Chapter 3
Friday nights are meant to be a joyous occasion as the rigmarole of work clears the mind and is replaced by a calming sense of freedom but I walked through my front door at the end of that week to be met by James in his boxer shorts, clearly very happy with himself, so I knew Jess couldn’t be too far away.
“Hello mate,” he said cheerfully, “Good day at work?” he asked, continuing on into the living room.
“Hello Tel!” Jess yelled from inside the room, her tones longingly resonating through my body whilst simultaneously filling my blood with anger.
“Hi,” I replied trying to be cool and collected but as soon as I walked into the room and saw Jess in nothing but James’s light blue shirt, barely covering her ass cheeks, I went all weak at the knees and got flustered. “Oh, I err, how you doing?”
James laughed, taking my reaction for embarrassment whilst Jess just sat there smiling wickedly, refusing to get dressed. It had been a while since she told me I was her number two but she would have been an idiot to think my feelings had changed so I was almost certain she knew what her lack of clothing would do to me.
“We’re going to get a chinese and a bottle of wine if you want to join us mate? You’ve got no plans tonight have you?” James asked.
I didn’t have any plans, he was right, although it wasn’t nice of him to presume so I tried to act on impulse and think of an excuse on the spot but my brain has never functioned in anything less than one thought at a time and at that moment it was being occupied by Jess’s lack of attire.
“Err, well, I was going to do this thing that I had on, just something with…work but, yeah, I could stay here maybe. Let me just think…” I unconvincingly answered, looking up to the ceiling pretending to flip through the diary in my head, “Yeah I’m sure we could do it some other time so I might just join you actually,” I pathetically said, getting out my phone and pretending to text a cancellation message to a fabricated work colleague.
I was a glutton for punishment really because I knew exactly how the night would end; I had been there a dozen times before. We would have a takeaway, I would regret it not long afterwards (chinese always seems a good idea until you’ve eaten it), there would be a few drinks consumed during a movie and then, around midnight, they would go to bed and bonk the living daylights out of each other, leaving me to watch ten free minutes of dirty channels, keeping the volume so low that barely an owl could hear it. It was torture for me and demoralising to boot but I continuously let my heart rule my head and the thought of being inches from Jess for five whole hours was a teasing proposition, especially when, if I tilted my head to a certain angle, I could virtually see her lady bits.
When James left to fetch a menu from the kitchen draw I found myself face to face with my tormentor.
“I think I should go and get changed,” I said, clearly trying to get out of what I felt was an awkward situation whilst she sat there leaving little to the imagination.
“Oh no, don’t Tel. I’ll be all alone if you do. Tell me about your day,” Jess pleaded, a wide and friendly smile stretching across her face as she jumped up on the sofa, crossed her svelte legs and stared straight at me, one of the buttons coming loose on her shirt as she did so. It took all my will power not to jump over the living room table and waft little Terence in her face but for reasons of decorum I decided not to.
Jess had this ability to make everything else in life feel insignificant compared to merely being in her company. One glance from her and I was besotted, I would do whatever she asked which is why I stayed in my seat and discussed my day with her, like a good egg. She probably knew it had been as mundane as any other day but I didn’t want to admit to her that my life was boring so, of course, I tried to spruce up the details as much as I could. I know I shouldn’t have but I worried deeply about what she thought.
Sitting near Jess, her flesh on show, my heart raced, desperate to be with her. She was so close yet so far away but I knew I couldn’t have her and for the sake of my friendship with James, I knew I had to stop wishing I could and see her in no other light than a friend, albeit a sexy one with killer legs but a friend all the same.
When James returned I left to get changed but I eventually took up my place on the second hand single green velvet chair, opposite loves young dream who would lie together on the brown leather sofa, one unaware of what that did to me and the other possibly very much aware.
I dared not divert my eyes towards Jess when the three of us were together, I refused to even glance in her direction, in fear that just one look would reveal my true feelings. Even when she asked me to pass the salt I handed it to her with my attention firmly on the television, pretending that Back to the Future was so captivating I could not bear to leave it for one second, even though I’d watched it about thirty times.
Sure enough, when the credits rolled and the chinese sat uncomfortably on my stomach, the taste glued to my oesophagus, James and Jess made their excuses and rushed off to bed. It was always a double edged sword when they did so. Part of me hated the thought of the two of them going at it hammer and tongs directly above my head but there was another part of me, the perverted side, who fantasised over what she was like in the bedroom, what noises she made, what she would and wouldn’t do. James, for all his sins, rarely discussed what type of sexual partner she was so when they were fornicating upstairs and I was downstairs, eagerly awaiting midnight to strike, I couldn’t stop myself from pinning back my ears and listening for sounds of naughtiness, for the odd moan or groan or, fingers crossed, dirty pillow talk emanating from Jess’s mouth. But the trouble was her soft and beautiful tones rarely pierced the floor boards and more often than not all I got was either the legs of the bed scratching against James’s wooden floor or his deep, dulcet groans bringing pain to my ears.
I’m sure if I was perverted enough to stand outside their door I could have heard the lot but I guess the side of me which found it all to heart-breaking won over and instead, when midnight happily arrived, I would remain downstairs and flick to the free ten minutes on Channel XXX, switch the lights off and gingerly pull my boxer shorts down before watching some desperate young woman simulate sex on screen, bouncing up and down like a jack in the box, twisting her nipple with one hand and holding a phone with the other whilst some depraved man on the other end pleasured himself as she asked him if he ‘liked it big boy’.
I never did degrade myself to the low ebbs of paying £3 per minute for a woman to talk dirty to me whilst thousands watched but still, I was one of the thousands watching the damn thing and sordidly getting off on it so I wasn’t one to judge. Maybe I was the depraved one, refusing to pay for either the subscription or the phone call and giving myself a mere ten minute window for some erotic pleasure but, if truth be told, when it came to sexual activities ten minutes was a lifetime for me.
It’s hard surreptitiously trying to pleasure yourself in the dark though, especially when your flat mate and his girlfriend lie in a post-coital tristesse metres above your head. I had to juggle several different objects for various reasons but all with the same goal of secrecy. There was the remote control for starters, obviously for volume control and a quick change of channel if anyone was to come bounding down the stairs without any notice. There was the bundled up white tissue paper, for health and safety purposes, not to mention the most important object of all; the little fella. There was no guessing what he might do because, let me tell you, he had a mind of his own that’s for sure.
It’s almost like chess; you have to get all your pieces into position before you can strike. However, there is the odd occasion when all the pieces are in position, all the bases seemed to be covered but you’re still caught out when you least expect it and that Friday night was one such an occasion. The tissue paper was neatly folded on the sofa, the remote was in my left hand with the little fella in the right and I had a stern belief that my ears were attentive to any sound of movement but maybe the ma
nner in which XXX’s new presenter Crystal rubbed her fingers together to simulate cash was so much of a turn on that I failed to hear the bedroom door open, I failed to hear the stairs creak as they were tentatively descended and I even failed to see the door knob slowly twist before the woman I was secretly in love with walked through the door and caught me mid-stroke, all red faced and sweaty, approaching what was to be my climax.
“Oh my God!” Jess screamed as she clasped eyes on Crystal literally trying to eat the phone before turning her attention to me, weapon on show, going at it like a furniture polisher.
“SHIT….Jess….what the…” I yelped, startled and ashamed, swiftly bending down to retrieve my trousers from around my ankles and thrusting them back over my penis, screaming in pain as my zip caught little Terence at an awkward angle, nearly chopping him in two. Every man should always remember, and never forget, that when placing a stiffy back into his pants it needs to go in vertically, the tip pointing to the sky, either just below or just above your waist line, depending on size. If it’s shoved back in horizontally then you’re in for a world of trouble.
“God, are you okay Tel?” Jess asked approaching me, concerned by my high pitched screams.
“NO,” I yelled, just managing to put out an arm and stop her from helping me off the floor, “Just…please…get out!”
“What’s going on? What’s the matter? Is everyone oka…..” James burst into the room, switching on the lights, arriving to catch sight of me holding my crotch with my pants and trousers half way up my backside, tissue paper strewn across the couch and Crystal trying to bounce up and down on a pillow without swallowing the phone. “Jesus wept Tel…you didn’t?” he asked, half smiling, feeling my embarrassment and pain as a fellow man but also privately delighting in it for the comedy value.
“I’m sorry okay, I don’t have a girlfriend do I?”
“There’s no need to apologise Tel, you’re just doing what comes naturally. Oh look, your ten minutes are up,” he gleefully pointed out, acknowledging the disappearance of Crystal and the appearance of a screen demanding my credit card details to bring her back.
“What ten minutes? Have you paid for that Tel?” Jess said, confused by how dirty channels worked.
“No, he gets ten minutes free at midnight,” James smirked, a little too hastily.
“And how do you know?” she asked, suddenly more concerned with him.
“How do I know?” he said repeating her question, trying to think of an excuse, “Tel told me,” he continued, pointing at his friend who had one hand on his bruised chipolata and the other covering his exposed rear end.
“Yes I’m sure he did James,” said Jess, pushing her way passed him and storming back upstairs.
James looked frustrated, as if he knew what was coming but didn’t want to accept it.
“Now look what you’ve done Tel. She only came down here for water,” he said, taking a deep breath before following her upstairs.
What had I done? I had merely planned for some alone time with Crystal. It was they who decided to interrupt me and have a domestic in the process. I was humiliated enough but to then get the blame for their argument was an insult. Still, it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been firing on all cylinders, you know if Little Terence had been looking particularly healthy, but I was a little tired and stressed by work so she’d accidentally caught a glimpse when he was only about 66% of his full potential. I never imagined she would see it for the first time when it was one thirds flaccid, let alone whilst my knuckles were wrapped around it, but despite it quite possibly being the most embarrassing experience of my life to date there was a small, a tiny minute part of me which saw the silver lining because of the trouble it caused between James and Jess. I know that’s an awful, in fact a terrible thing to say, but I couldn’t help but wonder why he had blown gasps of frustration after her tantrum. Were cracks beginning to form? Was the love they had so blatantly revelled in at the very beginning starting to wilt?
The next morning I could have stayed to find out but I wasn’t overly keen on sitting down for breakfast with the two of them less than ten hours after they’d caught me massaging a sausage of a different variety so I left the house as soon as I could and headed back to my parents. My Mum had been ringing me for days but being the thoughtless degenerate that I was, I just hadn’t found time for her so thought a visit would make up for my ignorance.
My mother was easily pleased, after all she usually only had the old man for company and he would be sat in his moth ridden cotton chair, teetering on three legs whilst the fourth balanced on a make shift wooden stump as he watched more sport in a day than most men could consume in a lifetime. My mother had lived her life as a sports armchair widow so she welcomed a visit from anyone, especially her son, the masturbating machine.
It wasn’t a completely altruistic gesture however. My food cupboard was pretty empty at the time so I figured I’d get a feed and stock up on supplies whilst batting away questions about when I’d meet a nice young lady and settle down. I’d love to have told her I’d actually met one and was head over heels for her but it meant I would have to include the part where James was making her moan and groan on a nightly basis and I didn’t think that would go down well with my conservative mother who, to my knowledge, had been faithful to my father for twenty seven years.
The minute I walked up the drive she was out the front door running towards me like a woman possessed, embracing me in her arms and fussing like I had just that second returned from war. I lived about thirty miles away but you would have thought it was three thousand and thirty the way she deflated my lungs with her extended bear hug.
“Terence. Come here, give me a hug. Arr, how are you my baby? Are you okay? How nice to see you. I’ve missed you. Come on, come inside. Your Dad’s inside.”
She never failed to siphon away the little masculinity I had in me. No matter how old and how tough you think you are, when your Mum calls you her baby, you feel about ten again. I tried, on numerous occasions, to tell her that I was a grown man, that I was capable of looking after myself and that treating me like a kid was embarrassing to a young adult such as myself but she didn’t listen and she didn’t care, proven when she planted a great big red lipstick kiss the size of doughnut on my cheek and hugged me vigorously for a second time.
I didn’t mind though if truth be told. She was simply being a parent and doing what came naturally. As a child I didn’t understand what that meant, I kind of thought parenthood was a job to them but as I matured, supposedly, I was starting to realise it was much more than that. I guess it sunk in when my Mum once told me that she feared my death more than she feared her own which is a pretty big statement if you come to think about it.
I was a mixture of my Mum and Dad, having the sensitive side of my mother but also the lazy, often thoughtless traits of my Father – a typical man some women might say. He was a good egg though all the same. Yeah, he watched too much sport and drank more than he should but every man has their faults and my father was no different. He seemed content with his lot though and at the end of your days, when you look back on your life, I guess that’s pretty much what you want from it.
When I saw him he gave me the obligatory handshake followed by his much established ‘alright son’ and a shake of the head as my mother took my dirty laundry from me. He didn’t care to talk much, except to forthrightly inform me that he would no longer be buying newspapers because all they had in them was regurgitated Twitter rubbish, so I set about ransacking his supplies before settling down to watch the cricket with him.
After twenty minutes and a full tube of Pringles, my Mother came into the room, looked at the two of us lying back on the sofa, crumbs spread across our chests and laughed. It was a full, hearty laugh of high pitched tones; the kind of laugh which translates into pure happiness. She knelt down to my Dad and planted a tender kiss on his forehead. I would have accepted it like a bullet to the br
ain but the old fella thrived on it. After all those years and its ageing familiarity they still made the effort to show affection for one another.
Unfortunately, they still showed too much affection for my liking. I’d escaped my home because the embarrassment of my nocturnal actions were too great for me to bear and sought the solitude of my childhood bed, where it was quiet and where I could sleep in piece. How wrong I was. Later that night just as I was drifting off to what I hoped would be a deep and uninterrupted sleep the sounds of passion haunted me once again. The familiar murmurings of desire could be heard through the walls, only this time it wasn’t Jess and James who were at it. Try as I might, with two pillows crammed to my ears, I could not stifle noises which had plagued me my entire childhood life.
It seemed that everyone I knew was getting action of some sort so, as I lay there with the faint sound of my Father’s heavy breathing ringing in my ears, I finally resigned myself to partaking in something I had pondered for some time but had put off for fear of humiliation. I was going to have to go down the somewhat mortifying route of online dating.