The slow-motion nightmare that was the new South Africa hit home once again that night when I subbed a story about a family who’d been raped and tortured in front of each other before the intruders were interrupted and fled. The going comment, of course, was that at least they were still alive. I asked Jay if he’d read it and he nodded grimly. I typed one word into google.co.za and saw there would be a seminar on emigration in some or other plush northern suburbs hotel and emailed that I would be attending.
That night I was sitting on Dolf and his wife’s couch, getting turned on by her rattling on about something or other. She was wearing a creamy V-neck jersey, a charcoal winter skirt and black tights, and so we went through the whole charade of exchanging social pleasantries. Maybe she was so desperately lonely, I vaguely thought, that she needed to unload all that nonsense onto what was effectively a stranger, so I let her carry on for a while longer before I started stroking her face and neck. She liked that but kept her distance and carried on talking, which merely stoked my fires.
“Come here,” I said.
“Are you going to behave yourself?”
“Of course I am.”
So she snuggled up with her back to me and carried on talking and I carried on stroking her high cheeks and strangely erotic neck. After a while I slipped my finger into her mouth, which she gave a small suck before she gently expelled it with her lean lips and carried on talking, so I simply put it back again.
“I thought you were going to behave yourself.”
“So did I.”
“Ha.”
And on she went about how she’d gone down to the shops that morning and wasn’t the price of everything just too awful?
“Terrible,” I said, letting my right arm stray down to her breast and cupping it, then stroking her woollen stomach.
She was virtually sitting on my lap and must have felt that my interest wasn’t exactly intellectual, let alone economic, but on she went as I worked my hand under her jersey, stroking her stomach, the soft, sagged breast instantly responding. All the while I was nibbling her ear, kissing her neck.
“This is so wrong,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it is.”
“Then why is it happening?”
“Because you’re a monster,” she said.
Exactly, I said, and took my hand right down to her small wet cunt, she accommodating my quest by opening her legs.
“I can’t believe what I’m doing,” she said.
“You were still talking about, uh, the price of things.”
“Hmm.”
“What exactly is it that is so expensive?”
“Food,” she complain-moaned.
This was getting too uncomfortable for me, so I told her to move away so that I could stand up.
“What for?” she said.
“So that I can take my pants off.”
“You see. Here it starts.”
“Actually, it started quite a while ago. Take off your clothes.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“Ha,” she said again and duly obliged by taking off her jersey and vest and had to be told to take the rest off too in the unlit living room, with everything happening in a kind of tangible silhouette, the light coming in from the adjacent dining room.
“Why don’t you want the light on?” I’d said.
“I know you men. You go by what you see.”
It had been on the tip of my tongue to remind her that she’d only ever been with one other man, her husband, according to her, but I didn’t think it was quite the moment to remind her about that. So I took off my jacket and shirt in her and Dolfie’s warmed up living room, kicked off my shoes and told her to undo my belt and jeans.
“You’ve got a cheek,” she said.
“Actually, I’ve got four. Do it.”
Again, she duly obliged, struggling a little with the belt, but not the zip. What would the old man think of what was happening to me now, I once again distantly wondered.
“Put it in your mouth,” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Why not?”
“It’s too intimate.”
“Have you done it to Dolfie?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Okay,” I said, and went down on my knees with my tumescent IMP bobbing about like a buoy and started running my tongue along her shore, like an oystercatcher on Prozac.