12 hours

by Red Velvet

From a raw food dinner party to bedroom romp to a clerical faux pas, this particular 12 hours had all the ingredients of a truly wrong sequence of events. Sometimes when you’re on a quixotic roll, you cannot apply the brakes especially when a hot girl and high libido are concerned.

So Friday night 20:49 and the object of my lusty woeful desires arrived, decked out in razor sharp skinny flared jeans that cut enticingly against her ‘eat sushi off my…’ frame. I’d just awoken from my ritualistic power nap, so a little slow on the uptake but the first glass of pinot noir fused the brain cells with impetus and guile. The background: I met girl (married but husband allows her to play), indulged in several sessions of tonsil tennis but informed there was no ‘click’ thus I believed this to be accurate and expected nothing. Nada, niente.

21:23 and we’re tucking into the hors d’œuvre of a marinated mixed vegetable and vinaigrette dressed wrap that hits the palate with buzz, masticated viciously for smoother digestion. Banter in good company is tangy and light, with a chill through the wintery air I rub my hands together a little too fervently, at which point the girl says ‘you know in St Petersburg to warm hands we place hands on stomachs’. In that split second, she grabs my curled fingers and thrusts them to the rock hard plateau of her abdominal muscles as I pretend unconvincingly that I’m accustomed to this kind of cultural gesture. Raw lasagna is devoured nearly as quickly as it was uncooked, as the girl licks cashew ice cream with a cheeky flick of a tongue as my cheeks flush scarlet.

No click, no action? I begin chanting this mantra cyclically as she begins to wince that her whole body is aching, and would I mind giving her a massage to soothe an ailing frame, destroyed after eleven hours of intensive training in the past week alone. So I lead her to the bedroom, where thankfully I had the foresight to position a bottle of juniper berry massage oil in the crook of my window sill.

Freshly laundered towel down on mattress, and before I can say ‘where does it hurt’ the top and bra have been whipped off, and I’m trying to focus on my scented hands, not the temptress that lies before me face down. And she bloody loves it, the power play in its playful infancy. The massage is long and apparently therapeutic, the sighs and moans of pleasure coursing through every sinewy pressure point. Like wilting cinders, twirling together and we’re locked in, sweet in juniper berry buried beneath the oil-infused sheets.

But my girl is on lent, so the following morning I decided to accept an unusual religious invitation at a Russian Orthodox church in a decadent part of the moneyed West End. Dress code is more Brick Lane Mosque than Candy Bar, as my poorly pinned checked headscarf is hastily readjusted, greeted by a kiss on the cheek as she nurtured a holy candle. As the incense swished purple and gold for the service duration, I could feel the deacon’s stare penetrate my innocent demeanor revealing the carnal thoughts sabotaging any hope of disguising my true identity as non-Orthodox and non-heterosexual. As she moved across the altar, the power play was complete. I was in a foreign church at 08.48 thinking about wining, dining, 69ing and God was watching me. And you know, for the briefest of moments it felt fucking good. Heaven help me.