At sometime or other, we must have all been presented with an opportunity that was a dead cert, but chose to walk away. For whatever reason. Whether it be the wrong time, the wrong place or even the wrong person. We've all done it.
I try not to dwell on such matters, but every now and then a memory will come back and prey on my mind.
This has happened to me recently. Three times, no less and I thought that while I am waiting for inspiration to drop with my tale of those "Afternoons With Amanda".
I thought I would share these three short stories with you.
I have written them as they actually happened and then as the fantasy that my mind has created.
DEBBIE (Fact...)
Back in the late 80's I enrolled on a creative writing course. I write songs and music but lyrics have always been a pain to write. It's not something that comes naturally to me. My best songs are always ones when the words seems to fall out of the ether and into my head. I thought that by signing up to the course that it would unlock my talent further. In reality, all it did was help me to write better stories.
It was a night school class and I fell in with a nice bunch of people.
Our tutor was a professional actor and screenplay writer, not that he had written anything that you would know. But apparently he got paid for his writing skills more than his acting skills. His name was Ben and he was always accompanied by his wife, Julie.
The course was over eight weeks and as time went by, I was becoming increasingly more proud of the work that I was producing. He taught us everything we needed to know about writing plays, screenplays, poetry and it's various forms, shorts stories and novels.
We eventually came to our final night together and Ben suggested that we spent it in the pub. The premise was that we should observe people and make up stories about them.
After the third or fourth round of drinks that idea was clearly out of the window and we just sat and talked about anything. The topic eventually moved around to sex and one of the women in the group, a large girl by the name of Brenda, announced that her secret to keeping her husband happy and making sure he did as he was told, was to give him a blowjob two or three times a week.
I feel that I should tell you that at this time I was married and had been for about seven years. My wife and I had been like teenagers in the beginning of our relationship, as most people are and shagged at every opportunity we had. But after we got married, the intimate side of our marriage dropped off a little and after our son was born, she lost interest in sex completely. No amount of therapy would have helped and it seemed I was to be consigned to a life of midnight masturbation, in the bathroom, with porn magazine.
I didn't inform the group of this, of course, but I realised that it had been a while since I had felt the warm, wet mouth of a woman wrapped around my erect cock. Hearing how this woman happily gave a her husband a blowjob regularly made me a little envious of her husband.
Eventually it was closing time and we all hugged and embraced each other, exchanging phone numbers and planning to all meet up again in twelve months time. Something, I might add, I am still waiting to happen, thirty years later.
As I was exiting the pub, I heard a voice say, "Could I trouble you for a lift?"
I turned around to see a young woman, whom I remembered was called Debbie.
She was about 5' 6" tall. Her blond hair was permed and pushed high on her head. Her make up was slightly overdone, for my taste. Bright pink lipstick and lilac eyeshadow. Red blusher adorned her cheeks. She wasn't slim or slender, but then again she wasn't overweight or rotund either. I would describe her as cuddly.
She wore a black leather bomber jacket, skin tight, stonewashed denim jeans and a white t-shirt with the photo of a pop band printed on the chest. Quite a nice chest too.
"Where do you live?" I asked.
"Colthorn Avenue," she replied. "Number xx."
I thought about it for a moment, trying to place where Colthorn Avenue was.
"Ah yes," I said. "It's on my way home. Jump in."
As I drove, we chatted generally. She said that she could tell I wasn't from the area and I told her that I moved with my wife, so that she could be near her aging mother. Debbie wanted to know how long we had been married and so I told her.
She replied that she lived with her boyfriend. He worked away from home for a months at a time, out of the country. She didn't say what he did and I didn't ask. But she also told me that she was tired of him being away so much and wanted him to stop. But the pay was good and he was reluctant to quit his job.
She added that she signed up to the course in order to meet new people.
I got the impression that she was lonely.
We came to her house and I pulled the car to a halt outside her front gate and switched off the engine.
She thanked me for the lift and was about to open the passenger side door.
"Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?" she asked. "Or are you under a curfew?"
I replied that I'd love a cup of coffee.
I feel that I must point out that at no point was I remotely thinking about whether I was being given the come on, or that this was leading to anything else other than a cup of coffee. Despite what my wife and I were going through, I wasn't the kind of guy that cheated, no matter what the circumstances.
Once inside the house, we removed our jackets and hung them up.
Her front door led immediately into the lounge and directly in front of the front door was a steep staircase, which I assumed led to the bedrooms and bathroom.
As you walked into the lounge area, a wall created a small space to my left into which a dining table with six chairs was situated. There was door along the left wall which led to the kitchen and a bay window opposite provided daylight for the lounge. Set into the middle of the far wall was a fireplace. Once, it may have had a roaring coal fire burning, but now it just added to the decor and an electric bar fire sat in front of the hearth. To the right of the fireplace was television set, on a stand, with a VCR placed beneath it and to the left there was a bookshelf.
There was a couch set in front of the fireplace and a wooden oblong coffee table in front of that.
"Make yourself at home," said Debbie. "Put the TV on while I make a brew."
There wasn't any remote controlled televisions in the 1980's, so I switched on the TV by pushing the "ON" button in the front panel of the set. The screen spluttered into life and I settled back onto the couch and half watched a documentary about a pop star from the 1970's who was trying to make a comeback. Don't they all?
After a few minutes Debbie came back into the room with a tray laden with mugs of steaming hot coffee, a milk jug and a sugar bowl.
I placed my mug on the table and spooned in a generous amount of sugar, stirring as I went.
Debbie perched herself on the arm at the opposite end of the couch and cradled her mug. Time passed silently as we both watched the TV. Occasionally one of us would comment on the program.
Then the silence was broken when Debbie said, "It was fun tonight, wasn't it."
I turned to her and smiled.
"Yes it was," I said. "It's a shame that the course had to end. I was just getting to know people tonight. I'm going to miss it."
She slid off the couch arm and onto the cushion.
"You're quite a talented writer," she said.
