"Would you like someone to tie you up whilst you have sex?"
"What? I'm sorry, I wasn't listening. What was the question?"
"Caitlin, pay attention! Question eleven: have you ever let a man tie you up? Nat and I said yes, and Liz will if she ever stops wasting time and lets you-know-who get into her knickers!"
"Shut up Jen, I'm just making him wait. I just want to make sure, that's all, just make sure that we're ready for it!"
"Oh my god, he couldn't be more ready! His tongue permanently hangs out. He has a thing for you so big you can see it from space! Caitlin, answer the question, we're nearly there. Ever indulged in a little tying-up?"
"Sorry, no, I've never been tied up. Never tied anyone else up. I might have tied someone's shoes up once or twice, does that count?" I ask, smiling innocently. They all laugh at me. So far I've answered no to pretty much every question. Where do they find these silly magazine questionnaires about sex? Is it really necessary to read them all out loud on the tram in the morning? And how is it that I end up answering no all the time? Of the girls that I am with, Liz is the youngest, and even she's done more than me, if her answers are to be believed. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, seeing as I really did have the worst weekend ever. Shouldn't have gone clubbing on Saturday night. I ask them for the next question, confident that, as the oldest, sooner or later there must be one that I can answer with 'yes'.
"Okay, question twelve. Ooh, maybe we should skip that. Let's do thirteen, it's about anal!"
"What's wrong with twelve? Ask me number twelve."
"But we know what you'll say to this one. Oh, what the heck. Question twelve then: have you ever kissed another woman?" Immediately, and in spite of my best attempts to resist, my face wrinkles at the prospect.
"Told you!" Jenny laughs. "You always pull that face whenever someone mentions it."
"I'm sorry," I say, pretending to look offended. "It's just that some of us know exactly which side our bread is buttered, thank you. I'm quite happy sticking with men, which is more than one or two here might say!" With this last, Jenny and Nat have the good grace to go at least slightly red. On several occasions -- admittedly only when very drunk -- they've ended up sprawled out on a sofa in a bar somewhere with tongues down each other's throats.
"We only do that for the free drinks-"
"It's just to make the guys go crazy-"
Complaining in unison, Liz and I laugh at them. Furtively they glance at each other, pride knocked but not mortally damaged. None of us think that they're actually lesbians, and it does only ever happen towards the end of the night when they're very drunk. Maybe it's because they're so much younger than me -- I have a good two decades on them -- but somehow it doesn't seem right to me. I can't blame them, I suppose, because men do seem to find it extremely captivating, and when they surface for air offers of drinks are never far away. Smiling, I shake my head as they start picking on each other over who does the most outrageous things when they're drunk.
They were doing it on Saturday night, in the club. Jenny and Natasha pulled each other, bitch-face Karen shagged the best-looking man in the city centre and I had a pizza. Technically, I had a hot and spicy garlic bread on a pizza base, but the point is that I had to eat it alone.
"Am I boring?" I ask, throwing the question out from leftfield somewhere. "Am I too plain for words, or simply too old?" I don't actually know where that came from and now I wish I hadn't said it. They looked at me as though I had just produced a mountain bike from a bowl of semolina. "It's just that..."
"We know what you mean," said Liz, the United Nations Ambassador for Nightclubs and Bars in Sheffield City Centre. "This is about Karen, and that bloke, isn't it?"
"Absolutely not," I lied firmly and unequivocally, before inspiration struck. "I was thinking about Richard, actually. Although the, uh, the Karen thing sort of summed it up nicely."
Richard is my partner. 'OFT', as the girls call him -- they claim it's an acronym for 'Old Father Time' but I'm fairly sure that the 'F' is an expletive - is ten years older than me, and a lecturer in drama at the local university, which is sort of how we met. I make props and scenery for the theatre in the city centre where we all work, he wanted to send students for practical experience, yada yada yada.
He asked me out when I was at my lowest ebb for years -- the driver of the car that killed my husband had served his eighteen months, or whatever it is that drunken teenagers are given when they steal a car and kill an innocent person. Anyway, said murderer had just been released from prison and I desperately needed a Samaritan. I broke down on him one day backstage, he took me out for lunch, and we spent the whole afternoon talking. The afternoon became the evening, and that became night, and for the only time in my life I went to bed with a man who wasn't my husband. His first marriage had also been until death parted them, and it just felt right.
Now, it's different. What struck me as passion for his work when we first met now just seems like workaholism, and we barely see each other. We still have our own places, I haven't even met his family, which to be fair only comprises of a son, Ben. Although I have recollections of enjoying a sex life, that seems like a long time ago. When he can stay over, when he isn't too tired, and when I can get him to stop talking about work, it lasts about eleven minutes. Strictly lights off, no talking, by the book missionary position. The girls know all of this.
"No, the thing with Richard is nothing to do with what happened on Saturday night," said Natasha soothingly. "Richard's just not interested in sex, and the bloke in the club was using you to get to Jenny."
"Thank God," I mocked, "I was worried men would only have one reason to reject me, but I'm pleased they're operating with a whole panoply of reasons." It was Jenny who piped up with a pointless and inane comment to break the sarcasm.
"You should have an affair, C, that would sort everything out." A stream of bizarre comments punctuated by neologisms would often constitute a conversation with Jenny. I don't understand it, much as I don't understand why I love her to death. Some things just are. This last was quite a surprise even by her word-salad-as-conversation standards. We'll come to why in a moment, but for now we must pause to let Liz interject.
"Jen, even for you that's a daft thing to say. Caitlin is altogether a more sensible and mature person that to lower herself with a cheap fling." Jen was ready to rebut, but Natasha also had an opinion.
"Actually I don't think it's that bad an idea," she said, pensively. "She might realise that the grass is not always greener, or whatever cliché best sums it up, and decide she's better off with what she had." An interesting point of view - misery and rejection preferable to finding someone else. I would let Jenny make her case, then deliver my verdict.
"I don't doubt that OFT is an excellent partner, in his own way. He never cheats; works hard at a very decent job, makes sure you lack nothing, and is generally attentive to your needs except in one area. Granted he can be quite vacant and self-absorbed," she paused, building up to the punchline "but as I see it his lack of sexual interest is cancelled out by the fact that he's so bloody self-absorbed you could take lovers in the kitchen and he wouldn't notice. What you need to do is find a nice, safe shag; someone who's only interest is banging you until yours ears bleed, and doesn't want to stop for conversations."
"Jen!" Liz exclaimed. "She would never do that, she's so much more sensible than that."
"So what you're saying is," I started, quietly, "I should sleep around so people stop thinking of me as boring."
"Caitlin!" they cried in unison for entirely different reasons. I was determined to make them understand my reasoning.
"Liz, you used the word 'sensible' twice to describe me in less time than it takes Jenny elicit a marriage proposal from a stranger." Jen shrugged in an 'I can't help it' sort of way that made me want to hug her. "I know that you meant it in a complimentary way, but I don't see myself as sensible. I think of beige chunky-knit arun cardigans as sensible."
"Ooh!" exclaimed Jenny, hot on the trail of a random statement. "If I were clothes I would be a denim mini skirt!" We look at her and she fails to understand the meaning of the look.
"Perhaps," I smiled, "I wouldn't mind being thought of as sensible, as long as that's not all people think of me, but I think it sums me up." The tram lurched to another stop and people started to file on. "I would rather like to be thought of as exciting, or attractive, or sexy, or desirable. Frankly, even interesting would be an upgrade." Silence sidled into the carriage and we shuffled along our seats to accommodate it. Unfortunately silence was forced to give up its seat when Karen got on.
"Hey ladies," she smarmed charmlessly. My head filled with an image of keeping butterflies in a jar until they died. At the exact same point last Friday I thought about raptors ripping someone to pieces. That's the effect Karen has on people. Jenny calls her 'trout-face' behind her back. Different strokes, I say. "What's happening, bitches?"
"Caitlin's going to have an affair and I want to be a pair of strappy fuck-me shoes," Jenny said conversationally.
"Actually that's not quite what I said..."
"Oh Caitlin, why would you want to do that? It's not like you, you're so... I don't know, what's the word?"
"Sensible?" Jenny added helpfully, failing to evade the flying pumps of both Liz and Natasha.
