"He released his grip on her neck...I thought you’d like that, he mumbled": a story about sex, by Sarah Catherall
He drove her to her house in his van. He’d taken the backseats out and filled the space with a bed base and a double mattress he found outside the Salvation Army. His aunty had made the beige curtains which flapped when a door opened. He pushed his red batik cap further off his forehead and told her he was trying to reduce his impact on the planet.
He pulled the van on to her driveway. His whistle flew through the van, making her jump slightly.
He was her first date in 10 years. His keys hung off a surfboard keyring, jingling as he fiddled with them. She knew he wanted to shag her in the van but she wasn’t going to roll around for her first post-divorce romp on a stained mattress. So she snuck him inside, through her drive-in garage with the keypad and up a flight of steps into her living room.
Most first-time visitors to her home wandered past the art on the walls and stopped to gaze, as though they were in a gallery, but he ignored it all and walked straight into the kitchen. He pulled himself up on the kitchen island and broke into a grin.
She first saw that smile when he was whisking her milk in the cafe that day. He had shiny white teeth like her ex-husband once had. His blue eyes shimmered like paua shells. He wore the same type of backward cap as her first boyfriend at university, the guy she had often wondered, what if. It had been years since someone had asked her out.
Cute. He was cute. She heard his stomach rumble. She poured him an organic Moa beer, and put two slices of bread into the toaster.
How long’ve you lived here? he asked.
She told him 10 years, just as she was wondering what it would be like to fuck a man who wasn’t her husband, to press into the body of a complete stranger. Her ex-husband had replaced her with a new lover after six months, a woman two decades younger than him, who spent two nights a week with her children.
The toast burned, smoke wafting through the pantry. She had already decided she’d make the first move so she stood on tiptoes and kissed him. His lips were soft and slippery, tasting of beer and salty peanuts.
She couldn’t take him into her marital bed so she led him into the TV room, pulled the blinds down and watched him drop on the couch in one corner of the room, the one she lay on with her ex watching Modern Family reruns and birthing videos.
What was your husband doing leaving a woman like you? You’re gorgeous, he said.
He played with her right nipple, turning it round and round with one finger. His hands were thin and cold, giving her goosebumps. He unzipped her jeans, then pulled his down. She rolled hers off, and their jeans dropped on the carpet at the same time. He smelled musty, like her old school blazer.
On top of her, his body was lighter than she was used to, and he slid inside so quickly, and it was over before she had time to enjoy it. He lay there, afterwards, hugging her. Something hurt. She reached down, and felt the ridge of his hipbone, jutting out like the sharp edge of a rock face.
Afterwards, she made him more toast. We should catch up again, he said, giving her that smile.
The next day when she was putting the rubbish out, she noticed the oil stain on her driveway. She tried to sweep it away with turps and hot water. After a few weeks of rain, it finally disappeared.
*
She met a man through a yoga friend. His head was so smooth it shone, pale and pink under the lights. The rest of his body was hairless, which she found strange for a man. His electric razor buzzed every morning like a roomful of blowflies.
He kept his body in shape by running every day, sprinting over the roads and hills near the home he stayed in for free. He was so fit, priding himself on keeping an erection going for a couple of hours.
In mid-June, she told him there was a party at her local bowling club. He knocked on her door dressed in a purple shirt that made his nose look sharper and skin even paler than usual, but he was still handsome, in an unusual way. He handed her a bunch of flowers which she knew from the wrapping were from Moore Wilson’s. Then he wandered around the living room, checking which LED lights had blown.
Have you got any spares? I’ll replace them, he said.
He stood on the dining table and reached up, replacing a couple of dead lights. Afterwards, he pulled her leather couch closer to the fire, and unscrewed a bottle of Craggy Range pinot noir he had pulled from her wine cellar.
She was finally going to a party with a man, rather than on her own. He skulled two glasses of red wine which glowed in his glass like blood, and turned the stereo on. Let’s stay in, he said. It’s so nice here. He’d had a hard day, meetings with his accountant.
No. She wanted to go to the party, and even had an outfit from a hire shop. A frown ran down his forehead like a scar.
You go. I’ll look after the house, it’s fine, he said.
All good, she said.
Fuck it, she thought. She had gone to things on her own for months.
Where is he? her work friend, Samara, asked when she turned up without him. But she made up some excuse about how he was sick, and she danced under bright, fluorescent lights with her friends, and drank cheap white house wine usually served to bowlers.
When she got home at midnight, he was still on the couch, reading his phone, his bald head glowing under a spotlight. Three empty bottles were lined up like soldiers on the hearth, and his teeth were stained, tinged dark red, as though he had been sucking blood.
Come here beautiful, he said. His erection bulged through his pants. Oh god, he looked like Frankenstein. Maybe it was the way the light fell, but she saw the long teeth hanging down over thin lips and his purple shirt glowing too brightly.
You need to go home, she said.
It had been decades since she had dumped someone. He picked up a half bottle of wine and swung it under his arm as he left.
She fell on the couch and edited his contact details in her phone. She renamed him Bald Bastard, then she threw the empty bottles in the recycling bin and texted her eldest daughter: Miss you honey. The front door was still open, like a cape flapping in the breeze.
*
Samara helped her set up a Bumble profile. Days later, she arranged her first date. He worked in comms and was a published author. He wrote this on his profile and he told her this again over a drink in a Mexican bar where they sat outside because all the inside tables were full. The wind blew, rattling a sheet of iron on the roof. He did all the talking while she nodded. That was okay because she had lied about her age - he thought she was 39, not 45 - and she also didn’t want him to know she had children.
She ordered an uber and they went to his studio flat. He told her he kept the blinds closed, even during the day, because the sun might fade his new grey carpet.
He picked up his cat, a fluffy, white one with blue eyes, and held it up against his bare torso. His biceps bulged as he stroked it, veins protruding like meandering rivers. She wasn’t a cat person. She’d always preferred dogs.
I’m pretty hungry, she said. Do you have toast?
He was paleo. He didn’t even have a toaster. He boiled her an egg, serving it in its shell on one of just two plates in his cupboard.
She wondered if this was stooping far too low, sinking into the sewers of dating, but she reminded herself he was intelligent, a published author, in his late forties, with a good job.
They had matched because he also liked going out to restaurants and cafes, and he liked books. She was surprised he didn’t have a single book or a book shelf in his house.
Where can I buy your book, she asked, as she scooped hard egg yolk out of the shell.
She got a waft of cat piss. He told her he had self-published and she might find the book on Amazon.
He took her behind a tatty curtain and lay her down on the fold-out sofa bed. His lips were hard, as though his large, straight teeth were too close to his lips. He unrolled a condom while she stripped naked. She felt strangely aroused, her body soft and warm, opening up to him. She felt herself soften, and then she went somewhere else, her body quivering as she shuddered.
Later, she searched for the book and his name on Amazon. She searched all the online book sites, but there was nothing.
*
Two days after her ex’s second wedding, the removal truck took three hours to move everything from her two-storey home with three bathrooms on a lifestyle block to a Californian bungalow with one bathroom and a tiny backyard with barely enough room for the recycling bin. She let her ex keep three-quarters of their art: in return, he agreed she could have the kids an extra night a week.
She was in Bunnings, looking for a battery-operated lawnmower which was part of the Black Friday sale. It would be her first purchase for her new house and she felt weirdly excited.
She was in aisle 10, stamping her feet to stay warm because a chill was coming up from the concrete. Lawnmowers hung off the shelves like upside down monsters with limbs, different sizes, prices, all with different battery lives. She was reaching up to get a mid-priced one down when a trolley ran into her.
Oh god, are you okay? the man pushing the trolley said. Her leg stung. The trolley had bruised her right shin, a black mark the same shape as Australia slowly creeping over her pale skin.
Let’s get some ice, he said. He found some at the counter, and he tried to press the pack against her leg but she took it, and said, I’m fine. I’ll do it, thanks.
He looked about her age. He was tall and lean. He stammered something she couldn’t hear as a Bunnings sales person boomed something over the microphone. The concrete floor smelled of disinfectant and she wasn’t sure if it was the knock on her leg or the intensity of the past few days but she felt she might throw up. She needed to get home to the kids, but the floor was wobbling and swaying and the stranger seemed to notice because he pushed a plastic chair under her and she wobbled and dropped into it. The sale tag brushed against her arm but it felt good to sit down.
I’ve had enough of men, she thought, or did she say it.
Can a storeperson go to aisle 11, paints, the Bunnings voice crackled.
Fuck, I need to leave, she said. My kids.
Then somehow he was asking her about her kids and telling her about his daughter, and she wasn’t sure how it happened as she had given up on men but he walked her to her car, and a week later, she was at his house sitting in his kitchen.
His kitchen had been renovated, one of those turned from three rooms into one, with a white granite island dominating the space, bifold doors taking the indoors out, connecting to a huge deck he had built one weekend with his brother.
An Ecoya candle burned on a single glass table next to a lily plant, making the room smell like a Hawkes Bay orchard sweltering in the sun.
He poured her a glass of Chardonnay and told her he and his ex were best friends, but their marriage had been virtually sexless, which he hated, and so he had strayed and now they raised their daughter week about.
He flicked on a Fleetwood Mac record. Loved the eighties, he said, it was the best decade to be alive. He wore pale denim jeans and a soft pink shirt with the collar slightly up. His hair was sticky with gel. He had more hair than most men his age. Her ex was bald.
The wall oven snapped open like an interactive art work, and they ate warmed chicken cashew nut stir fry containing too much MSG. The cold, steel bar stools they sat on smelled of Spray and Wipe, making her nose twitch. As he talked about his daughter's talent as a gymnast, she thought of her kitchen renovation. She planned to put the sink and stove on the back wall and keep the island free of appliances - the opposite to what he had done - so the kids could sit up and do their homework while she prepped dinner.
She found him interesting. He ran an NGO. His name was Greg, which sounded solid. They talked about politics and the Covid vaccine, and why they’d both get it, and his eyes brightened when she told him she had gone back to university and was studying sociology as a mature student.
A photo of the World Vision child he sponsored was stuck to the fridge. It was a bad sign that he had an affair. But maybe she should be more open. Perhaps she’d just had bad luck so far.
She still had rice in her teeth when he took her hand and let her into his bedroom, which was the same blue shade as her mother’s dining room. She went floppy as she lay down on his bed. The Ecoya candle was now in his bedroom where it burned on an old brown chest, a scent so overpowering she asked him to open a window.
He was in a white dressing gown on top of her. His lips were surprisingly hard and cold. She’d expected them to be soft and soothing. You’re so sexy, he whispered, his breath wetting her ear.
He had told her he loved pleasing women and she wondered about that as he pulled her knickers down. His fingers, long like those of a pianist, moved around, finding her opening. And then he was in, thrusting up and down, his tiny pot belly bumping in and out against her flat stomach, flesh colliding.
She couldn’t breathe, then. She wondered if it was the Ecoya candle, but no, something was around her neck, squeezing it. Her neck hurt, and her eyes flicked open. She stared. At him, at his hand, wrapped around her neck, for how long, she didn’t know, but her heart thudded and the blood in her veins seemed to boil.
Stop, she yelled.
He released his grip on her neck, and ejaculated right then, dropping his whole body on top of her.
I thought you’d like that, he mumbled.
Up close, she noticed his crooked top teeth. The light shining from the yellow candle light made him look like a monster in a white coat.
Get the fuck off me, she screamed.
You’re overreacting. Most women love it, he said.
You’re… fuck you, she said.
Her neck throbbed and her breath was coming in small gasps. She searched for her knickers on the bed, found them under the pillow, pulled them on, while Fleetwood Mac continued to play in the living room. He lay on the bed with his arms folded behind him.
