Helen noticed the boyfriend before the girl. He was tall and handsome in a young, trendy way; muscular arms wrapped around his girlfriend. Italian tourists, they looked like. Maybe Spanish. 20-something. Wedged into a corner by the door of the tube train, utterly oblivious to the rush-hour cram.
Helen, sitting next to her husband George and on their way to The Bundle Of Joy Baby Exhibition, tried not to watch the couple. Especially, she tried - and failed - not to stare at the boyfriend's pierced tongue; pondering a Mumsnet discussion about tongue-studs being good for extra stimulation. Down there.
She sighed, and crossed her legs. A twisted curiosity had her searching out his girlfriend's face, as if she might find someone with a saintly, blissed expression. Someone utterly satisfied.
In reality, the girl made her smile. Helen might well be a tourist in London these days but she grew up in the city and went through exactly the same punkette look herself when she was that age, some 10 years ago. In fact, the girl did not look unlike her, wicked eyes, leonine nose and a big mouth. The only difference was her jet-black hair; a high contrast monochrome colouring that seemed naturally suited to punk. Helen always had difficulty rebelling with her drab, English ash-blonde.
The girl could not stop kissing her boyfriend. Helen wondered if this proved the tongue-stud theory or not. Were they 'thank you' kisses or was she still... needy? Hands appeared on the boy's rear, small with gloss black nails and thick thumb rings; they squeezed his backside then pulled his hips hard to hers. He laughed loudly. Someone tutted.
Helen blinked and looked away, feeling suddenly creepy, and squeezed George's hand. He reciprocated with a quick succession over-excited twitches. She had promised him a birthday 'doing' later; he would be like this all day. She wished she had sorted him out that morning rather than have it hanging over her.
It had been kind of fun watching pay-per-view cheeky-TV in the hotel room the night before, but it was always too intense. Even though they'd both climaxed (doggy) while watching, it had been quick and fizzy and left her wanting more. Then as she fell asleep, she kept getting lurid flashes of plundered glistening pinkness. She had even woken up aroused in the middle of the night, much to George's delight, but he too seemed over-stimulated and frustratingly kept finishing too quickly.
Her husband had been squeamish about sex since the ultrasound. Still early days, Helen hardly showed at all, and he was as rutty and attentive as ever before he saw the little bean curled up in there. Recently he approached her bits with a sensitivity that was simply irritating and she had hoped a naughty weekend might re-ignite him, but not this way. A succession of little firecrackers when all she wanted was one great big bang.
Meanwhile - mocking her - the girl was really getting off on her boy's slim hips, with her bare thighs frog-legged either side of him. Helen's ears warmed. It was just as if the pay-per-view porn had followed her out into the real world. Maybe she had become so bothered she was projecting them into being from her subconscious. Then the couple were swallowing each other whole, mouths locked like tussling hippos and Helen squirmed. She wanted a month of tongue. All over. Then - dear Lord please - a long and rigorous and pumpy shafting. She needed not a mouthful of George's overexcitement.
RideACockHorse, on Mumsnet, had got so fed up with her "Dear O.H." - and his obsession with her 'head' - that she went to the lengths of hypnotism. She had herself convinced that her tongue was another g-spot. The first couple of posts about the results were - literally - ecstatic. Her and her hubby had stopped going out of an evening, just so they could stay at home and play. The O.H. kept buying her gifts and even wrote her love poems. But, by the third post, RideACockHorse had undone the hypnotism. When every snack was an explicit act of self-love, she was piling on the pounds. Priorities.
The train stopped and people squeezed out, including the handsome boyfriend. The girl gripped his hand to the last second and even plucked kisses to it before she let it go.
"Remind you of anyone?" George said, nodding at her.
Helen had an urge to punch him.
An old man shuffled and wobbled amongst the jostle of people getting on and Helen, in a force of habit, offered up her seat quickly. The only space left to stand was that vacated by the boy, then - as the train became even more rammed - she found herself in the awkward position of being almost pressed to the punkette, who was glowering at everyone.
The train lurched as it pulled away. The girl was ok - leaning against the wall with her legs braced in a narrow A - but Helen stumbled. The girl caught her, but not before Helen had planted her flip-flopped foot between the girl's boots, to steady herself.
They shared an awkward smirk, left in an unusually intimate position. She was side-on to the girl, but Helen's leg was between her knees and neither could move. Helen tried to act like this was normal, just another day stuffed in the sweltering London tube. Mind the gap and all that. As long as they didn't look at each other, it was all good.
But the girl did look. She stared at the discrete dripping-rose tattoo on Helen's shoulder. The logo of an obscure and aggressive all-girl band in the 90s. She blinked and raised an eyebrow and checked Helen's reflection in the black glass, eyes flicking around her face, then with the briefest of glances down at her breasts and legs. Helen tried to be cool and grown up but had an urge to giggle like a teenager. Probably the last time she'd been appraised so blatently, too. Honestly. Italians. Spanish. Whatever.
The train lumbered along. The girl smelled of patchouli, a fragrance that tossed Helen back to her 20's and she subtly took long, deep breaths of it. In her wild years, Helen had gone through a sexually experimental phase and even had a girlfriend for one bright, brilliant summer. Her girlfriend would dab patchouli at the tops of her inner thighs, so now the fragrance was forever synonymous with being up-close to soft hidden places and delicate flesh. Even now, the tip of Helen's tongue secretly traced the alphabet in her mouth, recalling her special technique for eliciting gasps and swelling sighs.
