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Kiss and Tell by Anthony A Waugh
Monday, February 25, 2008
Not rated by the Author.
Sometimes even the most boring of parties can turn interesting. A young woman's fantasy (almost) comes true .
He’s saying her name but he’s kissing me.
How did I get here? I’ll have to flash back to earlier tonight, or last night to be more precise. Actually I should go back just a bit further and explain.
When I was invited over to Jeff’s place for ‘drinks and laughs’, I asked who else was going because that’s what you have to do to be sure that you don’t end up at the wash out of the year. Not that it was likely with Jeff. He usually had a good group and the nights were a lot of fun, if a bit hazy afterwards. He said that Caroline would be there, (like I couldn’t figure that one out for myself seeing as how they were going together for two years already), and that her sister Maggie would be there with her boyfriend and that a couple of other singles would come along and so I wouldn’t feel like the odd one out. He wasn’t condescending about it but it still carved another notch on my ego. I’m not bad looking and I have a good figure but I don’t have a lot of confidence because I think my teeth stick out. Not much, but enough to make the smile a bit forced looking, if you know what I mean. I’m constantly curtailing my smile to keep the upper teeth covered and it makes me look a bit moody or something, which I’m not at all. I’ve had boyfriends of course but nothing very serious. No need to feel sorry for me or anything, I’m the one who usually breaks it off. I don’t know why. I just go off them after a while. I sometimes think I would attract a better class of fella, not in that way, I mean the sort I would be more likely to keep around, if I just got the teeth fixed and let the smile come on through. But I’m getting away from the story of that night.
I’d heard about Maggie’s boyfriend from Christine, who’s another one of the crowd that gets together in various permutations every weekend, either at a pub or someone’s flat or, if we’re really lucky, someone’s house when the folks are away. He, Maggie’s boyfriend that is, was supposed to be something special. That’s because Maggie goes on and on about him to everyone. Quite the ride, according to her and she should know. No, forget that; it’s very catty. Anyway, I never met him so I was looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about.
So, I got to Jeff’s a bit early. He has a two bedroom flat in Ranelagh that’s the biggest pad anyone of us can afford. With a name like Jeff you could probably guess that the folks are a bit ‘well off’ and I suppose they help him out. Anyway, it was one of the favourite places to hang out, so I was surprised that more people didn’t show up. Caroline was already there, OF COURSE, when I arrived and so was Geraldine, one of the singles. She was a single by choice. Didn’t ‘have time’ for boyfriends; too involved in getting the old degree and planning for a financially independent future. Still she’s always been good fun. I suppose she needs to let the hair down every now and again. I’m not sure if tonight is a now or an again but there she was.
Georgie arrived next. He’s a short, funny sort of fella; always lots of jokes to tell and also great at parties, but apparently not boyfriend material because he’s never been out with a girl more than once in a row. One pal of ours told us that he ‘jokes and jokes and jokes and then goes straight for your crotch’. I don’t know if that’s true but I never felt the need to find out for myself so my interaction with him is limited to parties like this.
We were making short work of the first vodka and cokes when Maggie and Tom arrived. Maggie likes to make an entrance and she has the goods to get that particular job done. She’s five foot ten at least, built like you know what AND she is good looking in that blond film star way that we all envy. Caroline is probably better looking but she has nothing like the chassis that Maggie inhabits. She was wearing a mini-dress that could pass as a blouse and looks like she came right off a pedestal in some Greek temple and I was suddenly conscious of my tee shirt top and skirt that comes down to a couple of inches over my knees. I tried to ignore her grand entrance and steal a gander at Tom.
If Maggie is five foot ten then Tom is five foot nine. I suppose that I was expecting him to be taller; I don’t know why. I was kind of surprised to see that he’s pretty average looking. Build .. average; face …average; hair …average; eyes…ohh!
Let me explain. He shook hands with Jeff and Georgie and kissed Caroline and Ger, then he turned to me as Jeff introduced me and he made a grand play of kissing my hand and everyone laughed. But he never took his eyes off mine when he did it and those eyes just mesmerized me. I couldn’t be sure if I had soaked through his eyes or he had melted through mine, but I had a sensation like a ghost had found its way into my head and was writing down all my secrets on some vaporous tablet of smoke. Then he smiled and his eyes lost that intense look and smiled along with his mouth and the rest of his face.
“You can let go the hand now, thanks.”
I looked down and was mortified to see that I had grasped his hand kind of tight and was still holding on.
“Jesus, wait ‘til we at least have a drink”, says Maggie, slapping my hand away.
There was a laugh in her voice but not in her eyes.
It turns out that this is the extent of the invitation list, ‘only the best of us’ says Jeff which probably means that he has a limited supply of vodka and weed, so we all sit around on the floor. (It’s a big flat but there are only two chairs in the sitting room). The bottles of vodka and the cokes are close at hand and the weed is on the chair next to Jeff. Caroline puts some music on, Moody Blues getting all grandiose singing about transcendental meditation as if they invented it, great for getting buzzed to, and we top up our vodka and cokes, pass a joint around and start talking about all sorts of shit. It’s the usual stuff at first; what happened at work during the day; a bit of slagging on the people who aren’t here and what can we afford to do, or not do, for the rest of the weekend. When Ger starts bitching about classes, which bores the hell out of everyone, we tell her to shut up and get a job and we all laugh and she laughs too because she knows how boring she sounds going on about macro economics or whatever. The conversation gets fractured and the words just fly around the room so that you get the gist of whatever conversation you’re supposed to be a part of plus random phrases from others. I think Tom asked me what I do, but hoots of laughter from Georgie, damn him, interrupt before I can answer. Maggie tells me about a chap in her office that she thinks I would like and I’m thinking; there’s a chap right here I wouldn’t mind; and I’m also thinking I’d like to have those eyes soak me in again but my thoughts just flit on by, like the words that seem to have lives of their own, and float around the room. It’s like we are all just mouthing words but there isn’t any cohesive sentence to be found. It’s just the sounds. I start to think that the sounds are getting me as almost as high as the vodka and grass and I’m ready to just float away on the mélange. Then…
… Georgie stands up and goes to the chair that’s not occupied by the weed. He sits down all regal like and says he thinks we should have a literary evening and we all laugh again, because it’s such a stupid idea, until he produces a book from his jacket pocket and hands it around. It’s called something like Royal Flush and it’s a sex book with characters that are based on the royal family. Everyone except Ger thinks it’s a gas idea, so we have another round of drinks and Jeff rolls another joint. After draining half her vodka and coke and taking a drag, Ger suddenly seems to like the idea more and even volunteers to start the ball rolling.
Of course we don’t read the book from cover to cover. Each one chooses the passage they want to read and goes on as long as they want, or as long as the rest can stand it. I’m stealing looks at Tom and I’m ready to insert him into my fantasy version of the book, and anywhere else he wants to go… Jesus that’s the booze talking!
Ger reads a bit about ‘Princess Margo’ and ‘Tony Cockstrong-Jones’ but gets red when it involves a maid and some amazing anatomical maneuvers. She starts to read faster and rushes to the climax (sorry) of the passage before she passes the book over to me. I go flipping through looking for something good when Tom reaches over and says something like here I’ll pick a bit for you. He just flicks through a couple of times and seemingly stops at random at a page and then gives the book back to me. I notice that Maggie is giving him devil’s looks and I’m not sure why.
I read a bit about the same maid and a chauffeur up to high jinks in the royal rolls and I’m starting to imagine that it’s me and Tom and that’s when I suppose I stopped reading like just a book and started reading like it was a rehearsal for a play. I did a couple of plays in school and I was told I was pretty good, but I never had the nerve to take it any further. Anyway, I guess I still had some talent because Jeff reaches over and grabs the book saying that I’m getting everybody all hot and bothered and Georgie will jump me in a minute unless I stop. I’m thinking that I wouldn’t necessarily mind being jumped but I bite my tongue, drain the last of my vodka and coke and volunteer to pour the next round while Tom picks out the bit he’ll read. It turns out to be a return bout between the maid and the chauffeur but with Margo getting in on the act which is all played out in the servants’ quarters. If the real royals did anything like this they’d be a lot more fun. I bet the applications for maids and chauffeurs would come pouring in!
By the time Jeff gets his turn, and he’s last to go, we’re all pretty well drunk but no one is totally blotto. After Jeff bores us all to tears by reading about the only two pages in the book that have no sex in them, just to see if we’re paying attention, he says, we just sit around listening to more music. The two sets of turtle doves are just folded into each other so naturally, like they’re only two persons instead of four. Georgie starts coming on a bit to Ger, not by the joke, joke crotch method, thank god, but cuddling up and whispering sweet somethings in her ear. Ger is giving him the cold shoulder but in a roundabout way, if you know what I mean. She’s not pushing him away, but she’s not exactly cooperating either. It’s like she might like a piece of cake but can’t be bothered doing any slicing, or maybe she’s like the last girl asked up to dance, who’d prefer not to dance rather than to be seen as the last one picked. That’s kind of the story of my life, Jeff thought Georgie was getting ready to jump me and there he goes hitting on Ger. I pretend that I’m enjoying the side show but it does hurt, you know. Deep down there’s a little wobble in the pit of the stomach, like there’s something trying to find a way out; it’s not enough to make you sick but enough to be uncomfortable. I’m not maudlin about it and it’s probably just the wages of highness, but I can see the plain ironic fact that I’m attracted to Tom and I can’t even get Georgie’s attention. Not that I’m trying, I mean I could get his attention in a hundred different ways, but that’s not the point. Or maybe it is. If he was hitting on me I’d be doing the same as Ger, not wanting to encourage him, but enjoying the attention for the time being.
I’m cursing Jeff for not inviting another fella which would at least minimize my odd man out feeling, (which he promised me would not be the case), when, in her own majestic way Maggie rises, stretches to the full five ten, which drags the mini dress up to her phenomenal hips, and announces it’s bedtime for her, which means it’s also bedtime for Tom. They go into one of the bedrooms and that basically brings the night to a halt, because Ger finally tells Georgie to piss off and he grabs a cushion and goes off to the other side of the room and lies down. I guess he wasn’t too hot to trot because he’s asleep in about ten seconds. Jeff and Caroline go into the other bedroom and Ger and I just grab some more cushions and lay down on the floor. I hear her breathing becoming more even and I realize that she is also asleep within a minute or two. I’m still a bit, no a lot, hot about the story and Tom and I’m not helped by the sounds coming from Jeff and Caroline. They’re in the bedroom across from me, I’m on the floor right outside the room where Maggie and Tom went but I can hear nothing from there. I start to listen a bit harder and I think I hear words spoken under the breath. It’s hard to hear what with the competition from the other bedroom but it seems that most of the talking is coming from Maggie and I crawl a bit closer to the door to hear a bit better. She seems to be upset about what ‘went on’ tonight but I’m buggered if I can think what might be pissing her off, then I hear my name and it’s like she spit it out so I scurry back to where I was and put my head on the cushion. Maybe I was a bit too obvious in checking Tom out and Maggie is pissed off at both of us, although why she should give him a hard time is beyond me because he hardly even looked at me except for picking that part of the book for me to read. I’m still not certain that he actually asked me a question earlier. God with the booze and weed I’m having a hard time sorting through what I might have done or said.
I’m trying to get to sleep when the bedroom door opens and someone comes out. I have my back to the door so I only feel someone put a cushion on the floor between me and Ger and then they lie down. It’s Tom, thrown out by Maggie the stupid bitch. I’m wondering if I can get the nerve to turn around when he starts to snore and I’m thinking how come everyone goes right off to sleep in seconds and I just lie here wide awake. Even Jeff and Caroline are silent now after the noisy acrobatics of earlier.
I turn over so I’m facing Tom and, OH MY GOD; in his sleep he stretches his arm out and over me. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to sleep now but, without any conscious effort I must have dozed for an hour or so. Something wakes me up and I find that it’s his lips right on mine and I get a quick flash-thought of Sleeping Beauty but it’s gone in a blink and I’m not sure how to react. He seems like he’s still asleep but he’s definitely kissing me ever so slowly and dreamily, so I kiss back and his tongue sort of traces my stick out teeth and I’m going nuts because if I’m dreaming this it’s very nice but I’m sure I’m awake and it feels fantastic. He’s mumbling something in his sleep and all of a sudden his hand is on my arse and then sliding down my leg and then up again. I shift around so his hand goes up between my legs and I’m buzzing in a way that vodka or hash could never achieve. Now I can hear what he’s mumbling and I don’t care; I’m just taking this along wherever it goes and damn the consequences.
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