21. Bites on the bum

Chapter Twenty-One: first two weeks of July 

At the end of my first week on Skyros I sat down and wrote myself a letter for delivery a few weeks into the future.  It was something they encouraged at the centre, to keep the afterglow of the experience alive a little longer after their guests had re-entered the normal world.  “My obsession with Iryna left me largely after a couple of days,” I wrote, “and I think that it is best if I leave that alone.  I do not know what relationship is possible between me and her so I should not stir that hornet’s nest.”

“I have had communications from Carmen,” I went on, “which are loving and caring. It has been a surprise how this relationship which started out as something purely sexual and very guarded (particularly on her side) has turned into something more genuine.  I should think more about that and less about Iryna.”

I moved up to the town to spend a solo week sitting by the sea and exploring the island on a moped.  A few other people from the centre had done the same thing, so initially I was not alone.  Through the week I talked a lot with Carmen, arranging to see her as soon as I got back.  The turmoil in her life moved up another notch when she gave notice to her employers.  They wanted her to cater for them in the holidays at their house in the country, sharing accommodation with the nanny.  This she could not do, as it would jeopardise her ability to manage her Airbnb bookings in London: besides, it betrayed an underlying attitude of regarding her as a servant rather than as the professional chef that she was.  She had her pride. So she quit, leaving just a couple of weeks to work out her notice before she would need to find a new job.

She was getting cold feet about the date she had arranged with me upon my return. On the surface I wanted to be accommodating, but underneath I felt rejected: like I was a burden to her rather than a source of strength. “I am so disappointed,” I wrote, “that Carmen has bailed on me even though I had some anxieties about her visit…the truth is that this is one relationship that is going nowhere and has the potential to get in the way of any genuine relationship I am likely to form.”  She, my friend, had just given notice, was going to have to find a new job, had cancelled her annual holiday in Spain to her elderly mother’s great upset, all the time juggling short term lettings to make her rent – and yet somehow I made this all about me.  I don’t know what, other than isolation and a touch of loneliness, brought about this shift in my mood. However, I was once again obsessing a lot about my relationship with Iryna.  After an exchange of emails with her I realised I wasn’t feeling too good.  I was sitting at a cafe in the harbour, waiting for my ferry back to Athens.

***

A couple of weeks before, the day I had left, I learned that it would be Carmen’s birthday (47) over the weekend, and managed to arrange for a card to reach her in the nick of time.

“Rob, thanks so much for the nice card.  I was so happy… when I opened I think my face was like a little girl! !!! Thanks my love, the nicest surprise after time. Don’t forget to be open to new experiences. .. I’m looking forward to hear about your experience when you come back.”

She thought that I was likely to encounter plenty of surplus sexual energy, and was genuinely keen that I should take advantage of it.  Although I had spent much of the week lusting after one woman in particular, the fact was that I had made no progress with her or anyone else: perhaps I should have spent more time in the bar.  It was not a place for no-strings fun along the lines that Carmen envisaged, or me for that matter. They were couples types, looking to pair bond.

Often, when I could get a signal, I would find a message waiting from Carmen and we talked at considerable length on some days.

“Next year if we are still friends (sure yes) I would like to do a small trip with you…maybe to go for a weekend to Rome, amazing amazing amazing city, classic art everywhere! !!!  Or a weekend sailing along the canal!”

“Yes! I’m a good person to travel with. That would be real fun.”

“Today I was talking with my friends about my experiences on Tinder.”

“I am interested in this too! I like that our sexual appetites are similar. As a man I did not get as many matches as you would being female. A horny girl can really take her pick I think.”

“…yes … but the connection is unusual. I like your open mind. Some man don’t understand. Or prefer the stereotypes.”

“I found that many of the people at the centre were not that open, they are obsessed with one particular type of relationship. And yes men can be possessive. I think maybe people fall back on the stereotypes because they do not have the confidence to try something different. It has been so good for me to meet someone such as yourself. I hoped that women like you existed but I could not be sure as I had not actually met one. Now I have!”

“Thanks adorable Rob. It makes me happy to think that exist people like you. I am counting the days when we will meet again.”

***

Another twenty four hours after my wobbly moment at the port, Carmen had recovered her enthusiasm for an early reunion with me, and so we made it happen.  I drove straight home from the airport and she caught an afternoon train, just as we had planned a week earlier before I knew anything about her problems with her job.  As it was high summer and light well into the evening I gave her a choice: eat and then walk, or walk and then eat.  She went for the second option.

As we were about to set off said, “Rob, can I drive please? I need to practice driving English-style in a manual car”. It turned out she had only ever driven an automatic in England, and thought it might be good for her job search not to be limited to this.  I had no hesitation in letting her take the driver’s seat, and she drove fast and confidently to the woods where we took our walk.  A few years before, I reminisced, I had coached Iryna to upgrade her licence from automatic to manual, and I had taught both my offspring the basics of driving without any serious incidents.  Perhaps I had missed my vocation.

The woods were quiet and largely empty of people at this time, the sun slanting through the trees and the warm air.  Taking a side track we stopped at random and found a place to fuck, standing up: she wanted it from the back as usual and I was happy to oblige.  As we bent to pull clothes back up we found a crop of wild strawberries around our feet which we picked and ate.  By the time we got home it was late, but we sat down to eat the various raw foods that she had brought with her.  It was only later still, in bed, that we discovered that Carmen had been bitten quite badly on the backside by midges in the forest.  She must have been sensitive to it, I suppose: some people are, or have sweet blood that is attractive to the insects.  But she was not the type to complain, and I found her some soothing cream in my cupboard.

“Thanks for coming. I had a lovely time with you. I love your company and I love the sex. I hope it was relaxing for you too. I think so. I love the way we cook and eat.

“Was great and great and great! Next time a we’ll do a new recipe!  A raw recipe.”

16. All too much: farewell to M

Chapter Sixteen – mid-May 

After my conversation with Carmen at Chalk Farm the conviction took hold within me that I needed to grasp the nettle of my relationship with Marianne.  I had agreed that we would go dancing – finally – in a week or so’s time.  Until then I tried to keep her at arms’ length: there was a low key exchange of messages, but I kept it short.  I was still feeling topsy turvy after my decision to abandon the art degree, and I was spending much of my time outside where the weather was mercifully welcoming.

Meanwhile Carmen organised a picnic for some of her friends, and sent me a whole series of pictures of the event.  So I sent her a picture of my beach snack of local asparagus, and she sent me a picture of her latest gastronomic creation. She was in London, I was down by the sea, and we were leading two parallel lives which sometimes seemed like they could never intersect.  I sent her a video of some multicoloured stones shining in the sun, wet from the receding tide, which I said reminded me of her cunt.  She liked that.

Alex was struggling with her dissertation. I sent her some clips of the sea as well, which provided her with some distraction.  She talked about the meaning of the sea, to herself, to mankind, and specifically to me.

“I’m loving your energy today,” I said. “Somebody once said that a woman is like a wave, but there the analogy breaks down as I can’t remember what a man is supposed to be like.”

“The surface stones as the waves subtly sculpts them over many years.”

“Oh very funny, you are on form today.”

“I’m feeling like the ocean. Haven’t written a word yet. Maybe I’d better just start.”

***

The day came, and I went to Brighton.  I went via Rye, where I had some people to meet: it was quite a bit of driving, and my back was stiff by the time I parked at Lewes to make the last leg of the journey by train.  This resolved me that, whatever else, I was not going to go dancing. That felt like the right decision, without me having to take it.

I settled into a coffee bar down the road from the station, and waited for her.  I was nervous. In the end she decided to take a bus rather than wheel her bike all afternoon, and this made her later still.  I had a seat by the cafe window.  She was well turned out, in a brown shift dress that revealed her lower legs and her shapely, well toned arms: she was ready to dance.  A large metal bracelet around her neck completed the ensemble. Right away, I said that my back was stiff and I wasn’t up for it that day.  Then I went on:

“OK, I’ve been dreading this, but I’ll get straight to the point.  This just isn’t working for me.  I feel like I’m being pressurised all the time, and then I feel guilty that I don’t respond positively.  I’ve enjoyed spending our times together, but I don’t look forward to them in between.  I think I made a mistake.  I was not ready for any kind of relationship.  I need to spend some time being single. I’m sorry. ”

If I was expecting any kind of storm, I was wrong.  “Yes,” she said, “I knew before I got here that something wasn’t right: I could tell this from the tone of your messages these past few weeks.  OK, well if it’s not right for you then it can’t be right for the two of us and it can’t be right for me: I’m not in the business of trying to force a relationship on you.  We can just be friends.”

I felt deeply relieved, and my heart went out to her: her reasonableness and consideration almost made me feel like I was making a mistake.  After a pause, she went on: “You could always have said No, you know, to my propositions: I was just making suggestions.”

“It really didn’t feel like I could,” I said.

“Do you have any other feedback for me?” she asked. Once or twice before she had used this strange formula, and out of a misguided sense of politeness I had avoided answering directly.  But Marianne liked – and needed – directness, so this time I rose to the challenge.  I told her that at times I had found her rude: like the time in Bexhill when she had said she was not impressed with my art.  It only stung, I was careful to say, because I was sensitive on that subject at that time: I didn’t want to imply that it was all her fault.  Then again, there had been the time that she had said I must be getting old, just because I didn’t feel like getting up at the crack of dawn.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I really don’t mean to cause any hurt.” She was surprised, she said: her other lovers had all found her very loving. I could see the truth of this: she was very attentive in her way, but it just wasn’t for me, not at that time.

“What about the Serpentine in June?  Do you still want to go to that with me?” she asked.  Flushed with gratitude I said yes, that would be great, let’s do it.  I felt a real warmth for her, the first time for a while.

We wandered down to the beach and reminisced about the time we had lain there naked a couple of months before in the prematurely hot March sun.  She was quite ready to convert our arrangement into something non sexual.  It seemed like no more of a drama than changing gear in a car.  Before long, however, I began to feel that my business there was done.  There was nothing more to be said and there was no point in prolonging the encounter.  Besides, the beach that afternoon was cold and unwelcoming, a stiff wind beneath a grey sky.  I think she made one more attempt to persuade me to come dancing, and then I left.

***

“Phew”, I told Alex, “I did it. And I lived to tell the tale. And she was so reasonable so I think what was all the fuss about?  But I’m glad to get away. It’s been a hard day’s night. I’m shattered. Train back to Lewes then drive home the slow way and sleep, sleep, sleep so I hope.” I felt great relief.  The next day, however, I woke up with a sense of some remorse:

“It’s odd. I feel quite down after yesterday. Like I’ve flunked another test: she was so nice about it. I think, what’s wrong with me that I can’t bond with a nice person?”

“This feeling was bound to kick in after the initial relief, don’t panic it’s normal and you’re not on you’re own”, she said, and then she added: “I think you could do with a holiday.”

“Yes I think so too. But it has to be something with a bit of a purpose. I’ll ask my yoga teacher if she knows of any good retreats and things.”

“Or you could go to Skyros.” She had mentioned Skyros to me once or twice before: it was where she had gone to sort herself out ten years before, as her marriage fell apart.  I knew other people who had been there, too.  “But don’t go next week!!”, she added hurriedly. For I had promised to help her out as a “reader” for her dissertation, to make sure that it all made sense and hung together.

“I think Skyros is a brilliant idea!”, I said, “I am excited. Thank you. You read me better than I read myself.”

10. The dodgy date

Chapter Ten – end of March – spring coming 

Marianne was off to Venice with her her friend – the one I had met when we had gone for our walk on the Downs a few weeks before.  She took it into her head that it would be a good idea if I were to join them.  I’m not sure I took her suggestion seriously to begin with.

“Off early tomorrow morning,” she said cheerily. “Back Monday night late. I can’t believe you passed on the opportunity to have a fab weekend with two lovely women in Venice!”

“Me neither,” I said, although I really could not envisage how I would have fitted into this situation.  Sometimes it seemed like Marianne could eat all the time I had, and more.

“Are you getting old?” she said,  “or maybe you have much more exciting plans. Have a great time.”  I resented the getting old bit, what with my history of lying about my age.  It was entirely my fault for asking in the first place. So to change the subject I told her about Alex’ dodgy date.

“What kind of her dodgy date? That sounds interesting.”

“Oysters, prosecco, art, but the bloke left it right till the end before admitting that he was basically married to somebody else.  She was on the receiving end of this ten years ago so she reacted very strongly – physically.  Claustrophobic, couldn’t breathe.  A kind of trauma response.  And she’s a resilient person generally.  Doesn’t care to show weakness.”

“That must have been shocking for her.”

“Actually I think it may turn out to have been a really good thing – released something that was stuck, like a thorn deep in the flesh.  I thought she was looking pretty good by the time I saw her.”

***

Like me, Alex had been Tindering for a few months. It was she who had put me onto it in the first place: just a bit of fun, she said.  Women tend to get more matches than men, and she had selectively met up with a few.  The results had generally been disappointing.  Like me also she had lied about her age – we are almost twins.  This is good for getting more matches in the first place, but not so good later in the process.  Both of us could probably pass for five years less than our age, but we were pushing it at almost ten.  Before long, I put my birthday back to its original setting but she wasn’t able to do this for some reason.  So she was stuck with the lie, and also with her tendency to be less than honest about where she lived (she felt it was a bad postcode).

None of this is terribly relevant except as background to the dodgy date, to which I was alerted by a sudden and unexpected spate of texts from her: she was on a train, she felt like bursting, she couldn’t breathe. She told me what had happened. It seemed to me like a powerful thing that she was so much in touch with her feelings: a blessing, although it might not feel like much of one in the moment.  She would flush the bad energy out through her body rather than having it stuck in her head.  I decided to take her out to dinner while she came back to earth.

By that time she looked a lot better.  Her appetite had returned and she did most of the talking.  The guy had seemed plausible enough – presentable, interesting, interested.  They had spent the afternoon eating, drinking, and hanging out in the the Tate Modern.  Only at the very end had he divulged that he was still living with his wife.  Maybe it was one of those situations where a relationship ends but people still live under the same roof: maybe it was innocent enough.  It is probably not the kind of information I would volunteer up front, either.  However, about ten years earlier Alex had discovered that her then husband had another family.  Not just some affair – he had a child with another woman who also thought she was his wife, or partner, or whatever.  Removing herself from this marriage took all the resources Alex had.  She did it successfully, and in some style, but she carried the scars.  She was still abnormally sensitive to anything that smacked of two-timing.  She tended to see men as the property of another woman unless she was quite certain no other such woman existed.  She had been that other woman, and she wasn’t going to do what had been done to her.  It led to quite a black and white view of human relationships, in which people were either ‘with’ each other, or not.

***

The next day we went down to the coast, approaching the secret beach by a roundabout route involving a pub lunch.  It was warm enough to sit outside to eat.  There I bumped into Iryna’s son, which gave me a shock.  I had got on well with her boys and missed them.  He was there with his father and we were all civil, but I felt disconcerted.

Down by the sea there were daffodils and gorse in flower, bright primary yellows against the greens of the grass and the blue of the sky.  It was low tide and we were able to walk out onto the sand of the sea floor with its pools and patterns and tangles of seaweed.  It was beautiful and I managed to take some good pictures of Alex.  She is fit and attractive, but static photos do not always capture her: it is much better to catch her in motion.  I’ve found this to be true of a lot of women I like the look of, particularly if they are in their forties or (as in this case) older.

When Marianne saw the photos she enquired whether that was where I took all my dates.  Yes, I said.  There’s a pile of the unsuccessful ones at the bottom of the cliff.

***

That whole week I didn’t hear much from Carmen until the Sunday, when I decided to go to London to catch up on some art shows I needed to see.  I texted her a few times, with images that caught my eye or in some way seemed erotic, but she didn’t respond.  If I had hopes that we might hook up, I was destined to be disappointed.  Later that day, as if by way of consolation, and after I had gone home, she sent me a link to some highly explicit porn involving about twenty young gay boys, probably German, fucking and coming over each other’s faces.  “I found this video for you on Tumblr”, she said.  I didn’t know quite what to make of this.  As I said to her later, I would have preferred it if she had been in the picture.  I hope she didn’t think me prudish for this.  Only later did it occur to me that it was probably intended for one of her many gay friends, and she had sent the link to me by mistake.

8. Boot camp poly

Chapter Eight – cold, bright weekend in early March

in which Rob learns more about the meaning of the word “polyamorous” 

From Hastings you can walk east for several miles at low tide, through fields of boulders scattered beneath apocalyptic cliffs which look like they might fall at any minute. Sometimes they do: that is where the boulders come from.  You don’t have to go very far to leave other people behind, and then you can be alone in the company of multi-coloured stones which look like they might have been carved by a sculptor, rather than by the sea.  I once found one which looked exactly like a sculpture of a horse’s head by Henry Moore, which I had seen a few days before in the Tate.  Moore used to collect pebbles, actually, for inspiration. Others have the suggestion of abstract paintings engraved on their surfaces, and if you photograph them from close up it is hard to tell the difference.  I had the idea once of making an art project of this – an invisible art gallery – but never quite followed through.

***

“Just starting to think about the weekend and wondering how you are fixed,” I had said to Marianne.  “Fancy hooking up for a meal or a walk on sat? Overcast, north west wind. I’m pretty much free and flexible until midday on Sunday.”  For Carmen had announced that she would like to pay me a visit on Sunday, so I would be tied up then: I hoped.

“Let’s go for Saturday pm.”

“Excellent. Looks like a day for being outside. Anywhere you fancy going that’s beyond the range of your bike?”

“Surprise me!”

“A challenge!  Oh dear. How about you catch a train to Hastings and we frolic around there? I can show you some of my sacred places.”

“Sounds good. Sounds very good. What time shall we meet?”

“If you get off train 5 mins early at St Leonard’s there are veggie places to eat there. It’s not Brighton but it’s ok. Lunchtime.”

“Will do. Am not necessarily veggy though.” I had this fixation that Marianne was vegetarian, although she had told me more than once that she was not.

“No…. There’s choice, probably better than Hastings proper. St Leonard’s Warrior Square at one thirty then! Looking forward to it. Adventure.”

“Can’t wait! Should I wear my walking boots?”

“Yes I think that would be prudent. We can go down to the beach but it’s more about walking than stripping off today I think.”

***

So I met her off the train at St Leonards and we had lunch.   Then I parked at the fishing port and we trekked east.  It was hot in the sun but cold in the wind, colder than the previous weekend:  an awkward combination to dress for.  After we’d walked for a little while Marianne removed her leggings to reveal a pair of boxer shorts.  I have some nice photos of our shadows profiled against the stones.  Eventually you come to the famous and remote nudist beach at Covehurst Bay, immortalised by Holman Hunt in his picture of lost sheep: nowadays it is a firm favourite with gay guys who come from far and wide to fuck each other, more or less discretely, in the bushes behind the beach.  If you like the sound of that, bear in mind that the web reviews say that the talent is a little on the elderly side.  But that is in summer: this wasn’t the time of year for that kind of action, whether for them or for us.

Marianne said she had been here before, with a previous lover who had lived in Hastings.  She was all for cutting up from the beach and ploughing through the undergrowth before we reached the bay: I thought this would be rash, as this is rough ground which I knew to be more or less impassable.  So I managed to dissuade her and soon enough we found the path and were able to return to the car along the top of the cliffs.  Towards the end of the hike we sat on a bench overlooking the town and chatted for a while: although we’d seen each other quite a few times now we still seemed to have plenty to talk about, and the company was easy.

We picked up the car and drove to the pier, burnt out and derelict, at the moment of sunset.  We got out and walked underneath it.  The setting sun on the wet sand gave everything a liquid, shimmering look, the only solid elements being the long piles rising in silhouette to support the damaged deck above us.  I started to take photographs, she performed some yoga moves, and later I found that I had gathered an extraordinary set of images, moody and atmospheric, each one distinguished by the figure of Marianne striking a different posture, surreal and unexplained.  Afterwards I posted them on the wall of my studio space at college and as somebody remarked, she looked happy.

The day was coming to an end, but I wanted to prolong it:  so I suggested we went for a curry.  I wanted to know more about what she had said some weeks before, about her polyamorous relationships.  So I asked her about it, and she freely told me about some of her own history: I felt a  little like a child being instructed by somebody adult and experienced.  More by luck than judgement, she had arrived at situations where she had more than one lover on the go at one time.  There was no cloak and dagger, no “cheating” involved as the tabloids might have it: everything was consensual.  The most difficult thing, she said, was knowing that someone you loved was having fun with somebody else, and feeling excluded, or jealous, but learning not to act out on it.  Indeed, the ultimate aim was to to learn how to be happy for the others’ happiness.  There is a word for this: they call it “compersion”.

Somehow, I steeled myself to raise the matter of my liaison with Carmen, which I had denied – or rather not mentioned – when Marianne had first come to my place.  Every bone in my body fought against talking about one woman with another woman: keep it separate, keep it in boxes: but I was resolved to be honest, to live in light after too many years of sexual guilt.  I might as well start as I intended to go on.  Besides, it was not as if Marianne and I had actually fucked at this time: close, but not quite.  So I told her about it and her reaction was, of course, moderate and reasonable.  She didn’t mind what I did when I wasn’t with her: all that she required was that when I was with her, I should be truly with her, not thinking about somebody else.

Is she polyamorous too, she asked, or does she does fuck around?  This made me pause.  I was pretty sure that Carmen did not regard herself as anything remotely polysyllabic: she just liked sex.  Everybody in the circle should be tested at regular intervals, said Marianne sternly, and open about their other encounters.  Somehow, I couldn’t see this working too well: it seemed over organised and unspontaneous.  And I didn’t think of Carmen as someone who just fucked around.  I resented this, felt it unbecoming from a woman who was generally a feminist and an advocate for other women.

On top of this, Marianne had told me that she was “unimpressed” by my work as an artist: not because of what she had seen, she explained, but because of what she had not seen.  Unfortunately, this remark came at a time when I myself was deeply unimpressed by my work as an artist, and it felt like being punched in the stomach.  I thought it was tactless and unnecessary, and it reduced me to silence: but when she asked me if anything was wrong, I didn’t feel able to say so honestly.  So I let it pass, and I think it must have done.

***

The next afternoon, Carmen arrived from London as she had promised and we spent the afternoon together.  I was always a little surprised and gratified when Carmen actually turned up: I don’t know why, because she always did as she said she would, although once or twice she confided that she had come close to cancelling on grounds of tiredness.  About one o’clock she asked for directions, and I guided her in carefully: the trains were all diverted, but eventually she arrived.

It was another beautiful spring day, and I took her first to the chapel with the windows and then to the nearby castle garden, open for the first weekend of the year, where blackbirds were singing and the daffodils illuminated by the afternoon sun.  We drifted around, touching and stroking, not saying much, until the curator kicked us out.  Then we went back to my place and fucked as we had done the previous time. I think it was on this occasion that I dispensed with the condoms, almost as if in conscience defiance of what Marianne had said.  They seemed unnecessary: I knew Carmen to be clean and healthy, as was I.  I could smell it.  And although she was still fertile, being in her mid forties, I was not too concerned about her getting pregnant, as I am a grandmaster in the ancient art of pulling out.  Besides, she always preferred me to finish off up her ass, and that suited me fine as a grand finale.  All too soon the day was over, and it was time for me to put her on a train back to London.  She was home almost within the hour.

“I was thinking of you the whole day” she said the next day.  “The garden, your hands stroking my pussy, you breathing behind me close to my neck, feeling your hardness in my bottom, deeper kisses touching the soul, your body so close…the sunshine, the trees. Was magical…  I like to talk about sex with you. I like the provocation effect, it’s so enjoyable. I think you are a person with it’s possible to explore in sex, adventurous, calm, open minded, curious…  Very good mix.

“I like sex and love together, I need both. If I feel only sex …it’s enjoyable but sad for me…  If I  feel only love…  It’s boring. But I don’t want to be dangerous person for you, this is the reason I am  honest and sincere.  In my head and body are a sort of kind of feelings about you and yesterday, floating like bubbles. Such a wonderful time I had yesterday.”

I felt really moved by this.

“That is such a nice message,” I said. “When I met you I was looking for a new kind of relationship with a new kind of woman. Not possessive, not jealous, doesn’t have to be exclusive; but joyful and caring. I have found that with you and even if I don’t see you very often I am really grateful. I love that you like to be fucked up the ass and your cunt gets so wet. I love to fuck you and I think you are a special woman.”

So all in all it was a pretty interesting weekend.  The only fly in the ointment was that I left my scarf in the curry house, and felt impelled to make a seventy mile round trip during the week to retrieve it.

7. Urban beekeeping

Chapter Seven – one bright weekend in early March

Even before her first visit to my flat, Marianne was very keen that I should come dancing with her, and I thought that this sounded like a good idea as I’d meant to experiment with some new things and felt the exercise would be good for me.  The trouble was that we lived a fair distance away from each other. She had already regretted that it was too far for me to pop round and share her soup and her fire of an evening. It was further than I felt like travelling for a day trip and although she offered me a sofa for the night I didn’t find the idea all that appealing.  I felt like I was being negative all the time, so when she mentioned an upcoming course on beekeeping and suggested I might like to come I resolved to show willing:

“I am doing a urban bee keeping course in case that appeals to you more than moving to great music”, she had said.  “I used to help my uncle with his bees. It would be great to have a hive.”

“That does sound intriguing”, I said. I made a note and put it in my diary.  “Sometimes you see them in cities. In fact I think I saw them in Paris. I’m quite turned on by the beekeeping for some reason.”

“May be it’s a new kind of kink. You might look quite fetching with a beekeeper hat!”

“Yes it must be the dressing up. It’s either that or the ku klux klan for me,” I said.

***

“Hi Rob, I couldn’t find you to say bye,” said Alex. “Hope you’re good. I just had a feeling you were a little down. Have a great weekend. Call anytime.” She was right: I was suffering from the dissertation blues.

“Yes I went into a bit of a black hole. I’m hoping the change in the weather will lift my spirits. I’ve got things to keep me busy over the weekend although I don’t want to do some of them. Thanks for the concern.”

“Why not do the bee keeping for the buzz then?”

“I’m worried I’ll get stung. By the French woman.”

“Ha ha. Have a good one,” she said.

From Carmen I heard nothing much that week, although she sent me some nice selfies of herself getting dressed and undressed for her various social engagements, some pictures of her food creations at work and a link to a piece on YouTube by a New Age duo called Secret Garden, who had won the Eurovision Song Contest for Norway some years before.  It was an interesting insight into her cultural preferences, which were a bit different from mine in these respects.

***

“I’ll send you the details of the day,” said Marianne: “let them know that you are coming. I don’t think there will be much dressing up on that workshop but feel free to indulge!  It’s going to be sunny on Sunday. Shall we picnic on the beach?”

“Yes. Bring on the weekend. Where and when would you like us to meet? I’ll be driving down.”

But the urban beekeeping course was not to be, as it was cancelled for insufficient interest on what promised to be a blazing day, the first of the year. I was relieved.  I prefer to be out of doors.

So then she said: “If you fancy waking at dawn tomorrow, you are welcome to come and join me for a walk on the South Downs first. I’m going at seven with a friend.”

“I’m tempted but probably not as I need my sleep.”

“Life is short,” she said.

“Particularly for people who don’t get enough sleep,” I retorted.

“I am doing fine on six hours of it per night! You could meet us at seven fifteen. But no problem if you don’t. In that case we could meet at ten in town? We can still get a great brunch.”

This was fairly typical of my exchanges with Marianne: on her side, energetic and insistent, full of ideas, firing suggestions at me for immediate response: with me rather slower, hesitant, looking for space and time to respond.  I felt pushed, and I felt guilty at what must look like my evident lack of enthusiasm, and would sometimes go to the opposite extreme to compensate.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like her: it was often I who set things running with an enquiry about her availability.  But for someone I had only just met, it felt to me as though she had the appetite to consume more of my time than I had to give.  I had just finished living half my life in somebody else’s town, house and bed, and I didn’t want to get back to that: not right away, anyway.  With hindsight, it is a clear that I had a problem just saying No simply and clearly, for fear of offending: something that she later pointed out to me, clearly and simply: you can always just say no.

***

As it happened, I woke early on that Sunday spring morning, and thought I might as well jump into the car and head straight for the coast.  It was cold up on the Downs, a cold, fresh March day.  The light was crisp and I took the opportunity to practice with my new camera.  On the highest point of the hill stood a barn, with a reasonably large boat sticking out of the front of it.

With us was the friend Marianne had mentioned.  She was currently looking after a terminally ill man who had formerly been her husband.  This man had later become Marianne’s lover, and she too would sometimes care for him to give the friend some respite.  “That’s women for you,” she said, and I had to agree.  After about an hour we turned around and retraced our steps: the man could not be left all that long without care.

We went into town and had a vegetarian brunch, then to the already crowded beach, then for some more food, then finally to the nudist beach situated on a remoter part of the shore near the marina.  The sun was hot but the wind was cold, and we huddled up using our bodies as windbreaks by turn.  Later she was due to meet her son, and invited me to come along, but I felt that this would be an intrusion; too much, too soon.  Besides, it had been a long day and I was getting tired.  I drove her back into town and then headed home.

“I had a lovely day. Thanks. Safely home after a wonderful drive in the back roads in the dusk,” I said later.

“I loved today too. It was great to share it with you. Xxx”

6. Jehovah’s Witness

Chapter Six – last weekend of February 

There is a slow train that runs from Olympia to Clapham Junction.  In the days when I lived down that way, it ran once a day at nine o’clock in the morning and never came back.  Since then, the service levels have been improved somewhat: I was surprised how many people wanted to make that journey around nightfall on a Saturday evening.

Although I had not been to that area since the eighties, when I had lived in sort of squat there for a few months, Marianne left it up to me to find somewhere to eat.  I selected a tapas place. The only available table was next to the kitchen, and they wanted it back after an hour as they were booked out. It had the makings of a rushed encounter.

Marianne arrived after I had been waiting for long enough to become anxious that we might lose the precious table. The front door was narrow, and she arrived wheeling a large suitcase which was full of the equipment of her trade – she had a number of jobs, but that day I think she was teaching birthing skills to deprived mothers, and the suitcase contained models of pelvises and foetuses.  It was good money, she had told me. She came in as if completely heedless of the suitcase, almost taking the door off its hinges: as I have said previously, she was a big strong girl.  We sat down and ordered, with some relief on my part.

***

Carmen had talked of making a repeat visit to my place the weekend after her first, but in the event her social life got in the way and it wasn’t possible.  A cousin turned up unexpectedly to stay, or something. Around the middle of the week my thoughts turned to the coming weekend and I decided to go to the art show at Olympia for which the course director was handing out free tickets: and only really for that reason.  Talking to Marianne I discovered that she would be teaching in Clapham that same day.  So that was the germ of an idea that we might meet in London on Saturday evening.

“I’ve just discovered I’ve used up all my options to change my birthday on Facebook and therefore Tinder,” I said to Alex. “Justice, eh? I’m stuck at 52 forever now.”

“52? Maybe you’ll just have to accept it.  Have a good weekend with your girls.”

“Both the foreign ladies have cancelled on me which leaves me with my wayward firstborn. This is probably a good thing,” I said.  But things turned out differently.

***

It was about ten days since Marianne had visited me and we had not quite had sex in my flat.  I think by this point the non-fulfilment was faintly embarrassing for me: certainly, I felt less comfortable with her than I had the previous time.  In the meantime, there had also been some awkwardness about my intentions towards her.  Foolishly, I had mentioned that I had been discussing with my fellow students the possibility of making some sort of art project out of Tinder.  We didn’t know how: it just seemed like it might be a fruitful source of material: it was just an idea.  We had started screenshotting and swapping profiles, particularly ones which amused us.  I don’t think I had done much more than touch on this with Marianne, but after we had parted it clearly preyed on her mind:

“Can you please reassure me that mean that none of what I wrote and shared with you will be put ‘out there’? Your exchanges with your art college mates have left me wondering if I  been used as some kind of experiment,” she had texted.

I tried to reassure her, but my first reply was not received: she was swapping phones, travelling between countries, and she repeated her query twice more, insistently, using all the different media available to her.  For my part I assumed my earlier messages had got through, and didn’t know what more I could add.  Eventually, exasperatedly, I said:

“I thought I’d laid this one to rest already, but maybe not. No material relating to yourself will be used in any way whatsoever. We don’t know how to do the art project, it’s just the germ of an idea. I’m really sorry this has given rise to such disquiet which has gone unsettled for several days now. This is not good and was not my intent. I hope it didn’t spoil your time away.”

That seemed to settle it, but a little later she said:

“Let me know if you’d rather not carry on meeting. If this tinder thing was just for art’s sake!”

“The trouble with that sort of suspicion”, I replied,  “is that reassurance just makes it worse. There really is nothing more I can say.”

“That was said tongue in cheek! “, she said. I had no idea whether she was really being jocular, or was deadly serious.  The French do, so they say, have a fine line in deadpan irony.  Eventually I said:

“Ok fair enough. But my last relationship was destroyed by suspicion and mistrust. It is a sore point with me. I am probably over sensitive on the subject. It’s my stuff, but it’s real. I’m so not in the market for second helpings.” To which she replied:

“I am not into suspicion etc.. I was just wondering if you were up for more meetings together, as I enjoyed the last two.”

“Yes. The meetings have been good, so we should do it again.”

Later, when I reported this incident to my daughter, she said “you’ve got a nutter there”.  But I felt, on balance, that this was uncharitable: Enid’s track record in assessing the viability of my Dates was not a good one.  She had a tendency to over dramatize.

***

Marianne complained in a matter of fact, French sort of way about the food, finding it either over or under salted: in my more English way, I was just relieved to have something halfway edible in front of me.  We talked about ourselves: we talked some more about our backgrounds.

This was when I learned that Marianne had been brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness.  Hearing this for the first time was like the moment that Carmen had told me about the Enneagram, and I had taken her for a Scientologist. It was a shock: momentarily, I felt like running.  She had previously told me that she regarded herself as an atheist: but I did not know why.  Apparently, her mother had converted in adulthood and had taken her children with her into her new religion.  Her husband, their father, had never engaged himself in any of this, had never converted, but had never objected either.  Marianne decided in the fullness of time that it was all rubbish and rebelled, although not before she had had a couple of children in her youth with one of the limited pool of fellow believers who was available for marriage.  She said her later apostasy had caused difficulties with her mother, but they were on good terms again now.

Although the Witnessing was very much in Marianne’s past, it made me feel uneasy.  I felt some empathy because, as a child, I too had been expected to subscribe to some conventional beliefs which, while mild enough – Church of England – I had known to be false.  We had some experience in common here.  It cannot fail to leave an imprint: even when the faith is repudiated, the positive print removed, there is often a shadow, a negative that is left behind. Moreover, if a person is brought up in a faith that is very black and white, then their rejection of it will also be very black and white.  I sensed that this was how it might be with Marianne.  It is a trauma of sorts: the person concerned spends many years living a lie before coming to a point where they can articulate their own truth.  But when they do, the truth does not cancel out the lies: the shadow of them remains.  It is a dark energy, which can be a powerful motive force through life and, in particular, behind creativity: but ultimately it is a finite resource, and can fail us when we most need it.

Soon the time came that the restaurant wanted their table back, and it was time to go.  She was tired: it had been a long day for her.  She was remorseless in the way that she would push herself through business and pleasure, a product of her belief that life was short and could only be lived once: but even she had her physical limits, and would occasionally overreach them.  From Clapham Junction we went our separate ways, she to the west and me to the east. But our journeys home were obstructed, so it seemed, by drunks everywhere:

“Sorry for rushing home. I was exhausted after the long teaching day and very early rising,” she said.  “My journey back got delayed, with a big fight starting in my carriage, police called in …”.

“I saw two men so drunk they could barely stand.  I wonder what was going on.  I really thought one was going to fall under the train.  That would have held things up for sure!”, I replied.

“And they could have badly hurt themselves”, she retorted.  Really and truly, I could never be entirely sure when she was being serious, and when not.

I was now at the end of the second month of my personal programme of vigorous dating: I was looking forward to having the next day at home for once, doing nothing.

Interlude: dating in the Dark Ages

Giving Cupid a helping hand 

(This happened about seven years ago, long before I went anywhere near Tinder.)

I had this friend – let’s call her Tricia – who I hung out with a lot for a couple of years, until we fell out: my fault.  We had started out as “fuck buddies” but that didn’t really work terribly well, to be honest, so we just became ordinary buddies – and genuinely so.  Tricia was what she described as a “romantic”: she believed in true love and that one special person, somewhere out there, to make her happy.  There are lots of women like that: they make themselves miserable, in the end, I’m afraid. They are to be avoided as lovers, but can make perfectly good friends.  They do tend to go on a bit about needing someone to come home to, grow old with, share special moments with and feeling lonely.  That’s the downside.

As a Romantic, Tricia was becaming increasingly impatient with her single status and was starting to lose faith that cupid’s arrow would strike any day in Waitrose, so she joined a singles club. This one cost ten pounds per event to get in plus you had to bring a man to barter, so I agreed to go along in that capacity. It sounded like a good deal to me, although I was a bit pissed off to be charged £10 myself on the door. On the other hand, as that was the last of my money there could be no question of me having to buy the drinks.

One of my least favourite hobbies is making small talk to strangers, but in this situation I didn’t have to. They had to talk to me! Most opening lines, I have found, are variants of the “and what do you do?” tried and tested over many years by her Majesty the Queen. This is because women (so I had read in the problem columns of a quality newspaper) are interested in high status males, whereas men are interested in slim waists (same source). Although I am, in my own way, a high status sort of male I found it hard at that time to explain, even to myself, what I was currently doing. I tried to explain to one woman about my burgeoning interest in woodburners and woodchip fuelstock technology, and making my own diesel out of chip fat (which I never quite got round to doing) but she had to leave suddenly and unexpectedly very soon after. I would probably have done better to say that I was a member of the royal family. There’s always the slight risk of finding oneself talking to the Queen, but in that eventuality I imagine that she would just say “eoh!” and move on.

The next woman was a bit more drunk. High status females in their late forties and early fifties do sometimes have slim waists, but this is generally achieved at the cost of so much cosmetic treatment that if you were to bury them I doubt they would decompose. There were some Russian women there who were all very blonde and rather younger and who I suspect were prostitutes who had wandered in by mistake. I liked them best. But I don’t know how to chat up a Russian prostitute (“and what do you do?”) and they didn’t chat me up either, curses. I myself was described by the drunk woman as “attractive” but I was not really what you might call available what with the woodburning and my complicated personal life and my sneaking admiration for Russian prostitutes. And although there can be no harm in taking the occasional peep over the fence, the grass was perfectly green where I was at that time.

As Tricia does not drink alcohol (neither do I) I thought she might just be able to bide her time and turn it to her advantage by swooping on the prospective lover of her choice once he was too intoxicated to object.  This is the tried and tested British way of love: you can decide later whether you have made a good selection.  But it did not work out like this. Tricia was indeed very brave and targeted one of the few other eligible males in the room. Unfortunately, it turned out that our target had been pre-selected by the party organiser for her own personal pleasure, which I thought thoroughly unethical. But had he not been hobbled before the starting gate, so to speak, I think we might have had a result there.

4. Home visit: everything but

Chapter Four – a Tuesday in early February 

Over the next week Carmen and I sustained a cheerful flow of erotica in the form of words, pictures and video clips.  As to seeing her though: this was going to be difficult.  She was off to Prague for a visit – she had lived there for a while, just after the fall of communism.  “I can be very patient waiting for the right moment, the wish increasing with the waiting”, she had said. “It’s not an strategy, its the only way, to see the positive side.” This all seemed perfectly reasonable and sensible, but I found myself wondering how I would in fact ever see her again.  She seemed to live very much (and very well) from moment to moment, responding to events as they arose: I had no way to put myself in her field of vision, other than to wait for her to decide that the moment was now right.  This made me feel uncomfortable and uncertain.  I never developed the capacity to take the initiative with Carmen: I had to dance around her availability.  I suggested that we might meet for coffee in the daytime, perhaps, on one of my frequent visits to London: but right from that first weekend she had been frank that she wasn’t so much interested in the chit-chat as the intimacy, as she put it.

***

And so it was that when Marianne suggested we should meet up again, I thought, why not?  I had enjoyed my first meeting with her more than I had expected.  Although she was French, Marianne had lived in England for many years and was completely fluent in English: the only clue to her origins was a marked accent.  With her, I had an easy enough connection at the mental level: it was the other stuff I was not so sure about, but there only way to find out was to meet her again.  I found her rather insistent: time and again, I had the feeling with Marianne of being put on the spot.  Did I want to meet her or not? If not, that was fine.  If yes, then when? So I found myself agreeing, to my surprise, that she would come to my home ground on one of her days off.  She had a complicated life, juggling several part-time jobs, and shuttling around the south-east of England seemed to be no deterrent to her.

I picked her up from the station: it was about ten days after our first meeting.  First we had a coffee in one of the few acceptable cafes in the town, next to a steamed-up window on which we drew maps of our lives.  I had walked to the station, too late, and was unusually sweaty myself: I thought it would be off-putting, and I didn’t want to look nervous.  Over the course of the week we had swapped details and images of our lives.  She had shared some artwork in which she had used herself as the model: herself emerging from the sea like a sea monster in January, naked and painted blue. She seemed unabashed, splendid in her femininity, Amazon-like, and strikingly indifferent to cold.  I felt like I’d like to see the real thing.

We relocated to a Turkish restaurant for lunch.  As we walked, she berated me mildly for lying about my age on Tinder: she was not impressed, she said.  I blustered a bit, but could come up with no explanation that seemed like it might be credible.   We talked about circumcision, which was in the news at the time: female (against), male (also against).  She had firm views about the functioning of the male organ and so do I: I’m very pleased I’ve got it all, and wouldn’t want to be without any of it.  Maybe this led onto the next subject because at some point she gave it as her opinion that women, more than men, are inclined to be polyamorous: she had been in relationships of this kind herself, she said.  At this particular time, however, she was emerging from an arrangement which, while loving, had been unsatisfactory from the sexual point of view.  A woman has needs, she said. So that was it, I thought to myself: she was recruiting.

Putting the pieces together, I thought there might be a meeting of interests here.  I didn’t know much about polyamory: what little I did know suggested it was for heavily tattooed, overweight and pierced people, attractive to each other maybe but not to me.  On the other hand, I was dissatisfied with straight relationships as they seem to be understood.  I wasn’t sure about the logic of monogamy: it seemed to be something that my female partners had insisted on, rather than something I cared about.  Maybe there was an alternative: something looser, something less conditional.

A mile or two into the countryside there is a chapel with some unusual stained glass, which catches  the light from certain angles at certain times of the year and can seem magical.  It is nearly always open, so when I have guests I have developed a habit of taking them there.  Marianne loved the atmosphere: she lay on the floor, played with the piano, ventured behind the scenes into closed-off areas.  She was someone who, faced with a sign saying “do not walk on the grass”, would walk on the grass.  Outside there was a graveyard with an overgrown maze set within it, damp and mossy at the time of year.  We walked the maze and at some point took each others’ hands: she seemed genuinely grateful that I’d shared this experience with her.  The sun was shining, low in the sky; the birds were starting to call, in anticipation of the spring: we went back to my flat.

We removed a certain amount of clothing from ourselves and each other: this seemed spontaneous, unthinking.  We sat on the yoga mat, overlooking the river, exploring mouths and bodies.  Then at some point she said: “I don’t do casual sex.” “Me neither”, I said: true in the sense that I can’t fuck a woman I don’t like, and to like her I have to know her: a bit. “To me sex is sacred”, she said, and I concurred with that too.  So she wasn’t going to fuck, clearly, which was her prerogative: although it seemed a bit fussy as I sensed we were going to do it sooner or later.  Over the course of the afternoon, though, we did everything but: ending up in the shower together, glistening bodies, smooth skin.  She had a strong, athletic body which she kept in a state of nature with little, if any, cosmetic treatment.  Her pubic hair was complete (as I knew from her photographs), soft and silky: the only slight surprise was that she appeared not to have a belly button; not like mine, anyway.

I offered to cook her some supper and when I slightly overcooked the omelette she said, rather rudely I thought, that she didn’t like burned food: but there was nothing else to be had, so she ate it.  It was getting late and it would have been a long journey home for her, an awkward dog-leg by train which she said she was dreading: so I offered to drive her as far as the main line, for which she was grateful.  I didn’t feel manipulated or resentful, but after I dropped her off I felt a bit drained, and pleased to be in my own company for a while as I retraced the journey back home.  Maybe this was the consequence of the moment when she asked me if I was seeing anybody else off Tinder: on a reflex, I said no, which wasn’t really true.  I had every intention of seeing Carmen, if Carmen would see me.

I texted Alex with the verdict: “Give me a call first thing if you can. I’m a bit worn out. A good day all in all though”

“So she used and abused you in a good way. Lol :-). Speak in the morning.” And the next day we went down to the coast together, to house hunt for her and try out our new cameras.  I felt pretty good, although I still had the lingering remnants of the mouth ulcer.

It was barely a month since I had commenced my self-made programme of vigorous dating: it was doing the trick, in that I certainly wasn’t thinking too much about my previous attachments.  So far, so good.

3. Doubling it up

Chapter Three – first weekend of February

There is a cafe on the seafront in Hove.  It is more or less the only one that is open in winter, certainly on a Sunday afternoon, run by Italians, and it was full of people with their children: it was damp and humid inside.  Outside the wind was blowing a gale and the sea was beating furiously onto the beach: I had tried to take some photographs, but had barely been able to stand up.  So I took refuge in the cafe, picking my way through the shingle that had been cast up across the walkway in front of it, mounting evidence of the power of the storm.  I sat for a while, reflecting gloomily that the slight soreness inside my top lip that had started two days ago had turned without a doubt into a full blown mouth ulcer.  So here I was, waiting for my Date.

I thought she was late, but in fact she was right on time – it was just that she thought we had agreed to meet outside: and, despite the wind and the rain, had not thought to come in.  A proper outdoor girl.  Catching sight of her through the steamed up window, I reluctantly abandoned my seat and went to greet her: she was Marianne, and had arrived like some wind-defying demigod on her bicycle.  We went down to the beach together to take some more photos, as that was my pretext for being down on the coast: it was the moment of sunset, and there were some breaks in the clouds that illuminated the surface of the water. She had her own camera, and was a great deal more vigorous in using it than myself, the supposed art student.  A few days later I processed my film and found it useless: it was a black and white manual camera, and I had lost the knack.

As the light failed we went back into the cafe and ordered some mixed seafood.  It was a question of finding something sufficiently gluten free for her, and soft on the mouth for me: it was only the second time I had suffered a mouth ulcer, but it had come upon me at exactly the same time as the previous year.  If you are that way inclined, you can look up on the internet theories about the spiritual significance of mouth ulcers: it is to do with the ability to express oneself in truth, and so on.

I was instantly intimidated by Marianne.  She was quite tall, strongly built and very French: a yoga person and a dancer, although her legs would not have disgraced a rugby player.  Her manner was severe, it seemed to me: somewhat unsmiling, intense, and her eyebrows arched in what seemed like surprise.  You see that sometimes in women who have had “work” done: but not in this case as she was 100% free range and organic.  If I say that she probably reminded me of a disapproving headmistress or (worse) music teacher, that is telling more about me than it is about her: but that is how it felt at the time.  She was in her forties (all my women are in their forties).

But as we got talking that I started to relax, and realised that I was in the company of someone rather unusual: she was highly intelligent, widely read and well informed: she had strong political opinions which, as luck would have it, coincided with mine.  Once we started talking, the evening sped by.  After an hour or two she had to go: she had taken the precaution of book-ending our date with a trip to the cinema with a friend (an Iranian film, of course).  This is recommended practice on the dating scene in case you find yourself with a nutter: she was playing it by the book.  Or maybe, now I think about it, my date was squeezed in between other existing commitments.  She was a busy woman: they mostly are, I have found.

So she went to retrieve her bike and picked her way through the mounting heaps of shingle back towards the town, while I went to find my car parked a safe distance from the shore.  She had no car, her contribution to saving the planet, although she could drive perfectly well. As I drove home I felt invigorated, uplifted: this was the second date in a row that seemed to have gone well.  Perhaps I had it cracked.  Perhaps I could do this thing.  It was a week since I had last seen Carmen.

***

After my weekend in London the dialogue continued between myself and Carmen, initially by text.  After a bit she suggested we should switch to WhatsApp to exchange what she described as “creative things”.  These turned out to be a range of photographs and videos, some erotic to a varying degree and others just taken from daily life – she had a good eye for composition and colour, as one might expect from a chef.  I did my best to respond in kind although I don’t think I have much of a talent for candid photography and it seemed to me as though the available material (i.e. myself) was limited in scope. For me, the erotic is very much about the female and so it is difficult for me to envisage myself in that way.  She had no such problem with herself: female sexuality can, I think, be more self-regarding.  She also asked me if I had any fantasies.  Both of us, it turned out, were drawn to the open air, to the sea, to the sun, to the idea of sex under the sky. Her imagination, it seemed, had also been fired by our experiences the previous weekend: she talked of reenacting it, but making bolder use of the hotel facilities, maybe with fewer clothes on, maybe dispensing altogether with underwear.  Her communication was open and direct: “If I am rude”, she said,  “you can tell me that you don’t like…. i can understand.  For me is beautiful to express and share this kind of thoughts and feelings.”  “ And if the friendship finish (we don’t know) I  will delete all the contacts I have … it’s not something not polite it’s a logical rule of freedom. For me the amazing thing in a friendship is to know and discover the person, not afraid at all about that.”

Everything she said suggested that she had enjoyed herself with me and was looking forward to doing it again, but “next weekend i am going to a  happy birthday party, although there’s a huge wish. .. think will be difficult to meet you.” How about the weekend after? That wasn’t possible either. And then she was going away for a week.  “I hate to control people and I don’t accept people controlling me”, she had said. These words stayed with me.  There was nothing to be gained by being importunate, but I began to doubt how it was ever going to be possible to see her again. The thing was, I DID want to repeat the experience: but I was starting to question her motives.  Perhaps she was the kind of person who basically got off on cyber-sex; perhaps she enjoyed the chase more than the catch, and having chalked me up to experience would soon be moving onto the next one.  None of this really squared with the evidence. But despite everything there was this doubt in my mind: if it seems too good to be true then it probably is.  All of my previous involvements with women had been monogamous pairings: this was clearly different, and I didn’t know how to proceed.  I was frightened of the possibility that I wanted her more than she wanted me: neediness would put her right off, but if I left it entirely up to providence would our paths ever actually cross again?

I still had the Tinder app on my phone and matches were still coming up.  Carmen had baldly asserted that it was a “hookup” service and that was clearly how she used it, although she acknowledged that there was some ambiguity about this: and she was splendidly dismissive of the many women who used it hoping to find a “partner” or meal ticket for life.  At all events, after a little while longer I matched with Marianne.  As had been the case with Carmen, what had struck me was that there was something different about her profile: “passionate in everything I do”, it said, with a picture of Marianne posed provocatively on a woodpile in a pair of shorts.  This turned out to have been a mistake: Marianne had not understood how Tinder would draw default data from Facebook, unless actively edited: and a few days later she pulled her profile off, after receiving a deluge of more or less indecent propositions.  An active feminist, this was not at all how she had wanted to present herself: but the deed had been done.

Something else that was unusual about Marianne was that she (the female) made the initial contact with me (the male), in defiance of the accepted conventions.  When Alex had been explaining Tinder to me, it was clear that she never made the first move.  She would get her matches – lots of them – and then it was up to the guys to open the conversation.  All of her girlfriends were the same: it could not be otherwise. But these women – my matches – were different.  Carmen didn’t exactly make the first move, but she made the running thereafter. And Marianne was definitely the huntress, not the hunted: Diana on a bike.

We conversed using the messaging facility.  We had things in common – yoga, art, the outdoors.  She seemed interesting – should we meet?  By this point, it was more a question of, why not?  I had an empty weekend in front of me: no opening for a rematch with Carmen, and still with significant gaps in my life resulting from my car-wreck with Iryna.  I’d make a day of it: down to the south coast, to see the sea in the aftermath of what promised to be a powerful storm: working along from east to west, so as to hit Brighton about tea-time.  And so it was that I found myself in a cafe on the seafront in Hove, sheltering from the gale, waiting for the date.

2. Taking the plunge

Chapter Two – January/February

I stood in the ticket hall at Belsize Park tube station, watching as the lifts came up from deep below.  I watched the people as they arrived in batches, negotiated the barriers and departed: after each batch the place became strangely quiet and empty.  On my side of the barriers there was a young woman, drunk or wasted beyond the point of no return: she looked as though she had been dressed for a night out, but now she was a mess:  teary, makeup melting, clothes in disarray.  She bumbled around the hall in a random fashion, from the ticket mahine to the office, to the barriers and back again.  One minute it seemed like she was waiting for someone and the next moment she was heading home.  She had no money, or not enough.  I was wondering if I ought to ask her if she was OK, if she needed help, but I was not so sure I wanted to get involved.  As if somehow reaching a decision she suddenly made her way through the barriers and vanished into the depths: and at that moment Carmen appeared out of the lift.  It was a week since I had seen her, since our blind “date” at the Whitechapel Gallery.

***

For a few days I had heard nothing.  Tinder comes with a messaging function which enables users to chat with their matches: it can be temperamental.  I messaged her a few times and then, as there was no reply, I stopped.  I was unsure what to do next.  There was a programme of lectures being held that next weekend that were relevant to my studies, and I’d already resolved to spend the weekend in London taking advantage of a cheap room “special” at the nearby Premier Inn.  Carmen lived very close by: it seemed like too much of a coincidence, too good an opportunity to miss.  It seemed like the kind of thing that might have been choreographed by the director of a film.  I just hoped I was in that film, and it was the right one.

And then she replied.  There had been some problem with her phone – again: now she was back on line.  As always, she had a busy weekend lined up – friends, cousins, visitors.  She was not interested in attending any of the lectures, as I tentatively suggested.  She went out of her way to stress that she was not looking for a boyfriend: “I am single forever”, she said.  Well that’s OK, I said – I’m not looking for a girlfriend either, not after my last experience.  I was looking for something different: but I didn’t know quite what.  Nor did I know how to navigate this new situation.  I rather despise conventional male/female relationships with their rules and codes, but I was surprised to find myself lost without them – if you ski off-piste, you will have to watch out for your own trees.  She talked again about the importance to her of the mental connection, of physical attraction, implied that both had been there at our initial meeting: and then, as if it was the natural next step in the conversation, she simply said:

“I want to feel you throbbing inside me.”

Up until that moment, there was a part of me – the smaller part, but present even so – which suspected that I was being taken for a ride, that I was a player in a depressingly familiar male/female drama in which he chases and she plays hard to get.  I won’t play that game, but that leaves me in a minority of people – women as well as men – who do not.  In that moment I suddenly felt that I had indeed met a kindred spirit: a woman who said what she meant, and meant what she said.  I was excited: a surge of energy went through me, and after that the arrangements dropped into place.  I had the feeling that I was being guided by an invisible force, floating down a river to somewhere good.

I told Alex about it, who was going to be away for a while:

“I’ve had a highly explicit proposal from the Spanish girl so I don’t think I’ll be bored, although frankly I’m a bit anxious. Much to talk about in a couple of weeks time. Love you.”

“I hope the weekend goes well and she isn’t too much into S and M. Have fun. Don’t forget the condoms. (Winks).”

“Does one need ahem “condoms” for that sort of thing I wonder? Anyway I’d better be off soon.”

Carmen had a job with a private household which meant that on weekdays she was seldom free before 9pm.  Nonetheless she said she’d come to Belsize Park when she was finished: it would be more pleasant for her flat-mate that way, she said.  She seemed surprised to learn that it was only one stop out from Chalk Farm: perhaps she’d never travelled that way before.

I caught an early train to London, against the flow of the commuters returning home at the end of the week.  The weather was wet, wild and windy: the trains were damp and messy.  For protection I had the large golf umbrella under which my daughter had given up smoking.  I found my way to Belsize Park and checked in: the room was snug, the floorspace mostly occupied by a large double bed.  From the window there was a fine view down across central London.  I texted a description of this to Carmen, who approved.  And then I waited: and waited some more.  The waiting made me anxious: I’m not sure why.  Eventually she texted that she was leaving work, going home for a quick change: it was a relief when it was finally time for me to walk down to the tube station, five minutes away.  It was getting on for ten o’clock, I think.

***

She came through the barriers and greeted me firmly, definitely with a strong kiss on the lips.  Her mouth was as I remembered it, sensual, luscious, active.  After a few minutes we battled against the wind back to the hotel, arm in arm, using the big golf umbrella to keep off the worst of the horizontal rain.  It was a relief to get inside, back to the room where we kissed and embraced up next to the door to the bathroom: one of the few available wallspaces.  Then I shed most of my outer clothing and knelt to remove her shoes, from where I was able to assess what could come off next.  I don’t remember the details: I don’t remember what she was wearing this time, but very soon we were both naked, exploring each other’s bodies: eyes, fingers, tongues, noses.  Her body was neat and well-proportioned; nothing was too big, or too small.  She was strong and muscular, particularly in her upper arms and shoulders – not so usual in a woman, and probably a by-product of her work; or possibly of her tai chi.  We were both horny: I was hard, and she was wet.  On investigation I discovered that she had shaved her pubic hair down into a narrow landing strip: behind this I found her genitals, fleshy, appetising and symmetrical, apart from a mole on one buttock.

“Would you like me to use a condom?” I asked and she nodded, smilingly, as if grateful to me for raising the matter without her having to ask.  So I did, and then we started to explore the possibilities with that.  My memory is of her on top – a position I like, as it gives the woman the maximum scope to enjoy herself; but over the course of the next hour or so we tried all the available angles, top and bottom, and gave each other a good workout.  At some point my cock must have brushed her anus:  “Do you like anal sex?”, she asked.  I said I did, but that I found that it made me climax very quickly, uncontrollably: but soon we put this theory to the test and found that it was not really true.  Eventually she asked me to come inside her: this seemed to be important to her.  So I did, and then we rested for a while, lying in each other’s arms, waiting for the appetite to come back.  “You have a nice body”, I said: “It’s OK,” she said, “it’s an ordinary body, but I’m happy with it.”  I liked this attitude.

The first time with a new person is a shot in the dark.  It can take a while to get used to the other’s body, to their responses, to their proportions; their texture.  This first time with Carmen, after all my anxiety, was really easy, like we already knew each other.  Everything seemed familiar and in the right place.  Our rhythms were in time with each other. She helped herself to what she wanted, satisfied herself and made sure it was the same for me.  Considering it’s the first time, I thought, this is really good.  Can it get any better?

About midnight, Carmen decided that she needed to go home:  she had guests coming the next day, and needed to start early.  I felt really disappointed:  I asked her to stay the night, and she did not take much persuading.  We set an early alarm instead.  We got very little sleep: we fucked at intervals, as the urge came upon us, one or the other.  At one point, I became aware of a gush of fluid around my groin: she had ejaculated upon me.  I have come across this phenomenon a few times in my career, and find it really exciting: like the holy grail of sexual intercourse.  But she made no comment about it, just went to the bathroom; shortly afterward we showered together and all too soon it was time for her to go.

***

I went back to bed for a while and tried to sleep, but it was too late in the new day.  I was tired through the day; I dragged myself to the Martin Creed exhibition at the Hayward, feeling unwell, and wondered if I was sickening for something; but by the evening, and the first of the lectures, my energy had returned.  I wondered how it was for her.  I texted her briefly, to thank her for her company:

“That was a good experience for me. I was a bit nervous in the week but you were great. Thank you! … and enjoy your weekend.”

“Good thing in life to share experiences”, she replied. “I am trying to forget for a while… but erotic images come to me, non stop. Thanks too.  I wish you a lovely week.”

I felt faintly brushed aside. A week is a long time.

But I slept well that night.  Saturday had been cold, and Sunday was a fine day: once I had consumed my hotel breakfast I had the whole day to fill before the next lecture in the evening, for which I was due to meet a friend from college who was also attending.  I wandered up to the Heath, taking photos of curiosities in the fine winter light; I wound up at Kenwood, and took another look at their strange collection of paintings for the first time in fifteen years.  My thoughts turned again to Carmen: I wondered if it might be possible to hook up with her later in the day.  The first time we had met we had talked a lot: the second time we had done little other than fuck.  There was a part of me that felt guilty about this, like I was using her: perhaps she felt used.  I didn’t want that: I liked her, and I wanted her to know that.  I can’t fuck a woman I don’t like.  So I texted her again:

“Slept so well. I’m free this afternoon till about 6. How about we hook up? NB I am NOT trying to start a relationship here, but I’d like to get to know you better.”

“For me the amazing thing in a friendship is to know and discover the person, not afraid at all about that,” she said.  “I am preparing things and cooking for a lunch with my cousin, girlfriend and some friends.  I don’t know what time we will finish. .. I would like to meet you, yes …but not sure what time. Although I would like to talk, it’s rude if I prefer to have more intimate time with you?  I miss your body, the feeling was so intense I want more.”

But later she said:

“I am very sorry,  I am still with my friends …how do you think if we meet at 7:30pm.  I know is late, don’t worry if you can’t, we will have other opportunities.” For good measure she added a couple of explicit sexual fantasies.  “If I am rude you can tell me that you don’t like…. I can understand.  For me is beautiful to express and share this kind of thoughts and feelings,” she said. But it was too late, so I didn’t get to see Carmen again that weekend, after our torrid Friday night together.

I guarded the umbrella zealously for the rest of the time, but left it in the cafe at the final lecture on Sunday evening; and when I went back to check, it had gone.  I am still looking for one that is even half as nice.