18. Clifftop encounter

Chapter Eighteen  – first two weeks in June 

Over the bank holiday weekend I hired a van and helped Enid move all her stuff up to north London, where she had just rented a flat: just a few stops on the Northern Line away from Chalk Farm. It took most of the day to get there what with the traffic and a stop to pick up her boyfriend’s stuff too.  It wouldn’t all fit in the van so we had to procure a taxi for the final leg of the journey.  I told Carmen about it and showed her a photo of the van stuffed with stuff.  “A typical image when someone moves,” she said, “it’s unbelievable how much things we think we need.”  Although I was just round the corner, there was no suggestion from her that she might like me to come round. In any case, it was well into the small hours before we were finished with the removals.

I also sent Iryna pictures of the move in progress: we were tentatively back in touch following her birthday. I had sent her a card and she had liked it.  “Moving Enid to London like the proper glitterati do,” I said. “Oh good,” said Iryna, “I wish her all the happiness.”

***

The next week Alex took me to a circus show on the South Bank as a thank-you for the help I had given her with her dissertation, and I decided to take the plunge and book myself for a week on Skyros at the end of the month.  We were invited to the opening of a new gallery in Greenwich later in the week.  In the meantime I spent much of the week editing some video footage I had made on my trip to Croatia the previous year, featuring Iryna and her family. I had an overpowering urge to reconnect with her, and this seemed like a way to do it – indirectly if not directly.

The evening in Greenwich did not go terribly well. Alex was not the carefree soul I had known forty eight hours before.  She was on edge and compounded matters by dropping her iPhone down the loo.  She made the mistake of trying to switch it back on while it was still wet: what you should do, apparently, is to put it into a bag of rice and hope that it dries out.  It all took a lot of sorting out. The time came for me to peel off and head to see Carmen.  First I went to see how Enid was settling into her new flat. As a result I missed a message from Carmen and didn’t know she was home until well past ten.  It left no time to do anything very much other than go to bed, but that was fine with me:

“There’s no word to describe the feeling I have when I kiss you, hug you, touch you and you come inside me,” she said the next morning.  “…still feeling you inside me … It’s lovely.” “I still have the memory of you on my cock,” I replied. “Your smell and some wetness” (I prefer not to wash after sex, so as to keep a physical momento with me if only for a little while).  I was on my way down to the coast by then, taking advantage of more fine weather and feeling peaceful, calm and optimistic.  “You are an amazing lover, an amazing man to love,” she said.

***

As I sat high above the beach a young man powered up the hill towards me, sweaty and overdressed. I had noticed him earlier, frolicking in the sea.  To my discomfort he joined me on the seat. He opened his hand to make the sign of a “V” with his middle fingers. I did not respond.

“I’ve been sitting in the sea”, he said, “communing with God and Jesus and everything. I’ve come to realise a lot of things. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

Half the trouble in the world is caused by thinking, I thought. “This is a special place”, I said, noncommittally.

“What, you mean this life we’re in? All of it?”

“This place.” I gestured around me.

“Who are you, to carry this message? ”

“I’m just another guy. ”

“You are another guide? ”

“No just another guy. In a way we all are.”

“And in a way we are not. I’m a guide too, you know.”

Again he opened his hand to make the sign with his fingers. “I’ll be on my way then. Here, take a look at my eyes.” And he removed his dark glasses.

His eyes were blue and calm, not at all like the madman I had assumed him to be. I lowered my own shades so as to look at him direct under the brim of my hat. “Go in peace”, I said.

“My name’s Ivan by the way. What’s yours?”

“I’m Rob.”

“Rob. I am sure we know each other,” he said. “We will meet again, beyond a doubt.”

The sign he made, I learned much later, is the salute used by Mr Spock from Star Trek.

***

“We have to take advantage during the time I will be on my own,” said Carmen. “Come when you like. The annoying thing is to wait until 10.” Over the next few days we exchanged erotic fantasies involving her black friend, and some more of the pictures she liked.  The morning of our next meeting she sent me a selfie of herself posing at her desk, looking cool, confident and feminine.

“You look so cool.”

“Rob. .. but this is an spontaneous pic. .. nothing special. Happy if you like though.”

“I’ll be in London this evening. Ten minutes away from your place.”

“I want you fuck my ass and come inside. I want to feel all your powerful cock and your arms around me. Makes me wet. ”

“You make me hard. What time at your place?”

“Ten. I want you very hard. I am looking forward to kissing you. Deep and sensual kisses.”

I went up to London in the afternoon feeling strangely out of sorts and lonely. As it had turned out, my daughter was unavailable this time so I kicked around the Tate until closing time, then had time to kill until Carmen could get home. For the final hour or so I just sat reading in an anonymous pub at Chalk Farm – which was pleasant enough.  Finally, a bit before ten Carmen was home, a couple of minutes away.  I rang the doorbell and she let me in. Her door was at the end of a hallway, on the flank wall. She had a way of popping her head out of the door like an owl to welcome me.  Then she retreated inside, and I followed to discover for myself what state of undress she might be in.  We spent another happy night together: it was the third time we had done this on her home turf.  It was becoming a weekly event, almost a routine.  I looked forward to it and was starting to build my week around the expectation.

In the morning I watched her shower and photographed her in the act, noticing her strong upper body and the way it tapered to a well-defined waist.  In some ways her physique was quite masculine, but none the worse for that.

“Wonderful man. Relaxing day reading in a book shop. Still feeling you inside me. I miss your face into my neck while my hand touching your head. We have to spend a Londoner Sunday together!”

“Yes! Did you ever make it to Matisse?” I said.  We had been talking for some time about going to see the big Matisse show at the Tate.  I thought she might go with friends, but she still had not.

“No. .. I didn’t. .. maybe next weekend. I was thinking so much on you … your cock and how you turn me on. And how much I like to kiss you.”

So there was the germ of a plan.

17. Elderflower cordial

Chapter Seventeen – second half of May

Carmen had some time off from her job and was using it to research new things to eat and cook. Somewhere along the way she discovered a video showing how to make an elderflower cordial using only raw elderflowers, lemons and spring water.

“I want to go to pick up elderflower and make a cordial. Maybe on Tuesday. I’m free the whole week! “

“I’m free on Thursday afternoon and Friday. Is that any good? I’d love you to come. I’ll look for some good places to pick. I want to fuck you.”

“You want the same like me!!! Put it in my mouth…. In my pussy and gentle in my ass. See you next Friday!?”

“Friday is perfect. Come for sleepover – Thursday night or Friday night. Whatever suits you. I’m watching out for elderflower! There is lots.”

The following day I went to King’s Cross to see the annual student art shows.  I felt frustrated: Carmen was not far away, she was not working, she had her place to herself, we both wanted to fuck each other but here we were not doing it.  On the other hand, we did seem to have some definite plans to do it in the near future.  Later she told me that she spent so much time with other people that the occasional opportunity to spend time with herself was like a treat.  She spent the day inventing her own version of pad thai noodles.

***

The “reading” of Alex’s dissertation proceeded slowly but systematically, as we tried to get illustrations to line up and proofed the references and sources.  At intervals I was talking to Carmen, who said:

“Jim, are you busy tomorrow during the day? I need to come back to London at 4pm on Friday. It’s a pity, but a friend of mine is coming to help me with the broadband. I was very happy thinking in a countryside day but I think there is not too much time to do things out. …. my elderflower dream, it’s fading!,…. And the final bad news is, I have my period, just start yesterday, means not great playing.”

I thought about this. It seemed like my playtime with Carmen was going to be squeezed.  The situation with the broadband was a consequence of her flatmate Brian’s sudden departure, taking the router with him.  The lack of wireless internet was making it more difficult for her to let out her spare room to potential tenants who seemed to expect this as standard. To compound matters, it turned out that Brian had transferred all the utilities to a new provider which was being far from helpful.  He had taken his commission from them, and then he left.  Carmen had not paid enough attention when he had persuaded her to let him do this, and she had not foreseen the possible complications. She had trusted him and he had taken advantage of her: I was shocked.

As always, I wanted to accommodate her although I had this vague feeling that something I really wanted was about to be snatched away from me.

“I am free from lunchtime on Thursday through Friday. We have time to pick elderflower and also maybe go down to Hastings to buy fish. Just let me know what you’d like to do – the weather will be getting better particularly down on the coast.. It will be a pleasure to see you, period or no period.

“I will arrive after lunch,” said Carmen,”let me know what time is better. I didn’t think  about the weather! It’s true, it’s being horrible … Good if it will be better.”

And so in the end she visited just as we had planned all along, and we had a good time. I took her down to the coast to look at the petrified forest: it is not far from where we had picnicked the previous month, and I thought that with her background in geology she would be interested.  And so she was, and I watched her looking at the fossilised remnants and patterns in the sand with fascination, photographing some of them for her sister as she went along.  She was wearing a red patterned dress with bare arms and legs; her skin was pale in the sun. We scrambled around the beach commenting on suitable places to fuck, but did not actually do it.  Although it was sunny, it was also windy, and I was thinking: maybe later in the summer.

Along the way we bought a big bunch of local asparagus, then at its peak of perfection and this, along with some things that she had brought with her in her usual way, kept us going for the twenty four hours that we had together.  It was the longest we had been in each other’s company.  Her period did not prove to be an obstacle, since as usual we found ways round it.  She talked about her holiday plans for the summer, how her former boyfriend from Spain would visit and they would travel around the whole of Britain on a motorbike: then she laughed.  “Always we talk like this,” she said, “but most of the time it does not happen”. She had an easy, non-physical relationship with this man who visited her quite often: but he spoke no English.

The next morning we went hunting for elderflower.  Although the countryside was full of it, we needed to find somewhere that was away from any roads (because of pollution) and yet to which there was reasonable and public access.  I’d given some thought to this, and had felt anxiously responsible for identifying a suitable location.  In the end, I plumped for the community orchard in which I had a tiny share: I felt confident, though not certain, that there must be some elderflower there.  As it turned out there was: it was only one bush, which we were lucky to find, but it was enough as she only needed a few flower heads for her cordial.  I filmed her in the act, as she carefully cut the flowers: natural yeasts and pollens sprang into the air as she did so.  “The flowers we have to collect in the morning before the yeasts will go with the sun and the wind,” she had specified. We saw nobody apart from the occasional dog walker, to whom we explained our mission.

We went back to my flat for a light lunch – a salad of leaves and potatoes which she adorned with some elderflowers, along with more asparagus.  We sat on the balcony for a while, but it was still cold and out of the sun.  “Can we go to bed for a while?” she said, “just to cuddle, I mean not for sex or anything?” I must have looked surprised because she laughed and said, “I’m just joking.  About the no sex, I mean”. So we went to bed one more time and she seemed to enjoy herself as usual.  For myself, I wasn’t able to come: the only time this happened (or didn’t) between me and Carmen.  Perhaps it was the pressure of time, because before long it was time for her to go home so that her electrician friend could sort out the broadband for her. However, before she left I took the opportunity to photograph her nude in various poses, erotic and more or less pornographic: it was the first and only time I did this.  She was a willing collaborator.

Maybe that morning, maybe that afternoon, we lay on the bed talking about love and what it meant to us.  Any guardedness between us seemed to have dissipated.  Carmen was single forever, and I accepted that.  And I was trying to find a way of being that did not involve the monogamous pairing that I felt had served me so badly before.  It seemed like a good match. “We can love each other, can’t we?” I said to her, and she nodded: she had a lot of love to give.  From this point on the word love began to enter our vocabulary with each other, although the next morning the talk was more of sex:

“Our elderflower cordial is working in progress. You are lovely. I feel the pressure of your body on my body and I breathe deep and I connect with something very special and different.”

“I had a lovely time too. I’ll post some photos on drop box for you. The aroma of elderflower is still in my car, and makes me think of you. And smile.”

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.”

15. Dream lover: a sleepover

Chapter Fifteen – early May 

I spent the next ten days recuperating from my various traumas.  I had a growing feeling that I wanted to go away, and that I wanted Marianne off my back.  It was like she would not leave me alone.  I don’t think this was all her fault by a long chalk: my mood was very up and down at this time, and I really needed not to feel pressurised.

“Wondering if you fancy dancing tonight?” she asked, just a couple of days later. It’s a long way, I thought, and I don’t fancy another sleepover. “I’m really tied up”, I said. “The only time I’ve got is Friday daytime and Saturday afternoon this week.”

A couple of days later, she was onto me again: “I’m thinking about Corsica for summer holidays. Working on idyllic olive farm.  Do you fancy this?” I didn’t really.  The idea of going to a strange place, with somebody I didn’t know terribly well, when I didn’t know what my other options were, was not instantly appealing.  I stalled: “I’m not sure. It’s too early for me to say. There’s a lot going on.”

Feeling guilty about my stalling and evasion, I suggested going to see Marina Abramovic together at the Serpentine, a month or more ahead safely into the future.

“Yes”, she said, “I  am free then so let’s make it a date!”

“OK. A date it is then.”

“Shall I keep the whole weekend free for you?” This was too much: I my reflex was always to keep some room to manoeuvre in case Carmen was available.  But I didn’t say this.

“I really can’t say this far ahead. Sorry. It’s just the way my life works. Or not.”

“When there is a will there is a way!”, she said.  This phrase is significant: I found myself using it with Carmen once or twice.  It reminded me that the frustrations and difficulties that I experienced with Carmen, I was also imposing on Marianne.  I did not feel particularly good about that. Feeling like there was a noose closing around my neck, I sat down to codify my thoughts about my relationship with Marianne.  I had done this a few months previously, when I had tried to analyse what had been wrong with my relationship with Iryna in the wake of its collapse.  The balance was, I was not enjoying this relationship. However I took no immediate action to sort this out: not yet.

***

With her sister gone, and her friend leaving soon, I got back in touch with Carmen with some photos from our picnic site, a month or more on.

“Just to let you know that this coming weekend I am free…It would be lovely to see you for an hour, or two, or longer, in London, or in Kent.  I hope you’ve enjoyed having your sister and friends to stay.  Do you have a new flatmate yet?  Anyway, let me know.”

The response came a few hours later: “Come today and stay fucking me the whole night”.

Instantly, I felt electrified: it was like our first encounter all over again.  All of my doubts and hesitations dropped away.  “Ok. I can do that. What time?”, I said.

“Yes!!!!??  Wonderful!”, she said, as though she had not really expected such a positive reply.  “I finish at 9pm… Like you know … Usually I am at home at 10pm.” And she gave me her address, for the first time since we had known each other.

“I will fuck you good,” I said.  “Don’t wash. I like your smell. I want to get my tongue between your legs.”

“I am horny. Keep your hardness for my wet pussy. I am happy thinking I will be close to you.” I’m not making this up: it’s just a small sample of the stuff that passed between us.  She had a powerful erotic imagination which could be stimulated as much by words as by pictures.  Indeed, when she could not get the real thing, fantasy would do the trick.

I caught a late train up to London and got to her place about 10.30 in the evening.  She greeted me in the style to which I was accustomed with her.  Soon it was time to sleep.  I didn’t sleep all that well that night as she had noisy neighbours above her basement flat who seemed to keep the same hours as vampires.  However I was able to put my sleeplessness to good use as the desire for her body returned to me repeatedly through the night.  Under her bed, I noticed, she kept a large pot of lube and her big black friend.

In the morning she made me breakfast – a vegan yoghurt, reinforced with plenty of nuts and fruits.  She had a large front room, suitable for the dinner parties that she occasionally hosted on a commercial basis: until recently this had been mostly occupied by Brian, but now it was free again.  The rest of the flat was small but modern, furnished and adorned by her in her own modest but quirky style.  I liked it. As we ate I told her about my experiences with Marianne and how I was starting to feel trapped.  What should I do? I asked her.  “Just tell her you need space,” she said.  “I find that usually works.”

***

The rest of the week I drifted around, up and down to the beach where the water was steadily warming up under the influence of a small heatwave.  In the space of a few days it went from being painful to enter – like a knife to the testicles – to being warm enough to swim in, for the first time since the previous year.  Despite this, I still felt low after my abandonment of the degree course, and lonely too. With hindsight I can see that I had people around me, but what I appreciated most was my communications from Carmen:

“Lovely fucking. Enjoy your day. When I fuck with you my wish increases and I want more. I would like to sit on your cock and do circular motions.”

“That will be nice. I’m going to bed now to think about it.  Happy memories of your body.”

“Enjoy your memories.”

But every time she said something like that, it made me anxious that sooner or later there might not be a next time.

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.

1. In the beginning

Chapter One – end of January

“Dad, can you give me a lift to the station?”, said Enid, “I need to get to London to meet my friends.”

“I’m going up to London myself”, I said; “let’s go together.”

So I drove to the pub where Enid was working to collect her, my oldest, only and favourite daughter, and from there to the station for the train. We stopped once by the side of the road for a quick cigarette to celebrate the fact that Enid had sworn to give up smoking on her birthday.  I photographed her standing defiantly under a golf umbrella, Camel in hand, with a bright rainbow behind her: new year, new hopes.

It’s not a long ride into London, and we strolled across the river and stopped in a cafe.  We both had time to kill.  Enid had been unable to contact her friends (who turned out to be asleep and hung over), but as for me….?  Well, I was due for a Date: a date with a stranger, at the Whitechapel Gallery.  It was the third time I had done this sort of thing, three Saturdays running now.

“What makes you think this one will be any better than the others?” said Enid.

“I don’t know, I just have a good feeling about this one,” I replied.

Enid just laughed and gave me the finger.  “She’ll stand you up”, she said.  “It’ll be a no show”.

***

I had broken up with Iryna just before Christmas, suddenly, angrily, inexplicably, maddeningly: terminally as it seemed.  I was resolved to make some changes.  To stop myself pining over my loss, I would embark on a programme of vigorous dating.  I had never done this before, I had even dreaded the prospect, but my friend Alex had encouraged me to install a new app onto my mobile phone.  It was all the rage.  It was called Tinder and allowed men and women to decide who they liked on the strength of a simple picture profile, and to chat each other if they matched.  I quickly had half a dozen matches, and started to arrange meetings.  Being an art student, I opted for the many galleries in London as safe and sensible places for these encounters with total strangers.  I found that my matches tended to have certain things in common – independent minded women, healthy eaters and physically fit, yoga types with a good grounding in the arts. How you get that off a few pictures I don’t know.  They made me feel a bit inadequate, frankly.

The first two meetings had been nothing special – with hindsight, I can see them now as necessary warm-ups.  Within seconds of meeting the women I had known that there was no chemistry.  The first was older than she had advertised (as was I), well presented but somehow sexless, preoccupied with an ailing mother who she used as her cue (or maybe excuse) to part later on; she was intense, and rather humourless.  The second was an entrepreneurial Scottish girl, all skin and bones, who had cleverly worked out from my career history that I was older than I was claiming but who met with me nonetheless.  I spent a pleasant enough afternoon with each of them, parting amicably with a peck to the cheek and knowing that it was highly unlikely I would see either of them again.  And that was OK: I felt that even the attempt was something of an achievement.  I had surprised myself.

And then, sometime in January, I connected with Carmen.  “I am Spanish girl living in Chalk Farm”, she said; “I am very busy person”. And so she was.  It was several weeks before there was a chance to meet.  In the meantime we chatted intermittently on line.  There was something about her that was different, somehow fresher than the others. It had not taken me long to realise that there were certain patterns to the way that most of the women presented themselves. “No one-night stands” they would say – as if certain that I would wish to shag somebody I had not yet met; or “looking for a relationship” with someone they had not yet met themselves.  I was getting weary of it all, the coy evasions, the prim pretences around the sexual.

“What do you want from Tinder?”, Carmen asked one day.  This was a good question. “I’m new to it,” I said; “it was suggested to me by a friend, so I was giving it a go; have some fun, maybe make a friend or two.”  I’m quite a physical person, I said, so maybe some of that.  Everything about her seemed to invite openness about this.  “Physical attraction is necessary”, she said, “but the main thing for me is a mental connection.”  Fun, and a mental connection.

***

I pitched up to the Whitechapel Gallery well in advance of the agreed time, bought tickets for the current exhibition and waited – and waited.  It had been hard enough to find a show that Carmen had not already seen.  Like me, she loved Tom Hunter’s photographs but had already been to the the Photographers’ Gallery with some of what appeared to be many friends.

I studied the people coming and going and tried to remember what my date looked like.  Her pictures had been varied and in a paranoid moment I wondered if they were of more than one person.  My anxiety mounted as Enid’s prophecy came back to me. An woman with a pinched face approached me and my heart sank; but she was just trying to get to the gallery shop.  After about another half hour, seemingly endless, a woman finally bustled through the door and came up to me breathlessly: she was really sorry, there had been delays on the Tube, her phone was out of battery, she was sure I would have gone by now, she was so relieved.  She was flustered and this helped me to forget my own discomfort: relax, I said, it doesn’t matter. I mimed a sudden release of pressure as I pressed a gallery badge onto her lapel.  The feeling that this was going to be OK began to reassert itself.

On that first meeting Carmen appeared to me as a small, neat woman dressed in a tweed jacket and a denim skirt, a flowing scarf, some fishnetty tights and a slightly battered pair of red trainers quite sensible for the time of year.  She smelt slightly of garlic, but not unpleasantly so; I already knew she worked as a chef.  She had overnighted with friends in Hoxton, but rather than come straight to the gallery had gone back home first to Chalk Farm – this had made her late.  We wandered round the exhibition commenting on the display, first in French before settling on English.  She was open and lively: she was tactile, and from the start made little butterfly touches on me to add emphasis what she was saying, which I willingly returned.  She had a real enthusiasm for what she was looking at, which I found infectious. After a little while we retired to the cafe next door and talked until it closed over brownies and cups of tea.

Although English was not her first language, I found her easy enough to understand, her vocabulary reinforced as it was with expressive hispanic gestures.  She may have found it more difficult to follow me, but if so she hid it well.  She was in her mid forties – all my women have been in their mid forties.   She had come to London in search of more opportunities than could be found in Spain, and was working as cook in a private household.  She had lived with an older man for many years before deciding that she needed to be independent.  Her family were secular rather than Catholic.  She had friends all over Europe.  I remarked on the deficiencies of capitalism, and she told me a good story about a screw factory in Prague, even after the fall of communism, which, if it couldn’t sell its screws, would melt them down to make more screws.  At some point our fingers touched, and we let them linger and play.

Neither of us had made any other plans for the evening so we decided to look for a Japanese restaurant that she said she knew of – it turned out she knew the East End quite well.  It was bitterly cold by now and she seemed underdressed: I noticed that she was walking really slowly.  So I put my arm around her shoulders and after some time we arrived at the restaurant: which was closed.  There was nothing for it but to head for Wagamama’s, which was nearby in Spitalfields Market.  We both had hot, soupy dishes and herbal teas: she did not want anything alcoholic, which was fine with me as I do not drink either.  All of this was done stone cold sober.

I do not remember everything that we talked about, but it was mostly easy. There was a part of me that could not believe it could possibly be that easy, there must be catch.  It was the same paranoid instinct that had wondered if her profile was of more than one person.  So there was one moment when this instinct came bursting to the surface again.  “There is something about myself I need to tell you”, she said.  What can it be, I wondered, with a sudden edge of apprehension: it sounded dramatic.  And then she talked of her “enneagram”, a personality test which revealed certain key things, in her case a great appetite to give and receive love.  Later I researched the Enneagram, and discovered it to be a system quite often used in workplaces to analyse team dynamics, not unlike the Myers-Briggs or Belbin tests – quite reputable, if not at the cutting edge of modern psychology: adopted by some Jesuits, but condemned by the Vatican.  But all this fact-finding came later: at the time I just felt a surge of anxiety, because the word I heard was Engram.  Fuck, I thought, I’ve got me a Scientologist.  I knew there had to be a catch.  Get me out of here.  That’s all I needed.  A Scientologist.

But somehow we got past it: she looked it up on her phone for me, and it clearly wasn’t the Scientologists.  As we left the humid warmth of the restaurant we found ourselves under the arcade, cool rather than cold: I took her by the shoulders, hugged her, kissed her delicately – and then we kissed indelicately.  Her mouth was luscious and sensual; she was an active kisser.  Slowly we wandered back to the tube station: nothing much needed to be said, but I remember noticing how small her hands seemed to be, and slightly rough from her work.  We rode the Underground to Monument, caressing more like practised lovers than people who had just met.

We both got out at Monument and stood together for a long time as several more trains went by.  “Where are you going?”, she asked.  “Back home, I suppose”, I said.  I had a meeting the next day, but was open to better offers, and there was something about her manner that suggested this was by no means inconceivable.  I was unmistakably aroused by her.  However, she had already told me about her flatmate, an annoying man who seldom left the premises: she was sensitive to his possible embarrassment, or maybe her own. So after a long time standing, and kissing, and talking we went our separate ways on the Northern line, she to the north and me to the south. My underwear was damp and I’m sure hers was too.  It was only much later that I realised that if I’d asked her to come home with me, she probably would have.  It never occurred to me to ask: sometimes, I realise that I’m more conventional than I like to admit.

***

I travelled home that night in a daze, which carried over well into the next foggy day.  The good feeling that I had told Enid about had been justified, her scepticism scotched.  My intuition, which is often sound when I remember to listen to it, had been confirmed.  And yet I could hardly believe it had happened.  Where was I supposed to go from here?  What was the next step in this kind of relationship?  Was “relationship” even the right word – it’s not a word I like, anyway.  Too much like “appropriate”. I had a vague sense of something really good being dangled in front of my face, and then being snatched away.  The feeling that I was the willing fool in some sort of scam lurked there, below the surface: nothing I could rationalise, just echoes from past disappointments.  If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is, I caught myself thinking.

Enid did not, in fact, succeed in giving up smoking, I’m sorry to say.   Now that WAS too good to be true.