cover plus (we’re all grown up) – hazel o’connor

Well, last night went pretty well. I got the bus at St Andrew’s Square and it was an express. An hour and a half later, I was in Cowdenbeath. My second time here and I’m already starting to recognise the place.
I met her in a different pub this time, a brightly-lit drinking hole, filled, even this early on with what looked like serious career drinkers.
She was wearing a 1970s-looking zip-up jacket in one of these artificial leather-substitutes you see on tv. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, dark and glossy. She seemed pleased to see me, her mouth widening into a selfish-looking grin as I came through the door and spotted her, changing direction, weaving through the tablesful of hardened-looking drunks.
Some of them watched me with their pale, liquid eyes as I passed. One or two swivelled to take in her and it stuck me that maybe the teuchters didn’t dig the whole mixed marriage thing.
“So when ah goes up ti the coort,” one was saying as I passed. “The cunt’s went and gone and died, eh?” Solid and tired-looking, with massive hands, he shook his head while looking around his companions.
“Kin right.” One said, but they were already fading behind me. She was smiling and I didn’t even want to stay here for a drink, I wanted to be at hers, my face buried in her firm supple body.
She looked like she felt the same way. We struggled to at least look like we cared about our drinks, one of her feet playing with mine under the table. She stood, suddenly, holding my gaze. I left a good inch and a half in my glass and followed her between the scuffed tables and out through the smokers huddled around the doorway.
All conversation ceased as we burst through the middle of them. Half turning, she reached up and raised an arm towards me. I speeded up for half a step and took her hand in my own. She stopped, pulled me in towards her and let out a cheeky giggle.
Back at hers, she keyed open her door and turning, pushed me in. The usual short hall, one or more doors on each of five slightly curved walls. She pointed, her pointy finger dancing from one door to the next, describing a jagged circle.
“Toilet, shower,” she turned a little. “Kitchen,” another few dozen degrees. “Living room, box-room, spare room.” She stopped, her arm sticking staight out from her body.”The bedroom.” She moved toward it, motioning with her head, the short leatherish jacket falling from her shoulders, sliding down her back.
I watched her undress slowly, deliberately. Over the years, I’ve seen many women undress, from controlled-seductive types (like Stella, who flashed into my head at that moment) to, at the other end of the scale, the Alisons of this world who just tear ’em off and kick ’em away. But I’ve never seen anything approaching this.
She peeled away layers, slid things down an arm or a leg, tossed them in soft parabolas onto nearby furniture. I was hypnotised.
She snapped her fingers, breaking the spell and beckoning me to join her on top of the bed.
I shoved my clothes off, Alison-Style and clambered up next to her. When I laid my hand on the slightly puckered skin, it was cool and firm. She rolled onto her side and her hands were cool around my back, pulling me to her. With a sort of flash, our bodies touched. She was several degrees colder than me. The flat was warm, comfortably so. It must be her own operating temperature. I put these thoughts out of my head and kissed her.
Our mouths – then our tongues – came together, soft and it was like sinking into a lovely cool cloud. we rolled back, her taking my weight and I moved my hands up onto the small, high breasts. When I squeezed, they gave slightly, then popped back to their original shape. I found this erotic and did this several times. Each time, she’d moan softly, her eyes closing.
I moved down and took one of the black, stubby nipples in my mouth. Up close, her breasts smelled like the school cloakroom on a rainy morning, like wet policewomen.
Her hand – I don’t know which one – was closing and opening quickly around my erection, pulling it to her as if she was starving. I moved my hips forward and pushed it towards her. She was kissing all over my face and neck, tiny little pecks like a soft toy losing its temper. I began licking her face in between her kisses, the flat bland taste of her feeding my growing erection.
She wriggled her back, moving towards the middle of her bed, taking me with her, the shiny plastic of her skritting slightly as my palm stuck to it. I pulled it free gently and she moaned again, her arms encircling my back and crushing me down onto her.
I kissed the end of her nose, just the tiniest nibble and pulled my face back to look at her. The half-closed eyes snapped open and her mouth widened into a grin, the blue-black lips stretching as her tongue popped out, moved over them and retracted again.
We came together again, our stomachs hitting and sticking and dragging apart each time on the downswing. Her cool, pale grey hands slid in between us, took hold of my shaft and guided it into her. Inside her was cool and soaking and soft. I pushed in harder, feeling no resistance. She moaned again, a light pale thing like a hamster’s tiny orgasm.
I noticed a tiny mark on her stomach, touched it with with my fingertips, felt the raised line. curious, I disentangled my arms and began kissing my way over chin and throat, over the shiny firm breasts and down over the slightly puffy stomach until I reached it. On closer inspection, it was a tiny patch, a miniscule square, raised from the rest of her stomach.
Her head came up. “You found it, then?”
“Aye, what is it?”
“My ex husband.” her shoulders gave a shrug, her head bobbed. “Another life, y’know?”
I nodded, tracing my fingers down her arm and across the shininess of her lower back, curving up at her buttock. She leaned in and I leaned into the kiss. Our outstretched tongues met first, then our lips and her face was all over me, sucking and lapping hungrily at my mouth.
We stayed where we were all afternoon, kissing and touching in the space between and around her tiny moans and gasps and then stopping, just before I went over the edge.
It was early evening when we got dressed and headed back round to the bus stop. We hugged in the shelter like lovestruck teenagers until my bus arrived and we pulled ourselves apart for me to hand my ticket to the driver.
When I sat down, she was walking away, not even so much as glancing over her shoulder.

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.