Raven (12 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We were splashing up a storm in evening aqua class and as Vanessa and I drew level she called out to me above the noise of the throbbing music and roiling water: ‘I've had some more young ones contact me! I told them I'm not interested but have a friend who might be! They're very good-looking!'

‘Great – send them my way!'

‘Come back to my place later! We'll go online and you can check them out!'

So after we showered and dressed I drove Vanessa back to her flat, which I hadn't been to before. The place was memorable for the extensive wine rack in the kitchen (50 bottles, at least) garlanded with twinkly fairy lights. Nice touch.

She opened a bottle of
blanc
, got out a few dips and toasted some pitta bread, and we gossiped for a while over our girly feast before moving into the next room to log on to the dating site.

‘Look, it's these two guys. Stud123 and Cruiser.'

They were in their early thirties. And cute. Stud123 was the cockier of the two, and his main photo showed him sporting a come-on smile, if ever I saw one. As it happened, both were currently online.

Vanessa quickly tapped out messages to them. ‘My friend on this site, called Raven, likes younger men and thinks you're cute. Why don't you get in touch with her?'

Before long I was messaging with the pair of them and they claimed to be in favour of pursuing matters with the game Raven.

‘It's so nice of my friend Vanessa to give you to me,' I wrote to Stud123.

‘Yes,' he replied, ‘she's a good sport! And how can I be of assistance? Maybe pop round with a nice bottle of wine one evening to toast a new adventure?'

‘Yes, that's the kind of service I like.'

‘And I'm sure that other than opening and serving the drinks I can be of use in other departments…'

‘I've no doubt that a resourceful young man such as you has many valuable uses. It would be nice to find out. So what is it about older women that appeals to you? The sophistication, wisdom, experience, self-confidence? Or have I missed something out?'

‘The sex is far more adventurous, kinky and fun!'

My e-talk with Cruiser was more succinct. ‘You like cute young men and I like refined older women, so we're both in luck. Would like to have a drink sometime if you fancy it.' And he gave me his mobile number.

I was chuffed that he regarded me as refined. Because it had seemed to me that in the space of a few short months of starring in my own personal Sex and the City show, I had gone from thoughtful fellow-journalist Carrie, my natural alter ego, to voracious man-eater Samantha. But that was all right, as long as I still came across as ladylike and refined…right up to the moment the knickers came off.

It had all got off to an encouraging start and I told the boys we would continue our encouraging communications very soon.

Vanessa and I chatted and sipped our spritzers late into the night, discussing men and sex and relationships. I asked her how many more good years she thought I could look forward to.

‘Five,' she said without hesitation. ‘You need to sort yourself out by the time you're 65.'

Her words were depressing. I had reckoned on, maybe, ten. The way that time was now hurtling ahead, five years would seem to flash by in five minutes.

Then she told me about her two girlfriends who had moved to Marbella years earlier, where they met and married rich English criminals on the run. ‘They're having a great time out there with their bling and their swimming pools and year-round tans.'

‘Maybe I should go out there and find myself a rich criminal,' I joked. ‘I can get used to spending my days swimming and tanning and not worrying about money.'

Vanessa shook her head. ‘My friends have both had boob jobs, they're thick, Barbie doll types. That's the kind those guys go for. You wouldn't stand a chance.'

Then she reminisced about growing up as the daughter of a publican and spending her evenings in the family pub, constantly surrounded by fawning men. ‘In my twenties I would get a different guy proposing to me every week. A lot of them were rich and successful, they'd have been great catches. But after having my fun I'd tell them to push off. Easy come, easy go.
That's
what's given me the confidence that all these young guys like so much in older women.'

I had never had Vanessa's sort of confidence. I didn't grow up surrounded by fawning men and I had married the first person who proposed to me. Men didn't instinctively zoom in on me ‘like moths around a flame'. Although I had always had my fans, I was something of a
speciality,
an idiosyncratic choice. But my confidence with men had been bounding ahead very nicely of late. And I knew I had online dating to thank for that. I was becoming sharper and more sassy. A bit of a minx, even. Good lord, I might never be the same again.

*

Easy come, easy go. That was what Vanessa had said. And in that spirit, Cruiser was the one who went – simply evaporated back into the ether, as these e-daters often did before any meeting could take place – but Stud123 came, all right. More than once.

We arranged for him to visit me after work one evening, and texted each other a few titillating messages the day before, to get into the mood (this was practically becoming standard internet dating protocol). This is an edited version of our message thread:

HIM: Can you wear something sexy?

ME: Like a frilly French maid's outfit?

HIM: Yes. Got a pic of you in one?

ME: No, but I have one of me in my underwear. Shall I send it?

HIM: Yes, I think you should.

ME (texting him the saucy shot I sent Ryan and Charles): Very few people have seen this.

He responds by sending me a picture of himself stripped to the waist and flexing impressive biceps.

ME: Hmm. I think we'll get along just fine.

HIM: So do I. And if all goes well I can fit you in for a regular service when needed. Maybe we can even persuade Vanessa to join in. Lol.

ME: She doesn't do threesomes any more. Told me the last one was with her sister and some well-known footballer about 30 years ago.

HIM: Just us then. Maid costume at the ready!

We were in the midst of a rare London heatwave and Stud123 arrived hot and sticky. There was no preamble. We walked into the kitchen because I was going to get him a cold drink, but he jumped right into the proceedings, giving me a long, well-practised kiss whilst enthusiastically running sturdy hands over my backside.

‘Did you miss me?' I asked when at last I came up for air. We laughed. He had warm brown eyes and an attractive smile. It wasn't long before we tumbled into bed. His speciality was raunchy, uninhibited sex – up, down, back and front, not forgetting sideways. An hour later it looked as though a herd of buffalo had stampeded across my bed. I looked pretty run over myself, as I lay in a sweat amidst the soggy, tangled duvet.

After a while I brought up a bottle of cold white wine and we sat in bed, chatting. He told me about his failed early marriage (he was only 21 when he'd got hitched), and about his family (grew up in Kent, divorced parents, didn't get on with the stepmum) and his job with a software company which didn't reward his talents so he was leaving to join another, where he would be more appreciated. He also spoke at length about the various areas of London he had lived in and their relative merits and demerits, although I was arguably more of an expert on London neighbourhoods than he was, considering I'd lived in the capital for 40-plus years and he had only moved there eight years earlier. But I know what men are like, so I listened patiently.

Then we had the well-established orgasm conversation. He said that he had always been very highly sexed (‘You should have seen me in my early twenties!') but that he loved to give pleasure and the greatest satisfaction for him was the female orgasm. Such a prince! And I had deprived him of this great satisfaction.

I explained my difficulties and said the only thing that could do the trick was if I concentrated on sexy scenarios in my head, and I had a few old favourites to wheel out which worked well, but they were too dirty to tell anyone about. This was the first bit of information about me that really roused his interest.

‘Tell me about them.'

‘No, too embarrassing. They're secret.'

‘Come on.' He stroked my hair. ‘I won't tell a soul.'

‘Nope.'

So he padded off to take a shower.

By now it was dinnertime and I had taken care to have some nice eats in the house: smoked salmon, salad, fresh baguette and butter. Ice cream for afters. After all the wild physical exertion, I was expecting my Stud to be ravenous. But he declined the offer of a meal, saying he was trying to lose weight and being ‘very good' about cutting down on his consumption. So although it was only 8.30 p.m., he bid me goodbye and headed off towards the tube station.

His departure left me feeling strangely deflated. It seemed as if, in some perverse way, we could instantly leap into the most thoroughgoing carnal pleasures with each other, no problem, yet somehow to sit down and have dinner together would be too intimate a thing for us for to do, seeing as we were virtual strangers. Dinner
à deux
was what proper couples did.

I went outside to the garden, sat down on the steps by the little fishpond and watched my goldfish and koi swimming in their meaningless circles. I was having a moment of existential angst.

Later I texted Vanessa, briefly filling her in on my ‘date' with Stud, the younger man she had so considerately passed on to me. ‘He came, we shagged, he left. Christ, what the hell am I doing?'

She replied: ‘Are you okay, darling? Come over for a drink if you want.'

But I just wanted to change my bedclothes and hole up in bed with the comfort of my accoutrements around me –notebook and pen, radio remote control, mobile, mug of peppermint tea, et al. – so that I could feel like myself again.

Perhaps I was not so Samantha, after all.

I didn't think I would ever hear from Stud123 again, now that he'd had what he came for. But a text tinkled in late that night: ‘I had fun, hope you did too. Would love to hear your dirty fantasies. Maybe next time?'

*

The following week it was back to The Bells for an initial drink with a new young friend, Simon. His dating profile caught my eye because it was so articulate, it contained big words and grown-up thoughts. I sent a message paying tribute to his superior language skills.

He replied: Thank you. Coming from a journalist, I won't take the compliment lightly. How are you finding online dating?

Me: Illuminating. Have discovered a fondness for handsome young men, and if they can spell and use proper grammar, all the better! [Shameless but such fun.]

Him: I hope I fit the remit.

Me: Oh I think you might.

Him: That's nice to hear from someone so alluring.

And we were away.

Simon was 25, slim, sweet-faced and boyish, a little shy, but one of those super-bright young men powering ahead on the cutting edge of the technological revolution. He was an internet entrepreneur and blatantly passionate about digital technology. A total geek, in other words, but in the most charming way. And with lovely manners.

We sat back in the squashy armchairs in The Bells (I thought the Sheena Easton lookalike barmaid smirked as she spotted me there with yet another young male companion, but maybe I imagined it) and he gave me his potted biography. Born and bred in salubrious Hampstead, intellectual parents, prep and public school education. When he mentioned that he still lived at home, I felt a wicked frisson shoot down my cradle-snatching spine.

Then, predictably, we got onto the subject of relationships. ‘I've never had a serious girlfriend,' he admitted. ‘It's so hard to meet people. Before the days of iPads, iPods, tablets and smartphones, people could strike up a conversation on the tube or in a bus queue. You could say to a girl, “Hey, you look nice, fancy a drink?” But now everyone is immersed in their own little universe. People don't even make eye contact. That's why we all use dating sites.'

He recounted a dating disaster with a girl he'd met online. She wanted to go to the cinema for their first date, and being a gentleman, he let her choose the film. ‘Unfortunately she picked a really bleak Japanese film with subtitles. It was all about the dreadful lives of the members of a poor family living with the legacy of Hiroshima. A real downer. And very long. By the end of it we were both so depressed we could barely speak. We just trudged off in silence to the tube, said good-bye and never met again.'

‘So the lesson is don't see a Japanese movie on a first date. I'll remember that.'

‘Definitely not.' He grinned. ‘James Bond, maybe.'

‘How about blind dates? Do your friends ever fix you up with girls?'

‘No, they're hopeless.'

I smiled at him. ‘What would they say about you being out on a date with an older woman?'

‘I don't tell them much about my private life…' He drank from his glass of beer.

‘Would they be shocked and horrified?'

‘On the contrary, it would be a big mark in my favour.'

‘Even if the woman was my age?'

He nodded and grinned again.

Later that evening Simon came home with me. We had a cup of tea (tea before sex – so English) then went up to bed. As I had expected he was a shy, inexperienced lover, but all the more responsible for that – he insisted on condoms all the way, as per his sex education lessons at school, which weren't long ago. I love a sensible boy.

It was straightforward and pure, not wild and raunchy and all over the shop, as with Stud123. And at the end I rocked him slowly in my arms and ran my fingers through his hair, because I had warmed to him and his charming boyish ways, which contrasted neatly with his sophisticated mind. He was
refined
. I hoped to see him again.