Monday 13 October 2008

Danielle

On Saturday I did my first shift at C bar. I’m already a mate to the staff so I fit right in. There are plenty of girls and the dress code is casual. I like it there. Takes ages to pick up, but when it does the graft is hard and fast.

Afterwards we went to W bar for the last hour of the night. C shuts early- it’s considered a middle-of-the-night bar. After 2am C staff are the only people the Walkabout doormen let through. By this time I’d already hammered some JD and continued to do so once in there.
Bumped into Danielle, a girl I’ve been flirting with for the last 2 years nearly. For one reason or another we just never got together- we’d be with other people, or I’d be too shy, or whatever.

Tonight there was nothing stopping us.

“Come back with me, Matt,” she said. “I won’t try it on with you, I promise.”

Strange way of flirting, I thought. But I’d be grateful for anything she could do for me, as Edward Norton would say. Of course I went back with her.

This isn’t the first time I’d been to Danielle’s house. I finished uni in February 2005. I’d spent three and a half years there and I never got sex. Almost did a few times, but never really found the right situation.

When I left uni I spent a week looking for work. I dished out a few forms but didn’t really find much. On Saturday night my esteem, newly replenished from finally finishing higher education for good, was about to be battered senseless.

A friend of Danielle’s came to Walkabout with her. I’d met Adrienne the previous Halloween: I pulled her when I was glass collecting, dressed as a fireman. It was like the set of a very twisted porn shoot- Danielle was dressed as a nurse in white PVC and Adrienne was in full police uniform. I’d acquired the uniform from Heather, a flatmate from uni. Her then-boyfriend had been given the genuine fire services attire by a friend of his. Heather had told me he’d worn it for her in the bedroom and she just laughed at him and told him to take it off. So I was a bit sceptical about the effect it would have.

My scepticism was quickly erased: most women loved it. Danielle told me she LOVED firemen. I told her I loved nurses. Then she told me she had a boyfriend.

I kissed Adrienne before I even spoke to her. After this I ended up pulling about four other girls.
Danielle came back to me, and she was genuinely mad.

“Why are you being so nasty to my mate?”

I thought, who? I said, “What?”

“You are, you walked over there, you went with her, you walked round there and you went with her too!”

Who am I being nasty to? I remember meeting Emma, some stunner dressed as a Playboy bunny. Danielle had introduced me to her. But I didn’t kiss her. Danielle had an expression of utter disgust- she was genuinely mad at me for some reason. It took me weeks to figure out whom Danielle was talking about. The girl’s faces, outfits, and what I did with them, it was all a blur.

Danielle going mental at me had really fucked up my night. I felt like I couldn’t look at any girls. I felt guilty but I couldn’t figure out why. I started to construct an apology for next week, but I couldn’t because I could (already) only remember bits of the night.

Over the next couple of months I apologised, flirted, tried to get with her- shyness kept getting in the way. It looked like I just plain wasn’t going to get sex. I’d even had a lengthy text conversation with Danielle, which stopped for no reason at all. Then I finished uni.

The week I handed in my work, I shit you not- Adrienne came back into the bar. I pulled her again. She came to me just before closing time and stood on the foot rail, leaning over the bar.

“What are you doing later?”

No way. Why has she asked me this now? I gave her my number when she first met me. Why hasn’t she rang before? Another guy, maybe? Something wasn’t right.

“Not much.”

“D’you wanna come back to mine?”

She already knew the answer. But it was to be half three by the time I could get out of there. I
had all the glasses to wash and the floor behind the bar to scrub down. I was already fucked from getting about 6 hours sleep the night before: I’d worked the Friday night, then got up and gone to some building in Glodwick or somewhere where they were soon to broadcast a temporary community radio station. I wanted involvement. Then I’d been up all day, gone into Walkabout, glass-collected, met Adrienne again, pulled her again.

I necked a Red Bull at 3:30 and flagged down a cab. I was ringing Adrienne trying to find out where the hell Danielle’s house was but my battery kept dying, my pen was leaking all over my hands and notebook and the Asian taxi driver was taking the piss (“You’re supposed to be goin’ for a shag and you don’t know where she lives…”)

When I got there something was wrong. Adrienne let me in and Danielle was on the phone, arguing.

“That’s not the same person, Dan. Dan, that’s not her.” Adrienne’s explanations were falling on deaf ears as Danielle wasn’t backing down.

BANG BANG BANG.

Someone was at the door, and they wanted in. Admittedly, I shit myself. I wouldn’t have admitted it then.

BANG BANG CRACK.

A window on the door had been put through. Danielle was already on the phone to the Police.

“There’s kids in here!” She was yelling at the strangers outside while waiting to be connected. Then we heard the taxi drive off.

“Does someone wanna tell me what’s going on?” I was thinking, these people haven’t got a clue what’s going through my mind right now.

While we waited for the police Adrienne told me that there had been an argument at the taxi rank. It seems they’d followed her home. We were sat on the sofa, and the house was freezing. She told me she was a dance teacher, and she showed me a few grazes from the moves that she’d been doing. I thought, she looks way too young to be a dance teacher.

I went upstairs to wash the ink off my hands and when the police arrived I pretended I wasn’t there. After this Danielle took her fella Kev upstairs. This is when all the previous tensions- would I find the house, were we all going to get battered by local hoodlums, why had Danielle stopped talking to me, how long had she been with her fella- all of this gave way to one issue of discomfort- Adrienne wants sex from me. She doesn’t know I’m a virgin and I’m nervous as fuck. Me and Adrienne were on the lounge couch.

“Are you tired?” How weird is this? I’m with a fit girl and I’m trying to talk her out of sex. Am I just insane?

“Not really,” she said. This put the tension up a notch- there was no doubt she’d invited me for sex. She’d been dancing all night and it was past four AM.

We went upstairs.

“This house is freezing, Danielle.” I had to keep talking. I didn’t want so show any nervousness
at all.

“I know, its ‘cause I went out with the gas money! Ha ha!”

“You’ve straightened your hair haven’t you? Thought you looked different. It’s nice.”

Christ, I thought. That’s the most I’ve said to her in about 2 weeks.

In a few moments time I was waiting in a spare room with a single bed, and it was even colder now that I was only in designer boxers. Adrienne came in wearing a nightie and she looked beautiful. Something wasn’t right. Why was a girl this hot inviting me back with her? What’s the catch? The thought of having sex with her seems unlikely. If it was this easy, why hadn’t it happened before? But surely nothing could go wrong.

It wasn’t until we’d kissed in bed that I got the shakes. My cocky glass-collecting persona was long gone- she was looking into the eyes of a twenty-two-year-old boy.

“What’s wrong?”

“Would you believe me if I told you I was a virgin?”

I think she did. I can’t really remember what happened next. I just spent ages kissing her. I drew out foreplay- not because the books and columns in Loaded etc say you should- just because I was putting off what I was afraid of. She had a great body and I kissed her neck and shoulders and breasts and I sucked her nipples and they tasted great. She responded well and when she lay down I stroked her thigh. She had great legs. She took off her underwear and I stroked her clit with my fingertips.

I expected her to say, “what the fuck are you doing, you fucking ametuer,” and push my hand away from her. But she closed her eyes and her breathing become audible and heavy. I was studying her expression in the dark, convinced she was acting. After a few minutes I put two fingers in.

She wasn’t complaining. I had no idea whether or not she was just playing along with me, or even totally acting that it felt good. I was flexing my index and middle finger- something I’d got to work on two other girls. They weren’t anywhere near as fit as Adrienne though.

After a few minutes my wrist started to burn.

“Is this going to work?”

“Don’t stop.”

She was pushing her hips down onto my fingers and I increased tempo to match her.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t stop.”

Her insides started to suck on my fingers and she moaned when she came. My fingers were wet and the smell reminded me of times years ago- Gorton with Rachel, Stalybridge and Clayton with Christine…

Adrienne kissed me. “For a virgin, you’re fucking good at that, Matt.”

“I’ve done that before,” I admitted.

She started to stroke my cock. Meanwhile, Danielle was having audible sex in the next room. The stress and tension was too much. I wanted to explain so much to Adrienne but if I did she’d run a fucking mile. I was thinking about a million thoughts a second- something people still tell me I shouldn’t.

I never thought I’d lose a hard-on for a fit girl. I didn’t think it was possible. But I just couldn’t focus on the job in hand. I felt sick and terrified- if I fucked up in a situation like this, I could be wrong about anything. I had to cover my face. This was too much.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It happened with my ex a couple of times.”

Within minutes she was snoring loudly in my ear as I stared into space thinking, this changes everything. This is bad.

It took me months to realise that it was all nerves. There was nothing remotely wrong with me, and it wasn’t such a big deal. Eventually I saw it as a success- considering everything that happened that night, I still made her come. She even dropped me off at home!

It also took months to make friends with Danielle. After that we just kept not quite getting together. I was too shy probably.

Last weekend- 2 years later- Danielle pushes the envelope. She took me to her new home in Middleton. She tried to find the photograph of me kissing Adrienne the first time I met her, but couldn’t.

She took me upstairs. She was so into me that she kept saying, “I feel sick… Not in a bad way though.”

I couldn’t help asking about Adrienne. I reminded Danielle that she was going home with Kev and that Adrienne had left her car at Danielle’s house. She had to go back to Danielle’s.
“Yeah, but what you don’t know, is that she invited another two guys back that night. Then she got into an argument with them at the taxi rank, told them to fuck off, and they followed us home. That whole thing was because of you.”

“Oh, fuck…” This is like a fucking Hitchcock film, I thought. “Now I feel sick…”

I kissed Danielle again and fell asleep holding her. Everything was okay. I’ll probably have sex with her next week. She’s told me I can go round whenever I want. The next morning she even made me cheese on toast and paid for my taxi!

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