How to Kill Your Family(41)

After a bowl of cacio e pepe, another glass of wine and a macchiato, I looked at my watch and saw that it was already past 10 p.m. Funny how thirty minutes with colleagues can feel like an eternity and two happy hours with just your own thoughts can pass by in a flash. I think I’d known the whole time I was sitting having dinner that I could drop into the Chinatown dive that Lee frequented. Perhaps that’s why I’d lingered so long. I’d not been thinking it consciously, but as I paid up and walked into the street, I knew that it had been lurking in my mind. It was still a little early for my uncle, and I didn’t even know if the bar was open on a Tuesday. But sex isn’t solely for Saturday nights, and Lee didn’t seem to stay in very much – if ever, so I thought I’d chance it. Besides, I was keen to push on with the next part of the plan, and I had to be more assertive from now on. I had to persuade Lee to come with me to Mile End. This might have seemed impossible, given that we barely knew each other, but I suspected that his need to seek out risk and his low tolerance for boredom meant that he’d go for it. Men like Lee don’t require the levels of trust that other people do. Simon would never take up an offer like the one I was going to give Lee. But Lee had the perfect combination of not being smart, and very much thinking that he is. It’s a heady mix, one which made me pretty confident that he’d be up for the offer. I just needed to pin him down.

I walked to the bar. I wasn’t dressed for a sex party, in my work clothes and woollen scarf and hat, but it was a Tuesday night, and this establishment could hardly demand sartorial excellence when it seemed to imagine that an abundance of red carpet gave off an air of opulence.

The place was fairly empty, which was unsurprising. A few couples sat having drinks in low velvet chairs, while a slightly too drunk man in a leather jacket stood at the bar and perked up when he clapped eyes on me.

‘Can I …’ he said as I took my scarf off.

‘Absolutely not, no,’ I replied and stared straight ahead. Never be kind to men who seek to engage you in conversation. Even a polite brush-off comes off as a challenge. Especially in a sex club.

I gave myself an hour. If Lee wasn’t there by 11, then I was going home. I very much subscribe to the adage that nothing good happens after 2 a.m., and in this place, it was prudent to knock a few hours off the rule.

Eager not to give the man next to me any further opportunities to talk to me, I took my drink and went for a wander. In a room just next door to the accessible toilets (did Westminster council enforce these rules in sex clubs as strictly as they did in Starbucks?) I found two men and one woman having a threesome. This many people trying to pleasure each other has always seemed like one too many to me. How can you concentrate on your own orgasm when you’re having to think about whether someone else is being neglected? In this situation, there was a clear difference in the levels of attractiveness of the two men, which I imagine they all knew but could not address. One man had a gym-honed body, in that vain way that suggests he spent a lot of time creating the appearance of strength but likely meant he had very little. He looked as though he could chop wood with his bare hands, but his manicured fingers suggested the idea would appal him. The other guy had a sizeable belly on him, and back hair, which I refuse to accept is attractive to anyone in the modern age. You don’t get points for keeping yourself warm. The worst thing about him was his bottom, which had a pretty serious case of acne. Even the forgiving lighting couldn’t conceal it. Grant me the confidence of a man who can go to a sex club with a spotty arse. Truly, it was body positivity in the unsightly flesh.

Not that the woman seemed to mind too much. At least he was putting the effort in, his head between her legs as she leant back and serviced the weak handsome one. The effect was a little like dominoes, and the contortions were surely giving her a lower back ache. Handsome man was absolutely enjoying the performative aspect to it all, I could practically see him flexing his abdominal muscles as he looked over to me and ushered me to join them. I let out a small laugh, which caused the woman to look up and frown, and I felt rather unsisterly in taking her away from her ecstasy. Surely these people didn’t think I would want to join in with this. Absurd. But then I was the one wearing a winter coat and watching three strangers getting each other off, so maybe my laughter was misplaced.

I left the room and went back to the bar, where leather-jacket man had found another woman to bore, and I ordered myself a drink. While I was waiting for it, the door swung open and a very beautiful woman walked in. Behind her was Lee, cowboy boots and all. My heart leapt and then plummeted immediately. Because he put his hand on the small of her back, and I knew that getting him alone would be difficult when this woman, who was decidedly not his wife, was commanding all of his attention. Even I was finding it hard to look anywhere else. Lee was 54 years old. He might be trying to slough off some of those years with the hair dye and the regular gym sessions, but the fact remained. And remained inescapable when he stood next to this woman, who was really just a girl. A girl with five inches on me and lips which looked like they’d been sculpted by God himself but a girl nonetheless. It has always amazed me that older men would be comfortable with the visuals when people see them out with women this young. Do they not see how people laugh, and make their friends guess whether they’re with their daughter or their mistress? Or worse, how we think that they’ve coerced the girl, be it through financial power or emotional experience. But I’m a woman. Perhaps other men of a similar age really do look on with a mixture of envy and admiration. I feel quite often that it’s good not to know what goes on in the male mind. If we did, I suspect we would spend a lot of our lives in fearful despair.