Eat Me (22 page)

The whole event had lasted approximately nine minutes, including the five minutes that Helen had spent going down on Marc.

Helen's realisation that Marc had been a virgin tempered her disappointment. She found his innocent ineptness touching. She put her arms around him fondly and kissed the flushed cheek which lay astride her mouth.

Marc, however, was in turmoil. As his cock withered inside her, his brain snapped back into gear. Here was this woman he worshipped, whom in his fantasies he had pleasured in infinite ways, and he hadn't managed to make her come even once. He had meant to relish her like a banquet, and instead he'd scoffed her like fast food. He rolled off her in his shame. He got out of bed and began to throw on his clothes.

Helen sat up, surprised. ‘What are you...'

‘No! No!' Marc cut her off. He waved his hands about his head and stamped his feet on the floor. ‘I can't talk now!' he cried. He had so much to think about. He ran out of the house before the astonished Helen had the chance to say another word.

Pacing the streets of Newtown, one pigtail still tied up, the other laying flat on his head like a broken wing, Marc recoiled from the sight of groups of people his age, pissed or stoned, boys' arms around girls, girls kissing boys, everyone laughing or shouting. They could have been from another planet. He went over the events of the evening a hundred times. He wanted to weep, though out of desperation or joy or embarrassment over his melodramatic departure he wasn't sure. My God, he'd even forgotten the condom. For hours, he wandered.

After he left, Helen lay in his bed anxious and fretting until the alcohol and the emotional intensity of the evening took their toll and she dozed off.

When he finally returned, panicked that she might have gotten up and gone, he was much relieved to see the full contour of her body under the doona. One of her feet stuck out from the coverings. He stood in the doorway, gazing at her sleeping form, and a happy calm settled on his mind. He went to pull the doona over the stray foot. Its perfect beauty made his heart beat. Kicking off his boots, he quietly undressed and slipped back under the covers. Feeling for the curve of her body, he spooned it with his own.

Through her dreamy haze, Helen sensed his presence and hugged his arms close to her chest. Soon, she was feeling sexy again. She rolled over and, snuggling up against him, she kissed his forehead, nose and chin. She could feel something stirring below.

Marc had half expected her to have fled by the time he returned. He certainly didn't expect to be given a second chance. Not after that disappointing premiere performance, anyway. This time, he was going to do it right. He would not gobble his food. He would be a good student. He paid attention as his teacher showed him how to savour a kiss, and then, with her hand on his, how to tease and explore her pleasure zones. When she made to go down on him, however, he stopped her. That was a bit too exciting, and he needed to keep his wits about him this time.

Trying to ignore the urgency of his loins, he explored her breasts and belly, kissing her madly as he went. He parted her legs and stared. It was a fascinating and yet somewhat scary sight. All that hair! Did they all have so much hair down there? And were there always so many uneven folds and tucks? What was in there anyway? For some reason, his over-educated brain threw up the term ‘vagina dentata', and he felt his prick suddenly begin to deflate. No! This couldn't be happening! This was the classic unreconstructed male anti-fantasy: the fear of being castrated by a cunt! He'd written a paper on it last term! He knew it was just a pernicious myth. Why was it haunting him now? Chomp chomp. Chomp chomp. Stop it, Marc! His panic mounting, he tried to focus on what he was doing. Right. The clitoris! He was going to stroke it, and kiss it and lick it until she came. Now, which bit would the clitoris be? He studied the options and made a reasonable guess. Judging from Helen's satisfied moans he assumed he'd passed with honours. The smell of her cunt, which he found slightly overwhelming at first, began to thrill him. He was getting hard again. Had she come? How can you tell? Oh well. That would have to do. If he didn't stick it up her
right this second
he was going to explode. He scrambled on top, poked himself inside, remembered the condom, pulled out and, somehow, with Helen's help (he really couldn't recall how it all happened) got it on, entered her again, and several thrusts down the warm wet track, blew like a whale.

The next morning, he tried to apologise. Helen put her finger to his lips. She was Understanding Personified.

Marc was in love.

ERGONOMIC

Allow
me to introduce myself. My name is, well, you can call me Argus. How should I describe myself? ‘SWM, 38, powerfully built, paraphiliac (inspectionalist, to be specific), looking for...' No, make that just looking. If I were a food, I'd be fried eggs, black-eyed peas, lemon tartlets and certain varieties of sushi. If I were a game, I'd be marbles. Do you get it? All right, I'll spell it out: I am a voyeur.

I can see some of you mouthing the words ‘pervert' or ‘sleazebag' (yes, I can see you too, readers!) but please, hear me out. The women I enjoy watching are perfectly safe. I look but I never touch. That's a matter of principle and pride with me. Besides, I would never allow any harm to come to my pets—and I think of them as pets, in the nicest possible sense of the word. If, for instance, I ever saw someone sneak into one of the flats belonging to ‘my women' and try to rape her or nick her television set, I'd be over there in a second. I'd break the bastard's neck between my fingers before he could say boo. That's not an idle boast. I am a master of zen do kai and of other more esoteric, but no less lethal, forms of martial arts as well. I like reading: Georges Bataille is a personal favourite.
Me too, thought Philippa
.

I am not what you'd call a very social sort of person. I don't go to parties, or barbies, or cafes, or clubs, or pubs, or dinner parties or brunches. I don't, in fact, have any friends as such. Of course there's Ahmed. Each day when I purchase my daily supply of milk, cornflakes, steak, and artichokes from the corner store, Ahmed, the owner, always asks how I am. I always reply ‘Fine, Ahmed. How are you?' He will answer, in turn, ‘Not bad—for a Tuesday' (or Wednesday, or Thursday, or whatever day it is) and always I laugh as if hearing this little joke for the first time. Then I pay him my money, and leave. Does Ahmed count as a friend?

I also have a lady friend I meet once a week. We have a little arrangement, you might say. But that's another story. It's the first story, I might add.

Have you noticed the number of times I say ‘I' (‘eye')? Do you think it's a coincidence?

You might wonder what I do. I'm a guard at...well, does it really matter if it's the art gallery or the Pussycat Lounge or the State Bank or Bondi beach or government offices or the Hellfire Club? If you're very observant, you've already worked it out. If not, never mind. Suffice it to say: I keep watch over things. I enjoy that. When I'm not doing my paid job of guarding, I assign myself other tasks, which I take no less seriously. The task I have assigned myself most recently is keeping watch over Philippa. You might think of me as her guardian angel.

The reason I know Philippa's name is because one day I saw her come out of her building with a council recycling box. She put it down on the pavement and caught a bus into town. I hurried outside and, under the pretence that I was interested in the previous Saturday's
Good Weekend
, picked through the more personal scraps of paper. I found a number of envelopes, all addressed to Philippa Berry. I also found a few pale but intriguing segments of what looked like erotic fiction, printed out on a printer badly in need of a ribbon change: ‘tracing little noughts on her clitoris', ‘sensation of that massive rod sliding in', ‘she slides the head of a large dildo into the', that kind of thing. There were also three small bottles of Coopers Ale, a scrap of red velvet, an empty box of Panadols, and a newsletter from Greenpeace. I kept the scrap of velvet. They don't really recycle velvet, do they?

I already know a lot about Philippa.
It's not surprising, Philippa chuckled.
Our buildings nearly abut. My flat is on a slightly higher plane than hers. Physically speaking. I wouldn't presume to make any such judgments on moral or metaphysical grounds. From my bathroom window I can spy into her kitchen; my bedroom gives me a vantage point into her lounge cum study. If you knew Philippa like I know Philippa, you would understand that these are crucial centres of activity. I do regret not being able to see into her bedroom, of course, but I don't mind using my imagination. I don't always, if you'll pardon my crudity, have to see the gleet on the sheet.

Besides, Philippa puts on quite a good show in her kitchen and study. She sometimes feels her nipples in the middle of a stir-fry, or touches herself when she's writing. I had guessed she was writing erotica before I found those scraps in the recycling bin from the way she sometimes seems overwhelmed by what she's tapping into that keyboard. I love the slow, resigned way she unbuckles her belt, unzips her jeans and slips her hand in. She holds onto the back of her ergonomic stool with her other hand and closes her eyes and leans back and just goes for it. It's a riveting sight. I try to come at the same time as she does. Simultaneous orgasm is such a beautiful thing, don't you think?

That stool is the sexiest piece of furniture I have ever seen. It doesn't look like much—one downsloping red cushion for her arse, and an upsloping one for her knees and lower legs and a few black bars holding it all together.

It spends nearly all day caressed by Philippa's buttocks and limbs. Sometimes, she wiggles around to get more comfortable on it, or straightens her back, lifting her arse and pushing her pussy down on the seat, and I think, please, let me come back in my next life as an ergonomic stool.

If she has her window open, and so do I, and the wind is right, I may occasionally catch snatches of conversation she has on the phone, or when someone visits her. Sometimes I know she has visitors from the activity in the kitchen—she's preparing more food than usual, or maybe someone's in there talking to her. There's a younger girl who's often there, who has beautiful green eyes and short blonde hair, not my type really, too thin. She does seem to be on fairly intimate terms with Philippa, however, if you get my meaning. I've seen them engage in a bit of suckface over the salad-making, and there's always something going on with fingers and breasts and pussy, but they save the really good stuff for the bedroom. That's what I assume, anyway, because I only get the appetisers in the kitchen and they rarely go into her study. What I'm trying to say is that Philippa is a lesbian, and that interests me a lot. Or I thought she was a lesbian, anyway. I'm a little confused after what I spied with my little eye earlier this evening.

Of course, there was that episode when I was just checking out the flat before renting it, but I didn't really, you understand,
know
Philippa at the time. Besides, I could hardly see the woman involved for all those revolting— what do they call those things?—dreadlocks, that's right, dreadlocks on the guy. Never mind. I later came to assume it was someone else, maybe a friend of hers, who'd borrowed the flat. I don't think my Philippa would ever do it with someone who had dreadlocks. No, not her type at all.

It's funny how suddenly summer just sort of slips into autumn and autumn slides into winter. It's chilly enough to wear a jumper in the daytime now and the days are as short as they'll ever be. That suits me just fine, because once it's dark, if someone has their lights on, and yours are off, you can pretty much gaze away to your heart's content, and my heart is rarely content unless I've done a lot of gazing, believe me.

I had just got home from work. I was about to flip on the lights when I noticed that Philippa was in her study, with that girl. Or I thought it was that girl, anyway. Sitting on the ergonomic stool was a gamine creature with short blonde hair and very red lipstick, a neat black jumper, an aqua miniskirt and black stockings. She'd kicked off her shoes. Her legs were a bit on the muscular side, but her feet! Perfection itself! The exquisite arch and shapeliness of her feet exceeded in beauty even my darling Philippa's own pulchritudinous pedals.

Allow me a slight digression here. As I mentioned above, I am actually involved with a woman at work. Well, she's not a colleague exactly. But you could say we are having a bit of a regular thing at my workplace. She is beautiful, and she understands me perfectly. She knows I am sinful and punishes me for it, which is good, but I have always been deeply disappointed by her feet. They remind me of nothing more than cod, and I detest cod. I do love to worship a good pair of feet.

Anyway, I was so deeply fascinated by this woman's feet that it took me a while to realise that she was reading what Philippa had written on her computer. Possibly some of that erotic fiction. Philippa paced, in and out of view, until her reader, without taking eyes off the screen, beckoned to her with a graceful curl of the hand. Philippa stood just behind her to the right, reading over her shoulder. Because of the peculiarities of the view, while the stool and its occupant was perfectly framed for my delectation, I could only see Philippa from the waist down. I saw her friend's hand reach out to embrace her knees, and then glide absent-mindedly up and down her legs, as though basting them. Philippa sidled up a bit closer. I could see the other hand of her friend on the keyboard, scrolling. Then, much to my delight, the hand on her legs started to travel up the inside of her thighs. Oh, that's right. I forgot to mention this. Most uncharacteristically, Philippa was wearing a skirt today. A short black pleated skirt—a schoolgirl's skirt. And stockings—real stockings, the kind you wear with a suspender belt. I saw that when her friend's hand lifted up the skirt. Her thighs were a pure vanilla against the licorice lace tops of her stockings. They made my heart race. Anyway, then the hand moved right up between her legs and I don't know exactly what it was doing but it must have been good, because Philippa appeared to go a bit wobbly at the knees. Then the hand pulled her panties down her legs. She stepped out of them, and then returned to be fiddled with some more. Now I'm not really an expert on this sort of thing, but I think it's possible, judging from the fact that the hand seemed to go higher and higher and her body seemed to be expressing something on the border between pain and ecstasy, to assume that she was being fisted. I watched that elbow move up and down like a piston. Very interesting indeed.