Duet

He sat next to me when many boys wouldn't. I liked him. He was smart. he read books when many of the other kids didn't read. There were two seats left at the beginning of the school term and one of them was next to me and he took it. Many wouldn't have. I was the kind of person you should avoid. The kind that would ensure that you were not cool if you sat in the seat next to me. He sat in the seat next to me.

I always answered the questions first even though I knew it would make me unpopular. He didn't seem to mind. He still waved to me in the playground if he saw me. Once he leant me a pen.

On fridays there were singing classes. The teacher would put the radio on and we would listen to the ABC Lets Sing programme. Most of the songs were funny. Kids snorted while they sang. I liked the slow songs but there were almost no slow songs on the list. Speed Bonny Boat was a relief when we came to it. I could really let my lungs fill up with air and belt it out with long clear sustained notes. I was in the combined school's choir and we sang hymns, beautiful things with complicated notation. I learned to sight sing, which was another nail in the coffin of my 'coolness'. This day, in class I listened to the music and I sang along and it was beautiful. I sang, and he sang beside me, at my shoulder. We sang for the longest time.

When I looked around the other kids were snickering. They had all stopped singing and they were watching us, him and me as we sang a duet. Speed Bonny Boat with just two passengers. I noticed that he had a beautiful voice.

We stopped. We both blushed. The rest of the kids laughed and laughed, until the teacher, who was in on the joke, told them all to shush.

We sang more quietly after that, with restraint, but when I walked down the school path to my mother's car I realised that perhaps our singing together was the beginning of something. Perhaps we were in love. My first love.

I wish I could remember his name.

Replacement Ride

I lined up a replacement bike. How else would I get to work? I had to drop the bike at the shop, ride to work, ride home, off to work the next morning, then the next day I would still have to pick my bike up at the shop.

The replacement bike was a monster, all black and red and wracked with consumptive juddering. A coughing metallic beast. It was too tall for me. I had to lean it half way to the ground to mount it and then there would be that pivotal place where the bulk of it would prefer to lie down than stand up. I wrestled myself onto it and I almost dropped the thing. Bloody thing! I felt like a parasite on it's back. It was trying to scratch me off with it's touchy break pads and it's quick draw on acceleration. I thought of rodeo's, men in hats dragged through the dirt, red dust caked over grazed flesh. I held on and rode it.

My heart stopped then raced, then stopped again and there was a moment at a round-about when I was sure I was going to drop her because of the camber of the road and the tiny stumps of my legs struggling to keep her upright.

Familiar territory, Spring Hill, The City, Southbank. I relaxed into the shape of the seat. Odd riding position. My Virago is so upright, so laid back. It was a racer, and I had to lean forward with my arms stretched out. I felt exposed, like someone stretched on a rack. Overstretched. There was an uncomfortable breeze sneaking a slow path up through my leather jacket.

It was only at the lights on Boundary Street that I became aware of the small joys of riding a racer. Almost at work. I barely needed to concentrate on the mid-morning traffic. I could navigate this stretch of road with my eyes closed. I closed my eyes, just for a second, but enough to notice that this particular riding position tilted my pelvis forward onto the saddle. There was that juddering rub, that must have been there the whole time, but when I relaxed into it the friction overwhelmed me.

Almost at work. The welcome distraction of a pedestrian crossing. I let the vibrations settle in to my bones. I felt my clitorus swelling, spreading out to engulf every centimeter of my stomach and my thighs. A few more minutes and I would orgasm. I would orgasm from the sheer pleasure of riding a motorcycle that was not my own.

Almost there.

I approached the turn into the carpark slowly, but not slowly enough. I would not be able to climax before I had to turn the engine off. I paused at the turn off. Some car behind me beeped. I continued on. Just a quick ride down the back streets, just a little meander. Montague Road is a long stretch of easy rode. I settled in to ride it. Rode it. Somewhere around Bicycle Revolution, the moment arrived. I maintained my speed. I didn't close my eyes. I felt the race of my heart and the throbbing, some me, some the bike, and at the end of it I was still upright, a little steamy in the helmet, unscathed.

I really have to get me a racer one day.

Fortune Cookie #3

These posts are words of wisdom that have got me through life reasonably happy and sexually satisfied. If you want to pass these words of wisdom onto friends or younger members of your family, cut out the sayings one by one, there will be about one fortune cookie each week - and buy a cheap packet of fortune cookies from your local Asian supermarket. Using tweezers, remove the existing naff saying from each cookie and replace it with one of Krissy's words of wisdom. Throw a party. Distribute the cookies. Everybody happy.

Fortune Cookie # 3

Everyone looks the same when you are wearing a blindfold.

The table

He had sex with me on the table because he wanted her to see. She was eating her breakfast at the table, a mountain of food. I wondered how she could eat so much and still remain so willowy. She was a little doll, the kind of girl who would have once been mesmerised by her little plastic Barbie, made almost exactly in her image.

This morning I watched her flick her long pale hair over her shoulder and I was jealous and desirous all at once. He watched her too.

I had slept with him the night before because of her, and I resented it. He had come into my bedroom full of grinning teeth.

"She says that you will sleep with me if I ask."

She says. If she said I should jump off a precipice I might have, shrieking her name in the direction of my descent. I shrugged and I slept with him. A quick, disinterested fuck. When it was over I lay there thinking about her body, wishing he would leave my bed so that I could masturbate in private.

So in the morning there she was eating breakfast.

"I fucked your friend" he said to her. Those teeth bothered me. I couldn't bare them, all spit and sparkle.

She smiled at us as if she approved and I love-hated her completely.

"Don't you believe me?" he asked her, even though it was clear that she did.

"You told me she'd have sex with me and so she did."

I was invisible. It was all about them. I watched her smoldering glance burn through the rich fall of her hair. I wondered when he would leap across the table, pushing aside the chairs and the vase of wilted flowers that I had bought and the bowl of cereal and my body, all those items superfluous to the purpose of their conversation. I wondered how long until I saw him kiss her horribly wonderful mouth.

Instead he reached for me and lifted me and put me up on the table for display. He was going to have sex with me on the table. He was going to fuck me in front of her. I wasn't certain what my reaction should be. I watched as she paused, placed the spoon back into the bowl. She pushed breakfast to one side and watched us with that half-lidded bored expression that she had perfected. She wanted to watch him fucking me on the table. She wanted to watch me being fucked. I wanted her to watch me. I wanted her.

He was clumsy with my clothing, scratching my thighs with overlong fingernails as he struggled down my knickers. He lifted one of my legs to point to my vagina. She looked. I felt her eyes on me, sharper than his finger as he pushed it inside. She was looking at his one finger, two, then three, disappearing inside my body and I wished it was her fingers. I would tolerate her ridiculously manicured nails, I would enjoy the little nips of her talons, tearing at my soft flesh. I wanted to be this open for her and when he pushed me around and spread my knees for her to see the slightly parted labia I hoped that she would lean over and inspect them more closely. She didn't.

He turned me back around and plucked one of my condoms from his pocket. He had planned this. He had taken it when he was dressing. He had thought about the process of fucking me in front of her in the shower, and when he was brushing his teeth.

He fucked me on the table. He was the brother of her boyfriend and I was nothing in this. It was about him and it was about her, but I peeled my shirt off because I wanted her to see that I had breasts too. I bent and suckled on my own breasts because I wanted her mouth there. I was modelling behaviour. I hoped that this scene would be repeated without her boyfriend's brother. I wanted her all for myself.

He came before I was ready and it was finished. I wanted her to finish me, but, heavy lidded, she pulled her bowl of cereal towards her and continued to eat without a word.

I was suddenly shy. I hadn't had an orgasm. I wanted to be bold enough to turn towards her and show her how my climax might be achieved with a slight fluttering of her fingertip. I wanted to but I didn't. I was suddenly self conscious as I slid off the table and pulled my pants back on.

Later in the shower I barely needed to touch myself. There was the scent of her shampoo on the walls and the slipperiness of her highly scented soap beneath my feet. There was her razor on the soap dish and she had stood naked under the same scald of water. I had to hold the wall with shaking fingertips to stop myself from falling. I heard her little breathy bird-voice in the kitchen, asking some question of the brother of her boyfriend. Have you seen the milk? Do you want another cup of coffee? My clitoris tugged towards the sound of her voice. I held the open cap of her shampoo close to my face and fell a second time, silently sliding to the floor of the shower and placing a hand over the wild race of my heart.

Scent of her hair.

Her hair is intoxicating. I smell it. It is fanned out on the pillow. Her hair seems to be perfectly arranged where ever she falls. Sitting on the couch, there is a cascade of it draped over the red velure, perched on the kitchen bench she is hidden by a honey coloured waterfall. Lying in bed next to me there is this perfect arc of gold as if her hair is in motion even now, flicking out across the black sheets which are the ideal background.

I do not want to fall in love with her. Lust is impossible to dodge. She is all sex. Her breasts are large and have a tendency to spill out of her clothing. Her waist is thin and she has the kind of lips that look like they have just been kissed. Her lips make me jealous. They make me want to kiss away any memory of a previous lover. When I hear her in bed with her boyfriend I thump my books onto my desk. I crash and scutter. I want her to hear me in the next room, to think of me at her moment of orgasm. I want to rip the biley sting of lust out of my throat and feed it to her, drop by drop.

She is too pretty. Beside her I become a troll.

And then there is her hair.

One day, in the shower, I used her shampoo. I covered myself with the smell of her, wondering if boys would suddenly begin to look at me as I passed them in the street. I had often seen them stare at her, alerted to her beauty by only the passing smell of her hair. I emerged from the shower clean, but smelling of my usual loamy soil, the natural odour of my skin all earthworm and hobbit with a hint of sex. My olfactory fingerprint stamping itself on the air.

Today it is hot and the heat wafts the scent of her hair onto my damp pillow. She has fallen beside me as if exhausted, draping her gorgeous limbs across my sheets. She sighs and holds out her hands to trap my fingers.

All the men are lost to her. I have given up bringing people back home with me. They drift away from me, inching closer to her gravitational pull. I suppose I am lost too. I let her hold my fingers and I am a knot of tense muscles and thudding blood. I can see her breast easing up from her chest in a perfect arc. I can smell her hair. I want to yell 'stop flirting with me'. I want to tear her Barbie Doll limbs from their plastic sockets and rub her shining locks in the dirt. I want to fuck her. I want to leave the stain of myself on her so that she will be sullied by something less celestial than herself. I want her grounded because I am grounded, but mostly I just want her.

Yellow Truck

We lie for hours on the front lawn of the rented house, my sister and I, side by side in our swimming costumes, trying for a tan. My sister pinks up quickly, but I have inherited my grandfather’s swarthy skin and my plump limbs turn to charcoal in the sunlight. A yellow truck rattles by and the back of it is filled with young men in singlets and khaki work pants. My sister raises her roasting body up on her elbows and stares combatively straight at them The truckload of workers break out into spontaneous cheering. Under the darkness of my tan I can feel a blush sweeping across my skin. They are cheering for her, for us. I have never been looked at or whistled at by boys before. I am the fat weird girl who reads too much. I am the one they laugh at, never to be cheered for. We wait for another truck to pass and when it does we both rise up to challenge it. Another cheer, and whistling this time as if the speed and the distance has disguised the hideous puffiness of my flesh. My sister holds up her middle finger and this defiant gesture earns her an excited round of applause.

“I’m gong to take my top off," I tell her. I know she doesn’t believe me, but when the next truckload of workers passes I lower the top of my one piece swimsuit and the cheers are explosive.

We lie back, giggling and breathless.

“If you could see ten years into the future, who do you think you would be with. Would you have a boyfriend? A husband?”

She snorts, turns over onto her front to scald her back in the sun. “No. I think we’ll both be sad and alone.”

She’s probably right. My mother found and lost a husband, my aunt never even looked for one, the husband that my grandfather has is barely sighted by the rest of the family unless he emerges briefly from his room to visit the bathroom. But still I am longing for sexual contact. If not a boyfriend, then at least a series of encounters with anonymous men. I will never fall in love with a man. I know that all my love is saved and given to my best friend Gillian. My heart swells to bursting when I think of her, and unless we finally admit it I am destined to a life of loneliness, but still I want to experience sex for myself.

A dream. The yellow truck stops. The nameless men vault over it’s railings, run towards our garden. They are all tight arms and shining sinew. They are ripe with heat and strength and sweat and when they are close enough to cast a shadow over me I feel afraid. My legs are shaking. I wanted this. I pulled down my swimming costume and exposed my breasts to them and I wanted them to stop for me. Now that they have I feel afraid, but the fear is a shiver that vibrates the muscles under my skin. I cross my legs coyly and the pressure of this movement creates a wet warmth in my crotch.

There are two endings to this dream and I’m not sure which of them I like the best. In the first I am passive. They circle me and I feel their shadows dark and cold like the bodies of sharks brushing against my lets. My fear silences me. The first man to break this circling stand off is slick with sweat. He kneels, straddling my crossed legs and it is at the encouragement of the others that he slips his hand between them and his finger, rough from work and smelling like loamy soil, drags the crotch of my swim suit aside and I feel the scratch of it entering me. I am trembling by now and my fear is like excitement. Hands on both my legs, hands around my wrists. Four men stretching me taught as a skinned roo and the fabric of my swimmers stretch so easily when he wrenches them to one side. The heavy chest pushing the air from my lungs. The scent of sweat and hay and diesel, the tugging of the hands around my limbs. I am acutely aware of each of these sensations and if I wake before the first man has finished with me and zips up, stepping aside for another man to take his place, then I am disappointed. I crush my fist between my legs and roll over hoping to regain the rising tide of excitement before the last fragments of sleep drift away.

In the second version of the dream the men flirt. This is a slower beginning, but I enjoy their banter. At some point one of them admits that he has seen my tits. I feign surprise. They all agree. They did see me lower my top. They saw the large brown nipples standing tight and erect. My nipples respond to the thought of their attention, pulling the thin white lycra away from my body. It is impossible to hide them from their gaze and they are gazing. I might as well show them what they have already seen. I take my swimming costume off, stripping it down and away from my breasts which bounce back into full view. They watch, enthralled and I enjoy them too, Seeing my breasts as they must see them, full and round and pulling into buds of dark skin at their crests. One of them asks if they can touch me and I consider this. Only the man I choose can touch me. I am free to choose. They are all different. Some of them are large shouldered with tight brown muscles, some of them are smaller, with a wiry athleticism, some of them are very tall, dwarfing me. Amongst them there is one who is shy and small and pale. This man is hovering near the edges of the crowd. I point to him and he when he drops to his knees in front of me I notice that he is shaking. I know then that I will make the others watch while he sucks on each of my breasts. I will peel the rest of my swimming costume down and make him spread my labia so that they will see how pink and soft it is inside. I will make him lie on top of me while they watch, tortured by desire. I will make him take his penis from his overalls and, fully clothed, and with his blundstone boots scratching for purchase in the dusty ground, I will make him enter me. Sometimes in this dream I let some of the others touch my breasts, touch the place where his penis has become slick with my juices. Sometimes I make them touch him too, with their hands, and their mouths. Through all of this I am the one they listen too. They do not challenge me or complain. They never judge me. They desire me. If I wake during this dream I lie in my bed and touch the place between my legs that has become warm and damp from dreaming, and I keep my men from the yellow truck where I can see them, behind my closed eyes in the bright focus of my imagination and I make them work until, pressing my lips together I fall into the silent pulsing dark of climax and then beyond that, into sleep.

Love lust

I just love some people so much that I feel like I should lust after them. This is a kind of love that squeezes the muscles low in the stomach, the same muscles that contract during orgasm. When I think about this hand-full of people I feel that the quick contraction of muscles might become an embarrassment.

I can't think about these people for too long or I might suffocate or cry or drop into one of those spontaneous hands-free orgasms that is so debilitating when you are on the bus.

Some of these people know that I love them too fiercely. Sometimes I tell them just to alleviate some of my red-faced mortification when I am in their presence. A few of them are oblivious. These are the quiet few who would find my enthusiasm quite frightening and who would never speak to me again if I ever let on how I feel.

"You must stop falling in love with your friends" my husband tells me, he who has been drenched by the full force of my love and who has managed to keep his footing despite the brute force of the wave.

I must stop falling in love with my friends, but they are so wonderful, this tiny cluster of bright people. I wish I could consume them. Ingest them. I wish I could take them up into my body and have them dissolve into me, making me as good a person as they themselves have been. I want to be free to mix my all-consuming love into the force of my lust which is quite substantial. I want to drink the concoction and grow drunk on it.

In another world, in another life I would make love to each of them and become them and feast on them and allow myself to be ripped into pieces by them.

Is this too much to ask?