FROM THE ANTHRO BOOK - 'BIZARRE TALES'

It was a gradual thing, one of those uncertain changes which take place but you can't establish exactly when. I just knew that sometime after I turned thirty, I had changed.

There was no sadness involved, no angst or psyching out because of reaching a certain number in life. No, this was something internal, something mental - an attitude change. No longer was I simply slinking from bar to bar and club to club seeking new mutual victims for spectacularly diverting and meaningless sex. That had stopped, had become empty. There had to be something more significant in my meaningless life. I found that I started to look for something deeper, a cliché perhaps but true none the less. Where before I had wanted to get into someone's body...now I wanted to get into their mind. I wanted to have experiences, not just be experienced.

I swirled my ice around in my glass of vodka and black, tossing vague thoughts around, no longer believing in finding that elusive something which would change how I looked at a grey, jaded world. Not here in one of a thousand facelessly quiet suburban lounges. Looking back this is what I found to be so strange, the cliché that after you stop searching for something, up it pops... from nowhere.

But it did.

I think it was 1990, a Wednesday, and on a whim or impulse I went into 'The Mariner'. Dull AOR eternally seeped through sleek speakers, sliding and mixing into the contrived shady ambience which was meant to provide the illusion of solitude for the clientele of white collars, execs and unwinding pros. I didn't think that it worked.

Sitting it the booth furthest removed from the milling vegetables in identikit suits and designs, I sat alone watching nothing in particular. I was doing nothing, thinking about nothing. Then, from out of nowhere, she appeared. She had a presence that made her seem to stride like a giant amongst all the regular little hardbodies. Our eyes met for a microsecond and then we were staring elsewhere.

Her shadow fell across me, blanking out the dusky light. "You don't belong here." she breathed, not rudely, but simply like stating a fact.

"I don't really belong anywhere." I replied, without looking up.

The woman laughed gently, naturally, and then sat down across from me. A dark mane of long paged hair shook over a pale blue Donna Karen tailored jacket. There was still a hint of a smile on her lips as she spoke, "You think this is some kind of pick up?"

I stared into her eyes, "I don't think anything - period. Except, maybe, that you don't look as if you belong here. Your clothes might, but your eyes are somewhere else."

The inquisitive look on her face remained, cutting out like a searchlight. I said nothing, it felt good bathing in her radiance. The details of her beauty were unimportant, physical beauty is never particularly uncommon, but if this had been a couple of years ago I'd have spewed some well versed lines of abject flattery and whisked her to my apartment to play 'horizontal mambo' for a week or so. She was lush, glowing...alive.

The busboy had arrived unobserved, as was his role, she asked for two of what I was drinking then rested against her side of the booth. A look of disappointment flickered across her expression.

"Are we playing lines?" she asked in a cool tone.

I sighed, "No, I don't play anything much. Your eyes reminded me of Crepax' Valentina. That's all!"

The woman giggled and bit her lip a little. "I wish I was. I mean aside from the aesthetic excitement, it'd also be safe - being wrapped up in fantasy, hanging on the tip of someone else's pencil, dangling from someone's mind."

We both laughed and her chiffon blouse wrinkled as she breathed. I wanted to say how pretty she was, how beautiful, to pour out a lot of things which I suddenly felt surge through me. I resisted, she might have mistaken my sincerity for duplicity. She aroused me by doing nothing, that was new. Her only function was to exist and she did that well. I started to feel alive, a little, and with no particular reason.

The drinks interrupted us for a moment. "You'd have to have your own name, " I smiled "ELLE! That's quite a cosmopolitan and chic title for you. As in 'The Adventures of Elle'."

"That's good, Jack. In that case you can call me Elle. But before we go any further," she paused her mid Atlantic tones to sip almost cautiously at her drink, "I don't want you to misconstrue anything. I don't do sex any more, under any circumstances – not interested, so if that's going to be a problem I'll leave you alone." She stared into me with her wide, penetrating x-ray eyes.

It was a little irritating, not in essence, but in a form of assumption. I gazed at her, this time staring at her form, her shape, her body visible behind the table. Her cleavage grew as she breathed in, drank and exhaled - patiently waiting.

"I don't think I indicated anything about sex, or suggested anything, did I? Have I assumed that you were coming on to me – no! This is a chance meeting, nothing more, well...nothing necessarily pending. Do you have to state the sex thing a lot? " I asked

There was a flicker of sadness, just a flicker and only for a moment. Her eyes reflected tragedy, "Well...actually, yes. I mean, you seem to be a little removed from all this - but you might not be, just as I might not be what I seem. You can never tell with people! You'll either know what I mean instinctively or you won't, Jack."

I kicked myself mentally, it could've been me speaking, or at least my rationality. "It was a stupid question, but I was curious – so any other terms or conditions?"

Her eyebrows arched and a little smile played around the corners of her mouth, she looked like the little girl you've grown up with and one day you see her as a pretty woman, not just a friend and not just a girl. We laughed, drank, and discussed trivialities, nothing about our lives or identities or occupations, just beautiful, meaningless nonsense. Things probably changed around us, the ebb and tide of clients, the tedious music, the atmospheric changing of the lighting - none of it was noteworthy. Our time passed in a strange, solitary unity.

Before we knew it, it had become late and she said she'd drive me home. It was one of the few times that I was glad to be car-less.

It was a strange thing that during the course of the evening's conversation I didn't really think about her in any kind of sexual way or spend too much time admiring her polished beauty. In fact I didn't even think much about her 'I don't do sex' speech either. The first time I became aware of any real scrutiny in this area was as we left.

I followed her to the car park, by now unashamedly watching her knee length skirt hug her limbs as she moved, watched the linen crease and her sheer legs stride as if she owned the world. I smiled to myself.

The black Toyota ate up the road comfortably as Erik Satie played minimalistic piano pieces through her car system. The city disappeared into the suburbs until it became unimportant in the mirrors. Unexpectedly she pulled over onto the hard shoulder and paused nervously before speaking. It struck me as unusual.

"I'd like you to do something for me Jack, something I haven't done since I stopped...I want to take you somewhere real quiet and then...then I'd like to, I'd like us to talk, just talk, and use our imagination to get aroused - 'sexed up'. If you'd like to and if I can trust you, that is."

I was surprised "Can I trust you?"

We laughed.

Twenty minutes later we were walking by the lake, it was late and a hazy moon lit the land like a diffusion light. In the distance the city glowed yellow and ugly against the beautiful dark sky, its screaming babble reduced to almost nothing. Elle smelt like a perfect mixture of scents as she walked beside me. I held her hand cautiously and she flinched for a second then squeezed mine gently in return. We were both foolishly trusting of each other.

It was the damnedest thing, I wanted to hold her against me, stroke her hair, touch her neck, taste her lips and tongue, but not as a form of foreplay, just because she was so fragile and precious. I wanted to hear everything she had to say, know what her opinions were and be told the things she thought were important. I wanted to be part of her and for her to be part of me, not through fornication ...I don't know how, it was somehow radically different for me and at the same time bizarrely ridiculous : I didn't even know she existed yesterday.

We talked about being children, things we wanted, things that made us sad...and then she started to talk about sex.

From above the dull drone of an aeroplane moaned from somewhere, harmonising with the light sound of breakers in the distance on the shore. The night was pleasant with only an occasional gust of cooling air, and the moon made our figures glow in rim lit silhouette.

She stopped a few paces before me, slipped her tailored jacket off and placed it on the smoothed rock beside her as she sat down. The black chiffon blouse hung perfectly and she folded her thin arms across her chest, opposing hands gently cupping her breasts then slowly drag across the tiny budding protrusions. Again her eyes glowed with a tinge of sadness as she began to speak again.

"I hope I can trust you, for both our sakes."

"I hope I can trust you " I replied smiling.

Elle arched her head back and unbuttoned the top of her blouse, simply staring back in response.

"I love my breasts, "she said as if to herself, slightly distant, "I really love them ". Her right hand slipped into her blouse and gently squeezed and cradled her own warm flesh.

"Sometimes, when I was young, I thought it was...immoral, wrong to be so narcissistic. But still, I often sat for hours, staring and touching, exploring all the different feelings in all the different places, comparing how some places felt so changed during my cycle."

A faraway smile watched me recline against the tree opposite her while she tugged the blouse out from her skirt then unbutton it apart. I listened to her talk.

"I loved the adoration they received, the feeling of someone else's touch. When I was still a kid, still young-ish, I stayed at my best friend's house one Halloween. It was great fun, dressing up, telling ghost stories, watching scary videos...it was a real, sort of typical kids stuff, you know, huddled in the same bed in the small hours, every shadow a monster, every creak was another raging psychopath."

She stretched and tossed her dark hair back, momentarily pushing her chest out and, seemingly, unconsciously exposing the gently rounded arcs of her breasts as they curved to convex fullness, a tiny brown nipple catching her blouse.

"Is this boring you, Jack? "she asked sincerely.

"No," I replied "far from it. In fact it reminds me of... intimacy."

This time it was I who was briefly melancholic. The things she said and the way she spoke reminded me of places I thought were long gone and irretrievable in my life. She smiled back, just a pretty, gently smile like the one you exchange with a stranger in some busy street. A momentary flash of affinity, but I liked that type of thing. She continued in a tone of innocent reminiscence.

"Well, by the time for lights out we had confided a thousand teen-age issues of importance...you can imagine, you know, all the things that matter when you're young. Eventually we started playing about, pretending to go to sleep then slipping your hand slowly across the bed until you suddenly grab the other and collapse in giggles when you manage to frighten her. When you're a kid you can play that sort of nonsense until you really just doze off, but this year we'd started to grow up."

As she finished speaking she knelt beside me, leaning on my shoulder. Her fragrance drifted lazily from her, it smelt expensive.

"So," she confided "we ended up tickling and fighting, trying to keep as quiet as we could considering the silly struggling. I can still remember the very moment. Before, we were still just playing around - I mean we'd grabbed one another numerous times, but this one time it was different. She was holding me down, sort of half on top of me, and we stopped laughing at the same time...the exact same time. Isn't that odd? And right then the elusive, funny feeling changed. Right then, I remember thinking, I wanted her to lie on me...just lie on me, and she did, as if she read my mind. My pyjama top was all undone and she stared for ages at these tiny boobs that must have seemed enormous to her because she was still pretty flat, just little bumps."

She turned her face up to me and giggled "In fact they weren't underdeveloped, it was all she was getting." We both laughed and the stars blinked above.

I stroked her hair as she continued, relaxing a little more.

"She lay against my chest, her T-shirt sticking to both of us. Oddly enough I started stroking her hair, it felt great is if it had suddenly become...really silky, I mean like the feel of real silk. I took her hand and put it on my breast...God, even today that was one of the most sensual feelings I've had. I can't describe what it felt like to have her hands touch me, and when she started to kiss my skin where it lay beneath her lips...it was unlike any feeling I'd created for myself, so I touched hers, through her T-shirt and instantly wished I had these big, tight points that she was really embarrassed about because they'd stick through her vest or shirt every time she got cold. We just lay for ages touching one another until she slipped her knee between my legs as she moved to finally discard her top. She sat up in just her knickers and whispered in my ear ; 'Your pants are soaking.' I was totally horrified, I thought it was a judgement, a punishment for my vanity and impropriety. She was much more sensible and explained how normal it was. I must have been laughably naive even for my age because I was reasonably unaware of how all my bits and pieces worked. Anyway it was then that my best friend actually showed me how to masturbate. Looking back I can see that I was obviously thrilled by all this otherwise I'd have just died with humiliation. It had never occurred to me to do it before, whereas she'd been experimenting for a while by then, and she was ever so shy. You'd never know she was so wild inside because she was always so demure and...prim, almost, even when she grew up. All through our lives we shared everything, eventually."

Elle paused, smiled at the sky and then concluded " I loved her, she was my best friend ever, better than my 'ex'. Died two years ago. I still smile every time I think of her."

I put my arm around her narrow shoulders and she stared up, we were silent and she seemed disturbed, distant.

Finally she spoke. "Not very sexy as stories go. I don't know why I told you that...except I've never told anyone about that. I had something else in mind entirely."

I was bemused. Everything she had said carried a strange air of poignancy, as if she were telling a story about something else with a different set of words. Even the very tone she used made an indescribable difference to the words she was actually saying. It was one of the most sensitive reminiscences I'd heard an adult tell me and my usual notion of world cynicism was momentarily paused. I was moved by her innocent, nostalgic affection, and by her.

The night was warm and the sounds in the air emulated the backing track of some New Age muzak. I was saddened to realise that I had no such tender memory I could share, but then my life was simply, sadly hollow...empty.

In the quiet she stroked my thigh then took my right hand in hers and placed it on her left breast, breathing out heavily as she pushed my fingers to a caress. It was the softest flesh I'd touched. She slipped away from me gently. I suddenly realised that I adored her.

"Jack," she asked, "when you 'make it' do you prefer to be inside your lover or do you like it to be over them?"

I paused for longer than I would have suspected.

"Sometimes I enjoy coming inside but I guess, overall, over them ...assuming they like it as well."

"Why? What do you like about it? "

"You can be creative, you can be visual. Sometimes the girl would want to see me doing it, just as I might like to watch her."

"Mmmm, I used to make a boyfriend come over my belly before I'd let him enter me. Sometimes I'd '69' with him until he was stiff enough to screw me and it used to turn me on to think his sperm was running down my belly, through my hair and over my labia into his mouth. Is that gross? It used to make me wildly horny, especially if the guy would lick my belly clean then kiss me as he finally entered. It always tasted nicer off his mouth, better than just from doing fellatio."

"Why? "

"Some guys taste nicer than others, but excitement can appear to change your senses. I like the erotic feeling as a man ejaculates in my mouth, the heat, the swelling, the force and sometimes the taste itself is nice enough to swallow but usually it's the occasions of excitement and unexpected surprise that make it...well, memorable."

I laughed and sat up on my knees to face her. It was all so 'matter-of-fact'.

We both broke up with laughter, fell against one another, stopped laughing and kissed-just for a few seconds until she pulled back smiling and stroking my lips with her fingertips. That same sadness was a shadow in her eyes again. I wished I had the power to magically dispel whatever dark memory was disturbing her, wipe whatever it was that kept sliding into her consciousness.

Her laughter was light and sparkled in the night air as she began to unbutton my shirt, push it past my shoulders to the ground where hers joined it a moment later. I couldn't tell what she was thinking about me but I certainly understood why she could stare in the mirror for so long. There wasn't an ounce of excess flesh on her frame, she was superb.

Elle moved forward and our skin kissed, raised her eyes a shade and grinned impishly as she pushed me against the tree.

"Close your eyes and listen." she demanded.

I complied and slipped my arms around her waist, she bristled for a microsecond and as quickly relaxed and oozed back into one flesh again.

I breathed her in, wallowed in the feel of her body against mine, the warmth of our loins, the touch of her hair where it fell on my shoulder as she whispered a catalogue of fantasies directly into my psyche. She had a surprisingly versatile imagination and oratory skill, almost everything she said pressed the right buttons within me. I could feel her heart picking up speed as she became entranced with the variety and specifics of her explicitly sexual narrative. I felt a progressive swelling in my jeans and tried to shift slightly to avoid making her aware of the effect, not because of embarrassment, that would have been ridiculous, but in case she felt threatened or suddenly pressured.

She kissed my cheek as I began to move away, my motive appearing quite transparent to her. I felt her hands slide down to my hips and she continued her discourse, pressing her pelvis in tiny circles in time to the pitch of her erotic fantasy. I wondered how many people had slept with her, where this type of imagination had sprung from. Perhaps she was just a writer like me, but I doubted it.

She stopped talking, pressed her lips to my shoulder, and touched my nipples with her fingertips. Elle was fascinated, her fingers just rubbing and squeezing experimentally as she increased the pressure of her hip grinding. There was a just discernible gasp of warm air on my shoulder and a second or two later she looked into my face, continuing to tease my nipples, realising the effect it had made on my organ. She spoke as she moved back, stared at my crotch, and grinned at the tiny damp patch of lubricant which oozed discernibly through my jeans.

"Thank you, in case you didn't realise, I just 'made it' a moment ago and...sorry, but I can't get over how stimulated you become when I pet your nipples, I thought it was a girl thing. Can you climax that way? "

"Do you want me to? "

"Do you, Jack? "

"I do, but not yet...if that's okay."

Elle stared quizzically for a moment and then slowly stretched her hand out to where my penis rose in relief from my jeans. I touched her hand and pressed it to my stiffness, leaving her to gently rub its raised outline. Her other hand stroked my left nipple, squeezing as she watched the swelling pulse and expand.

"Harder." I said and she complied, a sigh breaking from my lips as she continued. Eventually her attentions and the sensation of running my fingers over her torso was becoming overwhelming.

"Stop." I asked her and continued, pacifying the worried look she gave me, "It's too close, that's all. You try for a while. "

Slowly the sky was changing, a vaguely dull glow flickered off to the east forewarning sunrise approach. To watch her unhitch her skirt, slip it to the ground and recline on the flatness of the rock was a far more exhilarating prospect. Nude, but for her shoes and cami-knickers, the matching black of her chiffon blouse. I stared.

I'm unsure if it was because I liked her, felt some affinity or affection for her, and it probably doesn't matter, but I felt sure that she was the most perfect creature I had been privy to. Her skin, hair and eyes were so vibrant and perfect in form. If I had been born as a woman, this was the form I'd have craved...in fact this was the form I did crave.

"Come and look!" she called stretching and parting her long limbs.

Leaning against the cold stone I sat at the right of her and observed her fingers trace her peaks and hollows, the red nails worrying her taut nipples with her eyes closed and I listened to her breathing deepen and become sighs. Her left hand dragged aside the damp gusset of her lace trimmed cami-knickers to reveal a tidy mane of thick dark hair, the red nails dancing along the swollen, fleshy chasm of her soft pink lips.

Elle pushed into herself slowly, in a clump of fingers, and withdrew an oily collection of digits which she massaged into each breast until the tips glistened in the soft light. My penis was bursting against the zip of my jeans and I awaited the head to appear above the waistband as I became hypnotised with the teasing, twisting and pinching actions of her fingers on her nipples, areola and breasts. Her moans were growing in a harmonic wave of rising intensity which must have been audible all the way to New York city.

The paleness of her flesh contrasted enigmatically with the darkness of her body hair as I studied her sex. All the while her fingers working on her pinched nipples leaving an unimpaired panorama of sculptured genitalia between the gently parted thighs. It was here she appeared to urge me to watch as she approached her climax. In a final twisting and pulling she tugged the flesh of her breasts into pronounced conical peaks as her uterine contractions kicked in and she called my name aloud.

My skin rippled in a cold wave and still in shock I stared dumbfounded at the little spasmodic spits of ejaculation that shot from between her distended lips to fall in a repetitive echo on stone. I had never seen anyone do that before, shooting ejaculate out from amid the tensed, parted thighs. She watched me, her breathing deep and laboured, shining in a glow of shimmering perspiration. I touched the damp patches on the stone, raising my fingers to my lips until her hand flew to mine and held it tightly, pausing for a few seconds until she took my fingers to her lips and she licked the tips of my fingers with the point of her tongue, wiping them dry on the lace of her underwear. I could say nothing, torn between the pleasure I'd felt when she called my name and the sheer incredulity of seeing her ejaculate. We were silent.

Time passed quickly and we looked at one another as the light of dawn began to make its presence felt. In a blurred haze I found her against me, body cooling as the temperature fell. Her fingers rubbed at my hard nipple points in small forceful circles as her other hand released my jeans button and then tugged down the pedantic zip to allow my oozing stiffness to suddenly stretch out into the cold air. Her lips slipped down my chest dryly until she kissed and sucked my nipples making me moan in unexpected pleasure and with the obvious intention of erotically forcing me to come. I was so turned on that she could just have called my name again to achieve her ambition, but I pushed her hands away and stood against her, my penis stuck to the flesh of her belly. I raised my arms and cradled her head in my hands, trying to see inside her head as she locked her arms about my neck.

I opened my mouth and kissed her.

My gasp of release met her gasp of surprise as she felt the shudder of my emission spurt against our bellies, her kissing became uninhibitedly passionate and brought forth more and more wet orgasmic release, spiting further up our flesh.

I was racked in spasms of total joy and discharge. The rapture of being with her, the unique incomparability of finally simply kissing this intuitive and sensitive goddess mixed with the physical elation of the wet bursts of muscle wrenching deferred orgasm. She kissed me until I couldn't breathe any more and then we clung to each other as the hot sticky dampness dripped down our skin. Neither of us seemed to care that we were a sodden, sticky mess. We stood unmoving and silent until the sun peeked into view.

She spoke first. "I have to go, I'm sorry."

She slipped off her knickers and wiped my torso clean, then slowly turning to wipe her own. It was surprising how beautiful she was, looking better nude than most people do when they're dressing to kill.

Quietly we fixed our clothing and walked in silence back to the car, she was still clutching her sodden underwear. We negotiated our way back to the black car, a dull shaft of new sunlight throwing our shadows far ahead of ourselves. There were a million things we could have said to one another, but there was only silence.

Something told me that there was bound to be a disaster looming as the sleek car hurtled back to the city again.

"We aren't going to meet again are we? " I said breaking the lengthy silence.

She slipped on a pair of silver, mirrored sun-glasses as the rising sun filled the vehicle in cold, pale sunlight.

"No." she replied unevenly.

My new world collapsed in an explosion of shattered slivers of despair. I sat mutely watching other people's worlds drive past us.

I racked my numbed mind for some way that I could convince her to see me again, to talk, spend time with her. There was nothing I could think of, but I tried none the less in a machine gun chatter of desperate sincerity.

It was useless, all she could say was "I'm sorry, I can't and I can't explain why. Please try and understand and forgive me, you don't know how much I want to see you again, you really can't. But it's impossible...there could never be any sort of future in it."

The coastal scenery progressively gave way to houses and urbanity once again. Soon the city had swallowed and consumed us into its dirty grey heart. It was surprising how many humans were up and about at such an ungodly hour.

Tiny drips of salt water slipped from under the dark mirrors as she pulled over to the subway entrance, as if she couldn't trust herself to take me home in case the knowledge of its location would make her come to me. Her resolve would have been admirable under almost any other circumstances.

I had known upset and disappointment, even situations of infuriating powerlessness, but nothing compared to the irrational despair which coursed through me as I opened the door of that car. She touched my arm and stopped me as I started to leave, opening the glove box where the soiled lace lay. She smiled, a wide and almost happy smile as she wrote a note out and said "I'll keep those just as they are till the day I die, so I can think of you." I said nothing.

I prayed she was writing her address, or phone number... anything to help me reach her. She folded the note with shaking fingers, melancholy again, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. The next moment we kissed as if we were about to face a firing squad and I felt the wetness of her tears on my face.

We parted mutely. The black car door slammed shut with a discreet thump and in my numbness I watched the car race off, too stupid or stunned to take note of the license plate number.

My eyes remained fixed on the black vehicle until it shrunk to minuscule proportions and became swallowed within the others in the distance. I stood alone in a grey, sunlit city as increasing numbers of ghosts started to populate the streets in a never ending ritual of repetition. A lot of time passed and I just stood there, still staring at where she had gone.

I stumbled, zombie like, to the subway, pausing as I retrieved the note she had given me. Holding the crisp paper in shaking fingers I tried to focus, to find what she had needed to write-whatever she couldn't say. I already knew deep down that it wouldn't provide me with any clue to her or where to find her in the future. I stared at the impeccable writing and read :

Thank you for tonight, you'll never know what it meant for me. I'll miss you for the rest of my life.

Forgive me...Love always, Jean B.

I fell against the wall behind me and watched in amazement as the world started to turn misty, blur and slip out of focus. It was strange, because for once I felt the same way.

Eventually I walked into the opened maw of the subway and slithered down into the real world again - empty, like all the rest.