Behind the Curtain

He brought out the masochist in me. He made me what I am today: helpless, frustrated, fingers vengefully invading tight cunt as I lie tangled in sweaty sheets. Stymied and angry I give up, ferociously thumping the mattress as I turn over and scream into my pillow. This isn't fair. He's done this to me. Before him I could get myself off in minutes. Now I just have one more thing to add to the long list of things he's done to fuck up my life.

He brought out the masochist in me. He showed me a new world. From the moment we met I knew he'd change my life. I just wish I'd known how. A darkened club in the heart of the city. Smoky, sweaty, sticky floors and cheaply upholstered seating. Two smooth, cool fingers circling my wrist, hot breath tickling my ear and sending shivers down my spine. A whisper, 'I know you.' Oh and how he would take advantage of that.

Since he's left these flashes of memory descend on me several times a day. Not images, not frozen scenes like film stills projected flickering on the screen of my mind's eye but something more visceral. A shroud of memory that envelops me, drags me in. I feel myself there but not there. The colours are muted, there are no sounds but it feels so real. Perhaps as real as it ever was. And my stomach lurches, my cunt floods and I scurry home hoping this time, maybe, I'll come. But it's been three months and each time finds me where I am now; defeated and disheartened, hate and thwarted love burning agonisingly in my chest.

•

It's a stifling Monday in Bangkok. Rainy season is just around the corner and the soupy air pervades everywhere, oppressive and irritating, not least on the un-air-conditioned bus I find myself travelling home on. Uncomfortable though I am, any moment of inertia is enough to give my imagination a chance to sneak up on me and so once again I find myself trapped in a shroud of memory. Of roaming hands stroking willing flesh, of being spread over the kitchen table, ankles and wrists bound while his tongue teased me into confessing that I loved him. Being gagged with my own underwear and spanked into submission. The sound of the cane tearing through the air, the sting, the spreading pain. I can feel it, feel the angry red welts rising on thoroughly punished ass cheeks. I wriggle in the vinyl seat, thighs sticking and tearing off, my cunt getting wetter and wetter. This traffic jam is hell. I need to get home! This time, maybe...

I close my eyes and lean back into the feeling of him roughly thrusting his cock into me, his words, made staccato by lust, 'you filthy slut...you cock-hungry bitch...take it, take it!' My labia swells as the memory overcomes me. I can feel his skin as it slaps against me, I can smell his need, his want and mine as well which I realise, embarrassed, other people on the bus might be able to smell as well. But with wondrous serendipity and the characteristic incongruity of the Bangkok traffic (I have, no kidding, been stuck in a traffic jam at four in the morning. And sailed home in rush hour in under ten minutes) the cars break and we speed down Sukhumvit to On Nut. I almost trip over myself to get off the bus and race to get on a motorcycle taxi. My cunt hums along with the engine and I think to myself, this time, maybe...

I fumble the key in the lock, legs crossed and knickers soaked through. The door slams behind me and I strip and stumble my way to the bed. Attempting to exercise some restraint I take a deep breath and begin the ritual. I run my hands over my body, caressing my thighs. I try to submerge myself into my pleasure, hoping that each stroke will erase another piece of the outside world until I'm alone with my need. Hands slide up over pubic mound, between swollen cunt lips. Index finger teases engorged clit, slowly circling, gently tapping, while the other finger sneaks down and pushes itself gently inside me. I arch my back and impale myself on my own digit, a gasp escaping from me at the unequalable pleasure of a solid object sliding deliciously into a hot, sticky mess. One hand working my clit I start to fuck the other, legs wide, hair tangling and matting on the pillow. But something's happening. A familiar numbness. I try to ignore it, to stop it taking over but it's beginning to spread over me. Frustrated and desperate to finish I open my eyes and that's when I see her. In the opposite flat, a woman standing at the sink of her kitchenette, watching me. The shock of it switches everything off -- the frustration, the desire -- and, embarrassed, I hasten to the bathroom for a long, shameful shower.

•

Tuesday sees me once again trapped on an airless bus crawling through the loud, obnoxious mid-afternoon traffic. I'm still in shock from my experience of the day before. Though I'm sure she didn't realise I'd seen her (when I got out of the shower she was still calmly washing up where I left her), every time I close my eyes I see her impassive face, observing, recording her findings. An ethologist cataloguing behaviour. But even as the embarrassment trickles slowly down my spine, the thought of being watched, of someone wanting to see me in my debauched state, is undeniably intoxicating. I think of her trapped behind her sink, arousal spreading through her and so it spreads through me. Once again, I'm on a bus and dizzy with desire.

This time when I get home I walk calmly into my flat. I remove my clothes carefully and deliberately, sneaking just the slightest glance at the building opposite and there she is! Has she been waiting for me? The narcissist in me is thrilled. I lay myself down on the bed and again my hands begin their familiar journey. Over undulating curves and soft, yielding flesh, I will them to will away the rest of the world until it is just she and I and our mutual desire. My searching hands find their way home, teasing clit, circling hole and plundering the juices therein. My treacherous imagination throws up an image. Me, on me knees, outside the front door of his apartment. His fingers are tangled in my hair and he's brutally fucking my throat as I gag around his hard shaft and he tells me to take it, slut, take it and I did and I loved it but now I worry that this memory will ruin everything and the numbness will descend.

And just as a worm of panic begins to wriggle in my gut the image changes and instead of him I'm on my knees in front of her. The woman watching me. I'm faced with a neatly trimmed thatch of black pubic hair and the scent of female longing. Delicately, hesitantly, I part the plump labia before me and my tongue goes searching for her clit. I've never gone down on a woman in my life. I have no idea where these images are coming from but they seem so real, more real than my images of him. I can taste her, hear her tiny cry as I make contact with the nerve centre of her pleasure. I lick and feather and flutter over it. In my imagination she is wriggling beneath my tongue, squirming in pure felicity. Her fingers are in my hair but not rough and controlling. She gently pulls me in to her until her sex surrounds me. I slide a finger deep inside her, as I slide a finger deep inside myself, and she rides me and I feel it mounting, something I haven't felt in months. That swell, that surge. It radiates through my body, a supernatural glow infusing my being. I'm fucking my fingers now, harder and still harder and here it comes. Here I come. Screaming and convulsing and then collapsing, finally sated, on the sheets.

I take deep breaths as I come down. My head is spinning, my breath ragged and a huge smile on my face. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and rise and walk towards the window. She's there and as I reach to close the curtains I look her dead in the eye. I hope she knows what she's done for me.