the background to an upcoming confession
I met S in The Lemmy in December. I don't know what attracted me to him, I just noticed him and liked what I saw, even though there physically wasn't anything that made me lust after him, apart from that unique bulk and brawl a rugby player's body has-which, embarassingly, makes me ache with lust. I guess he just had that quality.
I spent a while doing my usual looking over a lot, and trying to catch his attention for a sultry smile, but he was so busy, surrounded by beautiful people he never noticed. I remember a gorgeous Oriental girl, clad in denim and fuschia, standing right next to him, and my heart sank, both because it might have been his girlfriend, or he simply like the company of exceptionally beautiful women. Feeling a stab of defeatism, I gave up, sulked for a bit and then, after a few boozy snaps and dances with my friends, totally forgot about him.
Later, I was doing my usual last-hour of The Lemmy thing; hanging about by the doors, in the corner of the achingly cool bar-hip hop room and smoking my customary, poser-ish long white menthol cigarette. I always smoke when I'm alone, it makes me look less sad and desparate, as I perch at a table, cigarette held high, me dragging on it and exhaling smoke with aloof grace. I like to think I look like a Tarantino-esque heroine, dark hair, dark eyes, simple clothes, glitzy jewels, surveying the scene, and wondering if I deem these people cool enough to join. S suddenly appears, dashing in and out of the swinging doors, me casually surveying him, no smiles this time, I'm in a Tarantino movie remember? Another drag, and a cooler nasal exhalation (tres Francais), and S is suddenly returning my sly grin. He sticks half of his body out of the door but then springs backwards, and ambles over to my table. As he chats to me, rather suavely I may add, I half grin, pout, giggle, suck on my methol slowly, and we swap numbers. He shows me a photo of him and then-pop-star-of-the-minute Steve Brookstein, and then, just as I think I'm about to drop the Tarantino act as I fish for my cloakroom ticket and have to queue up against the breezeblock for my coat, S announces a mate of his has been punched by a bouncer in another club and he has to run...
...we text, I think he's rather sweet, due to the lack of sexual suggestions and I don't see him for some time. He's in London a lot he says; as he's a third year he's looking for work, he lives in West London anyway, and his uni housemates distract him from his dissertation. But it's temporary he assures me, we'll soon meet up. My heart smiles, I imagine cosy drinks and long chats, not the usual boozy cocktails and innuendos, before we can't keep our hands of each other anymore and crawl back to whoever's bed is nearest, for aggressive, grunting sex...
...the penultimate day of the first term looms, and I have a terrible cold. On campus, during seminars, study group meetings and the like, Tarantino heroine is gone. After all, you can't smoke in most campus buildings either due to law or the amount of scowls you recieve from sickly looking prep-princesses and bottle green clad athletes. Anyway, my arms are too full of books and junk, despite the empty tote bag swinging empty and open off my shoulder. I'm heady with photocopy ink, and there's a million things to do but I don't want to do them. I'm aggressive, lazy, full of bitter resentment. Ready to chomp the head off the next braying Sloane girl who mentions St Kitts or her boyfriend or tonight. And everyone's so well dressed compared to me. As I stand over the photocopier, green light sweeping back and forth over my face, the glass on the copier juddering as I aggressively turn each page and whack it down, I make the ever-renewed resolution to actually care about what I wear in the AM. You know, plan my outfits, make collages from the glossies cluttering my room, buy clothes, not the latest miracle spot cream, which, if I was naturally pretty, like EVERYONE here, I wouldn't need. Armani, Ralph Lauren, REAL designer luggage, folders effortlessly slung under arms or casually bound to chests. Artfully ripped denim. Clear tanned skin, bright white teeth and eyes. Giggles, bevies of friends. And my jacket is falling off my shoulder, my skirt is twisted round back to front, my tights are falling down, so are my slouchy boots and the cold has rendered my appearance dinosaurish.
My phone bleeps with a message. Which is really unusual during the day. It's S. Phew, he's in London. No he's not apparently, he's just witnessed the horror at the photocopier. And...his "friends are dead impressed". It must be a nightmare, I conclude, not replying to his request to meet up and hurrying off to my seminar, where my lips will remain glued shut in the presence of people who bothered to do the work and know how to discuss things.
I stomp home, the iPod screeching 80s rubbish in my ear and my phone continues to vibrate. He wants me to meet him in the campus bar. I'm halfway home, sweating and full of grumpy cold, and yet again forgot my make up bag. So there's not even the hope of retouching my make up in the reflection of the bus shelter glass before breezing back to campus. I just can't go. Even though he's leaving for the holidays today. House parties pass, goodbyes are said and term one ends.
I text S to say Merry Xmas, and things remain sweet. I joke like a fluffy bimbo, about a stocking full of diamonds and Chanel goodies, now the wholesome, rosy cheeked family girl celebrating Christmas with the family. My dark, black lace clad sexual side hasn't reared it's head with S yet, I think he's too nice.
Term two begins and plods on, the boring first half, full of exams and nothing much else. Everyone's snappy, it's been cold for too long and we wish we could come out of lectures into the late afternoon haze, not street-lit concrete and eerily shadowed trees. I always run home, pass the smells of student cooking and Neighbours glowing from cosy and messy living rooms, in the black streets, where it's damp and unloving. I don't hear from S, we're all busy, until exams are over and everyone's getting overexcited about the future. New housemates for some, tears and anxiety for me about where I actually am, halfway through. Not wanting to leave but dying to just jump on the train to London and never come back. Crying about leaving here and staying here. S is always in the background of my life, a cosy light. One day I'll be like my housemate and her boyfriend. Blockbuster videos and pizzas, giggles, kinship, lazy morning sex and spotaneous outings. It seems that sexually I'm finally getting all I want. But S texts back and he's always in London. A pattern begins to form and still I cling on. Because one day he'll have time and be my boyfriend, sure he will.
That sustains me for a long time. Even though I'm getting deeper and deeper into the messy world of casual sex with people in clubs, and in the darkened bathrooms of house parties, my panting louder than the rumble downstairs. S is always there to me though, as I lie naked on my bed, grabbing hold of yet another bobbing backside. I like to think S is waiting for me, as I shag about S is being respectful and telling everyone he's kinda seeing someone. S is going to change me, he'll be nice.
I get a little cocky one night, and text S something cheeky to which he replies with something X rated and admits he was fed up of being all chaste and was starting to worry about me. Enter MSN and my webcam. I'm doing what I've never done before. Lip-glossing and hair-ruffling up for a lens, gyrating alone in my room in th best lingerie I can find while S responds with admiration in the filthiest sentences. Now I'm cam-girl, greeting an audience of thousands as my friends watch in admiration and the guys I know from first year see that sexual side of me and dream about me in the most exotic positions. Sexual confessions and ambitions too, and suddenly that's all I am. Sex toys arrive in the post and obscure "discreetly named" companies appear on my credit card bill. My pubic hair disappears on a hot waxy strip of paper. Soon I'm gonna meet S too.
And that's how I developed the fatal habit of baring all for gains.
S has always been my secret. Nobody knows about him, nobody knows I even met him. I don't know why, but I like it that way. He's mine, my private hope, my rope ladder from a burning window. I'm envisioning parties where everyone's secretly gobsmacked at my smart choice. S is wowing the boys in the kitchen, beer casually clutched in a bear like fist, gesticulating and making kind jokes about me in the Carribean, London restaurants, at rugby matches. I'm in the lounge, glowing, orange tanned, sleek black hair, frosty make up, flicking long nails about and jangling jewelled wrists, talking about "my baby, S". Everyone's imagining me, a tiny toned stick under his mass, slim ankles on burly shoulders, between hotel sheets and my face contorted in extascy, while my cockney boom is replaced with a high pitched squeak for a voice and I'm whipsering American porn cliches in his ear as we make the steamiest love possible.
So I head off on the train, to see some vaguely phrased "boy from my course", in an impossible combo of tight denim, bouffant hair, heels and a ballet wrap, to London's West End, the rendez-vous point Selfridges. I've never seen S properly. And there he comes, huge, in an expensive suit, kisses me politely on the cheek and leads me through a melee of softly lit marble beauty halls and noisy fashion departments full of echoing ragga music. It's weird though, S looks bored as I chat animatedly over a vile noodle broth while he stabs slovernly at a piece of chicken and chews it powerfully, glancing about and nodding or asking me to repeat myself or grunting assent.
S is different in real life to the charming "sweet-heart sweet-heart" over the phone.
He discusses hotels, champagne, a night together. A bit speedy I must say. And as we leave, we both start to head off before bashfully assenting to a polite kiss. An hour and that's that.
Something doesn't feel right, I brood silently over tea indoors, where Mum bitchily sticks the boot in. I stare into space and think as burgers sizzle to a dried out black disc on a griddle. My mind is split in two as I scrawl cooking preferences for steak and slap it on a grimy tiled wall in a kitchen. The dream is unravelling, but I'm doing my best to keep it tight. Perhaps it's me.
But the chats on MSN are brief now, a few filthy sexual suggestions before S before he announces how busy he is and just logs off. I don't hear from him for weeks on end, he's always busy. Term three does not bring pizzas, videos, outings and morning sex but more hurried, sporadic messages and chats, and an increasingly worried mental state for me.
I'm hiding in my room, cringing and crying whenever a housemate laughs in another room. Phoning my parents for hours on end in the middle of the night. S visits me for 15 minutes one day, but ignores my conversation and just wants me to suck his cock. Interrupting my worried gabble about things not feeling right to make grabs at my boobs and pull me on top of him. A housemate walks in confused about the huge suitcase in the hallway and finds S. An elusive description from me in return and S's threat to never get my friends involved in us.
I'm getting bored and spending more time alone, in tears, ignoring my work, feeling sick as I walk back to my house from campus. Something's wrong. And S was supposed to be here this term.
S phones now and again. On the eve of my aunt's funeral while I look at ponchos with my mum in a deserted Docklands supermarket. And other times. S is still that little hope, although now tinged with grey, when I return home suddenly, unable to take life anymore. And he continues to disappoint. Still too busy. Arranging a date because he cannot stand me online. A midnight phone call lecturing me about my accent. Bragging about strippers and strip clubs and breaking his ankle in a topless bar in the Ukraine. S was nice. Not a blue-lit face looking up greedily while a long-legged, big breasted Amazonian beauty with fluttering false eyelashes pouted at him as she flips herself around a pole. Not the guy who books a double room and then phones me to tell me on no terms are we just gonna be sitting chatting the night away before undressing with our backs to each other and dozing off. I'm going to be fucked till I faint in every hole. Who cares what underwear I've spent hours browsing when he will push it to the side as he aggressively takes me.
Life is full of disappointments.
I spent a while doing my usual looking over a lot, and trying to catch his attention for a sultry smile, but he was so busy, surrounded by beautiful people he never noticed. I remember a gorgeous Oriental girl, clad in denim and fuschia, standing right next to him, and my heart sank, both because it might have been his girlfriend, or he simply like the company of exceptionally beautiful women. Feeling a stab of defeatism, I gave up, sulked for a bit and then, after a few boozy snaps and dances with my friends, totally forgot about him.
Later, I was doing my usual last-hour of The Lemmy thing; hanging about by the doors, in the corner of the achingly cool bar-hip hop room and smoking my customary, poser-ish long white menthol cigarette. I always smoke when I'm alone, it makes me look less sad and desparate, as I perch at a table, cigarette held high, me dragging on it and exhaling smoke with aloof grace. I like to think I look like a Tarantino-esque heroine, dark hair, dark eyes, simple clothes, glitzy jewels, surveying the scene, and wondering if I deem these people cool enough to join. S suddenly appears, dashing in and out of the swinging doors, me casually surveying him, no smiles this time, I'm in a Tarantino movie remember? Another drag, and a cooler nasal exhalation (tres Francais), and S is suddenly returning my sly grin. He sticks half of his body out of the door but then springs backwards, and ambles over to my table. As he chats to me, rather suavely I may add, I half grin, pout, giggle, suck on my methol slowly, and we swap numbers. He shows me a photo of him and then-pop-star-of-the-minute Steve Brookstein, and then, just as I think I'm about to drop the Tarantino act as I fish for my cloakroom ticket and have to queue up against the breezeblock for my coat, S announces a mate of his has been punched by a bouncer in another club and he has to run...
...we text, I think he's rather sweet, due to the lack of sexual suggestions and I don't see him for some time. He's in London a lot he says; as he's a third year he's looking for work, he lives in West London anyway, and his uni housemates distract him from his dissertation. But it's temporary he assures me, we'll soon meet up. My heart smiles, I imagine cosy drinks and long chats, not the usual boozy cocktails and innuendos, before we can't keep our hands of each other anymore and crawl back to whoever's bed is nearest, for aggressive, grunting sex...
...the penultimate day of the first term looms, and I have a terrible cold. On campus, during seminars, study group meetings and the like, Tarantino heroine is gone. After all, you can't smoke in most campus buildings either due to law or the amount of scowls you recieve from sickly looking prep-princesses and bottle green clad athletes. Anyway, my arms are too full of books and junk, despite the empty tote bag swinging empty and open off my shoulder. I'm heady with photocopy ink, and there's a million things to do but I don't want to do them. I'm aggressive, lazy, full of bitter resentment. Ready to chomp the head off the next braying Sloane girl who mentions St Kitts or her boyfriend or tonight. And everyone's so well dressed compared to me. As I stand over the photocopier, green light sweeping back and forth over my face, the glass on the copier juddering as I aggressively turn each page and whack it down, I make the ever-renewed resolution to actually care about what I wear in the AM. You know, plan my outfits, make collages from the glossies cluttering my room, buy clothes, not the latest miracle spot cream, which, if I was naturally pretty, like EVERYONE here, I wouldn't need. Armani, Ralph Lauren, REAL designer luggage, folders effortlessly slung under arms or casually bound to chests. Artfully ripped denim. Clear tanned skin, bright white teeth and eyes. Giggles, bevies of friends. And my jacket is falling off my shoulder, my skirt is twisted round back to front, my tights are falling down, so are my slouchy boots and the cold has rendered my appearance dinosaurish.
My phone bleeps with a message. Which is really unusual during the day. It's S. Phew, he's in London. No he's not apparently, he's just witnessed the horror at the photocopier. And...his "friends are dead impressed". It must be a nightmare, I conclude, not replying to his request to meet up and hurrying off to my seminar, where my lips will remain glued shut in the presence of people who bothered to do the work and know how to discuss things.
I stomp home, the iPod screeching 80s rubbish in my ear and my phone continues to vibrate. He wants me to meet him in the campus bar. I'm halfway home, sweating and full of grumpy cold, and yet again forgot my make up bag. So there's not even the hope of retouching my make up in the reflection of the bus shelter glass before breezing back to campus. I just can't go. Even though he's leaving for the holidays today. House parties pass, goodbyes are said and term one ends.
I text S to say Merry Xmas, and things remain sweet. I joke like a fluffy bimbo, about a stocking full of diamonds and Chanel goodies, now the wholesome, rosy cheeked family girl celebrating Christmas with the family. My dark, black lace clad sexual side hasn't reared it's head with S yet, I think he's too nice.
Term two begins and plods on, the boring first half, full of exams and nothing much else. Everyone's snappy, it's been cold for too long and we wish we could come out of lectures into the late afternoon haze, not street-lit concrete and eerily shadowed trees. I always run home, pass the smells of student cooking and Neighbours glowing from cosy and messy living rooms, in the black streets, where it's damp and unloving. I don't hear from S, we're all busy, until exams are over and everyone's getting overexcited about the future. New housemates for some, tears and anxiety for me about where I actually am, halfway through. Not wanting to leave but dying to just jump on the train to London and never come back. Crying about leaving here and staying here. S is always in the background of my life, a cosy light. One day I'll be like my housemate and her boyfriend. Blockbuster videos and pizzas, giggles, kinship, lazy morning sex and spotaneous outings. It seems that sexually I'm finally getting all I want. But S texts back and he's always in London. A pattern begins to form and still I cling on. Because one day he'll have time and be my boyfriend, sure he will.
That sustains me for a long time. Even though I'm getting deeper and deeper into the messy world of casual sex with people in clubs, and in the darkened bathrooms of house parties, my panting louder than the rumble downstairs. S is always there to me though, as I lie naked on my bed, grabbing hold of yet another bobbing backside. I like to think S is waiting for me, as I shag about S is being respectful and telling everyone he's kinda seeing someone. S is going to change me, he'll be nice.
I get a little cocky one night, and text S something cheeky to which he replies with something X rated and admits he was fed up of being all chaste and was starting to worry about me. Enter MSN and my webcam. I'm doing what I've never done before. Lip-glossing and hair-ruffling up for a lens, gyrating alone in my room in th best lingerie I can find while S responds with admiration in the filthiest sentences. Now I'm cam-girl, greeting an audience of thousands as my friends watch in admiration and the guys I know from first year see that sexual side of me and dream about me in the most exotic positions. Sexual confessions and ambitions too, and suddenly that's all I am. Sex toys arrive in the post and obscure "discreetly named" companies appear on my credit card bill. My pubic hair disappears on a hot waxy strip of paper. Soon I'm gonna meet S too.
And that's how I developed the fatal habit of baring all for gains.
S has always been my secret. Nobody knows about him, nobody knows I even met him. I don't know why, but I like it that way. He's mine, my private hope, my rope ladder from a burning window. I'm envisioning parties where everyone's secretly gobsmacked at my smart choice. S is wowing the boys in the kitchen, beer casually clutched in a bear like fist, gesticulating and making kind jokes about me in the Carribean, London restaurants, at rugby matches. I'm in the lounge, glowing, orange tanned, sleek black hair, frosty make up, flicking long nails about and jangling jewelled wrists, talking about "my baby, S". Everyone's imagining me, a tiny toned stick under his mass, slim ankles on burly shoulders, between hotel sheets and my face contorted in extascy, while my cockney boom is replaced with a high pitched squeak for a voice and I'm whipsering American porn cliches in his ear as we make the steamiest love possible.
So I head off on the train, to see some vaguely phrased "boy from my course", in an impossible combo of tight denim, bouffant hair, heels and a ballet wrap, to London's West End, the rendez-vous point Selfridges. I've never seen S properly. And there he comes, huge, in an expensive suit, kisses me politely on the cheek and leads me through a melee of softly lit marble beauty halls and noisy fashion departments full of echoing ragga music. It's weird though, S looks bored as I chat animatedly over a vile noodle broth while he stabs slovernly at a piece of chicken and chews it powerfully, glancing about and nodding or asking me to repeat myself or grunting assent.
S is different in real life to the charming "sweet-heart sweet-heart" over the phone.
He discusses hotels, champagne, a night together. A bit speedy I must say. And as we leave, we both start to head off before bashfully assenting to a polite kiss. An hour and that's that.
Something doesn't feel right, I brood silently over tea indoors, where Mum bitchily sticks the boot in. I stare into space and think as burgers sizzle to a dried out black disc on a griddle. My mind is split in two as I scrawl cooking preferences for steak and slap it on a grimy tiled wall in a kitchen. The dream is unravelling, but I'm doing my best to keep it tight. Perhaps it's me.
But the chats on MSN are brief now, a few filthy sexual suggestions before S before he announces how busy he is and just logs off. I don't hear from him for weeks on end, he's always busy. Term three does not bring pizzas, videos, outings and morning sex but more hurried, sporadic messages and chats, and an increasingly worried mental state for me.
I'm hiding in my room, cringing and crying whenever a housemate laughs in another room. Phoning my parents for hours on end in the middle of the night. S visits me for 15 minutes one day, but ignores my conversation and just wants me to suck his cock. Interrupting my worried gabble about things not feeling right to make grabs at my boobs and pull me on top of him. A housemate walks in confused about the huge suitcase in the hallway and finds S. An elusive description from me in return and S's threat to never get my friends involved in us.
I'm getting bored and spending more time alone, in tears, ignoring my work, feeling sick as I walk back to my house from campus. Something's wrong. And S was supposed to be here this term.
S phones now and again. On the eve of my aunt's funeral while I look at ponchos with my mum in a deserted Docklands supermarket. And other times. S is still that little hope, although now tinged with grey, when I return home suddenly, unable to take life anymore. And he continues to disappoint. Still too busy. Arranging a date because he cannot stand me online. A midnight phone call lecturing me about my accent. Bragging about strippers and strip clubs and breaking his ankle in a topless bar in the Ukraine. S was nice. Not a blue-lit face looking up greedily while a long-legged, big breasted Amazonian beauty with fluttering false eyelashes pouted at him as she flips herself around a pole. Not the guy who books a double room and then phones me to tell me on no terms are we just gonna be sitting chatting the night away before undressing with our backs to each other and dozing off. I'm going to be fucked till I faint in every hole. Who cares what underwear I've spent hours browsing when he will push it to the side as he aggressively takes me.
Life is full of disappointments.
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