Читать книгу Sex & Samosas - Jasmine Aziz - Страница 9

The fussing downstairs was all too familiar. I heard the click of the door locking and the sound of Manny opening the foyer closet to put his shoes neatly in their place on the shoe tree inside. He had a thing about shoes in the doorway and never liked to come home to see anyone’s slippers or boots in the entrance. The closet door closed followed by the sound of his bare feet shuffling across the wooden floors until they were muffled by the beige carpet in the living room. He went into the kitchen, opened the fridge door and then closed it. I heard him pour a glass of water and then wash it out in the sink. I grew more and more anxious and even became a little agitated that he wasn’t rushing upstairs to see how my night went or if I had purchased anything.

I heard Manny shuffle some of the mail on the island in the kitchen until he finally thumped his way up the stairs to our bedroom. I had left the French doors open but was still a bit surprised to suddenly see him standing in the doorway. There was my husband of five years with the face I had lain beside for all that time and with the body I had come to know every inch of and suddenly I was more nervous at that moment than I had been our first time together.

“Hey baby,” he said with his usual warm grin. “Did you have fun tonight?”

I tried not to read too much into his question. Was he making polite conversation because he thought I probably wouldn’t buy anything? Was he trying not to embarrass me in case I did buy something? Did he forget that I went to a sex party?

“Yeah, I had fun tonight.” My gaze directed him to the sex sleeve lying on the top of the bedcover.

“I hate driving George around!” He stripped off his clothes ignoring my gaze and what I thought was a fairly provocative tilt of the head. “What part of being the designated driver means I have to drive him to the grocery store to get eggs for tomorrow? Just going to jump in the shower and rinse off the stink, okay baby?”

Within seconds Manny was in the shower, his sweaty clothes in the hamper, his pyjamas out of their drawer and waiting for his freshly washed body. I started to feel my blood boil. Maybe his normal behaviour would have been fine if it had been one of my regular Saturday nights staying at home stuffing myself while I read or rented movies. But this was no regular Saturday night!

I heard the faucet turn off and watched him shake the water from his ears and inspect his nose for errant hair before he finally flopped down in his wet towel on the duvet next to me.

“What’s this?” He picked up the tube in his hand.

Waiting for him to finish his shower, I went from nervous anxiousness to irritable anger to suddenly being caught off guard.

“It’s uh…” What do I say? How do you put something like that?

It’s a sleeve for your cock, dear. Or a warm blanket for your dick? What had Mahjong called it during the party? Pocket something. Pocket rocket? Pocket Pita? What was it called again?

“We won the game, eh?” Manny said excitedly. “You should have seen it! There was hardly any time left and suddenly out of nowhere Rodriguez totally scores on their team and after that, it was bam, bam, bam we had three goals!”

It was all too much to absorb at once. My night had some sort of surreal quality to it which was only enhanced by the image of my husband excitedly recanting details of a hockey game while unconsciously squeezing and smacking a pink sex toy in his hand.

Deep down, under the anxiousness and anger, I was starting to feel hurt that Manny seemed more excited to talk about his game than my night in a room full of drunken screaming women and vibrators.

“You won? That’s great Manny,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. “Won? No baby, we didn’t just win, we pulverized them! I think Marcus even tore his leg up again.”

“That’s horrible!”

“He’s a dick,” Manny said. “Don’t worry about him. No one likes him on the team. Hey, what is this thing anyway?” He looked down at the pink sleeve still in its plastic wrap and gave it a tentative squeeze.

“Well… speaking of dicks…” I said, trying to make a clever segue.

“What?” he said with alarm. “This is a fake dick? You bought a fake dick?”

“No, no! It’s more of a sleeve actually.” I was mortified. This wasn’t how I had pictured things going at all. He hadn’t even kissed me hello yet.

Manny studied the outside plastic casing, inspected the ridges on the side and squeezed open the hole at the top. “Oh! I get it!” he said. “It goes on my dick.” He sat on the edge of the bed with the pink sleeve flopping back and forth between his hands.

I would have paid a million dollars to know what was going on in his mind at that moment.

“What did you get yourself?”

He smiled warmly at me and started a step by step routine I had grown accustomed to over the years. One: Towel gets hung up damp on the side of the tub. Two: Pyjama top goes on before boxers and pyjama bottoms. Three: Teeth get brushed. Four: Slippers are left neatly at the edge of the bed. Five: Pillow is removed from under his head and placed at the foot of the bed. In ten minutes, he would be snoring.

He was half-way through brushing his teeth when he popped his head out of the bathroom and shouted, “What did you buy, Lee?”

“Just some stuff. And I bought some other stuff too.” I paused to see if he was going to say anything or press for more details. When he didn’t, I made my dramatic declaration in a voice barely above a whisper. “And I bought a toy too. For me.”

“What?” he asked turning off the faucet. “I couldn’t hear you. I had the water running.” He shut the bathroom light and sat down on the bed. He lined up his slippers by the edge of the bed. “What did you say baby?” he said, stifling a yawn.

From the fatigued and exhausted look on his face, I could tell that sex wasn’t going to happen. And sadly, for the first time, I was really ready for it. I was in fact so anxiously anticipating it that I found myself deeply disappointed when I realized it wasn’t going to happen.

“I just bought a few things,” I said in a low voice. “Do you want to see them now? You look kinda tired.” “I am, Lee. If I didn’t have to drive George to the grocery store on top of everything else, I wouldn’t be so late.” He took the pillow out from under his head and placed it past his feet. I stared at the five-year-old symbol at the edge of the bed that signalled it was time for sleep.

“I understand Manny. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight baby.”

I turned over to the side lamp by our bed and switched it off. I sat in bed while Manny nestled into the mattress and tucked the sheets up to his neck. Visions of lubricants, a large pink diamond ring and a bunny with a vibrating nose swirled through my mind until sleep finally overtook me.

Sunday morning started out like any other. Manny and I rose around the same time we usually did on the weekends: 9:30 a.m. We would both brush our teeth and head downstairs to our usual routine of coffee, breakfast and the morning paper.

“Hey, tell me how the party was last night,” Manny said putting his section of the paper down on the table.

His attention was completely on me. I didn’t know where to start. Everything felt like a dream in the bold light of morning.

“I had a good night actually,” I said. “It was fun. I learned a lot too.”

“Really?”

What did he mean by “Really?”

Did he know more than he was letting on?

Was he being sarcastic?

Did he know that I had never had an orgasm?

If he did know, was now the time to tell him?

I decided that wouldn’t be nice. It’s simply not something one says over scrambled eggs and toast.

“Yeah I did learn a whole lot.” I smiled. “Nothing Mahjong doesn’t already know of course.”

Manny burst out laughing. “She could write a book I bet.”

“Well she wasn’t as surprised as me by some of it. The consultant was a really nice woman. She’s been doing the parties for fifteen years. She was really nice. I liked her a lot.”

“I guess I wasn’t picturing your night being an information session.”

“What were you picturing?” I wondered if his vision was anywhere close to what I had in my mind before I got there.

Manny flashed his big smile. “A bunch of girls in their pyjamas hitting each other with pillows.”

He smiled more broadly.

I crossed my arms and furrowed my brow until his smile vanished and I knew the image of young, chesty women in lingerie flailing linens at each other was out of his mind.

“Sorry to disappoint Manny but it wasn’t anything like that at all.”

“Hey, what’s the deal with that thing you showed me last night?” he said. “How much was that?”

I suddenly felt a pang of both guilt and fear. Would he be mad when he found out how much money I had spent? Should I really have bought that much stuff? In the sober light of day I wasn’t even sure I could remember what some of it was for.

“I got that for you,” I said, praying he wouldn’t ask me to show him the receipt.

“I don’t think I got a good look at it last night.”

Was he trying to be coy or was he using the toy as an excuse to have sex? I couldn’t read his expression.

“I can show you,” I said, sounding more like a teacher than I wanted to. He shrugged and followed me upstairs.

Our sex routine had become as regimented as the pillow-at-the-foot-of-the-bed habit. It was always the same. One of us undressed, then the next undressed, we would slip under the covers, kiss and touch, usually in the same places with unvaried pressure and for approximately forty seconds a body zone, until the act itself was complete.

With all the new information floating around in my head and my burgeoning desire to make things different, I felt compelled to strike while the loins were hot and not settle for tried and true.

“Wait here,” I said.

I left our bedroom and headed towards the storage room. I rummaged through the black bag and removed the bottle of lubricant and toy cleaner I vaguely recalled was supposed to be used with the pink sleeve. While foraging through the rest of the bag I reached into the tiny sac that had my vibrator neatly enclosed inside and decided to leave it where it was for the time being.

I wasn’t ready yet.

I closed the bag, took the two bottles in my hands and headed back to the bedroom.

When I re-entered our room, Manny was lying on the bed absently tapping his toes against the bed railing. It wasn’t exactly the kind of sex scene I had imagined as I told him I should probably clean the toy first before we used it. He nodded in agreement and then promptly began to tell me about his plans to play squash with his buddy later that afternoon.

I grabbed the pink sleeve from where it was sitting on the night-stand and took it into the bathroom removing the plastic wrapping while Manny carried on a conversation he could have easily had without me. He was mentioning something about one of his squash buddies cheating in a game and I half-heartedly responded with the odd “Oh you don’t say,” here and the occasional, “You must be kidding!” there.

Was this what all couples do when they play with sex toys – make idle conversation and pretend not to feel awkward and a bit foolish?

Was this how they do it in porn?

I sprayed the cleaner on the outside of the toy and on the inside of it. When I put my fingers inside the pink sleeve it suddenly became very clear what it was for. I felt a strange tingle of excitement.

What had Mahjong called it at the party? A pink pocket? A pizza pocket? No! A pocket pussy! That was it! It was all coming back to me.

I started to get excited.

I poured warm water down the centre of the toy to make sure all the cleaner was washed out. I opened the bottle of lubricant and placed a small bubble of it on my fingers shoving it inside the toy. I giggled feeling the rubber react to my slippery touch.

Manny was still talking about how he got jilted out of ice time when I walked out of the bathroom with my hands behind my back. He must have noticed my expression because he eventually stopped talking and waited for me to say something.

“Look what I have,” I said slowly bringing the soft pink toy to his view. His mouth twisted and I couldn’t read his expression. “Do you know what it’s for?”

The truth is I was hoping he would tell me so I wouldn’t have to figure it all out myself.

“I think so,” he said, slowly getting up from the bed and walking towards me. “Is that what you showed me last night? It’s pink.” Before he could ask me how much it cost, which might threaten the light-heartedness of the mood, and before I lost my nerve completely, I pushed him back against the bed away from me and the toy. He willingly lay down and propped his arms behind his head, making himself comfortable.

I opened the buttons of his pyjama top. He unfolded his arms long enough to free himself and then promptly returned them back behind his head. I was determined to stay in control even though I had no idea what I was doing. Unfortunately, my cell phone was too far away to text Mahjong to ask her what I should do. I figured stopping every ten minutes to get instruction by text would probably spoil the mood.

Once Manny’s pyjama bottoms were off, it was obvious to me that there was much work to do. I looked down at his semi-erect penis, looking like a beleaguered snake in a charmer’s basket too tired to get up and wave to the tourists. It reminded me of a Discovery program I saw on India when I was younger, with one major difference: I didn’t have a cinnai flute, I had lubricant.

I took Manny’s penis in my hands and gently stroked it with the same rhythm as I had so many times before. I placed one knee between Manny’s legs and the other against his outer thigh. I reached for the lubricant. When I squirted it onto my hands I was shocked to feel how cool it was.

I knew instinctually the snake would retreat back into its basket if I doused it with the coldness of the liquid so I made a spectacle of warming the gel in my hands until I was covered in its silken warmth. Somewhere along the way Manny’s expression changed from relaxed to excited.

With the liquid dripping between my fingers, I slowly placed my warm, wet hands down the shaft of his penis. He smiled. I watched as his eyes closed and his head sank deeper into his pillow. He brought his arms down to his sides. It almost looked like he was melting into the sheets.

He moaned. I took it as a sign that I was doing something right.

I spread the lubricant all over his genitals until he was one beautifully glistening masterpiece of manhood. I was heady with my accomplishment as his fully erect penis indicated my work was well done. It was time to find out exactly what the pink sleeve did.

I reached over and grabbed it putting some of the lubricant still left on my hands into the opening. It felt squishy and warm against my fingers. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like for Manny.

I stretched the opening of the toy over the head of his penis and slowly slipped him into the sleeve. His eyes were still closed. As the sleeve descended down, he let out a guttural moan from his throat.

I felt a rush of confidence.

Once the sleeve was completely on his penis, I sat and stared at it, unsure what I should do next.

I was glad Manny’s eyes were closed so he couldn’t see me looking around for inspiration, almost expecting someone to be there to give me some tips or guidance. I struggled to remember what Clarissa had said we were supposed to do with the toy once it was on. In a sudden flash, I had an image of her stroking the pink sleeve on the cyber-skin penis she called Hank. Somewhere in my drunken state I remembered thinking how sensual it looked to see her pulling and twisting the pink sleeve up and down on the fake penis.

I started to yank at the toy but it was so slippery that as soon as I pulled it up, it began to ooze lubricant and threaten to fly skyward. I securely anchored the sleeve down at its base with one hand and then began to squeeze the sides in and out with the other.

Manny’s back started to arch.

I nestled into my position like I was glued to the sheets and then continued to gently tug, twist and pull on the pink sleeve. With each movement his face contorted into a new expression. He started to breathe heavily and erratically.

The toy felt like warm dough in my hands, just like my mother made for samosas. I started to knead the sleeve like it was atta.

With every twist Manny arched higher, moaned a bit louder. Somewhere in the midst of preparing the dough for samosas, I lost sight of the most important aspect of the toy - anchoring it to the base.

I began to tug, twist and pull with more vigour when I suddenly lost control of the pink sleeve. Just as I felt Manny rise to his climax my hands slipped and lost their place. In the split second that Manny bucked upwards and ejaculated, the pink sleeve shot at bullet-like speed into my left eye bounced off my face and ricocheted toward the lamp at the side of our bed. The base cracked and split in two colliding with the sound of Manny’s groaning and the crash of my ass hitting the ground as I slipped from the bed to the floor.

When I opened my right eye, I looked down at my hands which were covered in a combination of volcanic eruption from Manny’s penis and a sea of lubricant. Without thinking, I raised my left hand to my left eye to alleviate the throbbing sensation, which resulted in an even more shocking sting from the combination of lubricant and sperm I had just introduced to the delicate tissues of my eye.

I screamed out loud and darted from the floor to the bathroom. I instinctually cleaned my hands and began to douse my eye with cold water in an attempt to ease the burning sensation.

When all was said and done, I emerged from the bathroom with my left eye red and starting to swell, the black mascara I had forgotten to remove from the previous night dripping down my cheeks making me look like a swamp zombie. Manny came to his senses when I returned to the bedroom. He struggled to sit up, a confused expression on his face. He looked from the side lamp to my pathetic figure by the bed.

He smiled sheepishly. “Good luck explaining to your mother how you got that black eye.”

I instantly burst into tears.

Though the swelling around my eye healed fairly quickly, it took a full week before my ego did.

After a long week at work, Manny and I planned to do little more on Friday night than catch up on some television shows we had missed or possibly rent movies.

Sitting on the sofa, fat and full from a dinner of dosas in an Indian restaurant, I watched Manny flip through a series of sitcoms on television. I felt restless and bored. My mind drifted to the sex party. I found myself mentally going through what was in the bags in the spare room. For some reason, I continually returned to the same image of a large black box marked with the words Sex Games for Couples. It showed a picture of a man’s hands massaging a woman’s bare backside.

“Want to play a game?” I asked. Manny began to randomly flip through the sports channels.

“You want to play Rumi for cash? I’ll let you win if you’re nice to me.” He smiled without taking his eyes off the TV.

“I wasn’t thinking about beating you at Rumi, I had another kind of board game in mind.”

“Monopoly? Sure. We haven’t played that in a while.” He raised the volume on a sports channel he had locked onto.

“No, not Monopoly. I was thinking we could play Sex Games for Couples. I bought it at the party. Jenny’s party,” I added at the last moment.

“Seriously?” Manny focused on my face and muted the station.

“Yeah.” And then more emphatically, “Yes! It looks like fun!”

Manny turned the television off.

“Okay,” he said. “Sure.”

I studied his expression for sincerity. Finding nothing but slight intrigue and what I thought was a small dose of fear, I decided to seize the moment and got up from the chaise. In no time I returned from my secret stash. Manny sat on his chaise, hands neatly folded in his lap. He looked like a nervous young school boy. I handed the game to him and sat down at the end of his chaise.

“I thought you might bring down Monopoly as a joke.” He tore open the cellophane wrapping on the box.

I chewed on my lower lip as Manny rifled through the contents of the game. He unfolded the board onto the coffee table in front of us. It had the same image from the cover in the centre, the woman’s backside slick with massage oil. In the middle of her tailbone was a dial that spun around to different coloured squares. Manny put out a small sand-filled hourglass, a white vibrator shaped like a torpedo and a black silk blindfold.

Of all the things on the table only one scared the hell out of me: five inches of satin in the shape of a figure eight. The vibrator didn’t scare me half as much as the blindfold.

When I was fifteen years old, my friend Julia invited me to her house for a birthday party. I was shocked when I saw a few boys from school were also there. I sat awkwardly in the corner of her basement unsure of how to engage with anyone. When Julia’s mother said she was going to leave to go pick up more chips, someone suggested we play the racier version of pin the tail on the donkey. The idea was to blindfold someone, place them in the centre of everyone else, spin them around and wherever they stopped, they had to kiss the person who was standing in front of them.

Julia went first. Her long red hair spun like a blanket in the wind as she twirled and giggled with delight. She stopped right in front of Dack Grover, a lanky but handsome senior. He reached down to kiss her while the others quietly smirked. When she took off her blindfold she was glowing. Carrie, Julia’s best friend spun next. Her kiss was with Trevor Hamm. They locked lips so tightly I thought they were going to melt into one person.

Then it was my turn.

I put on the blindfold and spun around, excitement building in my chest. I would have been happy to smooch any one of the boys there. It was to be my first kiss after all. After a few moments of twirling around I started to get a bit queasy and stumbled forward. When I finally stopped I felt something in front of me so I leaned forward and planted my mouth on it. I heard the kids behind me suppressing their laughter. I wondered why the person I was kissing seemed to resist my mouth so I pressed harder until the others were screaming and clapping. I removed the blindfold and stared blankly at Julia’s father’s punching bag wet with my saliva. To make matters worse, my stomach revolted from all the twirling and I suddenly threw up all over her basement floor. I was never invited over to another one of Julia’s parties again.

“The game seems pretty straight forward,” Manny said. “We spin the wheel and pick up one of these cards to win favour coupons. You want to go first?”

I was nervous and breathing heavily. I could hear my heart thumping loudly in my ear.

Maybe the game wasn’t a good idea.

Manny seemed calm as he laid out the cards on the board.

I stared at the blindfold and then the vibrator.

Then from the vibrator to the blindfold again.

I grew more anxious.

“Ready?” Manny asked.

The board was fully set up. I nodded, my eyes fixated on the wheel in the girl’s back. I tried to think of a clever decoy so that I could distract Manny long enough to either set the blindfold on fire or accidentally drop it into our personal shredder upstairs.

“I’ll spin first,” Manny said. The white disk in the centre of the board game whirled until it landed on a section labelled Challenge. Manny picked it up and read it aloud. “Blindfold your partner and before the time is up, guess what part of their body they have put in your mouth.”

That damn blindfold!

“What! What does that mean?” I hated how hysterical I sounded.

Then in a split second, my memory raced back to the night of the sex party and I remembered Clarissa’s description of the game.

“This is so much fun for couples. You play the challenge cards in order to win favour coupons that are good for thirty days outside of the game. If your partner is a man then I can assure you every time you’re blindfolded he will try to put his penis in your mouth. So now that you know the answer, you’ll win the challenge for sure!”

Her description had the room of drunks roaring with laughter. I vaguely recalled hoping to cheat in the game by writing “answer = penis” on my order form.

Manny reached for the black silk blindfold and motioned for me to come closer.

I had no choice. The shredder was upstairs and there were no matches in sight. What’s worse, I could only imagine what Manny would say when I backed out of playing after it was my idea.

I leaned in half expecting the blindfold to be one that you can see through or one that you can successfully peak out the bottom of. Instead I saw nothing but blackness as soon as he put it on. Almost instantly, I felt my heart beat faster and my hearing become more acute.

“You ready?” I could make out the sound of him shifting on the chaise and the rustle of what I thought was his shirt coming off. There was the unmistakable sound of his zipper going down and the thud of his pants hitting the floor.

“Open your mouth.” A faint touch of laughter accompanied his instruction.

I suddenly didn’t trust him, feeling the sweat on my lower back begin to mirror the dewy slickness of my palms, I cautiously opened my mouth. Cold air rushed against my tongue. Before I had a chance to think, something was gently placed in my mouth.

Well, I reasoned, it definitely wasn’t his penis. Clarissa was wrong. It was a different kind of hard. I would have tried to explore it with more zest if it were not for the smell I couldn’t quite place. I immediately recoiled making what must have been a horrified face.

“Trust me,” Manny said guiding my head back. I could hear him starting to breathe heavier, the hard knob back in my mouth again. “Try and guess.”

I started to press my tongue against it and assessed that it must be a bone of some sort since it seemed hard under the surface of the skin. I started to suckle it to try and figure out its shape hearing Manny’s breathing getting harder and deeper with each stroke of my tongue.

He seemed to have trouble keeping whatever it was in one place as it kept jerking in and out of my mouth. My mind was racing but I couldn’t think of anything that it might be. Since it obviously wasn’t his penis, there was no harm in me possibly biting it off so I scraped my teeth against it which caused Manny to let out what sounded like a squeal, a deep moan and a gasp all at once. It was a noise I had never heard him make before but it was a decidedly satisfied sound.

I leaned back and tried to think.

Hard and bony = shoulder? No. Nose? No. Toe?

“It’s your - your elbow,” I guessed.

Manny began to giggle between short, shallow breaths. “Open your eyes!”

I removed the blindfold to see him contorted on the chaise, clutching his calf in the air, the sight of his ankle in front of my face still bearing faint lipstick marks from my mouth around it.

“Your ankle?” I threw my hands in the air. “I’d never guess!”

“It’s really erotic,” Manny said in a low rumble. He grabbed me closer to him and gave me a long deep kiss.

Was he turned on by having his ankles sucked? I looked down at his boxers and could see his penis trying to periscope out as if to watch us play the game.

“You like that?” I asked with hesitation. “Having your ankles licked?”

All the times we had been together, and I never licked his ankles. I never even knew that he liked it.

“Okay Lee,” he said. “It’s your turn next before we re-spin.”

“What do you mean?” I asked pulling myself up on my haunches on the chaise.

“Give me the blindfold. Now you put a part of your body in my mouth and I’ll guess.”

“Okay so it’s my turn,” I said out loud hoping to motivate my brain to think of something to do.

Manny smiled and opened his mouth wide in anticipation, the blindfold firmly in place over his eyes. I laughed out loud at the sight of him sitting on the chaise, his tongue flopping forward like a dog in summer heat.

My mind raced. What do I do? Put my elbow in his mouth? Put my ankle in his mouth?

I removed my blouse and pants and prayed for inspiration. I left my lingerie on. My black bra was starting to fray badly at the edges and was held at the base with a safety pin. My faded black control top panties with the elastic escaping slightly from both edges was stretched to its capacity attempting to hold in my heavy dinner.

What if I put my finger in his mouth or my wrist? They both seemed too easy. I felt competitive and wanted to win, to surprise Manny the way he had surprised me. I asked him to ease his head forward to stall for more time.

Impulsively, I placed the inside of my elbow near his mouth, being careful not to get too close to him but close enough to watch his expression. His tongue probed around the gentle curve of my arm causing me to giggle from the ticklish sensation and instantly jump back.

“Sorry, sorry!” I leaned his head forward again putting my arm back up to his mouth. He licked slowly at first and then more rapidly. The sensation started to drive me wild. I wanted to scream, cry and laugh all at once.

“I think it’s your shoulder,” he said tentatively.

“I win!” I said triumphantly. “Open your eyes!”

Manny removed the blindfold and smiled at me. “Your elbow?”

“Inside of my elbow,” I corrected. “I win.”

“You do not!” he said. “We both got it wrong. You didn’t guess mine either.”

I enjoyed the playful banter between us so much that I wanted it to continue more than I wanted sex. It had been so long since I felt so energized and playful with anyone. Any thoughts of nervousness or tension were completely gone. I wanted to play and what’s worse, I wanted to win.

“Is it my turn to spin?” I asked.

“Yes.” Manny slid back against the chaise.

I spun the wheel. It landed on a section labelled Action. I picked up the first card on that deck. “Do a sexy striptease for your partner.” I sat back on the chaise away from Manny. “Can I pick another one?”

“Why? Seems pretty simple, you just do a sexy striptease.” Manny folded his arms, a faint smile curling his lips.

“Most of my clothes are off already!”

“Okay, so you forfeit?” he said and smiled reaching for a favour coupon.

“No!” I grabbed his hand to stop him.

I put my blouse back on and began to wish we had started drinking before opening the game.

It’s not like I hadn’t ever seen a strip tease before. During my first year of university, my entire dorm floor had decided (with Mahjong’s guidance) to visit an after hours club and take in a strip show. By the time we got to the club most of the girls were already at their drunken saturation point. I wasn’t close enough to mine to plunge as easily into the noisy room like the others. I was convinced I would run into someone I knew, or worse, someone my mother knew. I surveyed the club to see if there were any brown faces I might recognize until Mahjong screamed at me to let go of the front door frame forcing me to give in.

Our group took up an entire table at the back. The centre stage was empty and the club was alive with screams from women who were being goaded by the D.J. The lights dimmed, music began to crescendo from two loudspeakers hidden in the dark when suddenly a tall, very well built blonde came charging out of the back curtains wearing red and orange fire fighter cover ups and no shirt underneath. He began to gyrate and swing his plastic helmet about much to the delight of the frenzied women in the club. With deliberate skill he removed his uniform piece by piece until he was standing in only a pair of loose boxers with red and yellow flames on them.

“I respect the attention to detail,” I shouted to Mahjong commenting on his shorts.

“I want to see his hose!” Mahjong screamed.

Several rum and cokes later, I began to feel the energy of the crowd infuse me. I whooped and hollered with the rest of them even when I wasn’t sure what we were yelling at. Mahjong was happy to see me so animated. She encouraged me to call “Officer Pete Pecker” over to our table. I raised my arms over my head and started to flap them around to get his attention which caused me to accidently elbow a nearby dancer in the groin. He doubled over in pain, lunging towards a server with a tray of drinks that ended up flying through the air. We were asked to leave immediately. I have never been to another strip club since.

“I’ll put music on,” I said as I did up my buttons slowly to stall for more time. My top was long enough to drape down to almost mid-thigh though it was badly wrinkled from being shoved in my slacks at work all day.

I walked over to our stereo system at the side of the big screen and pushed the power button on. As it fired up, my mind started to race again. What can I play that’s sexy?

I glanced over the compact discs but nothing seemed even remotely appropriate. I picked up Anne Murray’s Greatest Hits, got temporarily distracted by some of the tracks on the back, but decided in the end she wasn’t the right choice. I loved Anne, but her music only conjured up images of snow birds and spring time, not sex poles and strippers.

My well worn Air Supply disc wouldn’t motivate me to do anything more than sit on the sofa with a box of chocolates and cry like I did for months after my break up with Nick. I put it back.

In a flash, I remembered a George Michael disc I had just purchased and put it in. I moved the selector over to track eight. I vaguely recalled thinking the song “Freek” sounded like something my mother would hate, which meant it must be provocative and sexy.

I pressed play, took a deep breath and stared at the wall in front of me away from Manny.

The song started out slow for a brief and awkward ten seconds until the tempo jumped slightly with a heavy pounding beat. I turned to Manny who was sitting back in his chair, one leg propped up and the other lying flat. He had one hand behind his head, the blindfold resting on his temple and the other hand on his thigh.

I tried hard not to look him directly in the eye at first because I knew I would lose my nerve. Instead I focused on the music, attempting to move my hips back and forth in time with the rhythm. I smacked the fabric of my top in patches at first. When I realized it looked like I was swatting flies off my blouse I stopped. Manny looked bored. When I slowed down the strokes, his expression softened.

What else do strippers do? I walked in small circles until I ended up with my back against the door frame. I leaned back against it and saw Manny’s eyes widen slightly. I slid down against the wood slowly, then more vigorously so I could scratch the itch in my back. On the way up, I got a mass of my curly hair caught in the dimmer switch. I turned sharply trying to yank it free which in turn eased the lights down but cost me a wad of curls.

With the basement not as bright, I felt more empowered by the music, more in the mood. I walked over to just in front of the chaise and began to touch my arms, shoulders, breasts and the top portion of my thighs. What I intended to look provocative ended up looking like I was giving him baseball signals in slow motion. Manny was unimpressed and I was nervous. It was time, like it or not, for some clothes to come off.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and turned my back away from Manny slowly unbuttoning my blouse out of his sight. I looked over my shoulder to see what he was doing causing the blouse to slide half way down my back. His eyes widened. I bent over and flung my head down between my legs to peak at him while giving him a long view of my sizeable underpants. I saw him smile slowly and lean back farther into the chaise, his hand moving up his thigh to his lap. When I flipped my head back up, I felt a rush of blood course through me, the dosa in my stomach churning in revolt to the disruption of its digestive process.

I winced and rubbed my belly. His gaze became more intense. As the dosa settled, I slowly undid the buttons of the bottom half of the shirt. I was still clutching the fabric close to my chest allowing him to only see the top of my underwear. I let the shirt slide back over my shoulders again slowly revealing my bra one breast at a time, the dimmer pot lights gently gleaming off the safety pin on the side.

I swayed closer and just barely missed nicking myself in the knee on the coffee table. I straddled it deciding it was easier to do that than to stop to move the table over to the corner and continue. There were probably a whole field of dust bunnies under it anyway. What would Manny do if I stopped my version of an erotic dance to grab the vacuum and do a quick clean up? The thought was so ridiculous it made me smile. When I looked back at him his eyes looked more intense, the dome of an erection peeking through his boxers again.

I felt more confident so I dropped my blouse to the floor. I crawled over the long part of the chaise toward Manny like a cat, feeling my tummy drop loosely in the cold air. In an effort to minimize the droop, I twisted my hips backwards rocking my body like it was in a boat on choppy water. All the writhing made my hair clip suddenly pop loose. In frustration I started to wildly toss my head back to get the hair out of my face and just as I was mentally cursing such a long song choice the music finally drew to its climax and ended. The room was silent for a brief second as the c.d. moved to track nine.

I lay on top of Manny who slowly raised his hands to my bare back.

“Good job,” he said in my ear.

“I felt like a fool.”

“No it was good. I was impressed. Where did you learn that?”

“Learn what?”

“To move your hips like that.”

I didn’t realize I had moved my hips at all.

“Bollywood I guess. All Indian girls can sway their hips, na?”

He laughed out loud and then laid me back on the chaise so that I was sitting in the same position as he had been. He walked over to the stereo to change the c.d.

I looked down at the folds of fat curling down my stomach and quickly grabbed my shirt off the floor to put it on while Manny’s back was to me. I couldn’t find my hair clip so I let my curls hang loose around my head.

Manny turned and looked over his shoulder at me. “It’s my turn now,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

I nestled back on the chaise and drew my legs up to my chest eagerly clapping my encouragement.

With extreme drama, Manny tapped the play button on the stereo and in moments the heavy tabla beat of an Indian song began to thump through the air. I instantly burst out laughing from the expression on Manny’s face. He mimicked the actions of a Bollywood actor in sync with the lyrics. His expression changed from sorrow to fleeting happiness as he thrust his hips rigidly from side to side. His mocking impression of an Indian movie star dancing in the rain and looking around imaginary trees had me holding my sides with laughter.

He chose to pick up his clothes and begin to dress instead of undress. He put his pants on and as soon as he raised the zipper he began to thrust his hips back and forth while holding his hands up in a “U” shape over his head. At one point I think he was swatting an imaginary tabla drum but it looked like he was playing basketball.

“For the love of Bollywood please stop!”

“Here comes the strip tease part,” he said between jagged breaths. He reached behind him and turned the music up. As the bangra beat rose to its crescendo, Manny started to undo his pants slowly. He had them half way down over his boxer shorts when he stopped to smack his butt to the rhythm of the beat. With his pants half way down his legs he began to hop up and down again flailing his hands about as though he couldn’t decide if he should pull up his pants or push up the roof.

“You’re killing me!” Tears of laughter streamed down my face.

Manny pounded the power button off in one fell swoop and then leapt onto the end of the chaise by my feet. I could see beads of sweat starting to form on his forehead.

“That was awesome!” I said clapping my hands. “You were amazing!”

Manny flashed me a big smile and dramatically patted himself on the back.

After we caught our breath, we both looked back at the coffee table and the game. I think we were both wondering at the same time if we should continue playing or just start having sex.

“You tired?” he asked.

“No,” I said quickly. “Maybe a little,” I added a second later.

“That wore me out,” he said with another big smile. “It was fun though.”

“It was really great! Do you want to keep playing?”

Manny paused before answering. “Let’s have one more go of it if you want. Do you want to?”

“Sure,” I said straightening out in the chaise. “It’s your turn to spin.”

Manny spun the wheel and it landed on the section marked Challenge again. He picked it up and read it aloud: “Tell your partner exactly what you would like to do to them. Be explicit.”

I instantly felt myself get tense.

What was I supposed to say? Talking dirty was something that had never come naturally to me with any of my partners. It wasn’t like I was a complete prude. I could call my lady bits by their common cat reference even though it felt weird but stringing out a full sentence with the word was much more awkward.

“Mahjong, how does one talk dirty exactly?” I asked in a study break for calculus once.

“You just say wicked things to your lover while you’re having sex.”