I’ve suffered in my life. Real and imagined. Every time I’ve played Medusa to their Helen of Troy. Every eye that has flitted from me to her. Every conversation I’ve been gradually excluded from. All the haughty disdain that she, her, they have showered on my less perfect physical appearance. All of them recorded, maintained, twisted into new forms of bitterness to be dragged out fresh and livid each bright new day.
I’m jealous. I’m envious. I’m a green-eyed little monster; a poisoned dwarf constantly bemoaning the genetic scrapings that are me. The stunted growth, the insignificant breasts, the flyaway hair given to frizz at the merest hint of moisture, the thin lips, the facial angularity, the paleness of my lashes that leave my eyes unframed, and most of all the melanoma-free skin that coats the entirety of my body like a blotchy, speckled, luminescent shroud. Why am I not deserving of long limbs, almond skin tones, pouting lips, soft dewy eyes that entice, and breasts? Real breasts! Proper breasts! Breasts that demand slavish attention. Breasts that give shape and form and enticement to even the most shapeless of garments. Why? Why? Why?
But it’s not all my fault. She/her/they need to take some responsibility too. Strutting through life as over-privileged prima donnas, haughty and self-absorbed, barely noticing the little people and the acolytes. Empty and vacuous with barely a thought that extends beyond how simply fabulous they are. They’re coffee-table books; all glossy on the outside, an easy five-minute distraction, but lacking any substance and depth whilst far more worthwhile tomes go unattended and gather dust on the unbrowsed shelves.
But then there is Melissa.
Every so often, dear reader, there is a paragraph that just refuses to write itself and this is one of those. It should be simple; all it needs do is convey Melissa’s sublime beauty whilst emphasising that she is nice with a capital N. But all I have is words, so how do I capture the shimmering of her hair in dappled sunlight, or the movement of her yoga pant clad buttocks, or the soft curve of her pubis that seems an invitation to explore the hidden pleasures below? How do I convey the soft honey glow of her skin or the entrancement of her fluttering eyelashes or the defined bump of her unfettered nipples grazing against whatever piece of fabric clings about her flesh? I could tell you that she saves kittens from trees, helps old ladies across roads, and dances naked in the moonlight. That she gives without taking, that she’s pleasant and personable and quite the loveliest person you could wish to meet. But all I have is clichés. So, it might be best if you create your own version of the feminine ideal, let her grow within your mind, infuse her with substance and I will do my best not to disavow your vision.
For a month I avoided her, observing her regal progress from afar, a sullen cloud floating at the edge of her sunlit uplands. Each day, like a politician at election time, she would perambulate through her constituents full of joyous goodwill and well-intentioned concern, bathing them in her thousand-kilowatt smile, listening, empathising, caring whilst I tiptoed surreptitiously at the horizon. It could not last. She wouldn’t allow it.
Increasingly she placed her feet on the same paths as mine, hunted me, cornered me, forced us to come face to face so that she may impart her indefatigable cheeriness upon me. A turned head, a lowered gaze, mumbled responses; that is how I greeted her yet still she persisted. ‘Good Morning’ morphing into who, what, why, when, where, how, so that my monosyllabic yes and no were rendered redundant.
I relented. Allowing my brittle shell to splinter, accepting that she just might be allowed a small place in my world. And then she said it:
“I watch you.”
“I watch you watching them.”
I fled, scarlet shame burning my face. Found sanctuary in my home, hid behind bricks and mortar, safe and concealed behind my paned glass windows.
She watched.
She watched me.
She watched me as I peered into the debauched and disgusting lives of my near neighbours.
She watched me as my sticky fingers reflected the depravity before my eyes, as they slipped between my thighs, as they filled the aching void resounding in my sopping cunt, as my mouth gaped and my body arched, as I slumped splayed and offered, as stiff fingers ravaged my squelching core.
She watched me degraded and abased for her pleasure. Invading me, sullying me, violating me, forcing me to parade naked before her prurient gaze, my privacy reduced to tattered strips pooled about my feet.
The remains of the day were filled with spilt tea, chewed cuticles and self-recrimination, and it was only as dusk’s fingers clawed their way across my garden that I put aside my self-flagellation and reached a decision.
“If she is going to spy on me, then I’ll spy on her.”
And yes, I’m embarrassed to admit, I did say that aloud and not just in my head.
I knew where she lived, a small block of four flats whose entrance porch opened out onto the park. I wasn’t certain as to which windows were hers but to get the best view I would need to relocate my nest from my bedroom to the guest room on the floor above. Besides which I would not only have a better view from my more elevated position, but she might not look for me in the blanked darkness of my upper floor.
Time passed. Safely secreted in shadows, I scanned the eight possibles for her presence until only two blanked unrevealing picture windows remained. My bum was numb, my mouth dry, my arm muscles complaining under the weight and fixity of holding the binoculars to my red-rimmed eyes; yet still and predatory, I waited.
Her arrival was choreographed; off scene lamplight illuminating as she stepped into view, clad only in a shorty faux silk dressing gown, tied loosely about the waist, its hemline barely concealing the enticing curvature of her buttocks, the lapels spread to reveal her honeyed flesh as it swept down from her neck between the rounded possibilities of her perfect breasts to reach a pointed climax just above her navel.
Fluid, graceful steps; reaching, turning, pirouetting, as artful and preconceived she wends her way across the visible space to the armchair and unlit floor lamp placed provocatively facing towards the deep gloom of the watching world. This no casual evening spent home alone; this is a stage show, a sex show, a peep show and she’s just another slattern displaying her wares to the waiting crowd, just another stripper without a pole cavorting for the audience’s approval.
“Bitch.”
I’m mumbling it beneath my breath. My own imperfect flesh, flushed and itchy, tension thrumming at my temples, heat rash rearing virulent on my inner thighs, an endless sonorous booming reverberating in my ears.
“Bitch, bitch, bitch.”
She stretches onto tiptoe as she ignites the remaining lamp light; unnecessary and revealing, the twin moons of her bottom exposed as the clinging fabric slips northward, and between them the split seeping arc of her vulva is briefly, teasingly displayed in all its soft, smooth, hairless glory.
I refuse to moan. It’s beneath me. I will not submit to such degrading behaviour even as she swivels, lowers herself into her armchair, throws a single leg wide across an armrest, the remaining pretence of propriety flung asunder. I adjust the focal point slightly, bringing her pouting perfection into sharp relief; a single fine line of manicured growth splits her waxed mons, pointing downwards to the petal lips already opened beneath the lamplight, the darkened, blood-infused pinkness of her clit swollen and receptive, her furrow glistening, her pulsing gash dribbling wetness before my eager gaze.
“Slut.”
Mimicking the position I so frequently adopted, her slender fingers gliding across bare decolletage to disappear beneath the womanly swell of her breast, cupping flesh, the hidden movement of her nails and pads teasing and capturing what I was certain was a sensitive, aching nub of delight. A whimpering exhalation as her spare hand reached and clutched in the upholstery beside her before bringing a spotting scope to press against a lust-filled eye.
I shrink back. Wriggling deeper into the darkness. Breath held tight in my chest. Binoculars devouring her face as the scope steadily scans the darkened facade of my home. Her teeth nibble her bottom lip, delicate frown lines disfiguring her forehead, an almost imperceptible crinkling at the edge of her eyes as brick by brick and pane by pane, she seeks her quarry.
“I watch you watching.”
I’m whispering it beneath my breath. An almost hysterical edge to the words, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from springing forth and doing star jumps in the darkness to attract her attention. Yet somehow I resist. Somehow I keep my lenses trained on her perfection as she battles her indecision.
It’s the fingers teasing at her nipple that decide; slipping upwards, they traverse her collarbone’s sharp ridge and shrug the sleek satiny fabric from her shoulder before returning to clasp the now visible swell of her breast in a show of false modesty. Like Venus rising from the waves amongst the Uffizi’s dry atmosphere, she clings to herself, a blaze of vibrant life amongst surrounding pale shadows.
It’s but a momentary reflection, fingers sliding downwards, the inconsequential inconvenience of the waist tie dissolving at her touch, fabric parting, divinity revealed hewn not from cold marble but heated, blood-infused flesh.
Yet even as her fingers drift across her V of entrancement, even as they toy with her manicured and unnecessary hairline, even as they wander between her widespread thighs, caress her obscenely swollen vulva, circle her exposed erect clit and dip into the obvious wetness of her pulsing cunt, even as her intended fingers do all of these things, the scope remains fixed to her searching eye.
Plaintive whimpers throb in my ears as I squirm, hidden and safe. Transfixed by her insistent fingers as they slice into her gleaming sex. Buried, concealed, their movement revealed by the trembling in her stomach, the heaving rise and fall of her bosom, the quivering pants of ache and desire escaping from her gaping mouth. Thrusting; fingers sliding back into view before slamming back into her sopping gash, hips rising to meet the invasion, climbing onto tiptoe before slumping back down onto the soles of her feet. Rivulets of desire descending her clenching buttocks, knuckles soaked, wrist shimmering, beads of tension seeping through her skin as, blank and unseeing, her expanded pupils stare into the pitched night between us.
I gaze upon her face as it cavorts through its journey to pleasure. Fingers clutching the scope, hand fallen, eyes revealed as they dissolve into her flesh’s lustful embrace. Nose snorting, mouth greedy and cavernous as it sucks oxygen-thin air into her expanded lungs. Both hands fallen to her lap, between her thighs, two digits parting her juiced lips, opening herself, displaying herself in all her aching, perfect glory.
Through the darkness, across the paces of our separation, her eyes reach out for my concealed self. Blind yet seeing. Fixing themselves unerringly on my locale. Skewering me with her gaze as she slams the spotting scope into her wanting, waiting, willing cunt in frenzied self-abuse.
