Piccadilly Line

There's something wonderful about the first really summer-y week of the year. Its not on any calendar, but you know it when its happening. The whole world just seems... hornier. As a typical voyeuristic adolescent, I assumed this was just me and my fellow droolers, staring at the glorious adult flesh, for so long hidden away, bleaching under sensible winter coats. Obviously, the return of flesh to greedy male eyes is still a part of it, but these days I think there must be something more going on. Maybe it's the heat. Sultry days, sultry moods, and all that. Maybe it's the mating season. Maybe its because women enjoy the chance to dress more sexily. Maybe it's the prospect of evenings outside, a bottle of wine, I don't know. Anyway, as I say, I love it.

This past week in London has been just one of those weeks. I've been enjoying it. Enjoying, as always, the sight of women sloughing clothes like an unwanted skin. Enjoying the accentuated smells as sweat releases perfume. Enjoying the enjoyment of those around me. Its not often you get to talk about joie de vivre in London, but this week, it seems fair.

All that being said, on Thursday I was not in a great mood. A suit and tie turns a gorgeous spring day into a sticky nightmare very quickly. Staring out of office windows at lazy Frisbee games in the park makes it difficult to revel in other people's enjoyment. Perhaps I'm just too stressed, frustrated and bitter in my job to ever relax on a working day. All I know is that on Thursday I was far too hot, and I could feel the beginnings of a killer headache coming on. I went down to the tube platform at Earls Court hoping only for a journey without delays, and enough room to open my book.

Against all the odds, I got what I wanted; a tiny space on an overheated train, but room enough to read my book, and no major distractions around me. I've grown to hate loud iPods on the tube almost as much as I hate mobile phones on the train. But I digress. Thankfully I was reading Brighton Rock; Graham Greene being just perfect for the commute, an easy prose style and a good old-fashioned story. I suppose we'd gone through South Kensington before I even noticed her. It was the smell first, of course. I think it always is, for me. I knew a girl a few years ago who smelt like that. I don't know how to describe it; I'm better at wines than perfumes. Citrussy, I suppose. Slightly sweet. A very feminine smell, at any rate. I think Chanel make the perfume, but it doesn't matter. It isn't that I liked the smell (though I did), but the memories that it evoked that make it worth mentioning.

It was only as we jerked to a stop at Hyde Park Corner that I realised I'd been communing with the ghosts of girlfriends past, and had missed most of the last few pages. My thinking gradually became conscious, and I recognised the smell, as a picture of Jennifer in that white string bikini danced across my memory. Did I ever tell you about that bikini... oh well, maybe another time. You want to hear about this girl. I looked around me for the source of the smell. Moving was inevitable anyway, since the hordes were packing us deeper into the train. I parked Graham in my briefcase, a spied the woman I was looking for. It wasn't that I could smell that it was her, not at that point. I just knew.

Anyway, we were pushed closer and closer together. I didn't have to manufacture this, which is good, because I probably wouldn't have had the guts... it seems like a pretty seedy thing to do. But I was pressed up against her by the crowd. I suppose she was about five foot, as she didn't quite reach my chin. I had no chance of reading my book; the crowd having pressed my hands to my sides, and I studied the girl, the woman, I guess, standing in front of me. There wasn't much to see, from my angle. She had dark brown hair, parted in the middle. She was wearing some kind of greenish top, one of those ones with the flouncy shoulders. And she smelt of walking on the beach with Jennifer. Of first tentative hand on bra contact, blushing almost as much as she did. Great days.

As we rumbled into Green Park, where fat banker types forced their way on and off the train, she turned slightly sideways, and my picture of her improved slightly. She was wearing a silver dolphin pendant, stark against the flush on her neck. She had a perfect trail of hair around the line of her ear. Transfixed, I watched as it began to dampen in the heat, clinging to and accenting the lines of her face. She brushed it off with long, delicate fingers. Painter's hands. Artist's hands. Lover's hands. As she lowered her hand, I saw a glimmer of bra strap. Obviously pink, obviously expensive. And obviously gloriously, dangerously delicate. I suppose it was at this point that the girl began to turn me on in earnest.

I know this shouldn't have been erotic, but hey – it was. The heat, the scent, the subtle beauty of the girl, and the voyeuristic, taboo element to it all. Well, wow. As the train moved on, she was pressed into me, and for a moment, it was all I could do to stop myself from shouting in pleasure, as the rumbles and grumbles of the train caused her lower back to vibrate against my groin. Pure biology. My brain intervened and reminded my cock that it was... making itself known, and I shifted a thigh forward quickly, reducing the pleasure, but also reducing the risk of imminent arrest.

The girl pushed back against me. Moving my thigh back, straightening me up, and unmistakably pushing herself against me. She wriggled slightly, and eased into me. I could feel tight denim against my thigh. I could feel the slim, tight contours of a bum that knew its way around a gym. It sounds like a cliché, but I really felt my knees go weak, my heart race, and my face go warm. It was one of those defining moments. The single most erotic second of my life.

The moments that followed weren't bad, either. I simply stood there whilst this girl slowly, subtly gyrated against me. I could feel her moving along almost every point of my body. It was only a couple of minutes to Piccadilly Circus. It felt like everything from a few seconds to an hour. As the lights flashed and slowed around us, I felt her reach back, and for a fleeting moment I thought she was going to touch me. Her hand brushed my pocket, and I thought she'd missed her target. But two clever fingers reached into my pocket, and then she was gone.

As she stepped out of the train, she turned, and smiled at me. She was, of course, radiant, a porcelain beauty. It was the first time I'd seen her face. I reached into my pocket, and pulled out her phone number. I smiled at her back as she was lost in a tide of commuters. My headache was gone. All I had to do was drum up the confidence to ring her.