Addicted

My mind immediately sends me an image of a gaudy comic book, with the words The Madcap Adventures of Dillon on the front. At which point, I have to accept that I’m not going to get anything down to earth out of this. He probably doesn’t even know what down to earth is. He only knows wild, and electric.

Yet somehow I hardly care.

‘The beginning, then,’ I say, because apparently I’ve already jumped.

I’m halfway to the writing water already.

Chapter Five

‘I didn’t know her first name. She was always Mrs Goldman, to the staff. Hell, I think she was Mrs Goldman to everyone. Her husband probably called her that in bed. I know I wanted to call her that in bed. It was bad enough that I was seventeen and still a virgin – I lived in permanent boner-land anyway. But trying to trim the hedges round her pool while she lay there on a sun lounger, half-naked, all oiled and shit …

‘It was pretty torturous. She had the kind of breasts you don’t see any more. Eighties breasts. Really round and real, always trying to burst out of tiny bikini tops. And eighties legs, too – strong, thick thighs that sort of slid against each other when she moved. She glowed, you know? Her skin was always like satin. Some days I’d go inside to the bathroom just so I could, you know, take care of myself … which I’m pretty sure she knew.

‘How could she not? That summer was so hot you couldn’t wear anything but shorts, and I knew my dick was always straining through the material. Weird thing was, though – that only turned me on more.

‘She told me once that I had a blow job mouth, and I guess that’s true. I do love to suck on things.’

He gazes off innocently at some innocuous spot, everything about him so casual, so calm about this. He’s propping his chin on one hand, his bottle lying lazy in the other – while my mind frantically fumbles towards thoughts of that thing he said, about Alan.

It doesn’t get very far, however. It went sort of blank right around the idea of him looking at himself naked. The image he paints is so vivid that I can’t see anything but it for a second – like the photo-flash of something, seared on the insides of my retinas. There’s the outline of his body, thinner than he is now but somehow just as compelling. And his skin … oh, God, what must his skin have been like at that age? I imagine it the way he described hers: as glossy as syrup, as smooth as silk, so beautiful you want to die the moment you see it.

He must have been stunning. He’s stunning now, and that’s without the other thing my heated imagination has latched onto: how dazed he must have looked, under the pressure of all that lust. I think of those blue eyes of his, near-blank and foggy with a thousand thoughts of her, and I can’t imagine how she didn’t jump on him immediately.

Though I’m guessing I’m going to find out.

‘Back then, though,’ he says. ‘I honestly thought I was being real subtle. That she had no idea about the private sex sessions I was having with her, in my head, in her bathroom. I pictured myself suavely seducing her – giving her exactly what her puny husband never did. I’d seen him around, in his shitty suits, as skinny as a reed.

‘Whereas I was … well. I was six-two before I graduated junior high, and had already hit two hundred pounds of mostly muscle. I just knew I could give her what she wanted. I’d grab her and throw her onto the antique Italian silk couch, then pound her until she screamed for more. Then I’d bend her over the kitchen counter, the way I’d seen some guy do in the electric seven minutes of porn I’d dared to watch in my parents’ basement – then shove myself inside her. She made me feel electric.’

I flick from this to that, in the maze of all the things he’s saying – the idea of him swaggering around, contrasting with the expression he has on his face now, as he talks about it. He thinks he was ridiculous, I can tell – and I like him for that.

But I like him more for the last little bit. The way he says the word electric, as though some probably pilfered dirty movie sent a charge direct through his body to his dick. I know how that feels, all right … oh, I remember the delight of digging through all kinds of movies and books, searching for that one illicit scene.

We have something in common there, I think – though I suppose everybody does. I’m not about to get excited over it, or anything. I mean, his next words are these:

‘I spent actual hours trying to imagine what she would feel like, around me, so I could emulate the sensation exactly. I’d slick my hand with every slippery product known to man, then fuck my fist into the mattress. It was a real time of sexual discovery, for me.

‘Does that sound sort of foo-foo?’

He’s laughing at himself, a little, but I hope it’s clear that I’m not joining in. I can’t even answer him. He just talked about fucking his fist into a mattress. I mean, the image of him standing naked in front of a mirror was bad enough.

This is turning my insides purple.

‘Well, maybe it is. But that’s how it was. I started understanding stuff I liked – slippery things, obviously. The amount of times I imagined oiling her all over with that suntan lotion of hers, then getting to ease myself between her soft thighs …

‘Though that wasn’t the only lesson I learnt. I realised pretty quick that holding off made it sweeter, when you finally let it happen. Sometimes I’d keep myself on the edge for hours, until my orgasm felt too intense to take. I felt feverish, too on edge. I felt like pheromones were leaking out of my pores. She had to notice me, eventually.’

I think he’s right. I’m noticing him, and I wasn’t even there. I’m fifteen years into the future and a million miles away from whatever American town he’s talking about, but I’m sure I can smell that earthy, saltwater scent from here. And though it’s never been something that particularly interested me, I find myself tingling at the idea.

What would it be like, to see him aroused and in this state? I don’t know, but I’m no longer content to wait and find out more.

‘And did she?’

‘It’d be a pretty weak story if she didn’t, right?’

He pauses, and for that one second I think he really means it. This is just some tale of for ever wanting and not getting. He could call it The Madcap Adventures of Kit Connor.

But then he continues – like a warden, granting his sexual prisoner a reprieve.

‘So, the longer this went on for, the worse things got. And the bolder I became. I stopped being satisfied with the bathroom, and makeshift masturbatory aids. I started wanting the smell of her perfume, the feel of her silk underwear against my skin. I turned into her stalker, slipping into her bedroom when I knew no one was around. Running my hands over the clothes in her wardrobe – the works. It got so bad I could get hard by stuffing my face into one of her couch cushions.

‘I was pathetic – but when I finally got caught, I tried to bluster it. I turned on the ridiculous swagger I thought I had. Think I even told her, “You want it, baby?” God, I was such a punk.’

‘You still are a punk,’ I say, but I don’t know if I really mean it. I don’t think punks talk so openly about their sexual habits, before admitting that they are one. And I definitely don’t think they look hurt, when some chick hurls the word at them.

Because that’s what it feels like I’ve done. His eyebrows draw together briefly, like a flicker of an expression he’d like to have, if it didn’t make him seem so vulnerable. And then it’s gone as quickly as it came, leaving me to wonder if it was ever really there at all. I mean, guys like him … they don’t care if girls like me think they’re a little … douche-y.

Right?

And if they do, oh, God, if they do, please let him just say. I’ll apologise if he just says. I can’t do so without it, because then I’ll just look like an idiot who’s imagining feelings that aren’t really there. It’s the first step towards lovesickness – wanting to be sorry for hurt you might have caused.

And he’ll know it, and laugh.

He’s laughing now, as he plunges on into the story.

‘Yeah, I thought I was hot stuff. So when she said, “Oh, I want it all right,” I preened like nothing else. I didn’t think a single thing to her telling me to strip. I thought my body was hot and she just wanted to see it, so I took off my T-shirt, I took off my shorts. By the time I was down to nothing, I was practically mute with excitement. My cock was almost touching my belly, and everything felt real swollen down there, you know?’

I do know. I’m so swollen in that same place I can hardly keep my legs closed. It’s like trying to fit myself around a burning coal – though I think I keep the signs to a minimum. I’m so hot I’d love to fan myself with my notepad, but I resist. I don’t even run a finger around my clammy collar, and I definitely don’t remove my jacket.

My nipples are too stiff for something like that. They’re showing through my shirt, and I know it – though I’ve got less idea about the why. The story isn’t even that exciting, really. I’ve heard lots like it a dozen times before. He’s going to nail her, now, then write. ‘Dear Penthouse’ on the top and mail that sucker in. He’s going to show me what an incredible stud he was, because he could fuck her like her husband never could.

Or at least that’s what I’m sure of, before he tells me the rest.

‘But she didn’t touch me. She didn’t sink to her knees the way I’d always imagined she would. She said: “Do you know how to make a woman come, Dillon?”

‘And now, every time I’m flicking through the catalogue of every sexy thing that’s ever happened to me … every time I’m on the brink and I need to pull out something intense to really get there … that’s what I think about. I think about that one sentence, like a siren’s song. “Do you know how to make a woman come, Dillon?”

‘I couldn’t even tell her yes. I knew it was a lie. In every fantasy I’d ever had about her, she’d screamed like a porn star and lapsed into unconsciousness the second my cock touched her, but I never stopped to think how or why. I assumed my dick was the magical key to a winter wonderland, but when I tried to show her I could do it, when I tried to climb on top of her like some fumbling fucking idiot, she stopped me in my tracks.

‘She waved her red-tipped finger in my face – and I always remember that, too. I remember her pressing me to my knees with just that one talon on my big shoulder.

‘Then she said more words that still send a burst of arousal through me, now: “Lick your fingers. Lick your fingers, baby.” Like she was the one with swagger, and I was just her little cutie-pie, ready to be serviced. And I can remember feeling like I didn’t want to – I was sulking, then, I guess. I was thinking she was messing around with me.

‘But the weird thing was – that didn’t make it any less hot. In fact, it made it hotter. My cock actually jerked when she said those barely-anything words. I was kind of bothered by the mess I was making all over her carpet – I was absolutely dripping by this point.

‘And I was shaking. I was really shaking. Putting my fingers in my mouth felt like the most erotic thing I’d ever done. Like I was sucking myself. Like I had nerve-endings there that I didn’t know about. I actually got lost in the feel of them, sliding in and out of my mouth.

‘Until she lay back on the bed, and spread her legs.