Passing on Dai

This happened, to us, in London, in the 1980s. Or didn't happen - could be looked at that way too.

'Us' was myself and my wife, Chloe.

A bit about my wife.

Chloe is strikingly good-looking and in a sexy way. Some attractive women are ethereal or angelic, delicate, mysterious. Some are statuesque. There are many ways to be good-looking. Chloe's way is sexy.

She often dresses to it too. Hemlines that could be considered a bit too short, tight little shirts that don't button high enough to cover her firm little breasts.

When split skirts were in, Chloe's were sometimes split to the hip. She had this dazzling silk dress in a deep emerald colour, narrow all the way down to her knees, but with a split all the way up one side so that when she sat on a bar stool you could see her panties. If she was wearing any. And it had a narrow split at the front of the chest too, down to her navel, a peek-a-boo.

To sum up, Chloe dresses a little ostentatiously. Even when she's dressed for a funeral, she turns every head when she walks into a room. I know that's a bit of a cliché, but if you've actually seen someone like that you'll know what I mean.

And all this without looking in the least bit common, on the contrary, done with such poise, such sangfroid.

She's also a bit of a flirt. I've seen worse, but not much worse. She gets a lot of attention from men and she makes no bones about the fact that she enjoys it.

We always had an 'open' relationship - we each did things on the side. Not very often, but not rare either. We both enjoyed it immensely. Especially Chloe, she looked as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but sex was actually a kind of core competency for her, she was good at it and it made her glow. She could talk about history or the theatre or food or travel, but all the time she gave off this aura that telegraphed to those around her "It wouldn't take much to talk me into performing fellatio for someone right now." Hard to explain, if you've ever known anyone like this you'll know what I mean.

So another of the things that men found attractive about Chloe was that they sensed they had a shot with her. And they were right, they did. Not every single one of them, but she enjoys sucking men off, always did, and over the years more than a few of them have had the pleasure. (Actually, when she was young she did it professionally, but that's another story.)

The odd thing was though, she wasn't particularly interested in hot, fit, uber-abs, toothpaste-advertisement men, with the tan, the swagger, the biceps, the arrogance. She preferred on the whole, older men, or where they were younger they were more like me - a bit geeky. For her a lot of sex was in the mind rather than in the biceps.

Every now and then we would go to a pub or a hotel bar and she'd pick up a man, usually an older man, as I said she liked older men - I don't mean geriatric, just older than us - and go off with him somewhere and suck him off, or whatever, then come back and tell me about it. We played this game for years, though latterly it was mainly when we were traveling - too cautious about running into someone we knew. I was moderately well-known by that time.

So one night we were in this hotel in London, the Dorchester, and we went into the bar to have a drink after dinner. I went to the bathroom on the way in and by the time I came in Chloe already had an admirer, a somewhat older man. Not unusual.

At a glance he looked vaguely familiar, but that area of London is teeming with indistinctly recognisable people, people you've seen in films or on tv, in the newspapers and so forth, it's one of those spots in the world where recognising someone's face doesn't necessarily mean you know them.

Chloe and her admirer were at a table so I went over and sat at the bar so she could choose what she wanted to do. After a few minutes I picked up that the two men sitting next to me at the bar were with the guy who was chatting up Chloe. They spoke with modulated, educated, upper crust accents, and they were talking about their friend, laughing at what an incorrigible 'stick man' he was.

They were referring to their friend as "Dai" and it dawned on me who it was. He was Dai Llewellyn. Sir David Llewellyn.

Dai had two claims to fame, first and foremost as a playboy, in which role he was legendarily priapic, a prolific seducer of ladies, especially ones who were good-looking, young, or high born, or any combination there-of. For years, no, decades, he was a more or less permanent exhibit in the better clubs and bars of London, and he was often in the papers, especially the sort of paper that I don't normally read - News Of The Screws and so forth.

I hadn't actually heard that expression 'stick man' before but I knew what it must mean and it's stayed in my mind. Sleazy little term, isn't it? And so unfair - Dai was one of the great philanderers of our times, in his hands the pursuit of casual sex was elevated to a level that a minor divinity wouldn't be ashamed to own up to - far, far above the shallow, up-bam-thank-you-ma'am tawdriness conveyed by 'stick man'.

I said Dai had two dips at the fame trough. The other one was a walk-on part in another long-running tabloid tempest: Dai's brother, Roddy Llewellyn, had famously become the lover of HRH Princess Margaret, and they used to go off to Mustique together to escape the paparazzi. By all accounts the Princess chose well, Roddy was a bit of a catch, and a pretty decent sort.

The British press, a group whose morals made Dai Llewellyn look like a choir boy, knew of rumours that HRH was going to the Caribbean to meet up with a lover but they couldn't figure out where she was going or who it was she was meeting there, wherever it was. Dai helpfully identified his brother to them as the guy. Caused a bit of a rift in the family, so it was said.

So that's who was deep in conversation with Chloe. Dai Llewellyn.

He was probably past his best by that time, I would say he'd peaked a good 15 years earlier, but I could see at a glance, I could see from 20 feet away, that he had that same quality, the same thing Chloe had, an aura. I'm not a New Age person, in fact I think it's a crock, a measure of the decline of our education system, but the fact is some people undeniably have that atmospheric ability to project their persona, even from a distance, and Dai Llewellyn had it.

But for whatever reason, Chloe decided to 'pass' on Dai. One of the few who did. She stood up and came and sat beside me at the bar. Sir David and his friends left.

Of course Chloe had no clue as to who he was, had never even heard of him, and she was a bit miffed when I told her. Not inconsolable, but a friend of mine had fucked (can't put his name in, sorry) and claimed to have fucked (sorry, can't put his name either), and Chloe was a bit jealous, she had a bit of star-fucker in her too. Unrequited though. But I explained to her that in the case of Dai Llewellyn, the way to set yourself apart from the common herd, to get yourself talked about, was to NOT have fucked him.

(I read somewhere that Dai, after recounting some spectacularly inappropriate sexual escapade added "I wish I could say it was an isolated incident.")