Is it wrong to want to have a little fun?
Who did I think was better looking – her husband
or Francesco?
Didn’t I think she was in better shape right now
than in this photo of her twenty years ago?
I gave up sugar – feel how soft my skin is!
and I would touch her arm or cheek and say –
oh wow, like silk!
She’d show me texts from him to her.
We’d analyse the tone, discuss what she should
text him back.
She’d ask which lingerie I thought that she should
wear, which ‘saucy photo’ she should send.
There was something strangely sexless about it all.
In the photos that he sent, his dick looked sad and stoic
as though trying to keep its head held high under
enormous pressure – basically it looked like Atlas, Ava.
Sans the globe.
Once, she had me watch a video she’d made for him –
her sitting opposite a mirror – sliding her
underwear to the side, slapping herself between her legs
repeatedly. The sound was sort of comical, like someone
slapping steak. Her face reflected in the mirror made an
exaggerated oooh.
What do you think? She asked me earnestly.
Sure, yeah… hot. I said.
She told me that before she met her husband she had
worked in an Ann Summers –
men like it when I tell them that, she said, I used to
use the sex toys in the storeroom, put them back into
their packets without washing them.
The empanadas there were excellent.
I’d take a tray of what they had leftover home to Girl
House every Sunday night.
We had a lot of parties at that house – good space
for it – big and bare.
My favourite housemate there was Molly – on the
art degree.
Her hair was always pinned in these elaborate
styles – faux-pearls and feathers strung across – and
