Twenty-First Century

When she unwrapped the iPad he

winked at her and

muttered something about joining the

modern world, which to her was a

sexless marriage, three

rapacious screenagers who only left their rooms to

rape the fridge and mountain the sink with

washing-up, but she gave it a go,

learnt to surf, discovered

Facebook and Twitter, made friends, read

blogs and through them

Lit and tumblr and flickr,

clicked links she knew she shouldn’t,

started an anonymous email, made

new “friends”, one of whom,

now that the house was empty, was

waiting for her new Skype name to

connect, for her to be suitably

undressed, to show her ability to take

direction in the use of those

interesting objects the postman had

unwittingly delivered, a performance she would

record to show her husband that his wife had

well and truly arrived in the

Twenty-First Century.

No-Tell Hotel

She was so grateful for the nearby

No-Tell Hotel, where the sight of

one woman and several men (only one of whom

seemingly married to her) caused no

comment: where a large room,

well-separated from others was

always available; where there was

no complaint about her serious screaming nor the

foul language of full-on sex; where there was always

extra towels to dry so many

sweaty bodies; where no-one objected to the

heavily soiled sheets or the

feral smell of so much

gloriously impersonal pleasure.

As she drank her coffee, sated,

watching her children scamper, she

vowed to reward the staff, somehow, and

funnily enough she knew the perfect place.

Christmas Stocking

Her Christmas Stocking was

black, a fine denier,

tight-gartered, sleek, not suited to a

man’s ill-wrapped gift but

perfectly encasing  the

warm leg that led to the

best Christmas present

any man could wish for.

Keys

As the car took a sharp bend, the

keys caught her eye as they

swung in the street-light:

was the miniature Eiffel Tower

deliberately phallic or just an

amusing souvenir?

And that long Chubb looked serious:

was there a dungeon chez lui where his

wife liked to be stretched?

Would he want a bit of rough, this

man she barely knew? Would she

hurt in the morning? Would she mind?

She thought of that silly rabbit’s foot she’d

bought for her husband, wondered

whose wife was looking at that

swinging in another street-light, whether she

would think him weird: and where was

this man’s wife? In a

BMW, a Ford, a Peugeot?

Clean? Or cluttered, with

“Baby on Board” in the rear-window?

His cool hand crept up her

warm thigh to where there was

space for cold flesh, opening naturally,  

all beginning with a bowl, a

blindfold, a chaos of keys, a

story to tell in the morning.

A Valediction, Forbidding Morning

Let not this moist cavern of tangled limbs and

sweat and the sense of sex ever

evaporate but distil its latent power to

banish break of day so that

night and silence can reign in the

banked heat of skin on skin.