Hello. My name is Poppy. I'm not an alcoholic although I do like a drink, but it seems that I'm some kind of sexaholic, if there is such a word. Since I turned 60 a few years ago, I just can't seem to stop thinking about cock. I think the turning point came just after that big flood, which just about washed out everything I owned and swept away all my furniture and nearly all my memories.
I had to move in with my daughter and son-in-law and their three kids and either piece together my life or start afresh. Here's how it began...
"Oh Mum." Jane wailed "What are you going to do? Everything gone. All of it. Gone."
I patted my daughter's head as she cried on my shoulder, her tears wetting the new shirt I'd just bought. I sighed. I don't know if it was shock or what but I wasn't feeling anything at the time as we stood in the middle of the wreckage of what had been my home these last fifteen years.
"It doesn't matter love." I said "It's just things. No one's hurt. It's just objects. Things."
"But Mum" she said "It's everything. All your clothes, your lovely furniture, the telly, your books." She lifted her head to stare down at the bare floor. "Your beautiful carpet. You only bought that last year. Muuuuum."
"It's alright love. It doesn't matter." I said pulling her onto my shoulder again so she could cry into her Mum's chest, taking me back twenty years and more to missed dates, dropped boy friends, wedding nerves and birth fears. The only thing missing was the snot which used to accompany any tears, those years ago.
A voice from the open doorway made me look up.
"Come on Mum. Are we ready Gran?"
It was my grandson, raring to go. He'd just passed his test and his Dad said he'd best drive because his Mum would probably wrap the car round a tree, the state she was in.
"Just give us two minutes Hills." I said, noticing for the first time that my grandson seemed to have shot up in the last six months. From being a gangly teen with dyed black hair and those ridiculous gargantuan boots he wore, into a lithe young gentleman, dapper even and incredibly, a noticeable preference for which side he dressed.
Then I realised what I was thinking and walked towards the now empty doorway bringing Jane with me tucked under my arm and still blubbing, and trying to shake those thoughts out of my head.
And so I moved in with Jane and her husband; Mike. Oh, and the three kids. Well, I say kids. There was the middle son Hillary, who wouldn't answer to anything but Hills, who I've already mentioned then there was Benjy who was the eldest at 23 and then the youngest was Claire, 19 and so much like her mother.
Claire was at University so they'd given me her room. On either side were Hills and Benjy and down the hall were Jane and Mike. The bathroom was at the opposite end of the hall.
Ever since I'd had the kids (Jane and Alan) I can't abide sleeping with a closed door.
Now I'm not a prude but it's quite frustrating when young men pass by my bedroom door in the late evening without a care in the world or a stitch of clothing. Or those times in the early hours when a rhythmic thumping can be heard from either of the boys' bedrooms and the occasional squeal of some young lady.
It's not that I've never seen or heard anything like it before but after 5 years there's just so much of it. Not that there was a great deal of it for several years before, so make that about 11 years, and definitely not the variety.
So after about four or five months I was really feeling quite starved. I found myself leaving my bedroom door open a little bit more than enough to hear the kids crying, like in the old days. Enough ajar so that I could watch for naked men or boys making their way across the landing. I found myself staying awake long after I'd gone to bed if I knew that either of the grandkids were out 'on the pull' as they say, and feeling vaguely disappointed if they came home without a girl in tow. My new sex life, after all these years had become voyeuristic and vicarious.
The first time I can remember actually listening was when I was woken from a wonderful dream where I had been making love. I can't remember who to, it's not like I hadn't had a few boyfriends before I married. But in the dream I had been making love and the main thing that I could remember was the grunting noise my lover was making as he thrust himself into me and of course I was thrusting back. I must have been still wearing a jumper or something because I could feel the cotton or wool texture rubbing against my hard nipples.
When I finally woke from the dream I was still vaguely thrusting my hips and then found that the sheets were wrapped about my legs had become tight and strained between my thighs, pressing against the lips between my thighs. I began shuffling and kicking at the loose sheet and found that the action was causing the top of the sheet to rub across my breasts and nipples.
The grunting from my dream though, was still going on. It was coming from Hills' room adjoined to mine and was getting quicker. I stopped struggling with the binding sheet and listened. After a few seconds though I realised that I had started to writhe, to feel the sheet between my legs rubbing against my lower lips and sliding across my breasts.
The muffled sound from next door became quicker and then I heard a girl's voice whispering urgently.
"Don't come in me, Don't come in me."
Then the noises stopped, or at least got low enough so that I couldn't hear. I made a mental note to have a chat with Hills about contraception. I thought better and decided to talk to his mother instead, to see if she or his dad had talked to them about it. I thought better still and decided that it would be far too embarrassing to talk to anyone about this because then they would know that I knew.
I heard the bedroom door open and through the gap in the door saw a shadow flit past. I pulled at the sheet of the bed and accidentally brought a fold in direct contact with my clit which made me gasp and also brought the padding feet to a halt.
I jumped out of bed in the darkness and went to close the bedroom door further. But I didn't close it and stood there with my eye to the small gap. The bathroom door opened, flooding the landing with light and I closed the door further but still kept looking. A few seconds later the bathroom door opened again and there was Hills, outlined in the doorway and as he switched off the light the one thing that stayed burned to my sight was of his erection.
A strange mixture of shame and elation threw me back under the covers of my bed where I pulled the pillows around my head to block out any more sounds of anything.
Then I found that the sex life of my grandsons was a weekly occurrence. Mostly Friday or Saturday nights, one or the other, very occasionally both, would bring home a girl and wake me from sleep. The problem was that it was very annoying. It gave me sex dreams and I would wake up the next day feeling frustrated and alone. That's when my own 'sex' life took a different turn.
My libido had all but disappeared with the menopause and it was only very occasionally that I felt the need to masturbate. I didn't find anything dirty or immoral about it just that I rarely felt the need. Then one night, trying not to listen to the lovemaking in the next room, I'd adopted my effective position; face down with the pillow held across my head.
The position wasn't all that comfortable but I usually found myself curled around the pillow in the morning, which has always been my favourite with no memory of how I got there. So I began to settle myself in as soon as I heard the bed creaking next door.
After laying there in quiet comfort for some minutes I began to feel something actually digging in to me between my breasts. I reached under and recognised with my fingers the top of the pen that I had been using to fill in the cross word earlier. I dragged it sideways and pulled the sharp edge across my nipple. I snorted with the shock then drew a ragged breath.
I dropped the pen top and raised myself onto my elbows to get comfy again, without the muffling of the pillow I could hear the shenanigans next door. I heard the phrase "Oh fuck" quickly followed by a hissing shush. It's not that I'd never heard the word before, but not often from a girl. It was probably the piping voice that shook me, causing me to stop still and accidentally causing my hanging breasts to swing from side to side across the ruffled sheet beneath. A cross between a hum and a moan escaped my lips a tingling sensation enveloped them.
It must have been a combination of the half dream I was having, the pen top, the tension in my arms, the voice, the word and finally the unexpected stimulation of ruched cotton that led me to wait, straining for the sounds I knew would be there.
I pulled the pillow aside and lowered myself to the bed. Belly and breasts flattening into the mattress I began to gently writhe in the bed's uncaring embrace. The indistinct voices from the next room, punctuated with the rhythmic sound of their action penetrating the dividing wall served to increase my own insistence from the divan. My movement shifted my body across the confines and now I wriggled madly as the seam slid itself along my right breast. I dropped my hand to the floor, and with my knee hanging across nothing I began levering myself slantwise, pressing hard and releasing my hot nipple to the rougher edge.
A growl from next door "Come here" followed by an "umph" brought a shallow moaning from my own lips and my thigh slid over the mattress till my knee was on the carpet and the sprung edge had insinuated itself between my thighs, coruscating thrill through my tense flesh and causing dimpled waves to undulate from my backside and wash down my thick thighs.
With growing frustration I arched my back and pushed my hand beneath my belly then pulled at the loose flesh there so that I could press my puss further in and harder against the edge. Lost in the sweat and effort, oblivious to the climactic noise from the next room I frotted and fucked my uncaring lover.
* Some things I hate:
Mirrors. A friend of mine whose daughter is a psychiatrist told me I have a poor body image, which is why I don't have, or rather didn't have, any mirrors at home. With these crow's feet, this belly, that sagging backside and these rib warmers called breasts I tend to think that I have too good a body image. My husband said it was much simpler than that, he said I had a vampire complex. So I bit him. My son Alan's kids still call me vampire nanna.
* The next day, at breakfast, we were treated to the sight of Hills' latest. A sweet little thing who, even though she was wearing her 'clubbing' clothes of the previous evening, was something of a surprise. For one thing she was still here at 10 o'clock instead of disappeared into the misty hours of five, six or seven, discretion being the better part of one-night-stand valour. She was quite chatty and keen, but also polite enough to recognise that other people's homes have certain customs or routines which visitors should adapt to rather than take over.
I warmed to her as we spoke through tea and eggs and bacon. And toast. And cornflakes. And a hard boiled egg.
