The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

Paying My Friends for Sex ^{Matt Thorne}

Not having money was hard. But sometimes having money seems harder. It’s not as if I’m rich or anything, but having enough cash to get yourself in trouble, well, you’d be surprised how quickly that becomes a burden.

I’ve never been an avaricious individual. Ever since I was a kid, my cash has gone on three things, and three things only: CDs, books and the cinema. Most of my clothes were given to me; the rest come from second-hand shops. And although I spend more money on food than I used to, all this really means is these days I eat in expensive restaurants instead of McDonald’s. I always eat out, and will do so until the day I die.

So when I unexpectedly started having more money, the only real evidence of my newfound wealth was in the increase of my book and CD collections. My cinema habits remained unchanged: there are, after all, only so many films you can see in a day. But although it was fun to fill out my literature and music libraries, after a while I realized there was little pleasure in buying music or books by bands or authors you didn’t like. After that, I confined myself to only buying new books or CDs, or the back catalogues of bands I knew I loved. Even that got tiresome after a while (as much as I love Neil Young and Lou Reed, there’s really no reason to own copies of Landing on Water or Minstrel ). This meant I needed to find some new way of enjoying my money. At first I considered developing an interest in pornography. There seemed to be hundreds of adult videos, and it seemed likely that collecting these sorts of films would give me pleasure. But after I had ten or so, I realized I didn’t really enjoy pornography, and was also embarrassed about having the tapes around the house.

The same morning I chucked the cassettes away, I got a letter from an ex-girlfriend. When we’d broken up I’d been quite stern with her, telling her not to try to get in contact with me. It was over two years since we’d last seen each other, and she was writing to ask whether I would now be prepared to meet her for dinner. She made no mention of her own romantic situation, although she did say in one line that she just knew I would have a girlfriend and if I wanted I could bring her along. I hadn’t thought about this ex-girlfriend that much, mainly because I had been so upset when she’d broken up with me that I’d experienced a mini-breakdown that I didn’t want anyone to know about. The main reason why I had told her not to get in contact with me was because I knew she had a habit of falling back in love with her boyfriends after she’d broken up with them and I thought it was probably safer to stay away from her until I’d made a fresh start. Once I’d got back on my feet, I’d always intended to contact her, but for one reason or another I didn’t get round to it, and as I’ve never been one for nostalgia, not having her in my life didn’t really worry me.

I wrote back to her a few hours later, telling her that I didn’t have a girlfriend and hadn’t been involved with anyone since we split up. As I wrote this I remembered reading somewhere about how when writing love letters you should always forget about yourself and concentrate only on arousing pleasure in the person you’re addressing. I couldn’t remember if the passage came from Freud or Barthes (it sounded like something from A Lover’s Discourse, but when I checked my library this volume was missing) or someone else entirely, but I realized that this was what I was doing now, and wondered whether it was such a good idea for me to meet up with Tracey again. I had always composed my letters to please her, and felt wounded every time a reply arrived. Not because they were deliberately hurtful, but because they seemed written with no awareness of the emotions they would arouse in me, which was fine when we saw each other all the time, but more difficult during the year we spent a continent apart. The address on the top of her letter was from somewhere in Chalk Farm, so I suggested we go for dinner at the Lavender in Primrose Hill. Three days later, her reply arrived. She would be happy to meet me in the location I’d suggested.

The reason why I had been single for so long was because of a random act of kindness I had committed two years earlier. A friend of a friend had died of a heart attack at an unexpectedly early age. His girlfriend, Marianne, needed someone to look after her and, having the space and the time, I invited her to move in with me. I had expected her mourning period to last three or four months, but it showed no sign of coming to an end. Over the previous two years she had become increasingly dependent on me and, although there had been nothing sexual between us, I felt too guilty to indulge in anything other than the odd one-nightstand.

I arrived at the restaurant just before eight. Tracey was already waiting. She was wearing a short black dress. Smiling warmly as I entered the restaurant, she got up to embrace me.

“Tracey,” I said as she hugged me, “it’s so good to see you.”

“You too.” She looked down. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”

“So,” I said, “tell me everything. Do you have a job?”

She laughed. “You’re not going to believe what I do.”

“Should I guess?”

“Not just yet. I have to give you some background details first.”

“OK, start from the beginning. The last time I saw you, you were about to start drama school.”

Tracey smiled with her head slightly tilted to one side and leaned back in her chair. It was more exciting to see her than I’d anticipated, and I was already trying to calculate how I would feel if we ended up going to bed together. The candlelight in the Lavender was doing an incredible job of bringing out all of my ex-girlfriend’s most alluring features, from the small, springy, brown mole just above her soft upper lip to the exact colour of her curly brown hair. As always I was drawn in by her guilty-looking blue eyes, getting a sudden flashback of how her expression would harden when I trapped her into an argument.

“Drama school was great for the first term,” she told me, “because there were so many new people and you can remember how lonely I was before we split up.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I’m sorry about that.”

“Sorry, why?” she asked, sounding as if her question was genuine.

“Gosh, I don’t know if I’m ready to get into this.”

“Get into what?”

“I had a breakdown just after you left me. And although initially when it happened I wasn’t able to do anything or see anyone, eventually I managed to get myself together enough to start having therapy. And through the sessions I worked out why I treated you the way I did.”

I noticed from the direction Tracey’s eyes were pointing that a waitress had come across to our table. I felt glad of the interruption, amazed that I’d started talking about this stuff so quickly. Then I remembered how my therapist had spent our final session trying to convince me that I wouldn’t feel properly healed until I’d seen Tracey again, and how adamant I’d been that that wasn’t a good idea.

The waitress told us the specials and we looked up to the blackboard to decide what we wanted. I guessed from Tracey’s small order that she was having money problems. While not wanting to embarrass her, I attempted to persuade her to have more than just a starter by letting her know that I’d pay.

“It’s OK,” she told me, “I’m really not that hungry. But if you order a nice bottle of wine I’d be happy to drink it.”

I ordered the wine and my food, then said, “I feel terrible now, isolating you like that. But it wasn’t jealousy. I always thought it was jealousy, but my therapist made me realize it wasn’t that at all. I just needed to get something from you, something secret, something from inside, something you probably couldn’t give. That’s why I took us away from everyone else.”

She nodded. “I do understand, and that’s kind of why I wanted to see you. You see, like I said, drama school was great for the first term, but then I started missing you. And I looked back on our time together with a fondness you’d never believe. Every day I thanked God that we’d had those two whole years together so I had something from every season to remind me of you. Like, pick a day…”

“Hallowe’en.”

“Scary badger.”

“What?”

“You remember.”

I thought about it and realized that I did. We’d gone to the cinema together and on the way back we’d seen two liberal-type parents trick-or-treating with a small child wearing a cardboard badger mask. And we’d joked with each other about how the parents would’ve convinced their child he didn’t want to be anything as horrible as a hobgoblin or Freddy Krueger. “No, we imagined the two well-meaning parents saying to their child, ‘what you want to be is a scary… badger.’”

I smiled. “I find it hard to remember stuff.”

“I know. When we broke up you said you’d never think of me again.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did.”

“Well, it wasn’t true. So, are you going to tell me what your job is?”

“Phone sex.”

“Huh?”

“I knew you’d like that. Can I tell you about my audition?”

“For the job?”

“Yeah. Well, I’d been working for TicketMaster for a while and it just wasn’t working out. The rest of the people in the office didn’t like me because every now and again I’d have an audition for an advert and they’d all get really upset because I had a life outside work. So, anyway, there was one woman there who I became work friends with, and one day she told me she was leaving. She’d got a job working for a sex line and it was five times as much money for nowhere near as much work. I was a bit sceptical, but she told me that, although there were a few dodgy men at the company, the main people in charge were all women, and by that time the little pound signs were dancing in front of my eyes and I’d agreed to go in for an interview.”

The waitress reappeared at my elbow with the wine and the squid salad I’d ordered for a starter. I asked her what had happened to Tracey’s food and she said she’d thought it would be better to bring it at the same time as my main course. Tracey nodded and said that was fine. I still felt guilty about ordering so much food when she was having hardly anything and tried to make up for it by overfilling her glass with wine.

Tracey continued. “So I went in for my interview and found myself in this windowless room with two women and one man. Although the man did most of the talking, it was obvious from the outset that the women were in charge. Anyway, my audition consisted of three exercises. The first two exercises were pieces I had to read from a script. This is quite a long anecdote, but the punchline’s in the middle instead of the end so get ready to laugh. The script I was reading from was supposed to be as if I was talking from the perspective of a woman who had been led into sexual ruin. I had to go through this catalogue of things that my boyfriend had made me do and the twist at the end was that I had to tell the caller that I was now completely cock crazy and even just knowing there was a man on the other end listening to my past exploits got me off. The script was kind of torturous and confused and I was trying to understand it as well as read it so I kept stumbling over my words, and I got to this bit where I said my boyfriend introduced me to swimming and just as I was thinking that was odd and waiting for some subaqua exploits, the man stood up and shouted at me, ‘It’s swinging, not swimming. My boyfriend introduced me to swinging.’”

It wasn’t that great a line – she knew that – but the delivery was so perfectly Tracey that it made me laugh, identify with her and feel horny all at the same time. I knew one day lots of men would share this feeling, and it was this knowledge that made me certain that, in spite of Tracey’s considerable fragility, she would one day achieve success as an actress.

She went on. “The second script was less interesting. Standard sexy housewife, naughty knickers stuff. But then the final exercise was an improvisation. It’d been a while since I’d been to a proper audition and you know how much I like that sort of thing anyway so I got all overexcited and started acting as if I was auditioning for a movie instead of a job on a sex line. You would have liked the scenario though. It was a bit close to home and I could tell they’d come up with this idea for an audition piece deliberately to make me feel uncomfortable so I decided to take it to a real extreme. I was supposed to be an actress who’d come for an audition for a part in a film and then when I’d arrived I’d found out it was actually a porno instead of a normal movie.”

I popped a large piece of squid into my mouth and started chewing. Tracey brushed a strand of stray hair out of her face and carefully lifted her overfilled wine glass to her lips. As she did so, I noticed her lipstick was completely the wrong shade for her, making it look as if she’d been sucking gob-stoppers all day long.

“The weird thing about this last exercise was that they wanted me to do it over the phone. I suppose it wasn’t that weird, given that I was meant to be proving I could do a sex-line job, but the way they handled it was odd. First off the women came across and hooked me up to a headset, then the guy went off into another room on his own.

“Like I said, from the moment I was told what the exercise was I felt really irritated and wanted to embarrass them, so I tried to make what I was saying as disturbing as possible, telling him that I was only taking this job to support my baby, and that I came from a really religious background, and had wanted to be an actress my whole life, grown up on the kids from Fame, stuff like that…”

“How did he respond?”

“Well, that was it, after I’d been talking a couple of minutes or so he stopped asking me questions and just kept saying, ‘Go on, go on’, and I could hear the clink of his belt and, y’know, I knew what he was doing.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I kept talking, but I tried to make it sound as unsexy as possible, just praying he would stop. But he kept going and I kept going until he came.”

“Ugh.”

“I know. And the worst thing was he didn’t even try to hide it. I think I probably could’ve handled the situation if he was just some pervert doing this job as a sneaky way of getting his rocks off, but he came back into the main room with his fly undone, shirt tail still sticking out, and the two women looked at him and made another mark on their clipboards as if this was just another test I’d passed.”

“Tracey,” I said gently.

“Yes?”

“How long have you had this job?”

“Only a couple of months. It’s all right once you get used to it. And I make it fun, playing little games with myself like working out which words will make them…” She looked at me. “Oh dear. When I imagined telling you about this I thought it would make me sound glamourous and sexy.”

Not wanting her to worry, I smiled at Tracey and let my fork drop back on my plate.

We stayed in the restaurant until eleven. By that time we were both a little drunk and I was reluctant for the evening to end. I felt more aroused than I had in months and didn’t want to go back to the sexless friendship waiting for me at home. So I persuaded Tracey to walk down to a nearby pub for one final drink. The front of the pub was crowded so we went through to the back bar, which was empty except for an old man and a fruit machine. I bought us both Stellas and sat opposite Tracey. Her legs were crossed at the ankles and I found myself staring at the line where the hem of her dress pulled tightly around her toned thighs. She was telling me about a friend’s play but I had long stopped listening to her words. Taking a large gulp from my drink, I swooped in on her, sliding my hand up under her skirt. My fingers stopped as they reached the soft crotch of her knickers. My lips stopped as I realized they were pressing against a resistant mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “I don’t want to do this.”

When I was sixteen I went on a school-organized trip to Keele University. The trip was designed to introduce potential students to college life and, given the excesses of this weekend away, I think the organizers managed an accurate distillation of most people’s three-year experience. I was the only one my school expected to make it to university, so I went alone, although by the end of the coach journey up I had befriended a sizeable number of sixth-formers sent by other schools in the city. As my school was ridiculously suburban, a haven of bubble perms and teenage pregnancies, I had always been an outsider, so much so that the first-years started a rumour that I slept in a coffin. I didn’t go into school that much, spending most of my time in my bedroom listening to the Pixies and those first three Ride EPs. This was considered so outré in my neighbourhood that I was amazed to find that my tastes were shared not only by the sixth-formers I’d befriended on the bus, but also the students who organized the last night’s disco.

Those two days at Keele were, to that point, the best of my life. But as I returned to my isolation, I saw no likelihood of them ever being repeated. My parents were both intensely antisocial people, ashamed of their marriage and quick to discourage me from forming friendships with others. But my newfound comrades were reluctant to let me disappear back to my previous existence, bombarding me with calls until I agreed to come with them to a Primal Scream concert. I went with them and, over the next few weeks, found myself with my first ever social circle.

And after friendship came the inevitable romantic infatuation. Among my new gang was a beautiful redhead with goth tendencies and a tart sense of humour. The rest of my friends were dubious about some of her more extreme tastes, and I was the only one willing to accompany her to a Cranes concert at a local polytechnic. The show was terrible but the night was transcendental, and in the taxi home I tried to kiss her. She stiffened, pushed me away, and said she wasn’t interested. As far as I could remember, I’d never told Tracey about this, but it was definitely a formative moment, making me overcautious in the opening stages of any subsequent relationship. If I got any sense that the woman I wanted didn’t want me, I immediately backed off, even if their reluctance was only part of an elaborate flirtation. In some ways, I’d never really got over that first rejection, and now the same thing was happening to me again, I felt a fresh desperation. But that doesn’t explain what I said next.

“Tracey?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll give you five hundred pounds to fuck me.”

During the taxi ride home, I wondered whether I regretted making my offer. There was no question that Tracey had been horrified, turning me down immediately and remaining upset until we said goodbye, but when I thought back to my sessions with my therapist, I realized the fact that Tracey would never want to see me again was probably a positive thing. My therapist had never accepted my excuse that I couldn’t start another relationship because I was giving house-space to Marianne, trying to make me believe it was really because I held out hope that Tracey and I would get back together. Now that definitely wouldn’t happen, I was free to get on with my new life.

Marianne was waiting for me when I got home, sitting in front of our television drinking a mug of mulled wine and watching a film featuring Veronica Lake. She moved her legs down so I could sit next to her. As usual, her eyes were rimmed with red and she’d dressed with the bare minimum of effort. I squeezed her hand and she flashed me a brief smile.

The following morning I went out with three female friends of mine. Hazel, Ivy and Elizabeth were all young, recently married mothers. I had met them through Marianne. Initially, they had been her friends, calling me up for news about how she was coping. But as she hadn’t seen them in two years and they had stopped asking about her, I now considered them my friends, meeting with them once a week for a few hours of coffee and chat in a café in St John’s Wood.

Every now and again, we were joined by the unofficial fifth member of our party. Her name was Anita and she was by far the most glamourous member of our quintet. Marianne would’ve been furious if she’d known Anita occasionally accompanied us, as Anita had supplied Marianne’s boyfriend Donald with the drugs she believed had precipitated his premature heart attack. Anita had been having a low-key affair with Donald for several years, and Marianne blamed herself for being so understanding about his infidelity, knowing that if she’d been more possessive she might’ve saved his life. Donald was one of many men Anita had spent years seeing on the side, although she usually went for men of more considerable means. Between affairs, she was always short of money, lost without someone to pay for her.

Hazel, Ivy and Elizabeth were all fascinated by the fact that I had been single for so long. Ivy was the only one who flirted with me, although I knew this didn’t count for anything, as she was as certain in her marriage as the others. But they couldn’t understand why I didn’t make a move on Anita. Every time the subject came up, I used the same excuse, “Marianne would kill me.”

“But how would she know?” This was Elizabeth, the most persistent of my three friends.

“She’d know. She’d smell it on me.”

“I don’t see why you’re worried about that,” said Ivy, sucking her lip. “You’ve let Marianne live with you rent-free for two years. She’s in no position to tell you who you can sleep with.”

“There’s too many demons.”

“Between you and Anita?” Elizabeth asked. “Why? You hardly knew Donald. Besides, you two have an incredible chemistry. I bet the sex would be amazing.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I get the impression that Anita can keep people at a distance even when she’s fucking them. I hate having sex with someone who’s got their barriers up.”

“You only say that because you’ve heard how she talks about her businessmen blokes. It’d be different for you. You’d be able to break her down.” The other two chuckled darkly at this, encouraging Ivy to add, “If I had your body I could do it.”

I sipped my coffee and took a bite from my Russian cake, feeling unsettled. I still wasn’t really over last night and felt less comfortable bantering than I usually did. I knew myself well enough to know what I really needed was sexual reassurance and although, in a strange sort of way, that was what my friends were trying to offer me, thinking about Anita made me uneasy.

“Let’s talk about something else.”

That evening, I went to a party with my bank manager. She was one of the normal girls who’d made my life so difficult at school. We’d become friends by chance when I went into my hometown bank to open a third account. She’d been impressed by the amount of money I’d been depositing and asked me out on a date. We’d quickly discovered that there were the same differences between us now that there’d been at school, and we’d gone home separately. This had been a big blow to me as she’d been one of the most unobtainable girls in my school and, having spent a large part of my adolescence masturbating with her in my head, I was keen to see whether the real deal rivalled the fantasy.

After our unsuccessful date, we had concentrated on forming a workable business relationship. I needed more from my bank manager than most people, and was on the phone to her several times a week. And once long enough had elapsed for us not to be embarrassed in each other’s company, we started going out together as friends. I became her walker, accompanying Vicki to social events once or twice a month. These events were not grand affairs, consisting mainly of nights in the pub or dinner parties organized by her friends. Tonight’s party was in Jamie’s Bar in Charlotte Street. One of Vicki’s friends had just returned from two years in Australia and a gathering had been organized to welcome him back.

Vicki didn’t seem that excited about the party, and unusually for her, wasn’t even worried about changing for the evening, meeting me straight from work. Seeing her in a conservative suit reminded me of how great she used to look in her school uniform, and I wondered again about my impotent reaction to the women in my life. It was odd: I was excellent with strangers, no matter how attractive, able to go into a club or bar, find someone single, and persuade them to take me home with them. But as soon as it came to anyone with whom I had the slightest emotional connection, I became a complete drip. Feeling depressed, I drank too much and found myself telling Vicki what had happened with Tracey. I made a joke out of it, saying that it was probably not a good idea for me to tell my bank manager I’d been offering ex-girlfriends extravagant amounts of money for them to sleep with me.

She downed her glass, winked at me, and said, “I could do with some money.”

We went to her place. In the taxi we bartered about the price: Vicki saying she wanted twice the amount I’d offered my ex-girlfriend; me saying for that much money I expected something special.

I wasn’t that surprised by the way she reacted. Vicki had spent the whole of her adult life working with money, and no doubt saw this as a neat way of mocking its black magic. The idea of being paid for sex clearly appealed to her, as did taking a human transaction so lightly. I paid the driver and we went into her house.

“So,” she asked, “how do you want me?”

I thought back to all those adolescent afternoons. My fantasy had always been that while I was masturbating about Vicki she was somewhere masturbating about me. I told her this, thinking that was maybe how we’d start.

She chuckled. “You know, I never did. Not about you. I must’ve done it about almost every boy in the class, but never about you.”

I couldn’t reply. She noticed my sadness and said hurriedly, “I would’ve done, though, you know, if I’d known you were doing it about me.”

“You must’ve known.”

“Why?”

“Every boy in the year used to masturbate about you. We used to compare experiences.”

She looked at me. “Really? I honestly had no idea. Can I tell you about a fantasy of mine?”

“Of course.”

“I used to fantasize about groups of boys in the class masturbating over me. You know, with all that AIDS talk in assemblies sperm was seen as such an evil substance. But it didn’t seem that way to me. I wanted to be totally coated in it.”

She must’ve noticed my horrified expression, as she immediately eased back from our sexual conversation and asked me instead if I wanted a coffee. I nodded and she went out into the kitchen to make me one. I took advantage of the spare moment to assess my surroundings. Houses always look strange when there’s only one person living in them, but Vicki had done a good job of making her place look comfortable. Before Marianne moved in with me, there had always been something defiant about my decoration, as if I was trying to create a home that would be the envy of anyone who visited it. But nothing I could buy from a shop could add the warmth created by another person’s belongings.

Vicki was clearly less troubled by being alone, and although she couldn’t quite disguise the fact that she had too much space to herself, the lounge looked like somewhere she’d be equally happy entertaining friends or watching television alone. I liked the fact that she’d left stuff out (a hairdryer lying on its side next to a rectangular white extension plug; a box set of Friends episodes by the television; three cotton-wool balls dyed scarlet with nail varnish on a copy of the Express next to the electric fire), and began to relax as I settled down into her settee.

She returned with my cup of coffee. After her revelations about her childhood come-fantasies, I didn’t feel like watching her masturbate any more, and anyway, that was far too passive. It was time for me to become masterful.

“Take your trousers off,” I told her.

“Let’s see the money first.”

“What?”

“Cash up front. I don’t want you changing your mind after you’ve had me and pretending the payment thing was just a joke.”

“OK. How much did we agree on?”

“A thousand. Do you carry that kind of money with you?”

“No. Will you take a cheque? You know I’m good for it.”

“Do you have your cheque book on you?”

“No, but come on, Vicki, you’re my bank manager. You can easily debit my account whenever you want.”

“Write me an IOU.”

“I don’t have a pen.”

“There’s one on the table.”

“I got up and wrote out an IOU, wondering what was behind this banter. Although a thousand pounds wasn’t bad for one night’s work, I couldn’t believe that Vicki was genuinely only doing this for the money. The way I looked at it, the play with potential prostitution was just spice to stoke up enough excitement to get us through a one-nightstand. If she was taking it seriously… well, fuck it, if she was taking it seriously, I’d just make sure I got my money’s worth.

“Right. Now get those trousers off.”

She stood up, walked across to the table and checked the IOU. Seemingly satisfied, Vicki came across to me and put one foot up between my legs.

“Unbuckle my shoes first.”

I felt pleased she was bossing me back, thinking that this proved she was getting into what we were doing. I gripped her ankle before following her instruction, a motion that seemed to please her. Shoes removed, she turned her back to me. I sank down slightly so her bottom was directly in front of my face, then waited as she undid the buckle on her belt and slowly lowered her trousers over her buttocks. She was wearing a flimsy pair of white translucent knickers: the kind that pulled tight between her legs so that the material covering her bum formed a triangle. I gripped her hips. She let her trousers fall to the floor and stepped out of them.

“I bet you’re a man who likes bottoms.”

I giggled. “What?”

“Let’s see, shall we? What happens when I do this?”

She slid her fingers under the elastic of her knickers and pulled them down. Using a foot to flip them onto a pile with her trousers, she leaned forwards and pushed her bum up in my face, using her fingers to pull open her cheeks. The light was good in Vicki’s apartment and I had a full view of the soft creases of her anus. She was right: I did like this sight, although few of the girls I’d been out with had shown it to me so readily, and it was a hard thing to request of a one-nightstand. I could see why Vicki was so willing to reveal hers to me. I know this sounds strange, but it was absolutely beautiful, the skin moving so perfectly to the small hole in the centre with each tuck in exactly the right place. From this angle I could also see a rear view of her vagina, which was equally well defined, the flesh of her outer labia almost spookily symmetrical. Vicki seemed to revel in my slow appraisal and after my nice, long look I pushed my tongue onto her welcoming folds. I held Vicki’s hips and managed to get deep into her, curious whether she liked having this done to her as much as I liked having it done to me. I licked for a while and then asked her, “Can you touch yourself while I do this to you?”

“Well, I can, but you’ll have to hold me open.”

“That’s OK.”

She released her buttocks and I took over, opening her even wider. The muscles in my tongue felt pleasurably strained as I buried my mouth into her bottom, wanting her to feel totally loose. She fingered herself slowly at first, but when I showed no sign of wearying she speeded up. I wondered if she would be prepared to come with me and felt scared about how much I wanted that to happen. But I also wanted to come too, and as her moans grew shallower I stopped sucking her asshole.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I realize it’s not very romantic to interrupt the sex like this but, seeing as I’m paying…”

“Yes?” she asked, impatient.

“What are you like with orgasms? Do you come? Can you come? Do you always need fingers, or can you come just from fucking? Can you come lots of times or is it one-time-only, lights out?”

“I’m weird. Back to front. When I masturbate it takes for ever, but I guarantee if you fuck me for more than three minutes that’ll hit the spot.”

“That’s not back to front, that’s perfect. And can you still fuck after you’ve come?”

“Yeah, but if we’re gonna do that can we use lubricant? You don’t have to wear a condom.”

“Of course. Have you got some?”

“I’ll fetch it.”

She moved away from me and went out into the hallway. I watched her go, finding it sexy to see her bare legs beneath the jacket of the work suit she was still wearing. I waited while she went upstairs, rubbing my cock through the pocket of my trousers. When Vicki returned she could tell I was looking at her cunt and stopped beneath the main light, letting me see her. As I’d expected, she had a neat bikini line, an unnecessary precaution for one so fair, but nice to look at all the same. Although this was definitely an incredibly sexy moment for me, I couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed. Seeing Vicki Wade’s cunt… this was a childhood dream come true, but how could it hold the same magic for me now that it had done back then? I remembered one time when a boy from our school had told us that he’d seen Vicki doing stretches in the gym, and her leotard had ridden up so high that, as he’d put it, “he even saw her pin”. For months afterwards I’d dreamed about being in his place, even (if you’d caught me in a weak moment) prepared to give up my life to share the sight.

Maybe I should’ve offered her money back then. She probably wouldn’t have accepted it, but who knows? Of course, in those days I couldn’t even get near her, let alone start a conversation that would lead up to me offering her money to show me her cunt. It’s odd, but even now, the thought of Vicki’s adolescent vagina tucked inside that unfaithful leotard seemed sexier than the reality in front of me. I’m not a pervert, and have no interest in schoolgirls (even women my age dressed up in school uniform), but the power of that missed moment was so strong that the fantasy almost managed to obliterate what was happening now.

Vicki seemed to notice my distraction and brushed her fingers down over herself. She pretended that she too was distracted, but then quickly looked back at me and smiled when she saw me grip myself through my trousers again.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want to come inside you.”

“I’ve already said that’s fine.”

“I know, but I need to be sucked first.”

“Oh, OK.” She walked back to me, kneeled down and unzipped my fly. Pulling open my trousers, she slid my cock out through the slit in my boxer shorts and took it into her mouth. I don’t really need to describe the experience other than to tell you she was good at it, although to be honest I’ve never been with a woman who wasn’t. Remembering her promise of how little sex she needed to orgasm, I let her suck me longer than I normally would, eventually stopping her with a gentle pat on both shoulders.

She looked up at me, and her expression seemed so open that I snapped out of porno mode and stroked the side of her face. She bent down, unlaced my shoes, and stripped me from the waist downwards. Picking up her blue tube of lubricant, she squeezed a blob onto her palm, spread it over my cock then rubbed the rest inside her. Pulling my cock forwards, she slid herself gently on top of me. I kissed her, realizing as I did so that it was the first time our lips had touched. It’s embarrassing and inappropriate, but the first time I fuck someone I always want to tell them I love them. Thankfully, tonight I conquered that urge and mouthed it softly to myself instead. Our fucking was surprisingly (for me, anyway) forceful: a proper, deep, heterosexual shag that carried us both to orgasm and left us woozily clinging to each other.

We stayed like that until Vicki climbed off of me and asked, “Did you get your money’s worth?”

Marianne was asleep in front of the television when I got back. She often nodded out in the lounge, waking up again about three or four and going to bed. Feeling bolder than usual, I decided to carry her upstairs. When we reached the landing she awoke and, after taking a few seconds to adjust to the situation, sniffed my neck.

“You smell of sex.”

I didn’t say anything. She smiled, and let me carry her to her room and drop her on the bed. As I turned out her light she said, “Someone called for you. There’s a message on the machine.”

I went downstairs and played the message. It was Tracey, apologizing for the other night and saying she wanted to see me again. Tomorrow. Although it was after one, I called her straight back. She reminded me of her address and told me to come over at seven o’clock. I replaced the receiver and went to bed.

The following morning Marianne and I both awoke earlier than usual and decided to have breakfast together. This was quite an unusual occurrence for both of us and, as we lacked even the most basic supplies, I headed off to the deli. When I came back Marianne had made me a coffee and was sitting at the end of the table sipping hers, wrapped in a dark-blue silk dressing gown.

‘So,” she said, as I hunted for a grapefruit knife, “who was the lucky girl?”

“On the phone?”

“No… last night.”

“Oh. My bank manager.”

“Really?” She laughed. “I thought you were too rich to have to sleep with someone for a raised overdraft.”

“I was. Until someone started eating me out of house and home.”

She looked at me, clearly shocked. I’d never referred to money before, and she’d stopped bringing it up after her third straight week of thanking me for my generosity.

“I do feel ready to start looking for a job,” she said in a small voice, “although if it’s all right with you I’d rather stay here and pay you rent than move out. I’m just so comfortable here.”

I didn’t answer, preparing her grapefruit in silence and placing it in a bowl in front of her.

I arrived at Tracey’s house an hour and a half late. This was a deliberate tactic, my childish way of getting revenge for her knocking me back after our previous date. She pretended she wasn’t aware of the time, greeting me with a hug. Feeling optimistic, I’d stopped off at an ATM on the way and taken cash out of each of my three main accounts, now having nearly a thousand pounds on me. It was good to feel my ex-girlfriend’s body against mine and I clung on to her until she broke away.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked. “I have beer. Or whisky.”

“Beer, please.”

She fetched a bottle from the kitchen and handed it to me. Tracey had already strategically placed an opener on the coffee table and I used it to uncap the drink.

“Aren’t you having anything?”

“I will in a minute. I already had a little too much this afternoon.”

I could tell she was nervous. Tracey was not a casual drinker, and when we’d been going out together she had only drunk at home at moments of extreme emotion.

“Are you OK, Tracey?”

“I’m fine,” she replied, sitting on her sofa.

She was wearing a cream cardigan, a white halter-neck and a short grey skirt. Tracey had always had a thing for flesh-coloured stockings, and was wearing a pair this evening, with no shoes. I sipped my beer, waiting to hear why she had summoned me here.

“The offer you made the other night.”

“Yes?”

“Does it still stand?”

“Of course.”

“What if I don’t want to have sex with you?”

I wasn’t in the mood for this sort of game playing, and wasn’t about to beg. I put down my beer and stood up. “Then I don’t think you should.”

“No,” she said, looking up at me, “I don’t mean that. Oh, God…” She rubbed her forehead. “What if I want to do other things?”

I sat back down. “What sort of other things?”

“Safer things.”

“I can wear a condom.”

“I don’t mean that sort of safe. I mean, emotionally safe.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Well,” she said, “would you want to see me?”

I smiled. “Of course. But let’s not make this so clinical. Why don’t you come over here with me?”

“But how will we work out the money?”

“The money doesn’t matter to me. How about if I give you five hundred pounds anyway, and then you can decide how far you want to go?”

“And you won’t get angry with me?”

“Of course not. Don’t be stupid.”

“Or tell anyone? Or hold it against me?”

“I don’t know anyone you know. And it’s my idea. How can I hold it against you?”

She still didn’t seem satisfied. I was beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea, but was feeling too turned on to leave.

“And you accept that this will be a one-off? You won’t force me to do it again later because I agreed to it now?”

I couldn’t understand why she was being like this. Throughout our relationship I had almost always been the submissive one, never forcing her to do anything. I might have been a little more forthcoming than her about my desires, but that’d only been because she rarely talked about what she wanted, preferring to go unhappy than verbalize her discontent.

“Tracey, I’m not about to cast judgement on you. I offered you money the other night because I was desperate to sleep with you and couldn’t cope with being rejected. I can understand why you were offended…”

“I wasn’t offended, just scared. I’m frightened by you wanting me.”

“Why? You work on a sex line. You have men wanting you all the time.”

I realized the moment I said this that it was a mistake. Suddenly, everything became clear to me and I saw my way out of this. But first I had to listen to her response.

“Jesse, this is why I got so upset the other night. I told you about the sex line because I thought you’d find it sexy and funny, but I didn’t think it would change the way you thought about me. After I said it I remembered how afraid I was about telling you about my sexuality. This is something I’ve been wanting to tell you for ages, in fact, that’s the whole reason why I got in touch with you again. But then at dinner you told me you’d had a breakdown and I couldn’t tell you the truth… well, I mean, I told you part of the truth, about how I missed you and was glad we had all that time together, but I couldn’t get to the heart of it. I couldn’t tell you… Look, you know what you said about your therapist telling you that what you were feeling with me, when you isolated us, wasn’t jealousy but you wanting something from me, something I couldn’t give?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you and your therapist got it completely round the wrong way. What you wanted was to know the truth about me, but because you were so jealous you didn’t want to hear it.”

What she was saying made sense. I thought back to my bank manager telling me about her come-fantasy and how that hadn’t turned me on at all. I had often told Tracey I wanted to know what she masturbated about – and in my head I thought I did – but the truth was, if she wasn’t doing it about me I didn’t want to know.

“The truth is, the reason I freaked out the other night was because it felt like you were making the offer out of anger. And it reminded me of how you always used to view sex as something you had to take from me, as if I was deliberately withholding it. That ‘something I couldn’t give’ was an honest sexual response, because I always felt you were judging me.

“But the thing is, I do want to do something with you. Something that’ll get rid of all the hurt and make you think well of me. And, although it sounds strange, and it did upset me at first, I think you paying me for sex is a good idea. Only you have to be doing it for pure motives. You have to do it because you want me.”

“I do want you.”

“Good.” She came across and sat next to me. Taking control, she straddled me and pushed me back on the sofa. She’d washed her hair recently and I could smell her shampoo as her long brunette curls fell over her face. As she started kissing me, I considered how this evening’s experience was already so different from my previous night with Vicki. I had completely forgotten how Tracey kissed, the soft pulling that felt so reassuring after her resistance in the bar after the restaurant and, as I let her take charge, I found myself thinking back to when I first got my money and was trying to develop an interest in pornography. Although it had quickly stopped working for me, it was only now that I realized why. It was my lack of imagination, and my inability to bring details from my own life into my appreciation of the films. My one-nightstands were few and far between and, to be honest, they weren’t fantasy-occasions, instead usually arising from desperation and mutual need. And although I’ve always had lots of women in my life, it’s been hard to eroticize them, as I’ve known them as friends rather than sex objects (I realize the two are by no means mutually exclusive, but until last night with Vicki, it’d always seemed that way to me). So when I watched pornography, I found it hard to enjoy the variety, which I guess is the whole point in the first place. It was difficult to identify with the well-built men, and unless the women looked like Tracey, or other ex-girlfriends, they didn’t seem sexy either. I’m not a natural voyeur, and watching other people having sex always makes me feel like I’m the one being exploited, not them, as if I’m stuck in someone’s house and still having to be the polite guest even when my hosts start going down on each other.

Now that I was having sex with Tracey so soon after I’d had sex with Vicki, and was rediscovering myself as a sexual person (albeit in quite an unconventional way), I felt like I might like to watch pornography again, using the woman on screen as a point of connection between Tracey and Vicki and whomever I ended up having sex with next.

I was amazed at how much the money was adding an extra energy. When I’d been going out with Tracey, our intercourse had always been extremely fraught, a cycle of tears, excitement, pain, pleasure and tears. The first few times had been terrifying, a form of lovemaking I was completely unused to, having previously only been with women who saw sex as a friendly adult kinship. Now I was paying Tracey she seemed to be trying to fit her need around working out how to make me happy. The way she was kissing me showed she wanted me, which is something I’ve always needed to know in order to enjoy sex with anyone. These last two statements sounds antithetical. Let me explain. What I mean is, nothing is as big a turn-off for me as a woman saying, “I want to make you happy.” But a woman who wants me (even if she’s only pretending) is all I need for the sex to work. This is why I always aimed low when picking people up, and why paying my friends for sex was turning out to be so successful. I’m not vain enough to imagine I could sexually excite a professional prostitute, but I also knew that it would be impossible for a friend (or an ex) to have sex with me without feeling something. And with Tracey I thought it went much further than that, as I saw now that she’d always needed this sort of excuse to really enjoy sex, and may even previously have had this sort of fantasy herself.

She stopped kissing me and pushed herself up. “How much would you pay to pull down my top?”

“I told you. I’ll give you five hundred pounds whatever we end up doing.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I want to negotiate.”

“OK.” I smiled. “I guess that could be fun. Are you wearing a bra?”

Tracey got up and pulled her curtains. Then she turned on a table lamp and switched off the main light. Before taking her position on top of me, she pulled off her cardigan and hung it over the back of a chair.

“Yes, I’m wearing a bra.”

“So you’re only talking about me seeing your bra, not your breasts?”

“For the moment, yes.”

“And, let me get this straight, am I paying you to pull down your top yourself or for me to do it?”

“Either.”

“So there’s no price difference between those two options?”

“No. Come on, how much?”

“Well, it seems quite minor, so let’s say ten pounds.”

“Twenty. I take it you have the money with you?”

I felt surprised that Tracey was being as serious about the money as Vicki had been yesterday, especially as I’d assumed I’d have to persuade her to take the cash. But I enjoyed my role in the fantasy, taking a twenty-pound note from my inside pocket and laying it out on the table.

“OK,” she said, fingers going to the thin cord around her neck.

I reached up and stopped her, saying, “No, I want to do it.”

I untied her and pulled the top down over her breasts. She was wearing a white strapless bra and her nipples were visible through the material. I attempted to stroke them.

“No, no,” she told me, “you haven’t paid for that yet. How much to see my knickers?”

“What type are you wearing?”

“Does that affect the price?”

“No, I’m just curious.”

“Mmm,” she said, “you just reminded me of something.”

“Dinner in the oven?”

“No. A memory. From when we were together.”

“Dangerous territory.”

“Doesn’t have to be. Anyway, this is a nice memory. It was about the third or fourth time we slept together, and we met unexpectedly, or maybe I hadn’t been planning to go to bed with you but it ended up happening anyway, and you were surprised because I wasn’t wearing matching underwear and I felt really weird because I didn’t even have that many matching sets and you’d already seen most of them.”

“So you’re not wearing matching underwear today?”

“I am, actually, although I didn’t think about that this morning. Well, kind of matching, they’re white string-knickers, with a small red design in one corner.”

“Let me see.”

“How much?”

“Forty.”

“Cash on the table.”

I unfolded another two notes. “Are you sure you don’t want me to give you the whole five hundred right now?”

“And spoil the fun? I’m enjoying myself, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” She smiled at me and pulled her skirt up. She tried to make the material stay as high up her thighs as possible so I could get a proper look at her knickers. Shortly after we’d started going out, I’d discovered Tracey’s diary. Just before we met she’d had a lonely night with some unsatisfactory ex-partner and come home and detailed all the things she liked and didn’t like. Eventually I was forced to admit my betrayal of her trust, but prior to my confession it provided a useful shorthand on how to please her. She liked having her breasts caressed rather than kissed, preferred having her knickers gently slipped down her thighs rather than taking them off herself, sometimes enjoyed being fingered to orgasm with her knickers still on, although that was never quite as nice as being eaten out. She liked sucking cock; sometimes more than being fucked. Her favourite fantasy was imaginary incest (something only ever exciting to those who hadn’t suffered the irritation of real-life siblings) and except for very, very rare occasions, hated being on top.

She laughed. “I bet you’re just dying to touch me, aren’t you?”

Tracey never used to be this confident. I knew it had something to do with the money, but I also thought it was probably connected to her new job. I’d always known Tracey had the perfect voice for sex-line work, but felt surprised that she’d actually gone through with it. I wanted to ask her more about what the job was like, but after her previous outburst, felt scared about spoiling the mood.

“Can I touch your cunt and breasts at the same time?”

“If you’re prepared to pay for it.”

“I’ll give you fifty pounds. But you also have to rub my cock.”

“For fifty, I’ll only do it through your trousers.”

“That’s all I want, for the minute.” I counted out the cash and put it on the table. “Although let me touch you for a bit first.”

“OK. Can I lie back more?”

“Of course. It’ll make things easier.”

She shuffled backwards, reclining against the arm of the sofa. I moved round between her legs, leaning in to kiss her as I began to gently stroke and squeeze her breasts. Her kisses were more open now, her mouth more relaxed. I quickly embraced her and then began to rub the heel of my hand over her cunt. I touched her breasts at the same time, kissing her again. After a few minutes, she pushed me back up and began stroking the tight crotch of my trousers. She stroked her hand around my shape, the heel of her hand rubbing my cock while her fingers softly dug against the underside of my balls. I let her do this for a short while, then pushed her back.

“Another fifty to see your tits.”

She laughed. “Shall I undo it?”

“No, let me.”

I put a fifty-pound note on the table, and Tracey leaned forward to let me unhook her bra. I was amazed at how unfamiliar her breasts looked, and wondered how I could’ve forgotten something so important. Why are visual memories the hardest to preserve? Especially sexual memories. I couldn’t believe that in my fantasy world I had robbed Tracey of her real body and replaced it with an anonymous alternative. I had forgotten how easily she flushed; that her shoulders were lightly freckled. Her breasts had become bigger in my memory, her nipples smaller, and the real-life combination was much sexier. But strangest of all, I had forgotten how Tracey looked at me differently when I started to undress her.

She kissed me. “Knickers too?”

“Let me do it. You know what you said earlier about not wanting to have sex with me, do you still feel like that?”

“I don’t want to have penetrative sex. But everything else is OK.”

I considered this. “All right then, I’ll give you a hundred and fifty pounds to pull your knickers off and go down on you.”

“OK.”

Placing the cash on the table, I gently lifted Tracey from the sofa and brought her down onto the floor. She raised her knees and I slipped my fingers under the waistband of her knickers and gently tugged them down. Her cunt was already wet and slightly open, the pink bright beneath the spring of her light-brown pubic hair. I pulled her legs slightly more open and gave her cunt a first kiss. She murmured something and I moved up to hear what she said.

“What was that?”

“I said I’ve fantasized so much about you doing this. Especially since the other night.”

Remembering Vicki, I asked, “What did you do when you fantasized?”

“Touched myself, of course,” she said, sounding surprised.

I couldn’t stop myself asking, “When was the last time?”

She sounded slightly irritated as she replied, “In the shower at the gym this morning,” and, not wanting to push my luck, I went back down on her.

It was incredible to be between Tracey’s legs again, and I felt disappointed when she came quickly. I wanted to carry on and see if I could bring her to a second orgasm, but she stopped me and made me come up alongside her for a hug.

We lay like that for a while and then I asked her, “Would you like to see my cock?”

“Do I have to pay you?”

“No.” I laughed. “It’s a freebie.”

I pulled open my fly. She looked at me, surprised.

“You wear underwear now?”

“Since Michael Hutchence died.”

“Show me then.”

I pulled out my cock. She stared at it for a minute and then looked up at me.

“I remember it.”

“Do you?” I asked, surprised. “Exactly?”

“Exactly.”

I looked at her, wondering if women’s memories worked differently to men’s, or whether the fault lay solely with me.

“So,” I said, “two hundred quid for a blow job.”

“It’s extra to come in my mouth.”

“Two-fifty, then.”

I counted out the cash and she went down on me.

Marianne was already in bed when I got home. I knew she was probably still upset about what I’d said that morning, but found I didn’t really regret it. Since I’d started paying people for sex, my generosity to her had started to seem unfathomable, and I couldn’t understand why I’d been kind to her for so long. No one else seemed interested in her (in the whole time she’d lived with me she’d never mentioned her parents once) and she hardly contributed anything around the home. Besides, if it wasn’t for her living here I could have my sexual adventures without venturing outside the front door. I wasn’t quite ready to kick her out, but from now on I felt she should start doing something to justify her board.

I didn’t have much to do the next day. I arose late, masturbated, then went out for lunch alone. When I got back Marianne was sitting in the garden, reading a book. I went through to my study and called Vicki.

“Hi, Jesse, how are you?”

“Good.”

There was a moment of silence. I hadn’t imagined that it’d be hard to talk to her, assuming that we’d quickly fall back into a friendly intimacy, maybe with a pleasant new sexual undercurrent to our conversation. But suddenly I was experiencing the same sort of shyness I usually only felt when I was talking to someone I really fancied.

“Is this a money conversation?”

“Kind of,” I laughed.

“Oh,” she said, “I’m glad you’ve brought that up. The thing is, Jesse, the other night and everything I did enjoy it, but I don’t think it should happen again.”

“Really?” I replied, wondering if she was serious, or just wanted to be persuaded.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t really explain. It’s not you, or the money. It’s just that I’m not very good at the stage between casual sex and a proper relationship, and I know you’re not looking for that right now…”

“Well…”

“I mean, I’m not either, and I want you to carry on being my walker, and well, if I’m going to be absolutely honest, the next day I was a bit freaked out by the fact that I’d taken money from you and if you’ll let me I’d like to give it back.”

“No, Vicki, don’t be silly, it was worth it.”

“I don’t have to give you the actual money. If you want I can just credit your account.”

“No,” I said, “I’m glad I paid you. But I understand why you don’t want to do it again, and don’t worry, this won’t damage our friendship.”

“Oh, good,” she replied, “thanks, Jesse.”

I finished the call, found my address book and flipped through until I found Anita’s number. I dialled, and got her answerphone. So I tried her mobile.

“Hello?” she said, the background noise of a lively pub behind her voice.

“Hi, Anita, it’s Jesse.”

“Hi, Jesse, how are you?”

“Good. Where are you?”

“In Soho. Why?”

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I wondered whether I could meet up with you.”

“Now?”

“Is that OK?”

“Of course. I’m in Waxy’s Little Sister. Do you know where that is?”

“No.”

“Opposite the Metro.”

“The cinema?”

“Yeah. How long are you going to be?”

“About forty-five minutes.”

“OK. I’ll see you then.”

I told Marianne I was going out and took a taxi into Soho. Part of me wanted to reveal that I was meeting Anita, just to see how she’d react. But I worried that giving Marianne clues as to what I had planned might inhibit me, so I kept quiet.

During the drive, I thought about Anita and wondered whether she would go for my suggestion. The fact that she was drinking alone in the afternoon seemed a good sign, as she only lapsed back into alcoholism between affairs, focusing more heavily on drugs when she was involved with someone.

I remembered talking about Anita with Hazel, Ivy and Elizabeth, and how they were convinced I’d be able to seduce her. It was almost worth not using the money as a motivation, but I realized when I thought about having sex with Anita the financial transaction was the part I was looking forward to most. It was knowing that I was going to offer Anita money that stopped me feeling intimidated by her, as it seemed more adult, honest and decadent than her booze, coke and affairs.

Waxy’s Little Sister was a ghastly Irish theme pub, and I couldn’t understand what Anita was doing there. She was sitting alone with a pint and a small glass of whisky. I walked across and joined her.

“Hi, Jesse. So what’s wrong? Is this to do with Marianne?”

“No, nothing like that. I was just at a loose end and wanting someone to have a drink with. You were the first person who came to mind. Well, second, after my bank manager.”

She chuckled. “Isn’t he working?”

“She. And yes, she is. But I thought I could persuade her to knock off early. Anyway, I’m glad you were free. Are you all right for drinks?”

She nodded. I got myself a pint and pulled up a chair beside her. Even when she was getting wasted alone Anita looked incredible. She looked posh and innocent, a fatal combination even without the added spice of her exciting private life. I’d always wanted her, but had been held back by fear. Her red hair (always a warning sign to me, since that first experience of adolescent rejection) made her look a little like Nicole Kidman at her most elegant, although with a slightly more inviting, open face.

“How are you then?” I asked, still nervous.

“All right. Starting to get a little bit wobbly. How about you?”

“OK… a little drained.”

“Ennui?” She smiled.

“Something like that. Too much money and too much free time.”

“I wish I had that worry.”

I sipped my beer, sensing an opening. “You’re all right for money, aren’t you?”

“Are you kidding? I’m broke. I’ve never had this little money in my life.”

“Really?” I said, and after enough large swallows, began my pitch.

The following evening I was feeling lonely again. I couldn’t get hold of Anita, or Tracey, and knew it would be undignified to have another go at persuading Vicki to change her mind. Frustrated, I went downstairs to the lounge.

Marianne was lying on the floor, watching television. She was wearing a short skirt and a black top and when I sat on the sofa behind her I could see her knickers. She paid no attention to me, concentrating on the television. I stayed there for fifteen minutes, but finally couldn’t take it any longer and asked, “How much money would you want to suck my cock?”

Marianne moved out the following morning. I would’ve been happy if she’d left the night before, but she clearly wanted to drag out her departure. I wasn’t sad to see her go and, although I had said some seriously mean things to her in our argument the night before, none of my comments had been unfair. Two years of frustration had come out too fast, that’s all. I wasn’t a bad person.

“I think it’s good that you kicked Marianne out,” Elizabeth told me. “She’s been sponging off of you for far too long.”

“What was the argument about?” asked Hazel.

“Never mind that,” Ivy interrupted, “what I want to know is, what is Anita like in bed?”

I answered both their questions, at length, by telling them the story of my past week. This time I definitely wasn’t trying to reel anyone in, knowing that all three of my friends were happily married mothers who weren’t short of money and liked to think of themselves as decent, moral individuals. Ivy was the first to start turning the conversation. Her approach was obvious, getting me to repeat the concept over and over again (“So, let me get this straight. You’ve been paying your friends for sex?” “Yes, Ivy, that’s right, I’ve been paying my friends for sex.”) until it no longer sounded outrageous and they’d all accepted it as an acceptable thing to do.

But Hazel was the one who made it personal.

“Would you pay me for sex?” she asked.

“Would you like to have sex with me?”

“Maybe. How much money are we talking about?”

“Well, I paid Vicki a thousand, Tracey somewhere around five hundred and Anita two-fifty.”

“You paid Anita the least amount of money?” Ivy exclaimed, shocked.

I smiled, amused by her indignation. “I asked all three of them to name their price. Anita wanted two-fifty.”

“That’s terrible,” said Elizabeth. “She must have such low self-esteem.”

“How much would you want to sleep with Jesse?” Ivy asked Elizabeth.

“Definitely a thousand,” she said, “at the very least.”

It was fun checking into a hotel with three women. We went to the Tenderloin, a tacky rock-themed hotel that Ivy claimed was the only place for an afternoon assignation. I was shocked by her knowledge and wondered whether I’d been right to think of these women as being so innocent after all. We took the lift up to the third floor and found our room. I could tell the three women were enjoying themselves, although I thought it probably had less to do with the sex than the fact that we were all doing something secretive together. They always got like this whenever we left the café, even on the most innocent of missions. I think it was because we were moving outside the expected limits of our friendship, and none of us had the emotional maturity to cope with that.

Ivy took off her shoes and jumped backwards onto the bed. She was the shortest of my prospective partners, although none of them was tall.

“So how are we going to do this?” asked Hazel. “Are you up to having sex with all three of us?”

“Not in a straight way.”

Elizabeth looked worried. “I’m not doing any lesbian stuff.”

I laughed.

“I mean, not that I don’t like you both and everything,” she said to Ivy and Hazel, “I just don’t think I could bear it.”

“I’m not sure about the masturbation part either,” Ivy admitted. “I don’t even do that in front of my husband.”

“What is it that embarrasses you?” I asked. “Doing it in front of me or doing it in front of each other?”

“Each other,” they agreed.

“ ’Cause I could call down to reception for three blindfolds. They do do that sort of thing here, don’t they?”

“They do,” Ivy admitted. “There’s an S&M bag they give to favoured customers.”

“What do you think?” I asked them.

“I’d still be embarrassed,” said Elizabeth, “even with only you watching.”

“I don’t mind doing it,” Hazel told me, “as long as you do get the blindfolds.”

“Ivy?”

“Oh, God, honestly, Jesse, I don’t think I’d even enjoy it. Can’t you just fuck me?”

“Well, I will, but I wanted us all to do something together.”

“OK, how about if I strip down to my underwear and watch you having sex with Elizabeth while Hazel masturbates?”

“But Hazel doesn’t want you to see her masturbating.”

“And I don’t want you to watch Jesse having sex with me,” added Elizabeth.

Sighing, I decided to cut my losses. Ivy would wait in the bathroom, Hazel would masturbate, I would fuck Elizabeth. The women would all wear blindfolds. I worried that this would turn the afternoon into a slapstick comedy, but they were adamant. We moved everything they might bump into and called reception, who sent up a boy with three blindfolds on a silver tray.

I asked if anyone wanted to undress before I blindfolded them, but they all wanted to stay fully clothed to begin with. Their anxieties had made me feel uncomfortable and I began to wonder whether this was such a good idea. But even if we stopped now our friendship would still be changed for ever, and in spite of everything, this was still a sexual experience I wanted to have.

“You are going to wear a condom, aren’t you?” asked Ivy.

“And not the same one,” Hazel added. “A different one for each of us.”

“I don’t have any,” I said.

We called reception and they sent the boy back with a packet of extra-safe Mates. Ivy went out into the bathroom and closed the door. Hazel took off her shoes. Elizabeth lay on the bed. She whispered to me that she wanted me to undress her, so I took her shoes off and unbuttoned her jeans. I felt most worried about having sex with Elizabeth and was trying to make sure the experience didn’t feel inappropriately intimate. I pulled off her jeans. She was wearing simple pale-cream knickers. I removed them quickly and looked up at her face, watching her breathing as I went down on her, again trying to make the sex feel as straightforward and competent as possible.

I was paying so much attention to Elizabeth that I hadn’t even had a chance to look at Hazel, who was probably the one of the three I was most excited about going to bed with. I gently nuzzled and kissed Elizabeth’s clit, reaching up under her jumper and pulling the cups of her bra down from her large breasts. Behind me I had heard Hazel getting out of her dress, but she was managing to masturbate almost without making any sound at all.

I continued sucking Elizabeth, realizing my only real opportunity to look back at Hazel without Elizabeth sensing it was during the few moments it would take me to move from licking her cunt to fucking her. After that I could probably get another couple of glimpses but would have to really strain my neck. I would’ve sucked Elizabeth for longer, but I was so eager to see Hazel that the moment I thought Elizabeth was wet enough to fuck, I stopped and turned round. Hazel was wearing a long stripy top that, together with her hand, almost entirely obscured my view of her cunt, but her facial expression and the quick movement of her finger suggested that she had got over her embarrassment of masturbating in front of me.

I turned back from her, fixed my condom and slid my hard cock into Elizabeth’s cunt. She was wet, but it did take a couple of thrusts before I was moving smoothly inside her. Seeing Hazel like that made me excited again, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to last long enough to satisfy all three women. Elizabeth had been avoiding kissing me, so I didn’t force it, gratified when I felt her hands holding my hips. I didn’t want to get Elizabeth too close and then stop, as I knew that would prove frustrating to her. I also didn’t know where she was going to go when I swapped over to Hazel. In the bathroom with Ivy, I guess. I slowed down, and Elizabeth nodded, seemingly happy for me to stop. I pulled out of her, and helped her get dressed and go into the bathroom. The moment the bathroom door closed, I walked over and snogged Hazel. She seemed perfectly happy to kiss me, wrapping her arms around me and reaching for my cock.

“Hang on,” I said, “I’ve just got to get rid of the condom.”

“Forget the condom. Just get rid of it and fuck me.”

She reached up and untied the blindfold. I snapped off the condom and lifted her off the chair, pushing my cock into her as I pressed her against the wall. She grabbed my hair and we started fucking furiously, finding a satisfactory position somewhere between standing and a crouch. We continued like that until I said, “I’m sorry, I’m getting close. And I’ve got to stay hard for Ivy.”

“Can’t you come twice?”

“Not usually.”

“OK. Go down on me then. I’m pretty close too.”

She lay back on the bed and I gave her head until she came. Afterwards, she squirmed and reached for my hand. I kissed her and we stayed on the bed until Hazel called out to Ivy, “He’s all yours.”

“Come in here then,” she called back.

“No, don’t worry, I’m going down to the bar.”

Hazel dressed and left the room. Ivy walked in, still blindfolded. I let her come towards me. She gave a short, dirty laugh as her fingers reached my chest.

“Come on, then, what have you got left for me?”

I felt vaguely irritated at Ivy for stopping me from properly satisfying Hazel, and for the way she had always previously been so flirtatious with me, but then joined in with Elizabeth’s squeamishness when it actually came down to us all getting together. So I went down on her until her fingers were digging into my head, then fingered her as I fucked her from behind, making her come just before I emptied myself into her.

That was the last I saw of Elizabeth, Hazel and Ivy. They never contacted me again, and didn’t return my calls or emails. Anita and I met once more for sex, but then she got involved with someone else and said she couldn’t see me any more. Tracey, too, seemed to have decided against further meetings with me, and although Vicki was happy to talk to me about money, there was no chance of anything sexual happening between us. At first I was glad to be free of Marianne, happy to have the house to myself, but it didn’t take me long to become lonely. And with no friends left, there was no possibility of pursuing my previous path. I lasted two weeks before I started buying pornographic videos again, watching them with a hunger I had never had previously. And when they stopped working I found myself in a phone box, intending to try Tracey again, but after getting halfway through her number, stopping and dialling the digits on a small colour card in front of me, finally ready to begin the next stage of my existence.