rotterdam

*** content warning: slapping ***

The hairs on my wrist are dark. I look at the point where they disappear into the rolled cuff of my rumpled red-and-white-checked shirt, marvel at how much we hide from the public world. I push my quarter-full cup from me - the coffee has long gone cold. Its saucer scrapes low, slow on the wooden table, and I look to my notepad, scrunch my nose, look up to witness the world around me. 

It has ticked over after-work time, and it’s getting tight in here with bodies on the bench, the communal tables, strangers’ knees touching, elbows entering the sphere of personal space of the other. The volume of the cafe has risen, and is warmed by the heat of bodies. 

Though it’s only five degrees outside, golden light pierces through the window, lighting jovial women removing thick coats at the door, old men leaning on the counter, grey hair sprouting from ears but dressed nonetheless with dapper elderly style: maroon suspenders on crisp white shirts and golden buckles. Shouting in the raised energy of the room. They don’t have to work, but they can sense the jubilation of those pushing open the creaking doors for a glass of wine now the office day is over, and their cackles increase. 

Three younger men with identical haircuts push away from the bar, sipping the white head of pints in concert as if puppets on a single string. Elegant legs cross on stools, painted nails and thin fingers clutch glasses of white wine. Clothes, hairstyles, manicures; appearance masks what lies within. Above the cacophony, curling brass lamps watch the rise and fall of people as they have for decades, witnessing each day’s identical rhythm: morning’s quiet, the anxious rush of lunch, sunset release, and the inevitable decay of evening. 

I return to the scrawled sentences on my notepad, then push my fingers beneath my golden wire glasses and rub my eyes. Words don’t make any sense anymore. And I’m distracted by my distance from the communal throb. My freedom - writing in cafes, submitting work to editors from afar - means the collective movement of the employed is unavailable for me. I watch a river full of fish, flowing together; it is impossible to drift with the crowd. I cannot enter that water. 

The cold ceramic cup grasped between my large hands, I throw back my head, drain it. Sucking at the leftovers of pleasure. I sigh and shake my head. To have a beer or…what? Go home? Stroll along the canals while the sun still holds weak power? Watch the buzz of the streets and feel both heartened and even lonelier? 

Swearing beside me interrupts my self-pitying reverie. A blonde woman throws her laptop on the table beside me. Fuck you fuck you fuck you! She pumps her fists at chest level, and the childish enactment of fury amuses me. A momentary revelation of what we usually prefer to hide. Are you okay? I ask, and she looks at me with burning eyes, taking in my wrinkled shirt, my three-days-past-tidy beard. As if my suggestion of assistance is an infringement on her personhood. Her eyes are blue. I smile, put my hands up in surrender, and it works. My laptop won’t turn on, she pouts, then slumps forward, leaning her elbows on the table, pushing light-caramel hair from her face. She indulges in some more swearing with closed eyes, then looks at me with a sheepish smile on her face. Her fringe is stuck up at odd angles. Her cheeks are red.

I’m not sure what sends electricity from my chest to my palms, my ankles. Is it the vocal disruption, the expressed anger in a tight public space? We spend so long being appropriate, quiet, repressed it can be difficult to say what we truly mean. I like her un-silence, her voice, her anger made plain. You can shout at me, I smile, if it will make you feel better.

Sure, we had a few drinks. Somehow, I edged closer, I felt the warmth of her body respond, she leant towards me, not from her shoulders or hips, but the core of her stretched like a cat to the sun. I walked my bicycle next to her as we weaved through Friday-busy streets, people going to dinner, leaving the office late, the retribution of the weekend, where we make space for absolution, then transgression, or perhaps the other way around. I only kissed her at the door to her building, and she didn’t taste sweet like I’d imagined. There is a bitterness to her tongue. Perhaps it was the coffee still on her lips. 

Our clothes are off, so fast, neither of us under any illusion. She draws back the velvet curtain that separates her bed from the rest of the studio apartment. Do you always throw your laptop around? I push her down, lie on top of her, kiss her. With a swift move, she rolls my shoulders and straddles me. She shrugs, smiles that sheepish smile again, and her eyes are a deeper, darker blue. I know there is something there. I want to plumb those depths. Give it to me, I think, watching her full, milky body above me, letting my gaze trace from her face to the curve of her neck, the heavy weight of her breasts, her beautiful large nipples, my erection straining between her legs, and out loud I say You can hit me if you want. She pretends to be horrified, or caught off guard - maybe she is. Experimentally, lazily almost, she raises an open palm, allows gravity to pull it down. The first slap sings out, lands well on my jawbone. I hear it, more than feel it. I smile at her, and shift my hips and with my hand guide my cock to enter her, and she grins, she settles the weight of herself upon me, she eats me up, her mouth widens in the pleasure of it, moans. She pulls her arm back again, and I brace myself, and the force is larger this time, pushing my head to the side. She increases her rhythm, begins to bounce. I reach up to put my hands on her breasts, barely get my thumbs to circle those brilliant caramel nipples, before she places a palm on my shoulder and pushes my chest, forcing my torso back to her bed. 

Ah-ah, she waggles a finger at me, playful, pouting. 

Yes ma’am, I grin, and she laughs, rears back. Then rolls off me, and I feel cold and lost for a moment without her. Until I hear her voice.

Take me from behind. 

I get on my knees above her, and after I enter, I curl around her body. Reach to stroke her clit. Tentatively, finding my way. Show me, I whisper, and I’m sure my voice is wet in her ear, I can’t keep a handle on myself much longer, I don’t want to hold it in, it’s not the coming, the ejaculation, that I’m afraid of, but the self-containment, the regulation of self that I want to release release release. No more public persona. I want to spit and drool, I want to groan, ugly, I want her to climax without thinking what she looks like sounds like. I want total. utter. surrender. 

She takes my wrist, adjusts my angle, shows me how to flick my finger insistently. I keep the rhythm of my hips, and let her guide me, put my wet mouth on her neck, lick and kiss as if she were water in the desert. After some time she whimpers and I push into her with committed rhythm and increasing force, she whimpers, she mews, heightens, heightens - and groans deep. An animal. Yes. That’s it, that’s the sound I want. That’s the sound. That’s it. No regulation, no appeasement. I heard echoes of this in the shadow of her cafe swearing: utter expression. Utter release. 

Her shuddering lengthens, and her moans lower and soften. I pull out with a kind slowness, and she collapses, pants, recovers herself for a minute. Individually, we recollect our selves within. Then she tilts her face to me, a smile again, it is tentative, but she is cooking something up. I can tell. 

Lie on the bed.

She puts her left knee on one side of my face. Her right knee on the other side. We rearrange limbs. Fold in to each other. And she lowers herself onto me, and I lick and probe, work with my tongue. Mmm, she rocks back and forward, and I grab her hips to follow the rhythm. Then she tilts her hips forward. I can tell where she’s going with this. My tongue follows, my hands spread her cheeks. Her moans become guttural. 

And then suddenly, she pulls away. I’m not sure if she’s used to being the boss but I know she’s having fun with it. I’m only happy to comply. She stands, naked; the roundness of her belly, her full breasts and wide hips, she is glorious. She can’t say it, but I know what she wants to do. I climb off the bed and kneel beside her. She slaps my cheek, once, twice, and she’s getting braver with it. It stings. get angry, I say, feel what you were feeling earlier. let it out. She hits me a third time, and this time it rocks my body. I wonder what my beard feels on her open palm. Is it a different texture than if I were clean-shaven?

I’m panting now, and lean forward on the floor, look up at her darkly from all fours. Her eyes are thunderous. She takes my hand. Come here, she lays her back on the bed, opens her legs to me. Her vulva is wet, slick, entrancing, and, hypnotised, I move into her, within her, and she bends her knees, tilts her hips back - when I tremble she strokes my face. I’m not sure if it is retribution, absolution, forgiveness - perhaps guilt - but her hands are soft and trail my shoulder blades as my fast breathing subsides. 

At the door, I shrug on my jacket and kiss her goodbye. It is hours since we left the cafe. Yet still, she tastes of bitterness.  

***

xx

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