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The Adventures of Angela: CPDA – Central Park Display of Affection

As a newcomer to New York, I have no idea what level of indecency is considered, well, decent in your fair city’s fairest park. I’m just back from another great date with Wall Street, a very romantic picnic with wine, Godiva truffles and Cheetos (no one said he was perfect) and I’m wondering whether or not to expect a policeman (mmm, hot cop!) to turn up at my door. Obviously there was nothing removed during the outdoor sesh, but what’s worse – the hot and heavy petting or the unbearable levels of smugness we forced those around us to endure. Vom-worthy, really. Pre-New York dating extravaganza, I would have happily put Wall Street’s corkscrew through his temple if I’d seen a couple so terribly pleased with themselves as we were (Cheetos aside) but I really don’t want to kill him just yet. And I don’t want to stop getting touched up in the park either.

Hmm. This is going to be a tricky one.

After arguing with myself over the content of my post for twenty minutes, I just couldn’t do it. And in a radical bid to distract myself, I did something drastic.

‘Hello?’

‘Mum? It’s Angela.’

‘Darling, how are you?’ she asked, sounding fairly relieved, as though she thought it might have been the Avon lady from number fifty-four. ‘Are you coming home?’

‘No, not yet,’ I said, pacing the apartment. ‘I’m fine though, I’m staying with my friend still and I’m working for this magazine. Things are really good.’

‘But you’re coming home soon, dear?’ she asked again. I could just see her frowning in the mirror above the phone, probably fiddling with her hair, looking out of the window into her impeccably kept garden, watching next door’s cat shit all over her flowerbed.

‘I don’t know, Mum,’ I said, eventually coming to a standstill by the window. ‘I’m having a really good time. The writing thing is really exciting, I’m doing an online diary for the magazine’s website.’

‘That’s lovely, I’m very proud.’ The same dismissive tone that she had used for my GCSE, A level and degree results. Grrr. ‘But darling, you know, I would really like you to let me know when you’re coming back. You must have a date for your flight? And the hotel must be costing you a fortune.’

‘Mum, I’ve just told you, I’m staying with a friend. I don’t know when I’m – do you know what? It doesn’t matter. Why was Mark at your house when I called last week?’

‘I just don’t know why you can’t tell me when your flight is,’ she chuntered on. I was starting to regret the phone call all together.

‘I don’t have a flight booked so I don’t know when it will be,’ I repeated, thinking about how different the views were out of our windows. I could see yellow taxi cabs, the Chrysler Building and thousands of New Yorkers hustling and bustling around the city. From my mum’s window, she would be lucky to be able to see her Clio in the drive, the post office, and Mr Tucker from next door, possibly thrilling the neighbourhood by gardening shirtless. He was fifty-two. ‘Why was Mark answering your phone?’

‘He was dropping off some of your things, Angela.’ I could tell she was starting to get just as pissed off with me as I was with her. ‘I know he’s done a terrible thing to you, but I have known him for a lot of years. I can’t just pretend he doesn’t exist.’

‘Yes you can.’ Was she serious? ‘You can very easily pretend he doesn’t exist. He doesn’t as far as our family is concerned.’

‘Just because you have chosen to run away instead of confronting your problems, doesn’t mean I can,’ Mum tutted down the line. ‘I see Mark’s mother every week at Tescos.’

‘I haven’t run away,’ I said. This was not the supportive mother-daughter talk I’d been envisioning. ‘I’m doing something with my life.’

‘And maybe if you had stayed and talked to Mark, you would have realized how terrible he feels about things,’ she carried on, completely ignoring everything I was saying. ‘Maybe you would have been able to sort things out. Not that I’m saying you should, he did cheat on you, I know.’

‘He wants to sort things out?’ I asked. The idea hadn’t even crossed my mind.

‘Well, maybe he would have if you hadn’t run away, I don’t know,’ she said, sounding distracted. ‘But now he’s moved in that Katie girl, I don’t suppose the two of you will ever get back on track. I suppose if you called him …’

‘He’s moved in with – he’s moved her with in?’ I stopped her in the middle of her sentence. ‘Into our house?’

‘Well, you disappeared, dear,’ she seemed to be listening again. ‘What was he supposed to do? Not that I’m making excuses for him. He should never have done what he did, but, he did explain—’

‘Mum, I’ve got to get off, I’m going out,’ I needed to be off the phone right away. ‘I’ll call you when I know more about coming home.’

‘All right, darling, speak to you soon,’ and she hung up before I could.

Knowing for a fact that Mark had moved that girl into my house was all too much for my brain to process, but it did put the blog problem into perspective. I sat down in front of the laptop, blocked out the images of the filthy mare wearing my Cath Kidston apron and cooking with my beloved lime green Le Creuset casserole dish and emailed the blog to Mary. Mark who?

Once Jenny had returned from her Sunday spa appointment at Rapture and checked that everything had been exfoliated, waxed and moisturized to her own high and Jeff-ready standards, we headed out to Brooklyn. I was justifiably nervous, not having spoken to Alex about our ‘double date’ and not having spent more than fifteen minutes forcing my hair into some sort of shape, slapping on some of my miraculous MAC mascara and lipgloss. But my (still amazing) Marc Jacobs bag made everything better. I wondered if I could feasibly go out in my pyjamas and still feel like a grown-up if I were carrying this. Jenny practically skipped all the way to the L train, barely a sentence tripping over her tongue that wasn’t directly related to Jeff.

‘So it’s totally on with Alex tonight?’ she asked, holding my hand and skipping lightly as we crossed the road over to the subway.

‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I was with Tyler this morning, don’t you think it might be a bit tacky to sleep with Alex tonight?’ But just saying the words sent shivers all the way down my spine.

‘I knew this would happen,’ Jenny shook her head, swiping her Metrocard. ‘You weren’t even OK dating two guys, you were never going to be able to sleep with two guys. Not at once.’

‘Christ, it’s not a threesome, Jenny.’ I followed her down the stairs, shaking my head. ‘And you didn’t want to share that information with me? Really, I’m OK seeing them both, I like them both in different ways, but I don’t know. Tyler is so much fun, and Alex is, well, it’s different.’

‘But you like him more than Tyler?’ she asked.

‘It’s different with Alex, harder to explain. I like the way he makes me feel about myself. With Tyler it’s kind of more about how he literally makes me feel,’ I tried to explain without blushing. ‘Did you ever do that experiment at school where you get three white flowers and you put one in an empty vase, one in a vase with water and one in a vase with food colouring?’

‘Yeah,’ Jenny nodded, ‘but I really don’t know what that’s got to do with you getting your kicks with some hot banker.’

‘Shut up,’ I smiled wryly and hopped on the train as the doors slid open. ‘OK, don’t laugh but the flower without any water just wilts and dies, right? And the flower with the water blossoms and it’s just really ordinary but beautiful, then when you add the food colouring it—’

‘It takes the colour into the flower,’ she finished for me. ‘Oh my God, you’re so meta! Doll, your first analogy. I’m so proud of you.’

‘Thanks. I feel validated,’ I said, patting her thigh. ‘I know it’s cheesy, but it’s the best I can come up with. Before I was just suffocating, with Tyler, it’s like classic and romantic, he has a structure to his life that I recognize. But with Alex, it’s fun and exciting and different. I don’t know where it’s going, everything is so new.’

‘New and exciting is good,’ Jenny said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘But when you’re in a delicate emotional state, that’s you doll, or when you just need to go out and have lots of great sex because you’ve only slept with one guy your whole life, again like you, maybe classic and romantic is the best.’

‘Maybe. I just don’t know. And I don’t know how long I can keep seeing them both. It does feel weird, whether it should or not. But seeing Tyler almost takes the pressure off whatever’s happening with Alex. Not that anything bloody has.’

‘Well, how about you give Alex his shot in the bedroom tonight and make your decision tomorrow?’ She grinned as the train slowed down, approaching our stop. ‘God knows, I’m going to need you to get the hell out of Jeff’s, oh, I don’t know, as soon as we get there.’

‘Things are going well then?’ I smiled. ‘I’m really pleased. I’m not going to say anything other than, I’m glad things are working out.’

‘Like I said,’ she said, hopping out of the carriage, ‘it’s fate. Sometimes you have to put all the psychobabble stuff on one side and go with your heart.’

‘Wow!’ I linked arms with her as we strutted up the stairs. ‘I just lost all respect for you.’

‘I know,’ she smiled, happily. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’

The first thing I would have liked to have known, before I agreed to dinner at Jeff’s, was that he was a terrible cook. Which he was. The second thing that would have been helpful to know, was that, in Jenny and Jeff world, ‘dinner’ was apparently a euphemistic term for practising oral sex skills on each other’s forks and fingers. I tried not to watch while I nibbled a polite amount of the spaghetti and mush that had been presented to us the second we walked through the door. We had only been in the apartment for approximately fifteen minutes and already, it was quite clear that Alex and I were in the way. Alex openly stared, occasionally nudging me with his knee. I couldn’t even look at him. Apart from the awkward hello and half-kiss we’d shared before being rushed to our seats, we hadn’t really spoken. Jenny and Jeff’s red-light show was making the atmosphere so tense, I didn’t know where to put myself. I felt like a maiden aunt at an orgy.

‘So, how was your weekend?’ Alex asked me and Jenny, breaking the strained silence and twirling limp spaghetti around his fork. I noticed no one’s plates matched. The apartment was super swank on a Tyler scale, but it seemed as if it was just possible that Jeff hadn’t been too worried about his housekeeping recently. I figured he had something else on his mind. And possibly other parts of his anatomy.

Jenny response to Alex was a low moan as Jeff’s hand vanished under the table, so I took it upon myself to answer-slash-try to distract Alex from the incredibly inappropriate behaviour on the opposite side of the table.

‘It was OK, I wrote.’ It wasn’t a lie, I had written. ‘What did you get up to?’

‘I wrote too,’ he nodded, looking dead ahead. ‘It was good actually, I think I got some good stuff out.’

I smiled and nodded politely, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t ‘For Christ’s sake, get your hands back on the table, it’s unsanitary’ but our hosts beat me to it, dropping their cutlery and more or less giving up any pretense of eating, before moving on to the main course, each other. I could have killed Jenny.

‘So, Jeff,’ Alex started. So brave, to try to attract his attention. ‘Your food tastes like complete shit. What is it supposed to be again?’

‘Pasta,’ Jeff said, distracted by Jenny, massaging his shoulders. I couldn’t think what strenuous activity he might have undertaken that would necessitate a massage, it certainly wasn’t the cooking. ‘It’s just pasta.’

‘It’s delightful.’ Jenny tried some sort of erotic manoeuvre with a forkful of soggy pasta, but it did not come off well. Unlike the pasta, which dropped directly into her lap.

‘OK, then,’ Alex gave me a sideways smile, ‘nice. This totally makes up for your girlfriend throwing up all over my place.’

‘I want to know what’s for dessert,’ Jenny asked, actually getting out of her seat and putting herself in Jeff’s lap. Jesus, she was shameless.

‘I have ice cream,’ Jeff breathed heavily. ‘I got your favourite.’

‘I don’t really feel much in the mood for ice cream,’ Alex said, pushing his chair back and standing to leave. ‘But I do have some excellent day-old-pizza that’s crying out to be eaten. Angela, can I interest you in a slice of pepperoni?’

‘Yes. Yes, you can,’ I said, following him away from the table. ‘Thanks Jeff, Jenny.’

‘You’re going?’ Jenny started to make some noises about staying for coffee, but whatever Jeff whispered in her ear sent them off into squeals of delight and a short sharp ‘bye’.

‘Jesus, what was that all about?’ Alex laughed, slamming his apartment door behind him. ‘Does your friend like an audience or something?’

‘I want to say “no”, but the best I can give you is, I really hope not,’ I said, hovering by the sofa. There didn’t seem to be any puke stains on there, so I sat down cautiously.

‘Beer?’ He opened his huge fridge, balancing a pizza box and a six-pack on one arm.

‘Thanks.’ I took the bottle and sat in silence, not sure about what my next move was supposed to be. His apartment was the opposite of Tyler’s, every inch of it breathed him. There were CDs lying around on every available surface, notebooks littered the coffee table, and I was never more than three feet away from a chewed-on pen or pencil.

‘I don’t know, I guess it’s cool that they’re so in to each other.’ He settled down and opened the pizza box. No really, it was at least one-day-old pepperoni pizza. ‘I just figured when Jeff invited me round for dinner, it would actually be dinner.’

‘Me too,’ I nodded, accepting the pizza against my better judgment. It was actually really good. ‘If nothing else, it reassured me of my hostess skills in case I ever have to repay the favour. Compared to Jeff, I’m a shit-hot cook.’

‘Really?’ He leaned back and looked at me. ‘Yeah, I bet you are.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked. Was this another sly New Yorker way of telling me I was a porker?

‘Nothing,’ he defended himself by waving a piece of pizza around. ‘I just think you can tell a lot about a person by the way they cook. Not that Jeff was playing his cards close to his chest, but you could tell by his shitty food he’s not too worried about the preparation. He’s all about getting straight to it.’

‘I suppose so,’ I smiled. I really should drop the porker thing. ‘Jenny can’t cook for anything. It’s all takeaways and Starbucks. Made for each other.’

‘What’s your favourite thing to cook?’ he asked, resting his head in his hand, his elbow on the arm of the sofa.

‘Hmm,’ I thought. I didn’t have a particularly wide repertoire, but I did have a feeling a good answer was needed here. ‘I have this Balinese chicken thing that I do. You make this paste with lemongrass and dried chillies and then you rub it into the chicken and cook it really slowly wrapped in a banana leaf. It’s gorgeous.’

‘See what I mean?’ he said, closing his eyes and smiling a deep, delicious smile. ‘Spicy, adventurous, long and slow. Tells you a lot about a person.’

‘What about you?’ I knew I was blushing from head to toe. It was my most impressive dish, but I really hoped I wasn’t going to have to cook it without the book. It was a complete bitch of a recipe.

‘Honestly, I’m a pretty shitty cook,’ he admitted, taking my beer out of my hands and leaning across towards me. ‘But I’m kind of good at other stuff.’

‘Doesn’t that ruin your metaphor?’ I whispered as he crept across the sofa and placed his arms on either side of my head.

‘I just wanted to see you blush.’

His lips were soft and firm, but his kisses were hard and unrelenting. Within seconds, we were putting on a show to shame even Jenny and Jeff. The rough fabric of his jeans chafed against my thighs as I brought my legs up around his waist, pulling him in towards me. The nervous tickle that had been growing in my stomach migrated south as I lost my hands in his hair, my lips on his throat, my mind … just gone. Alex pulled me up and half carried me towards his room. No time for candles, for low music, just the twinkling cityscape behind us lighting his silhouette as he pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it aside. We stood in front of the window, kissing desperately, tussling with belts, zips and buttons until there was nothing left between us but our underwear. I silently thanked Jenny for my matching set pep talk as Alex sighed his approval at my black balconette and French knickers.

‘Why does it feel like this has been such a long time coming?’ he asked, sliding one of the straps off my shoulder and replacing it with a long line of kisses.

‘I know what you mean,’ I whispered. I placed one arm around his neck, obsessed with losing my fingers in that thick, black hair, the other hand somehow finding its way down his chest, his stomach, the waistband of his tight jersey boxers. My legs were beginning to shake, and all I could think about was getting onto that bed. So this was what they meant when they talked about knee trembling.

‘Hey,’ he said softly, replacing my bra strap and holding my face in his hands. ‘I just want to take it slow, OK?’

‘You don’t want to …’ I was confused. ‘I thought?’ He had waited until I was in my underwear with one hand down his shorts to tell me he wanted to take it slow?

‘No,’ he shook his head, smiling. ‘I mean this, now. I want to be able to remember every second of it.’

‘Oh, OK,’ I smiled back, biting my bottom lip. Was I in that much of a rush I’d forgotten about actual romance? ‘Sorry, I thought you meant …’

‘Don’t be sorry.’ Alex pulled my hair back from my face and kissed me tenderly. His skin glowed against the light of the window as his eyes met mine. ‘And stop thinking so much.’

He took my hand and led me over to the bed, laying me down and peppering my face, my throat, my shoulders with kisses. I wanted him so badly, every second he wasn’t inside me I thought I would explode. His kisses trailed down my collarbone, over my bra and down my stomach.

‘I thought you wanted to go slowly?’ I asked, the words catching in my throat as his lips reached the top of my thighs.

‘I should have been clearer,’ he said, pulling the silk of my underwear aside. ‘I meant slow for me. But I think that’s going to work out kind of well for you.’

‘Glad to clear things up,’ I whispered, closing my eyes and letting go.

If Tyler had been an education, Alex was an awakening. From the moment we rolled back on to the bed, through the long sweaty hours until dawn, he put my entire body through its paces, taking me right to the edge and then snatching me back again. When I woke, in a tussle of tangled sheets and tangled limbs, I was upside down at the foot of the bed, and so exhausted I didn’t know if I was coming or going. But I was absolutely certain, that at least three times in the past few hours, I’d been coming like never before. I stretched a leg, feeling out the floor with my toes, trying to work out how to extricate myself from Alex’s vice-like grip without waking him. Not going to happen. Feeling me stir, he half opened one eye. Without words, without any sort of verbal communication, he drew me back to him and we picked up exactly where we had left off.