I really didn't know what it was when I trimmed my bread down to a few days' worth of stubble. Yes, it had been long, scruffy and rather silly. But had I been the beauty that people seemed to find the new me all along? All of a sudden I noticed heads turning for the first time in my life, even overheard a female friend commenting to another in the pub.
"Yes, it made me forget how good looking he is."
Men, if you want to be found attractive, grow a beard, to the point where people start wondering about your religion, then cut it off from one day to the next.
We were finishing another lesson and as usual with Liz I couldn't really tell if I had taught her anything or just filled an hour with the sound of my own voice. She was a middle-aged lady, studying to get a qualification in mental health nursing. Like many of my clients, she had a class in statistics that she had to pass to complete her course. Unlike most of them, she had such difficulties with even basic math like percentages and ratios that I often despaired of her being able to follow any of the instructions I gave her. Lessons usually consisted of us starting at something in the book that she had to know, then working further and further backwards through easier and easier material, looking for something that she could actually take in.
Liz would hurry me a little as we got towards the end of the hour, and one of my theories about her was that she was an alcoholic who denied herself drink until the end of our lessons on the days I came. Sitting alongside her on the sofa, I would stare at the pictures, cards and books in the room and try to figure out her story. How did a plain, large and slightly unfriendly woman live her life, what transpired in this little apartment in the 165 hours each week I wasn't here?
Teaching stats to someone who takes very little in leads to boredom, and boredom as usual led to fantasy for me. Was Liz a virgin, one of life's permanent loners or was she a refugee from a broken marriage or unlucky love affair? Did she masturbate herself with violent abandon on this same sofa, was she maybe asexual, or was her life dominated by repressed urges which she tried to keep contained? Any of these seemed plausible.
She handed over my money as I packed my books away and I got up to go. As usual she walked me to the door.
"You're looking well, Frank."
She reached for my hand to shake. This wasn't what normally happened when I left. We had maybe shaken hands the first time I taught her, certainly not ever since.
I stood and paused with her hand in mine. This was clearly the desire I had just been wondering about. What seemed just a handshake was in fact for Liz a momentous triumph over her shyness, a leap into the unknown. It felt equivalent, for a more demonstrative, more experienced person, to unzipping my fly and sucking my cock right there on the threshold.
"Liz", I said. "Do you want me to stay and spend some time with you here ... in your bedroom?"
She looked right at me, breathing through her open mouth. "Yes Frank."
"Go into your bedroom."
"Yes Frank."
I follow her into her bedroom and she turns and faces me in the doorway. We clutch hands again, then move together and kiss. As soon as our lips have met briefly, she pulls away and looks at me.
"Uh, Frank? I don't know how to... I never have before."
"Don't worry," I say. "I'll show you what to do." We kiss again. This time her tongue goes straight into my mouth, before I was expecting it. She is half reaching around me, not sure whether to hold me tight or not. The big woman kisses breathlessly, with an open mouth. I unzip my flies and start to fumble my cock out of the fly of my boxers. As it sticks out of my clothes between us, jerking steadily, I bring her hands down to it in mine.
"Liz."
I am folding one of her hands around the head of my penis. "Push the skin back and forwards over it. Slowly."