PLEASE DON'T READ THIS SHORT STORY IF YOU HAVE A PHOBIA ABOUT AIR TRAVEL AND ARE ABOUT TO FLY
COME FLY WITH ME
Jessica always turned Brian’s photograph to
the wall when Clive was in bed with her.
It was as if she didn’t want him to see
what they were doing, and turning the strikingly blond, good-looking young man
away from the action, so to speak, was some kind of spectral or superstitious
means of preventing him from finding out what she and Clive were up to. What
they were doing, that is. Between the sheets. Behind Brian’s back. When he was
away. With nothing on but the CD player. In other words, as naked as the day
they were born.
Brian, the man in the picture now facing
nothing but the cracks in the plaster, was her fiancée. But he was away so
often recently that she found herself spending more and more time with Clive,
her new friend from the office. And most of their time together was spent in
bed where what they got up to was always more stimulating, daring and exciting
than anything she’d ever done with Brian.
For example, right now, he was standing at
the foot of the bed with an amazing looking battery-driven contraption. ‘Just
wait,’ he said, ‘you’ll love this when you see how it works. And when you feel how it works. Which is going to be as soon as I can get it going.
Are you sure you’re ready for a new and exciting experience?’ They both knew
that they both knew the answer to that rhetorical question.
Had this been Brian, she thought
fleetingly, he would probably have used a euphemism to ask if she minded taking
her clothes off. Despite his beautiful body, one that most men would have
grasped at every opportunity to show off, he was embarrassed by nudity.
Especially his own.
This puritan streak was probably because
Brian came from a dreary, prudish and narrow-minded family, and he’d been
unable to throw off his upbringing. So he rarely swore, he was disappointed
that Jessica didn’t like going to church with him on Sundays, he avoided
talking about their bodies, and although he’d had a few steady girlfriends, his
attitude towards sex could only be described as plodding.
Even though he was now her fiancée, she had
known him from childhood. So perhaps because they had grown up together had
something to do with it, or it may have been because they knew each other too
well, or maybe they saw their relationship as that of virtual brother and
sister, or, well… whatever it was, their physical relationship was not up to
scratch. No, not by a long chalk.
Clive was, in many ways, just the opposite,
and her new relationship with him had certainly stimulated her sexual appetite.
With a vengeance, as even she herself was inclined to conclude.
By now, it must be obvious surely, that
this is going into areas where some readers may not wish to go. In other words,
it’s not a conventional love story. So, although there’s no bad language,
please don’t read any further if you are offended by the exploration of sexual
matters, certain of which may be considered by some, perhaps more conventional
people, to be a little off the wall.
Jessica had initially been attracted by
Clive’s graceful, dark, and, despite his age, still youthful-looking,
androgynous, almost beautiful body. In Jessica’s limited, but not exactly
inexperienced opinion, he was quite well endowed, but even he could never
truthfully use a word as simple as big. What he
did with it was another thing. Something else altogether. And he was adept at
using other parts of his body too. Not only his hands and toes either. She soon
found out that his tongue was a worthy collaborator and he used it to
compliment his erectile muscle to a… well, what other word is there? To a
wonderful degree. And he had and cultivated a natural way of deriving pleasure
out of giving as well as receiving sexual stimulation.
LET’S TAKE OFF ...
Clive’s two passions in life were sex and
food.
His particular obsession within each of
these categories were the exploration of what is commonly known as BDSM in one,
and meat, particularly the cooking of steak, in the other.
Although armchair psychologists might find
it interesting to explore hidden, overt or subliminal links between, say, a
T-bone and what might be considered by some as somewhat unusual sexual
activities, that is of no consequence and it is not where this narritive is
going.
Fortuitously for Clive, and for Jessica,
probably, his metabolism had thus far protected him from the problems sometimes
associated with eating. And luckily for Clive, Jessica was not put off by what
some would consider a bizarre interest in the particualar sexual activities he
was intent on exploring. On the contrary, she seemed to find them stimulating,
interesting and enlightening.
On the downside, and there’s usually a
downside, Ciive was not particularly career-driven, his promotional prospects
were poor, and he had no wealthy relatives and not a penny to scratch his arse
with. So, short of marrying, winning or stealing money, his life was destined
to be middle-class-mundane. And his future would always be on a rung at the
lower end of the accounts department ladder. He did have some responsibility
for handling fairly large amounts of money, but he never took decisions, and
everything he did was always scrutinized by others.
But Jessica did notice one thing: although
he’d held the same position for years, despite his pedestrian job, and his
apparently mundane background, he always seemed to have the wherewithal to
indulge the two obsessions that interested him. Clubs and restaurants were
constantly on the agenda. And he was never short of a new sex toy or gadget
he’d found on the internet.
Let’s take time out here, several paragraphs
into Jessica’s story, to take stock of where we’re at. From what’s gone before,
it’s obvious that sex plays an important role in her life. And it’s a moot
point whether what she and her lover are about to indulge in is normal or not.
Although some hold the point of view that
these particular sexual adventures are outside of the norm, others believe that
we have simply been misled by those who, for whatever reason, would prefer sex
to be quick, mundane, unadventurous and exclusively for procreational purposes.
The missionary position (face to face, lights out, curtains closed, minimal
removal of garments, etc, etc) did not become a jocular metaphor because of the
unpopularity of the modus operandi. Just the opposite. At one time, most
couples knew no other positions, experimentation and discussion were rare, and
they almost always did nothing else.
However, thanks probably to blue movies,
dirty books and information from the internet, attitudes, ideas and practices
have changed. Although there is a fine line, and not every whim or predilection
or new idea can be condoned, many practices remain off limits, and are probably
illegal, even as far as libertine ideas are concerned. But the point of this
long and fast-becoming boring paragraph is to warn that some of what happens
here could offend. It’s up to you whether you read on or not. But if you’re a
wowser please don’t go past this full stop.
Now that you’ve had your second warning,
let’s go back to Jessica’s lover.
Clive also had the attribute to be able to
tell sexually stimulating anecdotes.
‘I find it really interesting that so many
people are so inhibited by their backgrounds,’ he told Jessica one day. ‘Their
narrow mindedness. And their unadventurous attitudes. To sex, I mean. You know
I told you about that holiday I had a few months ago, just before we got
together. Well, I met this couple.
James and Sonja, I think their names were, but it doesn’t’ matter. It
was great. We had such good fun. And now it’s over. We’ll probably never see
each other again. No harm done. Everyone enjoyed what we did. No one was
coerced into doing anything they didn’t want to do. A great time was had by
all, and now we’re back to our separate routines. And we’ve taken up our own
lives again.’
I'LL BE HOLDING YOU ...
Despite his peculiarities, and
predilections, and he had many, Clive had also recently discovered that there
was another dimension to sex, one that had eluded him for many years. Prior to
this revelation, he had been intent on his own pleasure. He did what interested
him. Things that he found stimulating, and he
made sure hat his partner did what she, and if truth be told, on one or two
rare occasions, what he, his partner, that is, was encouraged to do to enhance
Clive’s stimulation and enjoyment. He found now that he got a large dollop of
gratification out of giving sexual pleasure to others.
One of his favourite subjects in a
repertoire of many concerning his love affair with food, Clive was prepared to
speak for hours on beef and the preparation thereof. Jessica remembered the
first time he described his passion for garlic steak. Succulent. Spicy.
Pungent. Juicy. Rare. ‘It’s almost a love affair,’ she though. ‘As if he’s
describing a sexual contact in detail.’
‘And my life’s ambition,’ he added, ‘is to
have a few steak meals in South America. Grass-fed beef is the best in the
world, and I intend to get down there one day.’
A FLYING HONEYMOON
‘I’ve been a thief since I was very young,’
Clive said after a rather energetic and hectic round of lovemaking. Jessica was
just coming down from her cloud, and she wasn’t sure weather she was tired,
disconcerted by, or had miss-heard what he’d said.
Clive studied her reaction. ‘Yes, you heard
correctly. I said I like stealing things. I’ve done it all my life.’
‘I remember stealing trinkets from my
mother’s dressing table.’
He got out of bed and poured himself a
glass of wine. He stood naked at the window drinking and looking out across the
sprawling city. ‘Then I took my best friends most prized possession. A set of
collectable cards of cowboys given out by our local cinema at Saturday morning
matinees. At he time he was devastated, and he only found out who’d taken them
many years later when I eventually told him. And even then I think he always
held it against me. Until he died, anyway, because he’s dead now.’
ONCE I GET YOU THERE...
They’d been in the swank latin American
hotel for about a week when he described another of what he called turning
point in his life.
‘I remember when I bought my first dildo,’
he told her as he placed batteries into a sleeve in a long, black, lumpy
apparatus. ‘Not for me, I mean. No, no, nothing like that. I know it’s becoming
fashionable for men, but I’m not quite there yet. No, I mean for one of my
first girlfriends. In those days it was illegal to advertise this kind of
thing, so the manufacturers called them neck massagers.’ Clive laughed. ‘Can you believe that? Who on earth needs a neck
massage?’
Jessica lay enjoying the unseen charges flowing from the mental stimuli and anticipation that preceeded and unlocked the internal fluctuation of hormones and anticipating the arousal that always followed the physical stimulation of erogenous and physically sensitive zones.
Clive was biting at the packaging that
housed the batteries. ‘Of course I’m talking about long before the days of
online shopping, which is where I got this interesting looking little number.
Well, not so little, I suppose. In those days you’d see small classifieds,
that’s what they were called. Advertisements, that is, in local newspapers. In
amongst ads for used cars, paint, carpets and cheap holidays. Anyway, there
they were. These old, black and white photos of women holding a weird looking
thingo up to their faces. So, in fact, they were massaging themselves as far as
possible from the area they’d been designed for.’ He sniggered. ‘If you get
what I mean.’
So. When he’d first shown it to her, she
had difficulty hiding her surprise. ‘What on earth’s that, Clive? Something to
tether a horse to?’
While he was preparing to make it work she
studied his no longer quite so slim brown body. He was dark, velvety brown,
with curly, long, black hair and a perfect complexion. His mixed ancestry had
provided the genes that resulted in a well-built but wiry physique. His face
had the chiseled appearance of a rugged, perhaps slightly unfinished ebony
carving. His eyes were almost black. And he was circumcised. For whatever
reason, but certainly not religious, he’d been ritually deprived of his
foreskin soon after birth. Perhaps it was simply the custom in his country.
Jessica never knew whether this aspect was a positive or negative in other men,
but in Clive, weather or not there is any relationship between sexual prowess
and this ritual assault on the male body (as it’s deemed to be today), he was
certainly pretty good in bed.
And now he was ready, she could see that
quite clearly. In more ways than one. Because the machine was buzzing. Ready
for action, as they say. And quite excited about it. That was abundantly
apparent as well.
One doesn’t have to be a member of MENSA or
president of the crossword solving society to discern that this kind of
extended holiday is destined not to last. Especially when it’s been paid for
with money that should rightfully have still been in a pension fund.
Eventually everything started to go
pear-shaped as cracks developed in their relationship. Money was no object
because it was not theirs, but even other people’s money has a tendency to run
out.
They moved into a cheaper hotel, and not
long afterwards were forced into a really cheap hotel.
And then their physical relationship
started to unwind. Perhaps it was because Jessica decided she didn’t like
something he did, or maybe she thought involving other partners was not quite
her thing at that particular time, or it’s possible that she decided that
sexual activities with too much alcohol or chemical substances or too many
mechanical sex toys or just too much sex was beginning to pall.
Whatever it was, when she woke up one
morning in what was a rather dingy room, Clive was gone. Which meant she was in
trouble. A long way from home. A foreign country. Poor language skills. And,
worst of all, penniless.
To cut what’s getting to be a long short
story short, Brian came to the rescue. Humble pie behind her, and after several
weeks of very trying experiences, he provided the wherewithal and Jessica
eventually flew home on a budget airline. He was at the airport to meet her.
Please don’t enquire whether they lived
together happily ever after. That’s beside the point. And who cares anyway? The
important issue now, is to find out what happened to Clive.
Well, he stayed on with what was left of
the money he’d extorted which seems a little euphemistic, because stolen would probably be a better way to describe it. But eventually he
decided that he’d return home, hoping he’d find a way not to face the
music.
PACK UP LET’S FLY AWAY
But one never knows what’s round the next
corner in life, and Brian wasn’t ever going to answer any questions about
missing money. A small mechanical contraption invented by and named after the
French scientist Henri Pitot over two hundred years ago would see to that.
Here’s how and why.
Using the last of his ill-gotten gains, and
his ability to chat up women easily and glibly, Clive put on a long face and
explained to the Air France ground hostess that his partner had died on
holiday. He persuaded her to redeem the two return tourist tickets and upgrade
them for a business class seat home. He paid a nominal surcharge.
Amongst the many people Clive knew or had
known, there is still a wide range of attitudes and conclusions concerning what
happened next. Because of his ingrained and sanctimonious upbringing, Brian
said it was retribution. He talked Jessica into believing that it was some kind
of divine justice being handed out. A vengeance treasured up to be delivered at
a suitable time.
Some of his colleagues saw it as just
desserts for having taken their and the company’s money. A few simply shrugged.
They perceived it as something that just happens. Like waste building up in living
creatures until it’s released. An everyday event in the normal course of
events. Like believing in a fixed, predetermined or natural order. In other
words, fate.
Whatever it was, this is what happened.
INTO THE BLUE
Unbeknown to anyone at the time, Air France
was about to experience a problem with their pitot tubes on AF447 from Rio to
Paris.
Just over three hours into the flight,
Clive was sipping a scotch and soda, playing with the ice cubes with his
finger, and chatting about this and that to a very attractive young woman while
he was thinking about asking her to join him in the toilet. Although this is
not that common a subject these days, it was what was once jocularly described
as the mile high club.
They were both startled by an unusual
sound. Only the flight crew recognized this as a stall warning as the aircraft
shifted into a nose up position. Inexperienced flying training and badly chosen
attempts to correct the problem then caused it to start a rapid descent.
The woman he was talking to smashed into
the seat in front. Blood and mucus flew in all directions.
The glass flew out of Clive’s hands as a
forest of plastic masks and tubes released themselves automatically.
Overhead lockers burst open and baggage
shot around the cabin at lethal speeds. Several passengers died immediately as
flying luggage smashed into them. Seats became dislodged and huge gyroscopic
energy forced even strapped-in passengers up towards the ceiling and then down
again with tremendous force as the plane rolled over and started it’s descent.
People were shrieking and shouting and praying. Children were crying and babies
were floating about as gravity was neutralized and turned on its head. Those
who fainted or were knocked out could be considered the lucky ones. Being
unconscious, they were spared the expanding nightmare as the airbus went
through an aerodynamic stall and into a dive. Clive was amongst those who were
still awake, terrified and overwhelmed with fear, their sphincters grappling to
prevent bodily discharges, an adrenalin rush and additional dopamine pumping
around their bodies and priming them for fight or fleeing neither of which was
an option because all that was left was to wait it out as time slid slowly by
and they passed into the long dark passages of living hell and the next few
minutes expanded in their minds into hours of an extended nightmare.
And all this, According to the French
Aviation Authority’s report, because the failure of the tiny aforementioned
pitots resulted in a fatal loss of air speed causing the Air France aircraft to
experience a disasterous loss of power which caused it to hurtle towards the ocean
surface at 90 miles per hour and completely break up on impact.
*****
