AVOCADO
by Jo Holy
I was twenty-five when I met Megan, and I knew right away my life would never be the same.
I was at a friend's barbecue, chilling out with a beer in one hand and a hamburger in the other, talking to a couple of guys I'd not seen since university. Only a few years ago, but it could have been yesterday. Nothing changed.
My eyes scanned the garden, looking for something to catch my attention, something to drag my mind away from the predictable conversation about to unfold...
...And there she was. Blond hair backlit by the burning sun so that she seemed somehow to be on fire, her pale face smooth and radiant. Her nose was a cute little button in the centre of it.
One moment her eyes were narrowed, dark, focused - and then the next, wide and bright as she burst into a fit of laughter. Her mouth was small and soft, and dimples appeared high in her cheeks as she giggled.
She was beautiful.
She was wearing a summer dress, nothing flashy or showy. I knew I was mesmerised, but I wasn't actively thinking about what I was doing. If I had stopped to consider my actions, this would no doubt be a very different story - just me telling you about the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life, and how I had spent every day since then regretting not speaking to her.
But instead of thinking, I muttered something to the guys around me and then walked over to her. It felt more like I was gliding.
She saw me coming and smiled.
My heart jumped in my chest. She was stunning from twenty feet away, but up close she was breathtaking. She was about five-five. Her eyes were green and glittered in the sunlight. There were light freckles dotted across her nose and forehead, barely there. Her luxurious blond hair was tinted slightly red from close up.
'Hello,' I said. 'I'm Tom.'
'Hi Tom,' she replied, nodding her head slightly. 'I'm Megan. It's nice to meet you.' She looked around at her friend beside her: tall, slender, dark-skinned - probably Indian I thought. She had a pretty face and big, dark eyes. She was definitely someone I would have ordinarily noticed, except now all my attention was taken up. 'This is Nisha.'
I greeted her, but then turned back to Megan. We seemed to just sink into conversation, like slipping into a hot, welcoming bath. Shortly after, Nisha disappeared, realising she wasn't a part of whatever was happening.
It turned out Megan was even more incredible to talk to than she was to look at. She was smart and funny and she was able to hold a conversation on any topic. By the time the evening came to a close, I was pretty sure I was in love.
We exchanged phone numbers and I floated home that night, walking on air.
#
We exchanged a few texts and then agreed to meet in a bar a few days later. I had thought she was stunning that first day. On our first official date, I was completely blown away. As she walked into the bar, my eyes practically bust out of their sockets - a reaction I saw echoed by a number of other guys who saw her walk in.
I beamed as she approached me, knowing the other guys would be looking on jealously, wishing they knew the secret to being able to attract a woman like her. She was wearing a tight jumper, jeans - again, nothing flashy. She didn't need to have her boobs bursting out of her top to attract attention. Her hair was down in its usual style, but the afternoon at the barbecue had darkened her complexion a little, just a slight tan. Her freckles had darkened, and hundreds more of them seemed to have appeared across her forehead and the bridge of her nose.
We drank, we talked, we laughed. After a few drinks, we went on to another bar, and then another one after that. It was no doubt the most fun I'd ever had on a date. She even came back to my place at the end of the night. We were hammered: there was a clumsy kiss and a fumble, and I think I may have even managed to remove her jumper, before we collapsed into a drunken heap in the bedroom.
She left in a hurry the next morning - we hadn't planned a big night. She had to go home, get changed, go to work.
But we arranged a second date a few days later. This time we stayed sober, only having enough to drink to quell any nerves. This time the kiss wasn't drunken; the fumbling became purposeful groping, probing... I'm sure you get the idea.
We dated for the next six months - the best six months of my life. The sex was intense, incredible, like nothing I'd ever known. I couldn't get enough of her, and it seemed she couldn't get enough of me either. I've never been sexually inhibited, but I've also never been particularly experimental either; Megan was the complete opposite. She was wild, adventurous. She could do things to me that would keep me smiling for days. In the first few months, we must have worked our way through every position in the Kama Sutra.
I figured she was experienced - you didn't get that good at something without practice - but it wasn't until about four months in that we actually spoke about it. Every serious relationship has that discussion - the full and frank confession about sexual history. I remember that evening well - we'd been to the cinema, watched some grim horror film. It had been a stereotypical cheap slasher.
Afterwards, we went back to her place and got cosy on her sofa. I made some comment about how Megan could have been in the film.
'You mean I'd make a good victim?' Then she laughed. 'I'd be terrible in a horror film. You know how it's always the virgin who survives - the virtuous. They'd have to kill me off before the opening credits.'
I raised an eyebrow. 'Oh yeah? Do you have a secret past that I don't know about?'
'No secrets - just we haven't talked about everything.'
And so we talked about the naughty -
non-virtuous
- parts of our pasts. Or, to be more accurate, I told her the few naughtiest experiences I'd been through, and then she took over for the rest of the evening.
Megan's philosophy on life generally - and this included her sex life - was that she wanted to try everything. She was adventurous and daring, and she didn't want to grow old and die regretting all the things she hadn't done in her life. If she found something she liked, she wanted to do it; if something sounded fun, she tried it; if someone suggested something and she wasn't sure, she'd probably give it a go.
Some of the things she told me about were way beyond what I'd expected: sex in outrageous places, dressing up, living out fantasy scenarios. She had no real boundaries either - she told me about being bent over a car bonnet and having rampant anal sex with one previous -- and very lucky - boyfriend. I was mesmerised listening to her.
I couldn't understand how any of her other boyfriends had let her go. She smiled when I said it. 'Maybe I was too much for them,' she suggested.
I asked her what she meant by this and she said: 'I like to be appreciated.'
This still didn't make any sense, but she shrugged off any further questions and then leaned forward and hushed me with a kiss.
I let it go.
Most of my exes had been coy about their previous experiences, worrying about what I thought of them, thinking that if they revealed their sexual history it might affect the way I thought of them or interfere with how our relationship proceeded.
Megan scoffed at this idea. 'I know plenty of women like that, but I like to be completely truthful. That's upset a few of my boyfriends in the past.'
She then told me some of the startling reactions she'd encountered. One boyfriend had been angry when she'd told him the car-bonnet-anal-sex story - she hadn't let him try anal with her. 'He was just too big! And he was so rough - I couldn't imagine what damage he might do if I let him put it there!' But he had begun to talk about it more and more after the car bonnet story, insisting they give it a go. Then at one point, he told her that she obviously didn't like him enough, or think their relationship was special enough, to let him do it.
She ended things with him immediately - she wasn't going to get hooked onto someone who was going to resort to petty emotional blackmail.
Another boyfriend had ranted and raved - and even started to become aggressive - when she told him she had once had a threesome with two guys. He had called her a slut, a whore, a slag, all the bad worst words he could think of. She had finished with him and walked away before he had even got through that first breath.
'You don't give them much chance to get used to the idea,' I quipped.
She narrowed her eyes at me. 'No.' She considered and then continued: 'Maybe I am a slut. Maybe I'm all the things he called me. But that's my choice, I don't have to answer to him, or anyone else for that matter. He didn't like it - relationship over. I'm certainly not giving him time to "get used to the idea." Either he likes me the way I am, or he doesn't.'
When she'd been younger, she hadn't been as sure of herself. She'd been hurt a few times. The worst had been when she'd fallen for a guy during her final year of university. She had felt like she was really falling for him. Intellectually, they were on the same level (I had learnt over the last few months that this must have been quite a rare thing for her). They had similar views on the world. He was kind and thoughtful and funny, exactly the type of person she imagined settling with. Then they had "the chat." She told him about the things she had done. This was before the car bonnet story - "and I can't imagine what
that
would have done to him!" she said - but she had still had some incredible experiences with some of the guys from the uni - what else was freshers' week for, she joked - and a few on/off not-serious flings with some other guys.
He didn't call her names. His eyes darkened and he looked away from her. He looked so
disappointed,
as if she had let him down somehow. Or cheated on him.
She tried to make it right with him. Tried to kiss him. Even offered to lapdance to cheer him up. But he wasn't interested, pushed her away, said he had to think about things. She chased him up a few days later but still he wasn't going to change his mind. He told her he didn't think the two of them were morally compatible and there was no way it would work out.
'Wow,' I said.
'I know. He didn't mind me being
immoral
with him, but thought it was disgusting it had ever happened with anyone else. Hypocrite.'
'No, I mean wow - you offered him a lapdance and he refused...'
She laughed. 'Maybe, if you're a good boy, we'll see if I can figure something out for you...'
