Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir) (18 page)

Therefore I will skip the gory details.

…try to not look so disappointed.

To be honest, most of what transpires is awkward, nervous and tentative, so it wouldn’t make much of an erotic story anyway.

There’s another pause while I put on the condom I’d been carrying in my wallet for over a year. The pause is lengthened considerably because I try to put it on the wrong way round, nearly causing myself a night in casualty.

I yank and pull for a few moments, getting slightly worried at the alarming shade of red little Spalding has gone, before realising my error and swapping the condom around for another try.

If we both hadn’t been very nervous teenagers embarking on our first sexual experience, we could have laughed off most of these mistakes and carried on regardless.

But as we
were
very nervous teenagers, each cock-up was greeted with a lot of silence, followed by comments like
‘are you ready to carry on?’, ‘you’ll have to move round a bit,’
and
‘aaargh! wrong hole!’.

Would it surprise you to learn I had an orgasm and Annabelle didn’t?

No, I thought not.

I’m sure she was very pleased to gaze up into my eyes, with her legs locked round me for dear life and watch me grimace like a lunatic as I finished up.          

I’m sure it filled her with delight to hear me let out the groan of a dying elephant and collapse on top of her, spent and sweaty.

And I’m positive it made her night complete when the family dog - mentioned briefly at the top of this anecdote - wandered into the room and started to bark at the top of its lungs.

It wasn’t a big dog. A collie I think.

But at that moment it looked like a ferocious monster, ready to rip out my throat for daring to insert my penis into one of its owners.

The bloody thing must’ve managed to open the bedroom door upstairs with its cunning canine intelligence, responding to the sounds of grunting and moaning it heard downstairs.

Being the archetypal protective hound, it must have thought something dreadful was happening to Annabelle and had decided to come to her rescue as any faithful pet would.

It looked really,
really
fucking angry.

Seeing and hearing the dog, I went from ‘limp and sexually exhausted’ to ‘terrified and bolt-upright’ in the space of a second.

It’ll go for my cock!
I thought and hastily covered my rapidly shrinking manhood.

Annabelle started to shout at the dog, telling it to calm down. Maddie  - as it was called - refused to do this and continued to threaten me with loud barking and gnashing teeth.

Annabelle leapt to her feet as naked as the day she was born, and grabbed her loving pet around the scruff of the neck, pulling it away from me.

By this time, I’ve managed to secure some form of protection with one of the cushions from the sofa.

I slam it in front of my genitals, not caring that if a dog with a set of sharp teeth really wants to bite my todger off, then a small lilac cushion from Ikea isn’t going to stop it. Nevertheless, it made me feel better.

Annabelle succeeded in herding the raging mutt out of the lounge and up the stairs, locking it back in the bedroom.

As she got back to the lounge, I’m wrestling with my jeans, while at the same time offering up prayers of thanks that the naked girl had saved me from a nasty canine mauling.

I have to say my behaviour for the rest of the evening was not on top form. I hung around for another hour or so, but then started looking at my watch every thirty seconds, chucking glances toward the front door.

‘Do you want to go home?’ Annabelle said.

Yes I did.

With my virginity gone to the winds and my nerves shattered by the diabolical doggie, I wanted nothing more than to show the evening my heels and get back home for some serious sleep. No insomnia or superhero related sleep-walking in Spalding’s life at this point.

I gave Annabelle a half-hearted kiss at the door and wended my merry way home, pleased to not be a virgin anymore and relieved to still be in possession of the organ I’d accomplished it with.

My attitude to Annabelle was very poor that evening and if I had the chance to apologise to her now, I would.

We saw each other a few more times after that night and the sex got a little better - we made sure there were no domesticated animals about for one thing - but the relationship spluttered out in a couple of months, as so many teenage romances do.

A lot of people say their first sexual experience wasn’t great, that it wasn’t that exciting. I have to agree with the first point, but on the subject of excitement, I can’t think of anything more pulse-pounding than the prospect of having your winkie-woo bitten off by an incensed collie dog.

As life has gone on, I’ve got better at screwing, and I enjoy it immensely.

Even when actual sex isn’t on the cards, I have to confess that the odd
gentleman’s entertainment
film has made its way into my DVD player.

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of pornography in my book.

Where I do get a bit uncomfortable is when pornography becomes a group activity - conducted in public.

Yuck
.

It should be a purely solo venture, behind closed doors, with the curtains shut!

I’ve never had the desire to see a skin flick in a cinema and my one brush with public
sex-capades
is one I’d rather forget.

Cast your mind back a few chapters and you may recall I talked about a trip to Las Vegas with my cousin.

I promised I would speak more on the subject and the time has arrived to do just that.

As Vegas is generally considered to be the home of sinners and dodgy morality, what better place to investigate the idea of watching sex in public, eh?

James had one ambition while in Las Vegas. He wanted to visit a strip club.

Not just any strip club, but one where young ladies would entertain the customers with large and vibrating rubber implements.

It may sound like James was a colossal pervert, but in reality he just wanted to broaden his horizons before marriage.

Personally, I would have broadened my horizons by not marrying the pasty looking rodent of a woman he was betrothed to, but then who am I to judge?

So off we all went one night, seven partially drunk British men in a cab, wallets stuffed with bills of low denomination for the g-strings of the local good time girls.

The cab driver, a grumpy looking individual who’d done this kind of thing a million times, takes us to a strip club called Rhinestones.

This turns out to be a dreadfully tacky looking place - even by Vegas standards - with some large plastic cow-girl statues parked outside the entrance and the kind of exterior lighting you’d normally find on an aircraft carrier.

It may have been one o’clock in the morning, but I still needed sunglasses to look at the damn place.

We all go in, naughty school boy expressions on our faces, and are greeted, not by a semi-clad lovely, but by a grinning fat man in a suit three sizes too small for him.

‘Hello boys! Come for some fun with the girls, have you?’

No mate, we’re here to check your plumbing…

James, too carried away to bother with sarcasm, nods his head enthusiastically, requests a private table and
the works
.

The fat pimp grins even more and leads us to a private booth at the back of the club.

We walk past gyrating ladies on four separate stages. They’re being eye-balled by a variety of truckers, tourists and all-American college boys. The way they sit: heads up and bodies forward like penguins at feeding time, is a trifle unsettling.

Disconcertingly, as we are led past the tables and chairs I notice that under the ultra-violet lighting there are white stains all over the seats.

Now I don’t know what these stains are. They could be beer, they could be spirits. But I’ve seen enough forensic crime shows on the TV to think they could be something much nastier.

I’m now starting to think this trip is a bad idea.

Trying to put it out of my mind, I sit down in our private booth - cut off from the rest of the club with a lovely set of bright orange curtains - and await developments.

The fat guy takes our money and retires.

A few moments later, three women enter the booth.

They are not what you’d call stunners.

Stunted
maybe, but definitely not the kind of woman you see frequenting the front cover of glossy men’s magazines.

None of them look particularly healthy and I’m pretty sure the tall brunette is in her late forties.

The red head in the cowboy hat looks like she’s suffering with a good case of acne and the blonde one appears to be cross-eyed.

They’re dressed in a variety of sexually alluring outfits, which feature a lot of leather, rubber and - of course - rhinestones.

Two of them jump onto the table in front of us, while the cross-eyed one walks uncertainly over to the back of the room and picks up a large black bag. I’m fairly sure she’s walking slowly so she doesn’t bump into any of the walls.

James and the others start to make strange cat calls and grunts of excitement.

When an American man does this it sounds loud, brash and heartfelt. When a British man does it, it sounds very awkward and like he needs the toilet.

I join in, trying to get into the spirit of things. I’m not doing a very good job, as my mind keeps returning to the horrible stains I saw out front.

The two girls start to fondle one another on the table. Items of clothing are removed, and much slapping of flesh and licking of lips follows. The cross-eyed one starts to delve into the black bag, producing an increasingly eclectic variety of sex toys:

There are long ones, there are short ones. Some vibrate, some are tied together with rope.

They come in various shades of black, red, purple, pink and green.

One looks like something you’d clean your fish tank with.

Cross-eyes hands these to the two on the table, who proceed to insert them into various orifices.

Contrary to what you might believe, this is
not
arousing.

It’s just…
mechanical
.

I might as well be watching robots putting a BMW together for the sexual thrill it’s giving me. You can easily tell these girls have done it a thousand times for groups of men much like ours.

You get the impression that while they’re poking implements into each other and moaning gratuitously, they’re also thinking about what food to buy for the cat and what time Oprah’s on that evening.

Unbelievably, I’m starting to get bored.

The others look more into it than I am, though I’m sure they’re faking most of their excitement to keep up appearances.

Miss Cross-eyes asks me if I’d like her to sit in my lap. I give her a terrified look and metaphorically straighten my tie.

I’m acting so damnably British, it almost hurts:

‘Oh… er... no thank you. I’m quite alright as I am, but you’re very kind for asking.’

What a stud, eh?

She looks at me in disgust and turns to help with the implement insertion.

This gynaecological display goes on for another five minutes, with the girls collecting up a nice bundle of singles, fives and tens.

By this time, I’ve started looking closely at the orange curtains, wondering if they’d look good in my bathroom back home.

The fat guy puts an end to the fun by sticking his head through the curtain and telling us the show’s over. I’m quite relieved to hear it.

The girls immediately stop acting like rutting hyenas and bugger off back into the dressing room to clean up before the next load of horny idiots come-a-knockin’.

I ask James if he’s happy. He nods his head slowly, as if not entirely sure he believes it.

We return as wiser men to the nightclub proper and proceed to get drunk on vastly over-priced lager.

I certainly drink enough to be able to sit on one of the bar stools without worrying about what fluids have dried on it.

As we leave the club to return to the hotel, I can’t help looking at the plastic cow-girls out front and thinking that there really isn’t a lot of difference between them and the ones inside.

Not the most titillating or exciting of trips in the end, despite what the brochure may have advertised.

I guess I’m just not one of those men who can get aroused by sexual displays in public - where intimacy is non-existent and the time it lasts is directly related to how much cash you’ve got in your wallet.

For me, sex has to involve a level of interest from
both
parties - otherwise the thrill is most definitely gone.

James got successfully married to his woman and as far as I know the Vegas sex show has never been mentioned in their household.

Every time I see him, I like to go cross-eyed for a moment and ask him if he’s cleaned his fish tank recently.

It always cracks him up.

4.14 pm

42664 Words

That ended up being a long chapter didn’t it? Sex is always fun to talk about.

Mind you, the theory might be good, but the practical is
way
better.

We’re closing in on the magic twenty four hour mark now. I’ve kept a few milestones in my head while writing this and passing a full day is definitely one of the big ones.

I may have a beer to celebrate.

You can have one too if you like. It’s one of those low alcohol ones that claims to taste exactly the same but never actually does.

That’s good marketing for you:

Ten percent truth, seventy percent bullshit, twenty percent cleavage.

Twenty four hours ago I was down the park with my son Tom.

…it seems like months ago now, not just yesterday.

Funny how that can happen when you miss a night’s sleep.