A Halloween Cat's Tail
This is my 4
th
story on this platform and I'm again retelling a story that is from real life, having fun remembering the excitement of this experience. I hope you like it and I'd love to hear any comments, feedback or the like. Enjoy.
None of the family were invited to my brother's wedding. He'd left the UK to take up a job in the Bahamas at a 5-star hotel and had started dating one of the cabaret singers, an Argentinian woman about 9 years older than him. And I know what you're thinking: some gorgeous Latin beauty, with raven hair, a voluptuous body, dark eyes...the lot. That's what I thought and I went "good on you".
My Mum and Dad had gone out to see him for a holiday and he was clearly smitten. Mum and Dad less so. It was not a happy holiday with many awkward moments and arguments. On the last day of the holiday, one of these arguments culminated in my Mum saying, "If I'm honest, I'd be horrified if you married my son." No ambiguity there. No taking it back either.
Things progressed and they got married about 4 months after the holiday. Maybe a "fuck you" to Mum and Dad and no surprise they were not invited. As his younger brother and because we were pretty close, I was surprised I wasn't invited but I guess he might have felt I had been brainwashed. This was the mid 80's and communication was not so easy then. Certainly, he and I didn't talk often and 20 years old lads aren't writing letters to each other. Anyway, the wedding happened and we all found out about it after the event.
I was living in London at the time, living my best life as they say. I'd had a few serious girlfriends but was currently in a casual relationship with a horny thing who lived 2 hours drive away. She was a wildcat in bed but neither of us felt so much for the other that we were willing to move, certainly not me, from the playground that was London in the early 80's. So perhaps once every 3-4 weeks one of us travelled to the other and we spent the weekends fucking like rabbits and hardly coming out of the bedroom.
The weeks in between were fairly quiet sex wise, although going out clubbing often ended up with me at some girl's place, or her at mine. I was still learning the art of sex in all it's guises, so I would love to say each night was a passionate frensy of fucking, orgasms and screams of joy. Some were. Some weren't. That's life, as we figure out that it's not all about the male's pleasure and how to please a woman, how to savour the smells, juices and wonders of the female anatomy and understanding that foreplay is more important to brilliant sex than the actual fucking.
I was 24, decent looking (think about how Sting looked in mid 80's), working at an advertising agency and whilst not rolling in money, had my own apartment (well the bank did and I paid the mortgage), sharing with a mate and a circle of good friends. This was way before it was commonplace to go to a gym to keep fit and buffed, so I played hockey at the weekend. Although to be fair that was hardly keeping fit, as directly after the game, all 14 teams, 7 home, 7 aways teams, all piled into the clubhouse and drank copious amounts of beer. You run around. You drink a lot. I guess it sort of evened out.... not.
Anyway, I'd always had a high metabolism and didn't put on weight. I played tennis, squash, went skiing if I could afford it and was generally active. I was 6'1", 78kg, flat stomach, blue eyes and light brown hair. It's funny, I never really thought about how I looked in those days. I was outgoing and had always done Ok with girls from age about 16.
I was never a "bad boy", fucking women this way and that. With my 2 serious girl friends of 2 years and 4 years, I'd been faithful, despite the opportunities that life in London threw up. Both were really good looking and with the 4-year relationship, we'd both said the L word to each other. But things came to a conclusion, as we both realised it wasn't working. In hindsight I was still too juvenile for Alison, who was nearly 2 years older than me. When you're 20 and your girlfriend is 22, that's quite a maturity gap. Ah well.
Back to the main story: my brother. A year after the marriage, he and Sofia had moved to New York. Manhattan to be exact, although not living in luxury: the Lower East Side, which in 1984 was fairly grungy. I'd been out to visit them, not having been to the Big Apple before, it seemed a great opportunity to have some fun, get free lodging and experience one of the world's great cities.
My first visit was about 15 months after the marriage and my first time meeting Sofia. I mentioned that I had an image of what she would look like, this beguiling chanteuse. Hmmmmm, reality can be a real bummer. Not really a looker. An angular, rather severe face, short in stature and describing her as plump would be generous.
But turns out we got on like a house on fire. We both got each other's sense of humour and the banter was great (she spoke fluent English having lived in the USA since she was 19) and my brother was visibly relieved that this was not going to be a repeat of our Mum and Dad's holiday.
New York, as anyone who has visited from overseas, was (and is) just like the movies. The sounds, the smells, the sights were straight out of the countless films and TV shows: Taxi Driver, Kojak, Annie Hall....the list goes on (I'm referencing from the 70's and 80's as that when this story is set!). The steam coming up from the manholes, the diners, the bars, the street food, the delis, the skyscrapers, which have you walking around looking upwards. I loved it.
Fast forward 18 months and my brother Peter and Sofia had a baby boy (Nicholas) and there had been a thaw in the cold war between them and my parents. Grandkids do that. Unlike the wedding, this time we're all invited over to the christening. Dad decides to pass on the opportunity but Mum and I say yes and book our flights. It's to be a short trip of 4 days and nights but I'm looking forward to revisiting New York and exploring more and hopefully meeting another girl who would swoon at my accent and let me into her bed. That story from the first trip was less eventful and hence no story, as yet. Well, it's OK to be an optimist, isn't it?