Scotch by night

Finally, after about 6 weeks of acquaintance, he inserts his erect penis into her vagina.  There is little resistance. Too little, in fact. He is not really that horny, and she is very wide. This isn’t going to work! He is not going to ejaculate within a decent timespan – the unspoken contract is that you can’t fuck for hours. You have to come.

He looks down at her strong, beautiful face, and again feels a whiff of her breath which is a bit sour, as it sometimes is when they try to kiss – can’t have been more than twice or thrice. She can tell that he isn’t that hard, and she knows what that means. She reaches down between their bodies and grabs the base of his penis, which immediately makes it harder and more sensitive. The feeling is that of being masturbated into her sex. His excitement rises, he is on a good curve now, she can feel it, she can sustain this, and he comes with a quite reasonable intensity. They have already negotiated the issue of contraception and she has accepted his assurances that he is infertile. After all, he is over 40 and childless. It figures.

-no more abortions for me! she had exclaimed with her characteristic laugh:  more exclamation mark than laugh.

After ejaculating he rolls off her. The blinds are pulled down, dark blinds that keep the midnight sun out when need be; right now it’s about 8PM and a sharp stripe of light intrudes. The blinds are not fully down, then. Her two children are playing football and there is about 30 minutes left of this intermission before he will insert the keys in his Toyota station wagon and drive down to the field and pick them up. Diesel. D4D.

He tries to be intimate with her, after all they have just gone through that most intimate of acts. He strokes her brow. Tries to think whether she wants him to touch her – there. But he knows she is not even remotely turned on. 

He senses that for her sex is rarely about her.

This was all about him and his needs. What are they? The need to be with a woman and her body, the need to feel the inside of a vagina, the need to feel like a man? The need to come? He can achieve that when he wants on his own, there is pornhub, but… The need to be with that miracle of nature, the girl. That must be it.

Now he is here, and he has longed for this and worked for it. She is beautiful, men look at her, she dresses well and puts on make-up.. The bright yellow rain-coats that she and her kids wore when he first cast eyes on her. Her hair. The arch of her lips and the cheekbones. He can look at her for hours, and indeed has been known to do so.

Then when she speaks, he feels that life for her is about surviving. When she acts, the same.

She chose him, but in reality, there wasn’t a long list of decent candidates. And she would be better off with him than without him, and the price to pay was acceptable. And now it has been paid to this decent man.

You’re such a decent guy – he has heard it many times from her.

Now you shall listen to me. I haven’t told you a whole lot about myself, and especially about love. I don’t know if I planned this, to wait for this specific moment, but now that the moment is here, I will talk and you can listen. Yes, I know football training ends soon. They can wait if they must, they know all about waiting.

She has studied English and French, and speaks both idiomatically  – as far as he is able to tell – with a sing-song and some phonetic features that give her origins in Eastern Europe away.

She is lying on her side under the duvet, facing him. She had pulled it to her, and he realized he was naked and quite cold. She took pity on him and extended it to him. Being under the same cover created an instant feeling of inclusion, of benevolence. voler bene. 

Her words are as cold as before.

The first guy who raped me was my boyfriend. We had been together for a week and we kissed and stuff, and I had jerked him off a few times. Then we were in my bed, my whole family were home, and he stuffed his dick inside of me and came. I didn’t want it to happen, I knew it was going to happen, I said nothing.

A clears his throat, and asks, without knowing why, since he already knows the answer – have you been raped after that first time?

B looks at him scornfully. This is her tale, though, and she will tell it. “My boyfriend raped me regularly. He had sex with me, if you like. Then we married.”

A looks shocked at the last bit of information.

I loved him. Or at least, I thought it was love. I craved him and his attention. He was bright, smart, he was somebody. He could quickly assess a person and a situation and master it. He could buy three broken motorbikes for nothing and make two working ones and sell them with a nice profit.

I had three abortions, he made me go, and when I missed my period again, I told him: you have killed three of my children – at this she crosses himself – and if you want to kill my fourth, you must kill me first.

It was the first time I had spoken back to him, and he caved quickly. So we married, and D was born. My fourth child. The other three are angels. I gave them names.

A keeps quiet.

No-one knows their names except me and God.

Shortly after D, E was born. You know they are very close, about 12 months. My doctor said it was something of a record. E is the one that ripped me. Down there. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice. Everyone does. I look great. The best cake on the table. But when it comes to eating the cake….

At this her voice reveals an emotion other than determined bitterness. Pain appears briefly, only to be suppressed forcefully.

My husband, my ex-husband, stopped raping me so frequently. He took up with a tighter girl, and we went separate ways. No point in putting up with babies, nappies and a useless wife, is there?

Some time later war came.

Silence falls between them.

A feels sick. Sick with what he has heard and sick with apprehension.

I didn’t get out of the suburb where we were living fast enough, and ..

Well, tanks rolled in, armoured personnel carriers, open-bed trucks, cars even. Our fighters had cleared out, and a new normality was established almost immediately. Many of my neighbours were happy about the new situation. That didn’t spare them from being raped, though. A wry smile.

B is determined to get to the end, to get through all of it.

On about the third day two soldiers came to rape me. The boys were out, they had been told to go to school as normal. They just came in and motioned towards the bedroom. I lay down and the first one was on top of me almost immediately and pulled off my knickers and tried to get hard using his hands. He failed! The other soldier berated him and said he would show how to fuck a filthy whore and got his dick out. It was one of the bigger ones I have seen, and he managed to get it erect.

At this point I was scared. Not at being raped, I was used to that, but at being killed. I sensed that if nr 2 didn’t manage to fuck me, he might shoot me. He needed to show his comrade in arms that he was a proper man. So I put my hand between us and grasped his dick as he entered me. That works. The guy realised what was happening but he accepted it, maybe he thought that was how whores were. And so I made him come, and he got off me, his dick dripping cum, and pulled up his pants and shouted something about “that’s how it’s done”, and they were off.

I left the same night.

A is feeling even sicker, and is hoping this is the end of it.

That is not the end of it, B says, but we are nearer the end.

In the camp where they assembled us there was a good-looking Swedish aid worker. Technically he didn’t rape me since I consented – the word sounded dry and technical, as if they were in court – but he didn’t hold his end of the bargain. He said if I let him fuck me, he would make sure I got some strong painkillers I take  – doesn’t matter for what, long story – but when I need them, I really need them.
So we made this deal, and met in an outhouse used for storage. I leaned over a table and he entered me from behind. I am a bit tighter that way, and I also used my hand, and he really came very quickly and loudly. Then he just left – no pills for me. I was standing there with his stupid cum running down my legs. I was livid.

A couple of days later we met in the dining tent. Actually he didn’t see me, I came up on him from behind, he was easy to spot in his aid worker’s outfit,  and I kicked him in the groin from behind. You have to aim well for that to hurt, and it did. He stayed on the floor for about 10 minutes, I kept track of the time.

A tries to smile as he asks whether the pills materialised. No, comes the dry reply.

No pills, but a transport to your country, and to this God-forsaken place. Already the same evening!

After that, no-one laid a hand on me. But you laid your eyes on me.

I did, A admits.  I have never seen a face as beautiful as yours. I could watch it for hours.

– And sometimes you do. I have watched you watch me.

A says nothing. A question has been forming and acquiring a specific shape and now it is bursting to take up its place in the space between them. It might be a long time until the next opportunity.

Why, he says, why did we – he hesitates – why did we have sex just now? Her face does not yield or soften as she prepares her reply.

I felt that the time had come to.. reward you.

Reward me for what? A feels a lump of disappointment appear in his stomach. Reward. Was that the word he longed to hear?

Reward you for your patience. And for your kindness.

The dam holds for a few more seconds as she listens to her own words and their content, and then it bursts. Her face loses its composure and a wailing sound comes from her throat as if she had received word of someone’s death. The next minutes are a constant stream of wailing, crying sounds while she gradually slides off the bed and curls up on the floor wearing just her silk top. A sits helplessly watching for a while, hoping the intensity will abate, then when it doesn’t, he slides off the bed on his side, the window side, and walks around to her side and sits down next to her, squatting. He grabs her hand and presses it. I am here, he says.

She bites off the crying and turns her head and looks at him. Her gaze is steady, intense, through her red, swollen eyes. The sight of her pain connects with something in A and  before he has time to choke it back, A is crying too, or rather sobbing loudly. The pain shoots through him from his feet to his temples and for a while it holds him in its grip, wave upon wave rolling out from the great void inside him; then gradually relents as he takes control of his own breathing and calms himself.

She has been looking at him all the time. So much pain, she says softly, as if reflecting on the scene. I had no idea. I am sorry, she says with a gentleness he did not expect.

He sits up and both wipe their faces, then go together to the bathroom and wash and presently look a bit better. She is naked from the waist down and he steals many a glance of her legs and shapely buttocks. A germ of something has sprouted between, a complicity. He clings to it with something like desperation, and immediately tries to distance himself from it. Don’t hope again, he tells himself. Just cling on to anything that comes your way. Be here now.

He holds up his watch. Come, he says, let’s go and pick up our kids together.