I don't know what time it was when I woke up, but as soon as I tried to lift my head from the pillow to look at the clock by my bed I wished I hadn't. It felt as if a thousand hammers were thudding into my skull, my mouth tasted of ashes and I felt very sick. I groaned and shut my eyes and waited for the pain to go away.
I must have fallen asleep again because when I surfaced to some kind of consciousness again the world beyond my eyelids seemed brighter, although I still didn't dare open my eyes. The pain seems to have receded a little too, probably because two sets of fingers were gently massaging my temples — small fingers, a girl's fingers! What the hell? Girls weren't permitted in the men's halls of residence in those far off days, nor men in the women's halls come to that. It may have been the Swinging Sixties, but universities were still stuck in the dark ages.
For a while I was content to just lie there. Trying to think was like wading through thick mud, so I gave up the effort of trying to remember until something like sanity returned. Slowly however, random pictures began to rise up out of the miasma, and eventually I was able to piece them together into some sort of coherent story.
My new found friend on the same landing in our hall — this was only a few weeks after the start of the fresher term — was a jazz aficionado and even had a collection of about fifty rather scratched vinyls and a Dansette record player. I had discovered jazz a couple of years earlier when my then girlfriend gave me an EP of Duke Ellington for my birthday, but I was no expert. John, on the other hand, came from London and had been a regular at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club since his fifteenth birthday — he had lied about his age since you weren't allowed into licensed premises until the age of sixteen.
Anyway, as soon as he arrived in Bristol he had looked out all the local jazz clubs, and every Friday night while we were all drinking in the Students' Union Bar he would disappear, to reappear around lunch time the next day with blood shot eyes and the mother and father of a hangover. I have no idea where he spent the night, quite possibly sleeping it off on some bench in the university gardens — it was an unusually warm autumn that year.
That particular Friday he had invited me to go with him to a pub he had heard about near the docks where he said there was apparently a particularly good amateur combo topping the bill. We caught the bus into town — very few students had cars — promising ourselves we would leave the bar before well in time to catch the last bus. When we eventually found the place, it was in a dingy back street. The interior wasn't much better — with a cracked linoleum covered floor and walls stained dark brown by nicotine, all shrouded in a pall of thick cigarette smoke, but the beer was cheap.
The first couple of acts weren't much good so we sank a few beers and got through a couple of packets of fags while we waited. Our patience was rewarded however, because John had been right, the main act may have been amateurs but they were electrifying — the sax player was good enough to play with any of the top bands, and his improvisations were out of this world. My problems started after they had finished. I've never been a great beer drinker, but I think I must have had at least ten pints and the last couple of hours are just a blur of fags, faces and the flatter of people talking far too loud. There was a girl I think. Actually there must have been a girl since it was in her bed that I woke up, but that is moving on a bit.
Once I could think fairly clearly I began to piece together what I could remember about the girl, presumably the girl who was stroking my brow. Somehow she seemed to have joined us during the main act, very politely asking if the chair next to me was free. The first thing that struck me was her voice. Her English was good, but a little precise as is often the way with people where English is not their first language, with a delightful French accent. I don't know what it is about girls who speak English with a French accent, but I had always found them extremely sexy ever since I had stayed with a family in Paris when I was fifteen. She was petite — probably not much over five feet tall — with short black hair, and wearing a red tee-shirt and a very short mini skirt that barely covered the cheeks of her pert bum. She was bare legged and wearing black flat heeled shoes that my mother would have said were slippers, not shoes. Oh, and she was braless, with small breasts but very prominent nipples that made the two most delicious points in her tee-shirt. I vaguely recall thinking that it would be rather nice to suck them.
How I ended up in her bed I have no idea. I don't remember leaving the pub or how we got there. Presumably we walked. I have no idea what happened to John and I didn't see him again until hall dinner on the Monday evening. I later found out that her flat, which she shared with two other girls, was only about a mile and a half from the docks.
At last, when I felt a little stronger, I managed to prise open my eyes without feeling dizzy, and it was only then I realised I wasn't in my room in hall, but in a strange bedroom. I gingerly turned my head and took in the floral curtains, and dark red painted walls covered in posters. Finally my eyes lighted on a vision of sexiness sitting next to the bed wearing a white cotton vest and knickers, looking at me with a concerned frown on her face and rosy lips pursed in thought.
"You need coffee," she said in a husky voice, "proper coffee, not that instant muck you get in the shops here. But you are lucky. I brought a supply with me when I came over in the summer, since I knew that you English were such barbarians. Stay there, and I will make some."
Quite frankly she didn't need to tell me to stay there, since I wasn't going anywhere soon. I had the whole weekend and my imagination was already working overtime thinking about all the rather naughty things that we might possibly get up to, if I was lucky that is. My cock was well ahead of me, and was raising quite a tent in the thin cotton sheet covering me — I had quickly realised that I was naked and that she must have undressed me before putting me to bed to sleep off my drunken stupor.
While she was gone I had a closer look at the posters on the walls. Many were the kind everyone is familiar with ... copies of Impressionist paintings and pictures of Paris ... but there were a few racier ones of female night club singers in tiny black dresses and burlesque artists in very little more than a sequinned g-string. I had fucked one or two girls back home but they were all rather prim and proper, preferring to undress in the dark, but if her taste was anything to go by, this girl was something else altogether. I wasn't wrong.
