Now and the Future

We lay in the warm bed, the sheet tangled by our lovemaking, our skin drying in the summer evening air. She smelled of sweat and sex and coffee.

It was our second time together. We had known each other for six weeks, flirted, sidled, tentatively touched, picnicked and lunched, walked and talked and saw movies and longed for each other. It would have happened sooner, but we both had reasons not to take the final steps.

I was on temporary placement. Two months, then back to England. She was in a messy divorce, but had a life in France.

Then, the night before, rain had hit the square in Arles where we stood waiting for the fireworks. Cold rain for a summer evening, heavy and hard. Lightning had outshone anything that mere gunpowder could have made, and the noise was constant.

We ran to her apartment, it was closest, laughing and dripping, soaked to the skin. She told me to stand in the little hall, not to soak the carpet, dodged into the bathroom and threw me a towel. I caught it and started to dry my hair, the towel covering my face. I felt her hand on my chest a moment later.

She lifted the towel, and kissed me. It was unstoppable then.

We had gone for breakfast at a nearby cafe, and glanced at the Sunday papers. Then through the park to watch the boule, and back along the winding back lane lined with old stone walls and scented weeds.

It was natural to make a coffee to take onto her balcony, to look out over the roofs, to settle behind her with my arms around her, to bend and twine and twist into lovemaking again, stumbling backwards over the threshold into her bedroom, landing in heaven.

Afterwards we whispered, although there was no one else to hear us. The words were too big to say aloud.

"Why did you marry him?" I asked, in horror at what she told me. The scar across her back now seemed trivial compared to what he had done to her mind.

"He asked." She said and smiled sadly, with a shrug. "I was lonely, he seemed nice. When a girl turns thirty she doesn't get asked very often. I settled. Do you think that is terrible?"

"No. I know what lonely is like." I hugged her.

"And I was broken. I, I want to tell you everything, so you know. I didn't want you to know before. Before we... Before. But now I want you to know, before anything else happens. I don't want you to find out later, and be disgusted. Like he was."

"Disgusted?"

"Yes. You see, it was only when he found out that... that things went wrong. Well, you know we all do things when we are young, things we wouldn't do again? I don't know what he expected. I was thirty when we met. He knew I wasn't a virgin. But when he found out... You see, when I was in my teens I was pretty wild. My parents were strict, and as soon as I got out of school and into college, I rebelled. I went off the rails. Drink, drugs, sex. Lots of all three. It started in the first week at college. New friends, all girls, we went to a club to dance. Someone gave me a pill, and I took it - everyone did. Ecstasy. So I danced. And danced. And a boy came up and danced with me. I didn't care, I didn't feel shy, I just had to dance. He gave me another pill. I loved it. I had to move to the beat. He guided me, dancing, to the side of the floor, under the balcony, into a dark area, where couples were making out. He pushed me back against a padded wall and kissed me."

"I had kissed one boy before. Very briefly. No tongues. This one kissed me like fire. I still heard the beat and needed to move, but he was up against me, arms round me, pressing into me. He lifted me and my legs went round him, and he pushed me back, my skirt rucked up, his crotch, hard, pressing against mine. I had never felt anything like it. And I needed to move. I can imagine what it looked like, me writhing and grinding on him, him kissing my neck and face and shoulders, his hands on my bottom."

"I came there and then, for the first time. I didn't know what it was. I thought I was going to die. But it was so good I didn't mind."

We both laughed, and she went on "But of course that wasn't the end of it. The next thing I knew there was something pressing up against me, opening me. He had pulled my knickers aside and somehow got his cock out, and then in."

"No!"

"Oh yes. I was drugged up, stoned, had just orgasmed, so I was very turned on and wet, and also kind of naive, so it was all a weird blur. I had been a keen swimmer at school, so I had used Tampons since I was twelve or so. I knew what it felt like to have something inside me, and I had put fingers in there. Not playing with myself, but to feel the tampon was in right. Of course he was bigger than a finger. It felt huge. Enormous. But I remember it didn't really hurt, and I remember the feeling of being opened up, stretched, filled up. It was strange. I felt utterly exposed and yet covered up as well. Like my soul was being displayed mounted on this pole, but his arms around me and his lips on mine were protecting me, loving me."

For a moment her eyes were soft, thinking about that first moment. I felt jealous, which shocked me.

She shrugged "Not that it was love, of course. I knew that anyway. Once he had managed to get it in, and he said 'Christ you're tight!' which I was sort of proud of, he started to bounce me up and down and swing his hips to maximise the length of his stroke. I was overwhelmed. I didn't know what to think, what to feel. I remember thinking 'So this is what sex feels like' and then 'oh, I'm not a virgin now' and then 'is this what they call fucking?' and then I thought 'Yes. This is fucking. I am being fucked.' It was surreal. Like I was watching myself. And then suddenly I was back in my body, and for the first time I really realised, so was he. The sensation hit me. The beat hit me. My body wanted to move, and I went with it. I revelled in it. I fucked him back, I dragged his head down and kissed him hard and flexed and drove and clawed at him. We ended up on the floor, him on top, pounding me, as I came again, and pounding on and on with the beat. I don't know how long we went for. An hour or maybe two, before he finally came. By then I was naked, sweating, had been taken from behind and ridden him, and sucked him and wanked him as well. All on the floor, with other people passing by. He finished inside me, on top of me again, fucking me hard. I thought he was having a heart attack."

"And that was your first time?" I said, aghast at the idea.

She laughed. "You look like you aren't sure whether to be angry with him or turned on."

She kissed me.

"Be turned on. I was. Oh I know, it wasn't romantic, it wasn't with someone special, it wasn't gentle and loving and all the things it could have been. But it was exciting and it felt good. Not the best, but I was drugged up and happy. And I was lucky, I can orgasm on E. Not every does. And I thought it was normal, if you can believe that. So when he finished he rolled off and pulled up his trousers, handed me my blouse and said 'You need a drink?' and staggered off. He was enough of a gentlemen to return with a pint of water for me. I was dressed by then, and dazed. Starting to wind down. I drank the water and said 'Thanks'. He said 'Any time' and turned, dancing, back into the crowd."

"Gone?"

"Gone. In every way. He had probably dropped another pill. I went home. I threw up on the way. The next day I was in agony. Rubbed raw, and a touch of cystitis. But two weeks later I was back in the club. But by then I was on the pill. Oh yes, I wasn't on anything the first time I hadn't been expecting it. Lucky enough I didn't end up 'expecting' anything."

She laughed again, but then turned a little more serious. "And that was my life for the next five years. Drugs, sex, dancing. Drink when I couldn't get E, or dope, or coke. But always sex. Mostly casual hookups in clubs. Sometimes I got a job dancing, in a cage, on platforms. Sometimes I got paid in drugs. Sometimes I got invited to the VIP rooms, private parties, hotel rooms. Parties where the girls got given goody bags on the way home. Cash. A thousand pounds, minus twenty percent for the woman who organised the party."

She gave me a long, close look. "I would have done it all for free of course. But the money was useful. Party clothes and make-up and hairdo's are expensive in London. I was careful of course. I learned about condoms. I tried to keep it to one night a week, only a Friday or a Saturday, very rarely both. I saw what happened to the girls who partied every night. So I studied hard in the week, put my head down, didn't get distracted by boys, and then partied like a mad thing on the weekends. Got a job after graduation, kept regular office hours, dressed drab, didn't date the boss, lived a double life really. I had all the sex and fun I wanted at the weekend. The rest of the week was career time."

She looked down, at my chest, and her hand stroked my arm automatically as she spoke. "I never really counted, but, say fifty nights a year for five years, that's 250 party nights. Maybe 300. And sometimes a party would go on a long time. And there would be lots of guys there. So call it 400."

She nodded and looked up at me, clear green eyes with an unreadable expression. "Yeah, about 400. I fucked four hundred guys in five years."

She shrugged, and looked down. I wondered what she had seen in my eyes when she said that. She carried on in a softer voice "Then I quit the drugs and drink and the party life. I got sick, and sick of it all. I was sober and sensible for a year. Then I started dating. Some lasted, a year, or near enough. Some a few weeks. No one-night stands, I always waited until at least the fourth date to have my wicked way. Still, in five years I fucked another twenty. So that is the score. I have had sex with over four hundred men. I did it for money, many times. Often in front of other people, even on stage with a crowd of several hundred watching. Quite a few times with two or three guys at once, one night with six men in a row. And I've been with several women, although that was never really my thing. I was lucky, I didn't catch anything serious, and I am clean now, but I had the clap, and crabs. There is film and still pictures of me on the net. One picture has me getting double teamed by two black guys. I know it is me, but I don't remember doing it. Too much coke probably."

She shrugged again and fell silent. Then she looked up at me with scared defiance, and in an offhand, but slightly challenging way, said "So, do you want to go out for dinner with me this evening, or have you other plans?"

I swallowed. "I did have other plans, actually," I said, and I saw her slump. Her eyes glazed, with tears, as I touched her chin and drew her up to look at me again. "I was going to cook. So we could stay in, and not have to dress. But if you want to go out that's fine." I smiled.

She looked stunned. Unsure what to say, or hope. I smiled again and kissed her.

What did it matter how many lips she had kissed, how many bodies had touched hers? That was past. She had not changed in the few minutes she had been speaking. She was as perfect as she had been the evening before. She was made by that past, as I was by mine.

It was now that mattered. And the future.