The First Phase
J sat on the steps at the front of the house, soaking up the sunshine, her head tilted back. It was one of those July days when everything is still, save for the distant hum of traffic. Three steps above her, on the step nearest to the door, sat a much older woman. It was the older who did the talking.
For many years she had lived in this old Edwardian terrace in the same room with the same or similar ladies around her, ladies of the night - she laughed, for most of the business was done during the day, when her men could just slip out of the office for lunch or to meet a client.
Occasionally there were students, who came to rent a room not knowing the area, who soon moved on to more respectable addresses. But J had not moved on. J was a young art student, who went to college each day and loved to return to the seediness of what had once belonged to the city’s élite. It was here she felt she would learn about another side of life, the side far removed from her secure middle class upbringing.
And with this almost insatiable need to learn she now sat at the feet of this older woman, hanging on to her every word. The older woman sensed the younger woman’s need for details and took pleasure in giving them. Most warm afternoons during the long summer vacation were spent with J at the feet of the older woman, listening and dreaming.
Sometimes the afternoon would be interrupted by the arrival of a gentleman but he would be expected, for all the older lady’s gentlemen were regular customers. Before he arrived J would be told what was to be done to him. And some afternoons, when the heat made her feel giddy, the older woman’s details stirred such images in her mind that she had to excuse herself and rush into her ground floor room and there, in its privacy, with her own hand relieve that part of her body that was by now so hot and so in need of comfort.
Sometimes this pleasure was so great that she could not return until the colour in her cheeks had subsided and her breathing had slowed to a pace that would not betray her. Occasionally J returned to take her place on the step only to find her mentor had gone so she would wait there, basking in the sun, almost sleeping, until she heard the door above her head opening and heard the sound of city gents’ shoes on the stone steps and then she would raise her hand to her eyes to protect them from the sun and smile at the gentleman - for by now most were no longer strangers to her. Indeed one or two had become part of her daydreams, and as she knew what their preferences were, she would weave these into her fantasies.
There were some, she was told, that only went there to do things their wives would not allow. With some the session was taken up just brushing the older lady’s hair, which was auburn and very long and certainly her finest point. There was no other sexual requirement. J had been puzzled by this and the older woman had smiled and said she had much to learn about men’s needs.
As more trust built up between the two women, so the details became more revealing and J began to hate the moment when the heat from the sun started to fade and it was time to leave the steps and go to a local restaurant where she was working as a waitress in the evenings during the holiday.
One evening at work she recognised one of the customers who had arrived for a meal with his family. Between their eyes there was from him, surprise followed by fear - was he to be discovered? And from her, first recognition, then anonymity as she treated him in the way a waitress deals with any customer. During the meal, he had taken an enormous risk and smiled at her in a way that indicated they were better acquainted but she had not returned the smile. She had been the impartial waitress. Yet over the dessert course J remembered that his sexual requirement was having his sex drawn into her older companion’s mouth until the tip of it reached the back of her throat and then, almost forcing her to gag and causing tears to well up in her eyes, then and only then would he gently ease it from her mouth, to repeat the process over and over until he was ready to fill her mouth with the thick salty fluid that is proof of total satisfaction.
And as this memory crept into J’s thoughts she had sneaked a look at his wife. She could see by the neatness of his wife’s appearance - the tight, short hairstyle, the correctness of the way she held her glass - that no joy would be ever derived in that mouth from the pleasure that could be obtained from taking a man’s sex into it, no joy at gliding lips skilfully up and down, no feeling of satisfaction as her man emptied the proof of his pleasure for her. Only a second had passed as these thoughts came into her mind but she had lost track of time until a movement from another customer wanting their bill returned her to the present.
She must have been a little flushed when she returned to the kitchen, because the chef asked if she would like a glass of water, as she was looking warm. She had taken him up on his offer in order to compose herself, unaware that chef was studying her.
Returning to the dining room, she had no further contact with the gentleman until he required the bill but he left her a substantial tip. Her first financial gain from men behaving badly, she had mused, but by causing her cheeks to redden he had also left her something else. That night, as the restaurant had been particularly busy, it was well past midnight before they finished serving. There were two other waitresses with whom she worked, and a knock on the door indicated that their taxis had arrived. There was still work to be done but J told them to go and she would help Chef to finish.
This took longer than she thought and as they finished Chef, after thanking her, asked if she would like a drink before going. They settled themselves in the kitchen - him on his stool, opening a bottle of wine, her on the central working surface which was now uncluttered and the metal surface shining clean. They made small talk as she became aware how tired she was and how glad she was to be sitting down. Another glass of wine was offered. She was in no rush. After all, she lived only round the corner. And on the third glass she heard gentle music playing in the background and, beginning to relax, felt glad she stayed.
Chef had moved his stool closer to her and, as the working surface she was sitting on was much higher than his stool, she realised that she was looking down on him - or was it him looking up at her? She smiled to herself at the question because Chef was a big man, 6'6" and all of 250 lbs. He no longer offered more wine, he just filled her glass without asking.
She felt good. She was so relaxed that when Chef tentatively placed his fingers ever so slightly on her leg she could only smile. And when the fingers became the whole hand which, on not being rejected, became more ambitious, she felt herself slide gently forward, felt his hand explore past her suspender, past that smooth part of her thigh, before it reached that part of her that few had explored but that she hoped in time, many would.
Then his fingers took up the search, pulling her panties to one side. Now both hands as he manoeuvred himself to have her dampness, her openness next to first his mouth, then his tongue, and she could not suppress her sounds of stimulation as she felt herself moving her bottom on the metal surface to make herself more available to him. His tongue worked furiously, finding parts in her wetness that even she did not know and as her body became part of the music in the background, as her head drifted past her dreams into uncharted territory, he took her. Not with the gentleness he had so far shown, but with a force that caused her insides to explode.
And weeks of sitting on the steps in the heat of sun, weeks of talking and longing, pushed her towards him to greet him. Her enthusiasm, and the way her sex stoked his sex as he took her, robbed him of his desire to make it last and as he arched his back with his final thrust before his strength deserted him the cry from his lips was of both joy and frustration that this most pleasurable experience was done.
He adjusted his clothing and, as J went to do the same, his hand rested on her hand and he asked her to let him look at her openness for just a little longer. As she sat there being observed she heard a voice in her head, the older lady’s voice, telling her how much pleasure some of her clients had when she explored her body with her own hands. Overwhelmed by this image, J felt her fingers slip through that bushy forest that protects the inner jewel to find the place for which she normally searches only in her own privacy and she watched his excitement as her fingers stroked the flesh which had become the very reason for her existence. She totally abandoned herself and would have fallen if he had not steadied her. Then he took her in his arms and thanked her.
And so it was to be every night after work when the others had gone.
As soon as the light from their taxis had passed out of view, he would check that the front door was locked, turn out the front lights and then take her into the kitchen. Sometimes his work would not be finished, but the central work surface would always be cleared and polished and he would sit her on it, placing a glass of wine next to her.
He would raise her buttocks to remove her panties then, lifting her feet so that they rested on the gleaming surface, he would open her knees, exposing her, and then he would tell her not to touch herself, but to think of nothing else other than that he would be up inside her as soon as his work was done.
And finish his work he always did, never once touching her until he had put away his last pan. Some nights she had waited over an hour before he finished his work and all that while sat with her knees up and apart, her treasures open to the world, longing, wanting and as he knew, becoming all the more wet. And always it was the same.
He would pour her some more wine then, after she had taken a few sips, he would cradle her head in his hands and start to kiss her. He was a wonderful kisser and never since has her mouth been so exquisitely explored, her lips, in such a fashion, been so prepared to take a cock.
When she felt herself sliding from this world, for so long had he kissed her, taking the very breath out of her body, he would bend her forward and guide her mouth over his stiffening sex. On many occasions the long wait and then the taste of his swollen gland, the gentle gliding of it in and out of her mouth, caused her to come even though he still had not touched her. And if this happened he would turn her round on the polished surface, now wet with her own juices and, with her head hanging down over the edge of the work top, re-enter his sex into her mouth and then, leaning forward, lift her buttocks with his hands, to raise her treasure on a level with his face so that his tongue and teeth could torment her. Then, having climaxed this way many times, she would scream for him to enter her with his cock, and only when she had pleaded and pleaded and he was satisfied that she was beside herself with wanting, did he penetrate her, with her coming many more times before their drive subsided.
Her days and nights were all idyllic. By day, when the sun shone, she sat and listened to the older woman on the steps, sometimes recalling her own previous night’s exploits. And by night, in her little black dress and ever so white pinny, she waited on her customers, happy in the knowledge that when all was quiet and the lights in the front had dimmed, she would take her place on the gleaming surface and wait.
But nothing stays the same.
J was educated but knew nothing. Chef was uneducated but knew much.
In the early summer when the restaurant was quiet the waitresses, including J, had sat round a table talking and drinking long cool drinks. As they had talked J watched a small hover fly, one of those beautiful ones with gossamer thin wings that turn pinks and blues when they catch the light, as it hovered and darted above the table. Then unexpectedly, for no reason, it plummeted into her drink and for a second she had thought it had drowned. Carefully she lifted it out with a spoon, and very gently turned it on to one of the soft, absorbent, white serviettes they used for the customers. She watched the fly as it slowly revived, as it tentatively stretched first its legs and then its body. When it was almost able to lift and open its wings, Chef joined them at the table and, looking in J’s direction, spotted the fly.
Leaning forward he squashed it with his closed fist, muttering something about the nuisance of flies before continuing his discourse with the waitress next to him. He was completely oblivious to the expression on J’s face or the significance of what he had done. She sat numbed for a second and then sighed that sigh of acceptance given when something irreversible has occurred but is of no earth shattering consequence.
In the space of less than five minutes, two personalities were revealed. The difference between Chef and J at this stage of the early summer had no relevance but this small act of extinguishing a life would be the very thing that would, eventually, change another.
The Second Phase
There are days - no not days, moments - in our lives when something happens that at the time can be insignificant, nothing to us, but eventually have a very profound effect on our lives. Chance or the wild card, the element over which we have no control, allows us to develop tangentially. And when we think back, we can almost pinpoint those moments, from which the question that usually arises is: “If that had not happened, or if I had not met them, what would my life be like now?”