of your heart. And she was married, which meant, in a weird way, that she was free. There’d be no complications, no messy aftermath. I thought about it a lot. She was someone I could trust. And she was a teacher, too. It’s funny, that.
Your mouth is sapped dry.
And yet I can’t ask her to help me, it’s impossible. I could never ask her that. She asked me once but I just blanked, freaked, I wasn’t ready. And then…I couldn’t face it. I’m sorry.
You look at him sitting before you, utterly naked, with such a helplessness on his face and his forehead all crinkled up and you’re moved, so moved, by the courage of his honesty. You think of the contrast with Cole, the set of his jaw when you’d asked him again and again about Theo, the tightness in his hands as he’d pushed your questions away. Gabriel’s making an enormous leap with his words, you’re sure no one else has heard them. There was always a strange kind of absence to him, some piece of the puzzle you didn’t have and now, suddenly, he is present, in such an endearing, transparent way and a tenderness is falling over you like a wave. You won’t judge him or condemn him. In fact, you respect him; for not succumbing to all the pressure and panic about losing one’s virginity, for resisting, holding out. It’s so old-fashioned and disciplined, so austere, noble, quaint. No one does this any more.
Gabriel suddenly cringes and bows his head in his hands as if he can’t believe what he’s just confessed. This is a moment he will never forget in his life: tread softly, you must. Don’t hurt him, don’t scare him off, don’t thicken that pane of glass. He’s closer to you now than he’s ever been, he’s all vulnerable, stripped, and you know that you’ll also remember this moment for the rest of your life, like a too-bright fluorescent light in a communal corridor that’s never switched off, this moment of Gabriel sitting before you, naked, when all the nos that have been stopped up within you for so long become one enormous
yes.
you had better have a millstone tied to your neck and be thrown into the deepest pond than become a taker of opium
Walking to his flat. Not daring to talk; holding hands, tremoring, wet.
His rooms are spare and neat, like a monk’s, with a few beautiful objects from his travels here and there, and small stacks of paperbacks and some black and white postcards on the walls. He does not intrude heavily upon the space.
His bed’s surprisingly big. You turn off the lights. Where to begin, you are the teacher and before you is the blank slate: God, the responsibility of it. You gather your thoughts, you mustn’t rush. You don’t want him experiencing anything of the hurt or disappointment you’ve so often felt. How many women get the chance to do this, with a man, to break their virginity? It must be utterly memorable for him, something to savour for the rest of his life.
You tell him you want him to lick you, slowly, the inside of your wrist, and you push up your sleeve like a junky preparing for her first shot. Gabriel looks at you. He bends, hesitant. His tongue tip glides up your skin in one even, barely there line. Your eyes close, you let out a small gasp, his tongue stops. You take off his jacket, you unbutton his shirt, you find him, his vulnerability. His chest is cathedral-wide and your hands span its breadth like the vaults of a ceiling and you feel his galloping heart and you place your right palm over it, reading the race of it. He smells clean, pleasantly so, you can’t catch anything of his real scent. His body is young, not quite finished, it feels strangely untouched, maybe it’s the hesitancy in him, he’s all caged up. Your lips walk the softness of his inner arm, slowly, daddy-long-legs-soft, climbing the paleness. You look up and smile reassurance and for some reason you hold his head like a mother with a child and he begins to say something and ssssh, you whisper, no talk and you hold his face in the clamp of your palms and he’s concentrating so much, so intent, ssshh you whisper, ssshh, and kiss him slowly as if all the world’s tenderness is gathered in that touch and as you do it your hands snake softly to the eroticism of his hips.
You kneel, unbuckle his belt.
His penis curves gently to one side, it’s large; it always surprises you how big they can get. He is looking down at you, he is breathing fast.
You hold him, you lick him, soft, so silky soft, the tip.
He laughs nervously, he can’t relax. He tries to push you off. You propel him, gently and firmly, on to his bed, on his back. Remove your clothes, quick; wet, so wet.
You sit, very slowly, on to him.
Ease down, slowly, feel him all the way. And then you just sit, for a moment, you are filled up and you smile into his eyes and very slowly you tighten your muscles and gather him inside you: you feel Gabriel with your skin. He looks at you, all wonder and surrender and shock, and you throw your head back, you can’t look at him any more, you need to savour this moment alone. You keep on moving on him, slowly, rhythmically, with your eyes shut, ssh, you tell him, sssh, as he begins to say something, as you talk to him through your skin, you lean forward, you brush your fingertip on his lips, sssssh.
And then he comes.
He’s appalled; it’s so quick.
You smile, you stay sitting on him, feeling him in you, feeling him go soft. This, too, is delectable. Your hands fan upwards on his belly and his chest, savouring his surprisingly soft skin, untouched for so long by any other woman and you bow your head and kiss him, in gratitude, on the cleft of his neck. You didn’t orgasm, you didn’t learn anything new but it’s a start, a lovely one: for it’s the very first time you’ve been totally in control. Woemen bare rule over men.
You climb off him. Stretch languidly, your palms turned to the sky as if they want to push it up. You feel like a cat on a favourite armchair it’s never usually allowed on, thrumming with warmth and sunlight.
Gabriel rolls over on to his stomach. You walk across to him, lie beside him; your fingertips slip over each bump of his spine.
There was another time, he says, without looking at you. Your hand stops. It was my twenty-first, he says. I got drunk. My parents had thrown a big party for me. There was this girl, just some girl, a family friend, she was drunk, too, and we went up to a bedroom at the top of the house. But as I tried to go inside her I just…went limp. All I could hear was Clare’s laughter. I couldn’t go on.
You wing your arm across him, you squeeze his shoulder. Gabriel turns to you, he props his body on one side with his hand on his cheek.
So…thanks, he says, awkward, shy. Then there’s a pause, and his impishness slipping back. What happens next?
You shake your head, you cover your eyes, you laugh: no, no no, we have to stop, all right?
Excuse me, madam, but you are not leaving this flat.
those who eat too much should remember that they are robbing those who have not enough
Walking by the river to the tube.
The
