The Ex Files

I haven't had a lot of luck with exes.

There was the one who took half my record collection with her.

The one who left me feeling bereft and empty for months before announcing, when the gap was irreconcilable, that she thought we'd done the wrong thing by splitting.

The one who copied her key to my flat before returning it and turned up in the middle of the night, unannounced.

The one who asked me to contact my mate from the rugby club and remind him he'd promised to return the brooch she'd left on his bedside table.

But Jane was special. Special in her ability to get back under my skin as easily as if we'd never parted.

Of course she could. It was as if she'd been different all along. That's what I'd told myself, that she was different, the one. Clever, intelligent, razor sharp in her understanding of ideas and principles.

And she was attractive. No, not attractive. That's an understatement. She didn't ooze sex, but she had her style worked out to a T, and she knew it worked. She knew she wasn't model thin, but neither was she Sophie Dahl, so she went for a continental look that looked backwards to the fifties, but was label savvy and up to the minute sharp. It wasn't quite a pastiche of the fifties either; there were none of the jarring anachronisms that made that 1980s Style Council look so embarrassing.

I remember the first time I saw her. She was walking along the street, skirt and blouse, a pullover draped around her shoulders, D&G sunglasses, classic looking low heeled court shoes on her feet, her costume jewellery pointing up the fifties style references and making the real pearls around her neck look even more lustrous. Naturally olive skin too; Mediterranean looking even if the suggestion that her family was anything other than North Country gentry stock would make her seethe.

I was putting up a poster for my new business; second hand and antiquarian books and prints from a stall in the market hall. It was the kind of thing that would fascinate her I discovered; the highest word of praise in her vocabulary was 'authentic'. Í got additional praise because I was trying to do it the decent way; not bursting old books for colour plates that could be framed on walls, just acquiring the material any way I could and bringing it back into circulation at a profit to me.

She was fascinated, she said, and followed me down to my stall where she cooed appreciatively over the stock, before buying an Orwell first edition and a modern copy of a Bewick engraving. She made great play of telling me she'd need the Orwell for her Open University course.

Over the next few weeks she became a regular visitor to the stall. She'd usually have a bag or basket with her containing the product of her other shopping; fresh coffee, over priced cheese, occasionally a cushion cover from the embroidery stall. I got to know something of her circumstances; divorced in her twenties, owning a semi rural guesthouse and obsessed with acquiring status via learning. She bought an eclectic collection of books, taking great care to make sure I knew which were for her studies and which to make guesthouse look classier. And I took her money and amused her the way a shopkeeper should, building a rapport with a profitable customer. Except she seemed genuinely flattered by the attention, and genuinely interested in me.

So we began a relationship.

Don't get me wrong. I may sound jaundiced now, but by the time we started the relationship I was utterly taken by her. She was sexy and different, and this was the early nineties, when ostentation was still acceptable as a lifestyle choice. And I enjoyed the way her friends took me up as a new project, the bookseller trying to make their town a little more dignified in their eyes.

And we had great sex. Vigorous, enthusiastic, passionate sex. She'd decided that part of the problem with her marriage was her husband's attitude to sex. I never found out what his attitude to sex was. Hers was pseudo scientific. She wanted to experiment. So we did. And if in retrospect it seems to me like she overdid the experimental protocols and controls, I maybe should have realised that she was showing off her learning. The sociology of science and the enlightenment were both on her curriculum.

It was less of an experiment for me than for her. I knew what I liked. If she wanted to find out about sex that involved power exchanges, or challenges, I was up for it. We found ways of doing it that didn't challenge her book learned feminism head on. We found ways of having sex that made her feel that even when she was offering herself to be used or spanked she was in charge. Her notes specifying what she envisaged were an art form in themselves. She wrote them poetically, in a lyrical style that betrayed a strong knowledge of simile and knowledge, and a lack of understanding about how much imagery was enough. That was understandable though one night, drunk, she admitted that she masturbated while writing them, sitting on a leather covered piano stool at the dressing table in her bedroom. Looking back, I know now that I'll never know if the anticipation was greater than the experience for her. There's a line from a song by Bob Seger: 'wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then'. But if I had known, would I have done anything differently? Probably not.

I'd be a liar if I pretended the relationship was perfect. Spontaneity was not her strong point. She didn't relish the idea that sex might happen without warning. She didn't understand that part of being a lover was about fitting herself to my needs too; my need for sex to be a surprise, an adventure and a game.

That wouldn't have been fatal to our relationship. Not if it hadn't been a signifier of her approach to life. She found it hard to take chances, to understand that my job might involve driving thirty miles to a house sale or standing quietly at the side of a provincial saleroom trying hard not to reveal quite which book in a mixed lot had caught my attention.

We split acrimoniously. She took my being different to her as a reproach, not as an invitation to compromise. So we went our separate ways, as much as you can when you live in a small town and share a circle of friends. Our paths were bound to cross again.

It was two weeks before Christmas that our paths significantly crossed. It was at a party in a house up on Church Street, just round the corner from my new flat in Hallgarth Street. I'd moved after we split, to a larger flat that reflected the fact that even if my private life was in tatters the business was going from strength to strength. I was standing in the study, trying not to look like I was pricing the books on the shelves. Jane was looking good in a teal green dress, off the shoulder, sleeveless, revealing her muscular and handsome shoulders and her cleavage. She was wearing her hair loose and full around her shoulders. And she was smiling at me as if I was the only person in her world.

She was not drunk. I knew what she was like when she was drunk, and there was nothing vindictive or sharp tongued about her manner. Bu there was something different about her. She was more light hearted than I remembered, but more intense. Forgive me, but I thought that, given that she wasn't drunk, she might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

It took a little while to realise that we were playing a game. Maybe the fact that I was more vulnerable than I expected meant my defences were down. The penny dropped eventually. It was more a process of accretion than elimination. I thought she was trying to wound at times, and at others that she was trying to seduce.

Examples? We'd squabbled more than once about my fetish for piercings. She'd remained unpierced when we'd been together. So did she need to tell me now that she had a silver barbell through her right nipple? Or, given that I desire exhibitionism in a woman, that she was naked under her dress, save only for stockings? Did she need to tell me that she'd decided to try bisexuality, and was in a relationship with a woman, when she'd always denied to me that she had any such inclinations?

She wasn't trying to wound. She was trying to seduce. But not because she was drunk, or cracking up. She smiled as she pointed out her girlfriend, blonde haired, a mass of curls atop her head so she resembled a dandelion, slender in trousers and an ivory coloured blouse, maybe ten years Jane's senior, standing in the kitchen at the heart of a circle of women. Jane smiled.

"I've taught her the game you taught me. She writes me notes about her fantasies. Long notes, essays really, with footnotes and reading lists."

I realised where I knew the blonde from. She taught in the German department at the university. I'd sold her an early edition of Goethe. Jane was talking again, light hearted.

"She writes more notes than we can ever act out. So I collect them, and think of them, and leave her the one I've chosen on her pillow on any given night. The more she's pleased me, the more extreme the fantasy I'll act out for her." The couple having a hushed domestic row across the study from us wouldn't have been able to see Jane's right thumb, shadowed by her wine glass, stroking at her nipple through her dress, but I found it hard to tear my eyes away.

"Last week she wrote me an essay for my OU course. So she got her dream of being pissed on in the bath. Tonight I found, in her purse, the receipt for the ring she's bought me for Christmas. A wedding ring, antique style, the kind I've wanted ever since Paul." Her thumb was stroking at her nipple again.

"So tonight she gets her dream come true. She'll hate herself tomorrow, but tonight she'll do what she wrote one night when I'd denied her for three days, three days when I wouldn't even let her see me naked. The more I deny her the further it seems she'll go, and I want to make her go as far as I can. So tonight she'll get to dildo herself while she's licking a man's come out of me. Want to be the man Tim?"

Was I disturbed by the cruelty in Jane's tone? No. Was I disturbed by the precision of her planning? No. We didn't negotiate. Not exactly. We didn't need to. I was taken in completely. It was just a matter of getting the plans clear. She would come to my flat. We would have sex. I could have the use of her, so long as she was wet and had my come inside her when Barbara came to get her. I offered to let them use my spare bedroom, but that would interfere in the fantasy. Barbara would wait for her phone call, then come and collect Jane from my flat. I asked about the kind of sex we would have. The fact that I had liked to dominate Jane would not interfere in their fantasy; it was part of it.

I've already admitted my defences were down. So I went along with it. Completely.

We walked around the corner to my flat, not really caring if any of our friends gossiped about our departure. A few strides outside of their door she took my hand, and it was almost like one of our first dates.

It's an odd experience, watching someone else act out their fantasy. You know there's a script in their heads, but without dialogue or a script to follow it's a mime performance. Her knee length coat went on the rack in my hall; the dress followed with an economy of movement that I remembered with a keen sense of loss.

I realised, too, that I was seeing her body for the first time. It had changed. There was a muscle tone to her stomach that suggested regular visits to the gym. On her left hip, just below the joint, were two Chinese characters, one above the other. Her pubic hair, sometimes shaven, sometimes untrimmed when we had been together, was a neat, tightly clipped delta. And there was that barbell through her nipple, pushing the nipple forward, making it more prominent.

Jane was unabashed by my inspection of her. Did I feel sad that she was willing to do these things for her new lover's pleasure, but wouldn't do them when she was my lover alone? Not then. Later, maybe, even now as I write this, definitely, But not at the time.

At the time I felt as if I was alienated from the experience, acting a role exactly as she was. Where once I would have sought to cajole her or tempt her into a submissive role, now I took it as a fact and spoke coldly to her, commanding her to enter the living room, slapping her backside as she walked in front of me for no other reason than because I could.

Was I ass cruel to her as I could have been? No. Part of me was replaying the fantasies I'd had when I was with her, fantasies she knew about, of my beating her till she cried in pain, inflicting pain remorselessly while fucking and masturbating her. She knew about those fantasies, and she'd incorporated them in some of her fantasies. I had her sit on my sofa, her heels on the cushions so that her knees were raised and parted, her pussy open to my gaze until she did as she was told and started to finger her clit. As she did so I wondered if she was remembering those fantasies, if she feared that the riding crop I'd described to her in careful detail was waiting for her. Was that was making her so aroused that, within minutes, she was close to orgasm, masturbating herself in the way I remembered, thumbnail scratching at her clit as her fingers rubbed over her pussy lips.

It was possible that she was thinking about those fantasies. She'd played along with them before, and enjoyed it. Our first Christmas together had as its highlight her being bent over a bolster on the bed, her hands tied behind her back, a dildo buried in her pussy as I spanked her. She'd enclosed the note describing that in her Christmas card to me, and we'd made it happen. Watching her stroke herself I asked her if she remembered that occasion. Her answer was to come, gasping, biting at the fingers of her free hand as if to stifle the noise.

And yet I didn't want to push the boundaries of that fantasy. Not now, not in those circumstances. I explained it to her as I stripped, facing her, gesturing at her to resume her self-stimulation.

"It's not like I don't want to whip you. It's not like I wouldn't love to make you beg me to put the whip down and fuck you any way I want. It's not like I don't know that maybe that was in your mind when you chose me to make your girlfriend's fantasy come true. But I want you to go back to her and tell her it wasn't about whips, or pain, or being tied. I want you to go back to her and tell her it was about my cock, and about you coming as you suck it. I want you to tell her that even as you came with my cock in you the idea of taking it up your arse was in your mind."

Her answer? She extended her tongue to lick the end of my erection as it approached her mouth, and used her free hand to cup my balls as I entered her lips. Standing astride her I pulled at her nipples, pinching and stretching them, enjoying the difference between the smaller, unpierced nipple and the barbell enhanced left one.

"Is she going to make you have more piercings Jane? Does she want to make your body hers? Will she hate the fact that she can do what she likes to you but she hasn't got a cock, the one thing you crave?" She took her hand away from her pussy to hold my cock as she took it out of her mouth to answer; I slapped her wrist and told her to carry on wanking. She hated the word, hated the bluntness, but she did as she was told. I moved forward a little so she could lick the underside off my cock, alternating licks with her attempts to answer the questions.

"She hates it and loves it. She hates porn and stuff, but she loves showing me off. She has women friends round the house and makes me strip off for them. She wants to take me to a nudist beach so she can make me walk round naked in front of everybody. It's like I'm everything a woman shouldn't be in her world, and she can't get enough of me."

She leant forward and rested her head against my thigh as she came again. Her tongue licked at my thigh, but then it was as if she realised where she was, and what she was doing. She shuddered and tried to pull away from me. I slapped her breasts, once on each, then ordered her to stand. And yes, I enjoyed that reaction.

"Time for the endgame Jane. Time to phone Barbara and tell her that you've loved making yourself come as you suck my cock. Time to tell her that you're about to kneel on the floor, arse in the air, open to me, waiting for my cock to make you come again before I spunk in you."

And she did. She took my cordless phone, dialled a number form memory, and told Barbara exactly what I'd said. Then she knelt, between the coffee table and the sofa, her head resting on her forearms. And I knelt behind her, and remembered as I experienced it again the elasticity and muscularity of her pussy, pressing my way inside her as she held her breath. And then I fucked her, the way I'd fucked her when she was at her least inhibited, one hand stroking at her clit, the thumb of the other hand breaching the ring of her anus.

Barbara's timing was poor, or excellent; depends on your taste I suppose. The doorbell rang just after Jane's first orgasm, when we'd both paused with my cock lodged inside her. I bent forward and put my mouth next to her ear.

"She's waiting by the door. She knows you're here, but she might think we're already finished. Make plenty of noise Jane. Let her know you're loving being fucked."

And with that I started pumping at her, hard, deep, long strokes, holding onto her hair as if it were reins. She gave into the feeling, and started to shout, harsh single word exclamations in time with my groin slapping into her backside.

I came too soon for my taste. I'd like to kind myself that I could have stopped, maybe made her change position or used her anus as I'd threatened. But I didn't. As she came for the second time, calling me a bastard at the top of her voice, I came inside her. It was less of a little death than a kind of shared achievement; we'd set out to do it and we'd done it. Jane stayed there, on the floor, hunched over, as I pulled out of her and pulled my boxers on, then went to the door.

Barbara was red faced, her head down, not looking me in the eye. I smiled and asked her to come in.

"She's in the living room..."

Jane had rolled onto her side, her legs pulled up to her chest. Barbara's arrival seemed to change something in her; suddenly she was in command again. She walked to Barbara and kissed her on the mouth, putting her arms around her and resisting her attempts to pull away.

"This is how you want me to be Barbara. I know you're soaking wet under those trousers. He knows too. He knows I'm coming home with you. He knows that I'm this way because you want me to be this way. So don't blush. Don't be embarrassed. He knows what I'm going to do, and what you're going to do, but he's as much a player in this game as you and me." She turned towards me, the pink flush on her chest subsiding.

"I'll leave my dress. You can imagine I might be back to play a game again." With that she was gone, slipping her coat over her nakedness and making her way to the door in front of Barbara, who still hadn't spoken to me.

Three days later I got a thank you card with a note inside. One of Jane's notes, but less lyrical than before. What it led to is another story.