mess of my – the fall

The bell went around four. I glanced at the clock as I left the kitchen, headed for the front door. When I opened it, Alison was there, a black-and-red-camouflage rucksack dangling from one shoulder. I held the door open to let her crush her way into the flat.
She headed straight for the bedroom and I followed, heeling the door shut behind me.
She was bent over, fumbling with something on my bedside table and then the music started. Horrible jangly guitars, whiny male voice and weak, trebly-sounding drums. Turning, Alison nodded at me and I nodded back, not entirely sure what I was agreeing to. The music slowed to a crawl and the voice keened over it, insistent. Even though I couldn’t make out a word, it struck me that I’d heard it before, somewhere. Or something enough like it to remind me. I couldn’t place where, though.
Alison pulled off the little green anorak, exposing a darker, almost emerald blouse underneath, rumpled by the planes of her body. Her breasts jutted in it, rock solid and unmoving. She began to unbutton it, the large square fingers trying to force the tiny pearlescent buttons back through the even tinier buttonholes. Then she gave up and pulled the whole thing over her head and tossed it onto the carpet beside my bed.
She rolled onto her back to pull the short skirt down over her arse and thighs and I climbed onto the bed next to her.
She sloughed it off onto the floor near to where the top had landed and rolled to face me. Her arms came around me, pulling me to her and her big rough face plastered itself onto mine, the tongue scratching its way through my lips and into my mouth.
She squeezed me tightly, pressing the air out of my lungs and probably leaving a few scuffs around my back and sides. When she eventually let go, I sucked in a chestful of air and we looked at each other. The music stopped with some sort of a flourish.
“Hang on a sec,” she sat up, leaned over me and snared the rucksack in a massive paw. Drums crashed in, followed by more jangly guitars.
“Here we are.” she withdrew something and held it out to me. A carton of Greek-style natural yogurt – with honey. She tore off the lid and rammed a finger in. She let it drip into my lap and over my chest until she reached my nipple, where she smeared what was left firmly over the nipple and towards the other one.
She repeated the process with my other nipple until the sticky smears met in the middle.
Leaning forward, she began dragging her tongue over the trail of yogurt, making a slight sucking noise as she did. When I glanced down, a faint red line showed where her tongue had been.
Alison carried on licking and lapping until the yogurt was gone and my chest, stomach and thighs were criss-crossed with wide reddened lines.
“Your turn,” she breathed, fingering yogurt onto one of her own nipples and rubbing it in a circular motion around the aureole and down over the rock-hard breast.
“Come on,” she purred. “No need to be shy, is there?” she seized my head playfully and forced it onto the mess of yogurt on her breast. I licked at it experimentally, tasting the sweetness, the stickiness and feeling the grittiness of her as it scritched over my teeth. When I’d finished, she lay back and poured the yogurt, straight from the pot, onto her other breast and I watched it run down her side to pool slightly on the duvet under her.
I took my weight on my arms and leaned in on top of her, lapping at the mess she’d made.
By the time the tub was empty, I was covered in long red lines that itched and I could feel the sweet grittiness as my tongue moved it around my mouth.
If anything, the lubrication had lessened her excitement. A couple of her orgasms had sounded like the real thing, but most had seemed insipid and half-hearted.
I offered to make coffees and, once in the kitchen, took a quick suck on the tap, swilled the water around my mouth and let it fall over the couple of plates stacked in the sink.
I took the coffees back through and climbed back in beside her. She yawned and lifted an arm for me to lie, my head on her powerful chest.
We lay like that for a while, neither of us speaking, just listening to the traffic that drifted to us from the street.

the warmth of your breath – fishbone

I went back to Fife last night. Hopped the bus through from the west end at Queensferry Street and less than an hour later, I was in Dunfermline’s bus station, looking around for a number 19 to take me the rest of the way.
One turned up and I got on, noting the otherfolks getting on in ones and twos, nodding briskly to each other in a couple of cases. A pair of rubbergirls, noses in the air, ignoring everyone, but shooting enough covert looks around to make sure people were watching them.
The journey didn’t take long. I had a drunk Polish guy in the seat behind me, passing comments on the rubbergirls and an older papermale who sat, doing what looked like sudoku, his head down.
Even without the app, I’d have recognised the stop. Most of the bus stood and formed a queue, the Polish guy jumping right in front of me. The chatter intensified as we were bunched closer together by the joggling of the bus as it slowed to a stop.
As I stumble-scrambled my way off the bus, I caught the driver winking at the polish guy.
“An’ I’m stuck here workin’ the night.” He said, with a smile, as I passed.
I stepped off the bus into the milling otherfolks and meatfaces. A tall paperwoman, maybe six-three, six-four, flapped loudly. As the wind caught her, she gesticulated with an arm at the lights of a pub over the road. A young guy, either made of – or wearing – leather, took her outstretched arm and helped her to remain on the ground. Looking around, I saw those two rubbergirls, hand in hand, crossing the road. Cars slowed, necks craned to look at, first them, then at the rest of us and I’m sure I saw them smirk contentedly at one another. The group started to move and I followed, in their midst, over the road and down the short steps to the path that led to the lighted doorway of the pub.
Inside, cloth, paper, wood and metal rubbed shoulders with rubber, leather and a couple of substances I couldn’t name. One in particular, blue and gritty-looking, but catching the light as she turned. My eyes kept returning to this same woman, whatever she was.
The music stopped suddenly and it was only then I noticed how loud it had been. The chatter faded quickly in the absence of sound before a stuttering of drums and I recognised that song by the metal guy who was bumped from the X-Factor last year.
All around me, hips were moving slightly with the beat and lips – meat and other – were half-shaping the words.
The blue, gritty woman walked past, laughing, her head thrown back, exposing her long navy throat. The paperguy from the bus said something as she passed him and her laughter burst around her all over again like a mushroom cloud in the gap between the metal guy’s verse and chorus.
The tall paperwoman and the Polish guy were huddled together by the jukebox, poking fingers at the screen and giggling.
I glanced around and caught the eye of one of the rubbergirls, who looked away, nudging her friend and motioning towards me with her shiny grey chin.
I bought a pint and situated myself against the edge of the dancefloor, scanning around for someone else unwilling or unable to dance.
Of course, being St Paddy’s weekend – and therefore a Guinness promotion, the dancefloor was heaving. Especially when they played that ‘bullets’ song by the rubberguy who was married to the sinn fein councillor. The place exploded.
And they played it three times that I heard. But by then, I’d got into conversation with the blue woman and her pal, a woodwoman.
It’s really bad form to ask someone what they’re made of, so I didn’t, but she was fascinating to look at. I dragged my eyes away and concentrated on the friend.
She was pale, maybe pine or one of those other near-white woods, smooth though. I couldn’t see a single splinter.
We left about eleven, hopping a taxi driven disapprovingly back to her place. She lived in the next street from a flat I lived in when I was a student.
She invited me in for the usual euphemistic coffee and I agreed, looking at my watch as if I had to be somewhere at some point.
Inside, she took off her coat and I marvelled again at her figure.
She was slim without looking like a xylophone, soft thin pale hair framing a long oval face.
Wide eyes, pale too, like washed-out denim. The wide mouth broke into a smile and she clicked the remote control at the large bulky old television that came to life and the room was suddenly full of some syrupy-sounding black guy, his big sincere face filling the screen and the voice booming from all around. It seemed to be the word “you”, over and over, but I couldn’t be sure.
She danced lightly towards me, her fingers slipping under the green top and moving back and forward, lifting it up – diagonally – over her flat, creamy stomach and giving just the slightest hint of some sort of bra nestling there.
She let the top fall back down and started flicking at the button holding her jeans together. She danced close to me and away again, her clothes brushing me with their hint of the firmness within.
I sat back in my seat, watching the show. She stripped slowly and fluidly, exposing one area, covering it up, exposing another, covering that and so on. The whole process was exciting, her teasing really turning me on.
Neither of us spoke. The music (more languid syrup) filling the room around us. Finally, she stood before me wearing only her bra as she flicked the tiny, flimsy panties off her left foot into my lap, where they landed with a little puff-sound.
She leaned forward, brought up a pale thin arm and slid a long forefinger into her mouth.
Her eyes were locked onto mine.
She dropped to a squat and leaned forward, her forehead just touching my jeans and the erection fighting to get out into the cool air of the room.
She pressed against it, rocked back and the tip of her nose moved over the head. Then her mouth was open and I felt the warmth of her breath – then the gentle pressure of her teeth through the material – then the breath, the teeth, breath, teeth, breath, then she stood up, her smile widening. She held out a hand, which I took.
She led me out of the lounge, back through the hall and through a doorway hung with a beaded curtain that clinkled as we passed through it.
Her bedroom was all soft greens and blues, giving it a nautical feel. Wispy maidenhair plants hung down around the futon that took up most of the middle of the room. Cupboard doors faced inwards on every wall and far above, a skylight showed blackness or cloud cover or something.
She manoeuvred me onto the bed and sat me down, straddling my lap to keep me in place.
I looked at her, still wearing the bra and only the bra, hearing-feeling the pale shavings scritching over my jeans.
She lifted my shirt out of my waistband, unbuttoned the top two buttons and strong supple fingers slid it up over my head. Those same fingers traced down my chest, slid over a nipple and brushed away.
“I have a confession to make,” she sighed. She took her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. “I’ve got a couple of knots on my breasts – it’s nothing catching, I promise.” She lifted my wrists, placed my hands on her firm breasts.
“But can I leave my bra on? Is that ok?” She smiled again. “Or,” the smile widened like before. “How about I take my bra off?” She leaned in close enough to whisper in my ear. “But I blindfold you first. mm?”
Unable to speak, my throat dry, I nodded.
She snatched up something from behind me, something dark and began to wrap it around my head and face, filling my eye sockets. The room fell away into blackness and I held onto her voice.
“Good. Good boy.” She sighed.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a blowjob like it. It went on for what seemed like hours, before she pulled off and slid me inside her smooth, hard opening. It didn’t take long after all that build-up and she sighed contentedly as I gasped her name out between gritted teeth, every muscle in my body tensed.
She moved around, replacing the bra before removing the blindfold. I blinked in the dim soft light of her room and we spooned into each other in the middle of the great big futon until it was time for me to go.

velvet realm – clock dva

Last night, after missing last week’s, I went back to that pub for the clothfolks’ night. I made a point of arriving an hour and a quarter after things kicked off, making my entrance with a splash – and noticing several heads turn to clock me as I threaded between the tables.
Now that I’m a familiar-ish face here, I can nod and smile at faces I recognise and expect the same in return.
I exchanged a few words at the bar with an older woman, she must have been at least sixty, in a thin, almost see-through material. I tried not to stare at the veins and the movement of her muscles over the bones that held her up. Although well outside my age range, she had a deep, dirty laugh and as we stood chatting, she used it several times, punctuating our conversation.
I noticed the table of posh girls, all deep maroon and bottle-green satins and velvets. A couple of them kept looking over, nudging each other and giggling. I bathed them in my warmest smile that said, “Don’t be ashamed of who – or what – you are. Just be everything you can be.”
Then I went over and joined them.
It was obvious that the paler green one was attracted to me, her eyes flitting across at me and away again. Then flicking back into her lap, a rosy blush staining her dark green cheeks.
We got talking and her friends just kind of faded into the background and before I knew it, we were in a taxi, heading back to somewhere she lived.
We sat close enough to just touch and no more each time the taxi hit a bump, her thigh brushing mine for a moment. A soft hand snaked out from time, touched mine and slid back into her folds.
We got out of the taxi in a dark, anonymous street, big houses faced us across hard and tended lawns. Massive trees hung in every garden like disembodied punctuation marks.
She ushered me through a gate which she closed carefully behind me and we followed a path around the side of the house.
At the back, she opened a small door made up of tiny glass panels and held it for me as I took careful steps into the darkness as I head the door close.
Her small soft hand touched my arm, slid down to take my hand and she muzzled up against my back.
I turned, let her slide round in my arms and brought my face down onto hers. Her mouth was softer, even warmer than her hands. It tasted slightly of the brightly-coloured drinks she’d been sipping in the pub. An artificial fruit-sugar taste and her hands slid up under my jacket and began tugging my shirt out of my jeans.
I brought my hands up onto her sides, then the sides of her breasts, pulpy inside the tough cotton of her bra. She sighed and pressed herself against me. Her mouth clamped harder onto mine and I could feel the material of her face give as it pressed against mine. I pulled back to take a breath and the soft down of her cheek tickled my chin.
My eyes had more or less accustomed themselves to the gloom and I could see the shape of her, a dark outline against the paler grey of whatever was behind her.
She took a little step back and I heard her shoes scuffle slightly as she reached inside herself and there was a short draught as she flapped herself open. When she stepped forward to fling her arms around me again, her folds draped around me and her soft little centre was hotter than warm and we were kissing again, our front teeth clacked and she smiled as she said “sorry” around it and I pressed my tongue in on top of hers, feeling the shiny hardness of those tiny pale green teeth and the soft give of her velvet face.
I moved my hands up, slowly until I had a breast cupped in either one. I realised that the firmness I’d felt earlier wasn’t a bra, just stiff layered velvet covering the underside of both breasts and holding them up.
I pressed and squeezed, following her breathing – it was more like sighing, really – and her arms tightened around my back, pulling herself against me.
We stayed like that for several minutes. Her breathing slowed, became lighter.
She pulled back from me as if looking into my face and began to move downwards, pulling me down with her.
We arranged ourselves on the floor, on top of something soft-ish and she wriggled into position beneath me, her fine down brushing my stomach and thighs.
Although I couldn’t see a thing down here, it was powerfully erotic and I let her take charge, moving my erection against the folds of her opening.
I held my breath.
She slipped the head inside her – I could tell by the sudden feeling of wet warmth – and began moving her hips back and forward, her breath coming out in short deep gushes with each stroke.
I knew I couldn’t hold off for long and told her so.
“S’allright,” she gasped around my tongue. “Do it. Just do it.” Her words tumbled out in the breathy sighing and I felt myself climbing to my orgasm. Her movements were more frenzied now, pushing and pulling, her hips slamming into mine and giving slightly each time.
I think I clenched as I came, my fingers sinking deep into the soft layers of her, my thighs flicking spastically as the drained feeling hit me and she was sighing these “oh – oh – oh” sounds and I held her to me and our bodies relaxed together, our arms still around each other.

hot and cold skulls – royal trux

The headache kicked in about seven, maybe seven-thirty, I don’t know. I wasn’t watching the time. One minute, there I was, talking to the rubbergirl, the next, I was on the floor, holding my skull as if it was trying to explode.
That’s the only way I can describe it. Because it really did feel like it wanted to explode.
I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to my rubber friend, it was that sudden.
So, the game’s probably a bogey. Any guy who disappears off the internet as fast as that, probably has a wife who approaches silent and unexpected.
I don’t even know what time I got off the floor and made it to the bathroom, it was that bad.
Like a sinister magician was ramming knives in from all different angles, hot-and-cold pain coming from all sides.
It was about midnight when the nausea started to calm down and I looked at my watch. Four, four-and-a-half hours, locked into that world of pain. I’m not really one to moan, but this really was something else. Even in the hospital, it was never this bad.
The other bit I’m not sure, even now, whether I can write this.
You’ll probably think I’m mad, but it’s not funny. I was hallucinating.
Not the dreamy trippy sort that teenagers and young people talk about, where the edges of everything are blurred and it’s all warm and fuzzy. No, this was like bear-shaped arms pushing through the walls and the suggestion of cold voices, making obscene suggestions.
Shit.
I can’t even write about this now, it’s bringing it all back. Just thinking about it’s releasing all the tiny, razor-sharp fragments of memory, gouging their cruel way to the surface.
I managed to get myself a glass of water around two and my phone was flashing. A message. Well, it turned out to be three messages – all from Stella.
I looked at them – this morning – after an uncomfortable night, studded with queasy dreams, deserts of churned-up sand and filthy oil coating large expanses of freezing water.
The pain had lessened to a dull ache when I moved my head. My stomach and the inside of my chest hurt, probably from the retching and there was a gritty feeling whenever my eyes moved to one side or the other.
Good thing I’m not going back to work today. Maybe I will have to see the doctor again about sitting this out a bit longer.

feel like making love – bad company

Alison came over this afternoon. She’d texted around twelve, asking if I needed anything. I told her I didn’t and she arrived at quarter-to-one, carrying a carrier bag with something flat and round in it.
Instead of stripping and heading for the bedroom, she made her way determinedly into my kitchen. I followed her anyway and found her, bent over the cooker.
“Two-twenty,” she said, not turning around. “For twenty-five minutes.”
I leaned in and set the cooker, trying not to graze myself on her.
“Coffee?” I clicked on the kettle anyway and she said “Yeah. Why not?”
We talked until the pizza was ready and I carried it over to where she sat.
After it was finished, I made another couple of coffees and carried them through to the bedroom where we lay on the bed and talked about everything apart from my stay in the hospital.
While we were talking, Alison was stroking my cock through my jeans. I’m not even sure she knew she was doing it – to begin with, anyway – but as I became erect, her movements became more aggressive, squeezing and pulling and tapping.
I reached over and lifted her top up and she lifted her arms, allowing me to slide the thin materiel over her shoulders and off. 
I leaned in and kissed first one solid pink breast then the other, carefully and trying not to scratch my lips on the roughness of her. She rolled over onto her back and her legs came up. She slid the short checked-tweedy skirt over her hips and down her tree-trunk legs, before letting it slide off a foot onto the floor. I got in close enough to take a nipple – gingerly – between my lips and suck gently. She tasted hard and grainy in my mouth and she let out a sort of moan and I brought my hand up and began to pinch the opposite nipple between thumb and forefinger, on and off. Her moaning intensified, I thought.
I kept opening and closing my lips – softly – over the one nipple while squeezing the other. They were hard as bullets and I began to kiss my way down her brick-hard body, heading for that gritty opening between her thighs.
I got to her pubic mound, jutting against the flatness of her wide belly and the roundness of those thighs. I blew gently over the very tip of her opening, hearing a half-moan, half-gurgle in her throat.
I felt the bed moving slightly as Alison lifted one leg up and, adjusting her weight, pushed herself forward onto my face, scratching my mouth and nose, but not badly. I pressed in closer to her again as a huge breath left her body and her whole body seemed to flop. I carried on, moving my tongue and lips around the tops of her thighs blowing on the labia each time I passed from one thigh to another.
There was a sharp tap on the top of my head, enough to get my attention. I looked up and Alison was motioning me to come up to her. I did so, trying not to scuff myself on her as I did. She flung her arms around my back, pressing me to her.
“This – “ she was gasping now. “This is what I miss-ungh!” the last was lost as the breath shot out of her in a rush as the top of my erection found itself against the rough where her legs joined. She clenched me harder to her and I heard rather than felt the skin as it rubbed from my shoulder blade and then our mouths were together. It felt like hot sandstone, the hard full lips and the probing stony tongue like sun-warmed pavement.
When it was over and we lay next to each other, her huge heavy arm draped forgotten over me, I watched the light change slowly in the window, the rooftops opposite growing darker as Alison let out soft, metallic catlike purrs and moved occasionally in her sleep.

doctor doctor – ufo

I saw the doctor this morning. She was good enough to sign me off for another fortnight, which was pretty good – if not exactly unexpected.
After all, I’ve been in hospital for a couple of months, they can’t expect me to be magically better and go straight back to work, can they?
So, I’m to go back on the eighteenth. Unless I see the doctor again and she signs me off for a bit longer, of course!
Not that I want to lie around here indefinitely. No, I’ll need to get back to work as fast as is humanly possible. The trouble is, I’m out and about so much, I’m bound to be seen – and grassed up – by someone.
I put on a pot of coffee and fired up the computer. There was a message on We Arra from the Coatbridge papergirl. I replied and waited. Nothing.
I had another coffee. There was a ting. Almost thirty minutes, by the clock on the digibox.
When I looked, it was from that rubbergirl from Cowdenbeath (I’d checked google maps in the interim and found out where it was.)
Without a pause, she was all over me with sexual innuendos, all come-ons and passing me pictures over. One of which showed her, spreadeagled, with what looked like a pretty big vibrator buried in the shiny folds between her legs.
The contrast between the shiny black of her thighs and shaven pubic area and the dull matt of the cerise monster hanging out of her was striking and I told her so.
We made a date right then and there for me to pop through next week. I was looking at her photo throughout, her strong shiny hands grasping that thing, forcing it deep into herself. How was I meant to say no to that?
It’s probably a good thing, too. After last night, Fife needed something to make me feel good about the place.
Last night, I headed out to a place called Inverkeithing. It was just over the bridge and no more, so I figured that, if I failed to pull, the bus home wouldn’t take too long.
According to the app, there were twenty people going, (two thirds male, of course!) As well as thirty five or thirty six ‘maybes’ (also mostly male)…
Finding the bar didn’t take long, it’s not a very big place, although it does have a lot of pubs, many of which are boarded up with ‘all items of value have been removed’ signs displayed prominently.
The pub in question seemed, from the outside, quite well attended. Three guys stood outside, smoking and muttering short staccato fragments to each other. I nodded to them as I passed by, which they ignored.
It was obvious why by the time I’d pushed my way through the crowds to the bar.
Although the place was, as I’d thought, packed, as I looked around, there wasn’t a single otherface in the place. I’d heard about places like this, but never been in one.
No wonder those three meatfaces had looked disappointed when another one arrived. This place was, quite literally, all cake and no icing.
I wandered around with my lager, making eye contact with various people who made it quite clear I was competition.
A few meatwomen were dotted about the bar. All appeared to be checking their watches or phones, or watching the massive clock over the bar, as if waiting for whatever time it became okay to settle for one of their own kind.
I finished my pint and left to stand in the draughty bus shelter until the number fifty-five came.
When I got on it, I half-recognised three guys from the bar. They ignored me – and I ignored them – all the way back to Saint Andrew’s square.
Inverkeithing? What a shithole. I doubt I’ll be back.

surprise surprise – cop shoot cop

I’m writing this back home, in my own kitchen, drinking decent coffee from one of my own mugs. I’m out of hospital, finally.
Around eleven this morning, two guys in grey trousers and slightly darker tops, arrived at the nurses’ station. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but the nurse leaned over the brown counter and pointed directly at me.
The two guys nodded and strode at me, moving out to arrive at opposite sides of my bed.
Up close, their dark grey tops had the name of the hospital and a tiny crest over the left breast.
They grabbed my wrists at the same moment and dragged me down and off the bed. A nurse ran up, dodged around the guy on my right and started emptying the bedside cabinet into a large white bag marked, ‘patient’s property’ in red capitals. The same typeface tabloid newspapers use for their headlines. I landed on my feet, my legs weren’t capable of supporting my weight and I spilled forward.
As I fell, I saw the kid opposite, staring open-mouthed as the two porters grabbed my shoulders and jerked me back and upright again.
I was dragged-carried to the front door, where the nurse made me sign something while a porter held my wrist in a massive paw and handed me the white plastic bag, all sharp corners.
They left me there and I walked to the bus stop. The ten minutes or so I waited for the bus were among the most frightening of my life. Exposure to sudden violent surprises can get you like that.
I’d only gone two stops when Alison texted, asking if I was out and I replied, telling her I wanted to chill by myself tonight and I’d see her Friday, after work.
I was back home by half-twelve, answering messages on the clothfolks site and thinking about what I’d wear tonight.
I went out about seven, planning to arrive between quarter- and half- past eight.
The bar was pretty full, the same velvet- and satin- girls, still talking in their high voices about operas and painters, a table of metalgirls, too much make-up and traces of rust on their backs where they thought it couldn’t be seen.
I smiled across at one as she raised her head. She threw me something like a look of iron disgust, nudging her friends, making them turn to look at me, too. I smiled at the others and withdrew.
There seemed to be more of the rubber, leather, latex types tonight, in clumps of two or three, with that strong artificial smell they have.
There were at least two I’d have fucked if it was a slow week, but it wasn’t, so I left it.
Eventually, I let myself be pulled into the orbit of a table of two denimgirls, with their long pale hair and soft mouths. With them was a guy – also denim – with long frizzy, what’s the politically correct term for it nowadays? ‘Real hair’? ‘Person hair’? ‘Meat hair’? I let them see me and accepted their invitation to join them, shaking his hand warmly, but in a strong and fully heterosexual fashion. Which all three seemed to like.
I chatted with them for an hour or more, getting their names (and discovering it’s just called hair, apparently).
He was quite an interesting bloke, once I got talking to him. Up close, his faded material was dotted with a few brightly-coloured patches alerting me to old-time heavy metal bands.
More importantly, the girls with him were called Janice and Toni. Their denim looked newer, tighter than his, stretched more closely over their frames. They were probably both somewhere in their thirties and I got the impression they’d been on the scene for a few years, never having found ‘the one’.
I left the pub around ten, citing a bus I needed to catch.
Outside, I checked my wallet and flagged down a passing taxi, which got me home before eleven.

this is entertainment – cabaret voltaire

Alison texted once or twice this afternoon, as if she was bored and needed entertainment.
I texted back, reminded her that I was about to be paroled and left it at that.
There was a flash of being at home already, like someone else’s memory getting in my head for a moment, before erasing itself. And when it was gone, it was as if it’d never been. Deja vu or something, I suppose.
There was an e-mail, a little later, from the Coatbridge papergirl. Very flirty, I remember thinking, again with no obvious strategy that I could see.
That said, she wants us to meet in a week or two. Public place – coffee and lots of witnesses around. Somewhere she’d feel safe enough to meet a stranger.
I really can’t figure this one out. On the one hand, she’s flirting away like mad, wants us to meet, things seem to be progressing. On the other, there’s a sort of reserve, a hanging back, whenever I try to move things forward.
It’s almost as if *she* has to make the running. As if any suggestions from me frighten her off.
Stella texted around five-thirty to see whether I was busy tonight and when I told her I wasn’t, she arrived maybe twenty minutes later.
She was wearing a long black leather coat, flat, no ornamentation and black boots with loops of leather hanging down, lines pyramid studs, rolling as she came towards me.
Her hair was down and she was wearing next-to-no make-up.
We greeted each other, ignored by the nurses and the young guy opposite. We inquired after the other one’s health and what they’d been up to. I shrugged.
“Hospital food,” I mumbled and Stella nodded.
“What’s it like?” She asked, leaning forward and laying a hand on the blankets over my groin area. She was a couple of feet away from me, her face looming close. I held her gaze until her face opened up into a wide smile.
“I’m very busy,” she told me. “But I have a few days off at the end if next month, if you’d like to show me what you’ve learned in the last twenty years, hmm?”
I nodded.
“Okay then.” She sat up straight. “That’s settled.” She delved into a pocket and pulled out a pink blackberry. “Give me your cell number and your e-mail.” She was immediately businesslike, back straight, shoulders high, clicking at the phone with both thumbnails. A flurry of little clicks and she stood up.
“I’ll be in touch.” She said, smiled and left.
I watched her back as she sauntered out past the nurses’ station and disappeared around the corner, without looking back.

please, mr postman – the carpenters

I’m spending a lot of time on that clothfolks’ site, I realise. I’m building my base there, establishing relationships and checking out the lie of the land.
One person I’ve been talking to is a papergirl from Coatbridge, which I believe is a satellite town outside Glasgow.
She seems friendly, even perky, but won’t display any pictures. There are none on her bio-page and, even after I made her laugh, she didn’t offer to share her likeness.
It’s like Stella all over again – the aggressive flirting but backed up by no interest in notching things up a level.
Maybe this is what happens as you get older.
There’s a few other people I talk to, but she and I seem to run into each other a lot – and the chats we’re having are getting progressively deeper.
I got an e-mail from work, asking if I had a date I’d be returning to work yet. I thought about it for a few minutes and sent a non-commital reply, mentioning I was still in hospital.
Half an hour later, they replied. The tone of this one was lighter, more friendly.
I scanned it, then marked it to reply tomorrow.
Another e-mail arrived as I was eating. I checked it and it was the Coatbridge papergirl. I read through it and it made little sense.
I decided to file that alongside the work e-mail and deal with it all tomorrow.

do you believe in the westworld? – theatre of hate

There’s even chatrooms linked to these sites. Most are empty, wind whistling and tumbleweed blowing down empty wooden streets, but now and again, you come across one with a bit of life to it.
The ‘Ah Belong Tae Glesga’ room, as you’d imagine, is vibrant and well-attended. As is ‘We Arra Cloth-Peepull’. Glaswegians, eh? They’ll talk to anyone.
Very friendly and welcoming. ‘Ah Belong’ is just a general Glasgow room, filled with all sorts, rubber, wood, metal, cloth – even some of the weird ones, leather, latex, that sort of thing.
I’ve nothing against anyone made of that sort of material, it’s just not my thing.
There were a lot of meatfolks (as they call them) there, too. In fact, the room was so crowded, it was hard to get anyone into conversation. The screen kept shooting up, too fast to read.
‘We Arra’ was a bit quieter – and all cloth/clothadmirers – mostly Glasgow, but one or two from Edinburgh, Fife – even as far afield as Inverness and Aberdeen.
As you can no doubt imagine, the Glaswegians did most of the talking, often typing in dialect-spelling, which slowed me down a little at first, before I got used to it and after that, it just seemed to characterise them a bit more.
The Glasgow contingent seemed to regard it as ‘their’ room – and all others as lesser scots, somehow.
There’s a strategy I use in these situations. I got it from ‘A beautiful mind’, this Russell Crowe film a newsprint girl dragged me to, years ago.
The secret is, ignore the alpha female (or females) and focus instead on two or three of the ‘beta’ women. Let all the other idiots fight over little miss alpha, while carefully grooming someone who’ll be a lot more grateful for the attention.
I decided, after looking around, to focus on a rubbergirl from Cowdenbeath in Fife. I’m not exactly sure where that is, but it’s probably further than the places I have heard of, like Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy.
Her bio-page said she was forty-seven, which might’ve been true, but she could’ve been ten years south of that.
After my run-in with that older woman yesterday, I found myself strangely drawn to this woman from the town that may-or may-not exist.
She pulled me into a private window and the conversation became darker, more sexual, almost at once. She began passing me over photos – including the face pic from her bio-page. In the full-length version, her breasts were bared. I sucked in my breath and looked up quickly at where the youth opposite was staring into the space above and to the right of my head.
He was – or appeared to be – paying me no attention. I let my eyes drop back to the shiny, waterproof tits on the screen in front of me.
She was certainly in good nick for a woman of her age and I told her so.
She seemed pleased with that and sent me another two. In the first, she was wearing a black bikini and in the second, which took ages to download, she was dressed as a nun, hoisting up the skirts of her nun-suit and showing acres of shiny soft grey thighs.
I groaned inwardly at this kid who’d got in the way of me masturbating and thumbed my phone number across to her.