by iBloke
(02/19/03)

He sends a short reply, perhaps a bit carelessly; she feels unlikely to be real, and doesn't warrant much effort.

A reply comes back that evening. With nothing to lose, though apparently little to gain (she declares, despite her profile, that she is not looking for casual sex), he takes a day off to journey to Oxford.

An hour before they had agreed to meet he knocks on her door. Hair uncombed, in bed robes, she vacillates between sending him away and letting him in. An uncomfortable few minutes follows whilst she arranges coffee and makes apologies for her appearance.

In between combing her hair and boiling the kettle, she mentions the onset of her period. She laughs: "I nearly sent you away.” She adds honey to the milky coffee they share.

Their conversation winds like a river. She is on anti-depressants -- she went to pieces, she explains, when her husband chose an eighteen year-old student rather than their eighteen year-old marriage. She is re-evaluating her choices, searching for alternatives. She blames herself, at least in part, for the behaviour of her perfect husband, the perfect shit. She should not have taken her career so seriously, spent so much time away. Perhaps she took him for granted. But she has her career, sitting in this ancient bastion of intellectual elitism. Tea at three in the fellow’s gardens. A private chapel. Marmalade at breakfast served in silver.

As she dresses, she leaves the door to her bedroom open, and he sees her half-naked.

She emerges in faded jeans, a black satin camisole, a black nylon jacket. She never used to wear make up, she says, but yesterday the porter said she looked beautiful. Her hair, half-combed, falls dark and tangled about her shoulders. She drinks the remains of the milky sweet coffee from the spout of the tea-pot. Her odd behaviour makes him feel uncomfortable.

They make their way out of the house to a country road. A rubbish truck churns past. She stabs fingers into her ears and screws up her features. She drags him away from the din of glass and tins. “I hate this road. It is always noisy.”

They take a secluded path that leads along a canal and her composure visibly returns. “Can you put your arm around me?”

He puts his arm around her shoulder.

“No, like this.” She moves his arm to her waist. “So I can lean against you. My period is bad, much pain. If you don’t hold me I’ll fall.” He is English, disturbed by her candor.

Beside a lock, they come to a bench amongst flowers and weeping willows. She says she needs to sit.

On the bench, she snuggles under his arm. Well, he thinks, what’s not to like about sitting with your arm around an attractive woman in such a place. He exhales as he readjusts his expectations.

She cannot keep still for even the shortest of times. Is she tense? Or perhaps she is always like this. He strokes his hand along the side of her face. He feels her relax, just a little. She asks that they should carry on their walk. Once again she needs his arm tight around her hip.

She stops as they cross a footbridge. “I am very heavy bleeding. I must see to it.”

“Here?”

“Yes, wait here. Make sure no one follows.”

She turns in through a line of trees and into a field. He would feel uncomfortable peeing behind a bush, yet this mad East European woman is squatting in the middle of a field in Oxford seeing to her period. Doubts crowd his mind. He paces the bridge, glancing from time to time toward the field. It crosses his mind to follow her, to sneak a look. It’s mad, what she’s doing-but it’s also animal and female. He berates himself for thinking to violate her privacy, and turns to pace back over the bridge. He hasn’t seen her, though, so he isn’t too hard on himself.

Back at the porter's lodge, she asks for the keys to the chapel. Behind the massive oak door the private Chapel of the Ancestors is bathed in the five hundred year-old crimsons and violets of stained glass. A magnificent sandstone crucifix glows beneath the angeled, vaulted ceiling.

“A special place,” she says. “It's rarely used.” She practices her yoga here in solitude, she tells him.

She looks up. "Will you cuddle me?"

His arms fold around her waist. She draws into him and rests her head on his shoulder. He offers a gentle kiss to her cheek, but she wants comfort, not sex. God will rejoice in this, she tells him. He is the God of love and kindness. Mother Mary and the Holy Father watch her bring the devil into this holy chamber. Perhaps they will excuse her actions in the name of affection.

Something in her breathing changes, so his teeth scrape a line along the side of neck. He plays her senses until she shakes.

"What makes you aroused?" He asks gently.

"Nooo, you must not ask such things here."

He holds her.

"I think my nipples are very sensitive"

His hand closes over one breast and her shaking returns. Her breathing turns ragged. "We must go."

Back in her study, she checks her email; he sits and reads her dissertation. It has been an interesting day, but not the one he had hoped for.

"Did you expect to have sex with me?"

"No, not expect. Maybe hoped."

"Poor man! How long did it take you to get here?"

"Four hours"

"I am so bad. I should have stopped you coming. I am so scatty when I have my period."

"Would you let me cuddle you again?"

"Ah, I think we should just be friends, yes?"

She waits. "Okay?"

She walks towards the bed and he draws her down to lie next to him. She is thirty-nine. Before her husband walked out in January she could have been twenty-nine, or nineteen, but a pretty eighteen year-old has given her eighteen detestable extra years. She cannot compete.

The warmth, the closeness of another body: he feels her longing. His leg crosses hers; his fingers trace the line of her cheek. He kisses her eyelashes and then her cheeks. He kisses her lightly on her lips.

She permits him the kisses, and then says, "This is not sex. Sex is intercourse, kissing with tongues, things that can give you diseases."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"You can do this, but you cannot have sex from me."

He drags his hand down between her breasts and across the flat of her tummy. "Take your top off."

"Why?"

"I want to look at you." Maybe she wants a man to look, maybe she needs to be reassured.

"I don't think that is a good idea. Maybe next time. I have my period.”

He touches her nipples through her camisole and her eyes close. He pinches and teases, gently. She won’t open her eyes.

Such encouragement, such lack of protest, is an open invitation; he moves to rest his full weight over hers. His erection lies in the furrow between her thighs.

He kisses her cheeks, her eyelids. He slides down a little and catches the skin at the side of her neck between his lips. Her body jerks beneath his, shallow, sharp movements. His fingers slide the straps of the camisole off her shoulders.

"What are you doing?"

"I told you. I want to see you."

"Why?"

She doesn't really want his answer. It is enough that he wants to, but it is also too much. Before she can think, his lips have a breast.

He pauses and looks up at her. "Are you okay?"

She uses the respite to regain her composure. This is not really sex. So long as she is making the rules, she is in control.

"We cannot have sex, I told you this. But if you are too aroused I understand, maybe you can go next door, I can give you tissues."

"I don't need that.”

"I have my period, and anyway, this is crazy -- we have only met."

"I don’t want to do anything we would regret."

Moving from on top to her side, he wraps her in a tender embrace. Feeling more confident, more in control again, she starts to kiss him.

He pulls away and takes off his shirt. She gasps.

Lying back down, he reclaims her for his arms.

After a few breaths, she sits up and removes her top and bra. Before she can lie down he is already at her breasts with his mouth and hands and hunger. She sighs and sinks back into the bed.

His hand strays down across her hip and onto her thigh. "Take off your jeans."

"No.” She watches him. “Why?"

"I want to see your legs."

"No, I don't have nice legs."

"Let me judge."

There is a silence. She knows this is not right, but, but maybe she can still set the rules, still be adored and yet come to no harm. She gets up and strips the heavy jeans. Black lace knickers. A patch of white, a sanitary towel, shows behind the lace. As she comes back to the bed, she seems to have crossed some boundary.

“My breasts are not so nice. They are too soft. Look.” She leans over him so they dangle. “They should be more like this.” She gathers one between both hands and forces it upward.

"Your breasts are beautiful."

"I think I should have an operation to lift them."

He covers her again, crushing her. Her lips are moving, perhaps praying God will forgive her. Before she has had time to think, he is up and slackening his belt.

"No, no, please, keep your trousers on. Not this time."

He threads the strap back through his buckle, saying nothing.

She laughs now and says, "You have to leave this alone." She points to the tender area around her breasts. "You can go anywhere else, but not here also,” placing her fingers between her legs. She had made a stand and lies back on the bed. He starts to roam within her political boundaries, but of course it's not long before he is pushing at the borders: his lips cross the flatlands of her stomach, steal up against the black lace no-mans land.

Her hands rush to her defense. "Don't go there, I told you. I have my period."

"But that arouses me."

"But why, how can this be, what can you like about that?"

"It's...it's feminine. When I was nine years old I was staying in hotel with my parents. I saw this woman in a shop and I had a fantasy of her asking me to go with her to the ladies’ toilet to help her change her sanitary pad." They both smile, he in shyness and she in disbelief.

Her hands fall back to her sides. "No, I don't believe that is really true."

"Did you ever make love to your husband when you had a period?"

"No." Her look is not shock as he might have expected, but almost sadness.

"Did you want to?"

"Oh yes."

"Did you ever ask him?"

"Yes."

He kneels and lowers his head between her legs. He inhales deeply, through his nose, hungry to capture the heavy odour of a woman. Taking the sides of the lace waistband he tugs her knickers down.

"No!"

He is behaving badly, losing his grip. He has crossed a line too. "I want to see you with your period."

"Oh, God." She has stumbled over a precipice. She cannot say no and she knows she should. She wants to fall all the way, wants him and God to take away her responsibility. She sits up and pushes his head from between her legs.

She goes to other side of the room and replaces the fresh sanitary towel with a used one. She says, "I want to do something very perverted."

She takes up what seems to be a sacrificial position on the bed. He lies between her legs and buries his mouth and nose hard into her sex.

He grabs her lace underwear and draws it down. "Let’s take these off."

She lifts her behind off the bed and he draws them down her long legs. Over her pretty feet, he drags the last intimate garment from her body.

In a tremulous voice, she begins to pray. "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."

But between her legs is sex. The sound of his sharp intake of breath makes her look, and looking straight into her eyes he drags his tongue the length of the bloodstained pad. Her praying redoubles.

"...Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” His lips close lightly on her sex. He kisses her soft outer lips and she prays and prays, jerking and writhing.

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors...." He presses his upper lip against her clitoris as his tongue delves and tastes.

He grinds his erection against her leg, his senses overloaded. "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” He empties himself into his expensive trousers.

Spent, slowing, he works her with his tongue and lips and face. "…and the power and the glory, for ever. Amen." Her cheeks are streaked with tears.

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