‘Yeah, I’m not very good at it,’ he said, with a soft chuckle. ‘The only things I’m really good at are painting and shagging, and I haven’t figured out how to make money from either of those yet.’
When Claire got up the next morning, Luca had gone. On the kitchen table he had left an A4 sheet of paper, with a pencil sketch of a bunch of flowers and a message:
Thanks for last night – and the night before. Sorry they’re not real. Luca
Claire smiled at the drawing, touched by the sweetness of the gesture. Then she stuck it to the fridge with a magnet, as if to mark the end of her acquaintance with Luca. At least it had finished on a good note.
7
Let’s Get the Party Started
Regular readers of the blog will know I’m not into threesomes. I might consider it with the right person, in the right circumstances, so it’s not quite what the BDSM crowd would call a hard limit – but almost. So it might surprise you to know that I attended my first orgy last weekend.
If I wouldn’t contemplate sex with just one extra person, how could I think about doing it with a whole group of people, most of them strangers? But here’s the thing: people can do all sorts of things in a group that they wouldn’t contemplate doing on their own. Psychologists have studied this. A sort of herd mentality takes over. It’s partly the safety-in-numbers thing – no one feels responsible individually for what’s going down. Guilt is shared and thus dissipated. So: the more, the merrier.
It all started at a swingers’ event I attended with Mr Curious. You probably have ideas about swingers, right? I know I did. Even the word ‘swingers’ seems so old-fashioned, kind of sad and saggy, with a nasty tang of the seventies about it. It conjures up images of ghastly parties where a bunch of sad-sack suburbanite couples throw theirkeys into a bowl after a nice dinner, and some leering fat guy in bell bottoms wins the right to fuck you.
That’s what I expected to find at the hotel when we rolled up for our swinging evening – sad, desperate men whose wives were no longer interested; bored housewives longing for the excitement of flashing their cellulite at someone new. But I went because Mr Curious was… well, he’s not called Mr Curious for nothing and he wanted to try it. He’d heard about these parties from a colleague. Apparently the swinging scene is on the rise at the moment in our little part of the world. He’d read an article. He said he thought it wasn’t like that any more. And, like I say, I wasn’t averse – I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but I was willing to give it a try.
And some of the people were just like I expected. There were a few women who clearly didn’t want to be there and had been dragged along by their partners. They were always on the edge of the action, with a sort of desperate rictus smile on their faces, trying to look like they were being a good sport about it all but were just ‘sitting this one out’ while they watched their partner pounding into some tight-skinned girl half their age. Pretty grim. I felt sorry for them – and a bit cross that they wouldn’t stand up for themselves.
But most of the people weren’t like that at all. They were attractive, well-dressed, successful, and they appeared respectable – or as respectable as you can appear when you’re sucking some stranger’s cock while another fucks you up the arse and your husband cheers you on from the sidelines.
We fell in with a nice crowd, Mr Curious and I. We hooked up with a bunch of other couples. It got a little crazy and, without going into too much detail, I think we all had a very nice time. I got fucked seven ways from Sunday, I sucked a world of cock, I watched Mr Curious having the time of his life getting his curiosity well and truly satisfied, and everyone went home happy.
I still think three’s a crowd. But eight? Eight’s a party.
On Tuesday morning Claire sat in a café near Bookends, anxiously watching the door as she waited for Catherine to join her. She had been bursting to tell someone about her potential book deal since Mark had first emailed her. He had emailed again on Sunday and told her he would be in Dublin next weekend, and they had arranged to meet for dinner on the Saturday night. That had thrown her into even more of a tizzy. She was so nervous about meeting Mark in the flesh. She kept telling herself it was just a business meeting, not a date, and she felt a lot calmer when she thought of it like that. But it wasn’t easy when Mark was being more flirtatious than ever. They were communicating now by text and email, and the fact that they were flirting in private made it seem more real. She was desperate to talk to someone about it. But Catherine, the only person who knew she was the author of ‘Scenes of a Sexual Nature’, had been on holiday in Spain with her girlfriend, and had just got back last night. Hating to seem needy, Claire had nevertheless begged her to meet up this morning ? she’d explode if she had to keep her news to herself for one more second. She had taken the morning off when Catherine had agreed to come.
Catherine was a fellow blogger and a freelance journalist. She wrote the hugely popular ‘Unholy Mother’ blog, a funny, frank and (as the title suggested) irreverent account of first-time motherhood. They had initially met through the blogosphere, eventually moving on to emailing and finally meeting up in person, and they had become good friends over the past year. Claire knew she could trust Catherine, and it was a relief to have someone she could be completely honest with about her blog.
She looked up as the door opened and saw Catherine struggling through it with a buggy. She spotted Claire and waved, then manoeuvred herself awkwardlydown the narrow aisle towards her, bashing chairs and customers’ legs.
‘Watch where you’re going with that thing!’ a man shouted at her, when she rammed his ankles.
Catherine rolled her eyes as she parked the buggy beside Claire’s table. ‘I brought Paddy, hope you don’t mind,’ she puffed, unwinding her scarf and flopping onto the banquette opposite.
‘Not at all. It’s nice to see him.’
‘What’s the big emergency?’ Catherine asked, as she struggled out of her jacket.
Before Claire had a chance to answer, a waitress came to take their order.
‘Could I ask you to fold that up?’ she asked, frowning crossly at the buggy. ‘It’s in the way there.’
Catherine looked at her blankly. ‘Do you have any high chairs?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’d like a high chair, please. If you want me to collapse the buggy, obviously I’ll need a child seat.’
The waitress’s eyes darted between the buggy and Catherine. ‘You want a high chair?’ she asked, incredulous.
‘Yes. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’
The girl sighed. ‘Fine. I’ll see if I can find you one that’s not in use. What can I get you?’ Her pen hovered over her notepad.
‘God, they’re not very child-friendly here, are they?’ Catherine remarked, when they had ordered coffee and the waitress had bustled off. She sank back against the banquette. ‘I might have to negative-review them on my blog.’
