I must admit that it was a strange situation in which I found myself.
I was just 19, going on 20. I had pretty much cruised through school, doing what I had to do but not much more. And then, somewhat to my surprise, as my 20th birthday approached, I suddenly found myself becoming uncharacteristically ambitious. I suddenly found myself wanting to get on; wanting to make a name for myself.
Edward, my boss at Hawthorne’s, had more than a few things on his plate. His wife was unwell; his kids were a handful; and (unbeknown to me), Edward was planning to start his own business dispensing project management advice to whoever would pay for it. As a consequence, he gave me far more rope than any 19-year-old had a right to expect. And I was happy to use every last inch of it.
And then, on a bright and sunny Tuesday lunchtime, Edward stepped out in front of a Number 33 bus.
Edward’s explanation was that the bus ‘must have just come out of nowhere’. But a witness at the bus driver’s disciplinary review said that, while the bus appeared to be speeding, Edward had not even looked up from whatever it was that he was studying before he stepped out into the road.
Edward spent almost three weeks in hospital and then several more weeks recovering at home. In the normal course of events, Barry would probably have been expected to take over running the department. Barry had been at Hawthorne’s for the best part of 20 years. And he was known throughout the industry as a first rate project manager. But, for some reason, Gordon Shepley, Hawthorne’s general manager, asked me if I would act as temporary manager.
‘What about Barry?’
‘I’ve spoken with Barry,’ Gordon said. ‘He’s up to his oxters on Project Turnbull and he’s more than happy for you to take the reins. It should only be for a few weeks. Besides which … I get the feeling that you enjoy a challenge. This might be the opportunity that someone of your age needs.’
It was the day following Gordon’s memo telling everyone that I had been appointed temporary manager that Louise, the department secretary, arrived at my desk looking unusually stressed.
‘Problem?’ I said.
‘There’s a woman in reception. She says that she has an appointment with Edward. I can’t find anything in his diary. But she seems sure that she has the right Edward and the right day.’
‘Is the small meeting room free?’ I asked.
Louise nodded.
‘Pop her in there with a cup of coffee. I’ll see if I can help her,’ I said, slightly surprised by how decisive I had suddenly become.
The woman was Geraldine Marbeck. Her CV said that she had studied fine art at Central St Martin’s and then engineering at UMIST. She had then worked at Millar & Storm in product development. And after that, she had set up her own one-woman product design practice. Pretty impressive really. Well, I thought so anyway.
‘OK, you might have to help me here,’ I said, putting on what I hoped was a suitably managerial demeanour. ‘What were you and Edward scheduled to discuss?’
Geraldine’s story was that Edward had suggested that we might have a design project or two that we might want to put out to a free-lancer. (A lot of ‘mights’.) I had no idea which projects they might have been, but there was something about Geraldine that screamed ‘safe pair of hands’, so I could see why Edward might have been talking to her.
‘Look, I have no idea which projects Edward was thinking about,’ I said. ‘But I’m going to go and see him tomorrow. I have your contact details. I’ll see what Edward has to say, and I’ll get back to you. If that’s OK with you.’
When I raised the matter with Edward, he claimed to have no recollection of the woman.
‘Shortish coppery-coloured hair. Ayrancılar Escort Maybe with a fleck of grey.’
Edward shook his head.
‘Slight West Country accent,’ I said, trying to be helpful. ‘Dorset? Devon?’
But Edward just shook his head again.
‘She seems very credible,’ I said. ‘She has a good portfolio.’ It wasn’t until much later that I realised that Edward had been considering Geraldine for his new business – the business that, at the time, I knew nothing about.
‘Look, Edward is pretty vague,’ I said when I phoned Geraldine the next day. ‘But then he did take rather a serious tap on his head. That said … we do have a project that might benefit from a fresh set of eyes. It doesn’t have an unlimited budget, but if you’d like to take a look at it …’
Geraldine – Gerri, as I discovered – gave us three days of her time and a pretty good solution.
‘You’ve pretty much redesigned the product,’ I said. ‘But it makes sense. I’ve talked to the production engineering guys. They’re really impressed. Thank you.’
‘Are you an engineer?’ she said.
‘Umm … no. Just a project manager.’
‘And are you old enough to drink?’
‘Depends,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘Come over to my studio. After work. I have gin. Although I also have orange juice. Up to you.’
I thought about it. But only for a moment. Gerri seemed like someone it would be useful to get to know. Also … I liked her. There was something about her. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thank you. I’ll be there between five-thirty and six.’
As I’ve already said: I was 19. Almost 20. Gerri had to be in her late 30s. Maybe even in her early 40s. Her studio was in the loft space of a building on one of those North-South streets to the west of Charlotte Street. Cleveland, perhaps?
‘This is cool,’ I said. ‘Like something from a design magazine.’
‘Well … good light,’ Gerri said. ‘And it’s convenient. You know … transport, etcetera. Now … I’m going to have a gin and tonic. What can I get for you?’
‘I don’t think that I’ve ever had a gin and tonic,’ I said. (I wasn’t much of a drinker when I was 19.) ‘Maybe it’s time that I tried one.’
Gerri slid back a panel to reveal a compact kitchen. ‘I like mine with ice and a slice of lime,’ she said as she produced a couple of glasses, a large bottle of Tanqueray, and a small bottle of Schweppes tonic water.
‘Yeah. Whatever,’ I said. ‘You’re the expert.’
She poured us a couple of gin and tonics, and directed me to one of the black leather Barcelona chairs.
‘Nice chairs,’ I said. ‘Mies van der Rohe?’
‘In the style of, I think,’ Gerri said. ‘I suspect that I would have had to pay rather more for the real thing. Nevertheless, good design is good design. Well … cheers.’
‘Yes. Cheers.’ I took a sip. The gin and tonic wasn’t quite what I was expecting. But it was pretty nice. Quite a clean flavour. And crisp. With hints of juniper berries and lemon peel. And fragrant lime. And liquorice. And then at the end, there was almost a hit of freshly-ground pepper. ‘I like it,’ I said. ‘Yes. Yes, I like it.’
Gerri nodded. ‘Good.’ And then she began what was to be a bit of an inquisition. How old was I? How long had I been at Hawthorne’s? Why was I running the department when there were several older – and presumably more experienced – people in the team? Why was I working in project management anyway? Why wasn’t I pursuing a career in engineering? Or design? Why wasn’t I at university? Where did I see myself in ten years’ time?
In between sips of the gin and tonic, I tried to explain that my present situation was really the result of a series of accidents. Without really trying, I had done quite well Ayrancılar Escort Bayan at school. Particularly in maths and physics. But I’d had enough of classes. For the moment anyway. So I had decided to take a year out, and then maybe look at doing a Bachelor’s degree in some kind of engineering.
My uncle had got me a temp clerical job with a construction company. But I’d somehow got involved with project management. And then one of the guys at the construction company had gone to work at Hawthorne’s. And when Hawthorne’s needed a junior project manager, he had suggested me. And then there had been Edward’s accident. And where would I be in ten years’ time? Gosh … who knew?
‘Are you a virgin?’ Gerri asked.
‘A virgin?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Sexually,’ she said.
Gosh. This woman really knew how to ask the big questions. ‘Well … not really,’ I said. ‘At least … you know … not completely. I did have a girlfriend. For a while. Well … for almost a year, actually. She recently moved to Scotland. For university. She’s at St Andrews.’
Gerri nodded and looked at my almost empty drink glass. ‘I think that we’d better have the other half,’ she said. ‘Can’t fly on one wing.’
By the time that I had answered another raft of Gerri’s questions – and drunk about half of ‘the other half’ – my tongue was beginning to tingle and my head was feeling as though it wanted to gently float away like a hot air balloon on a perfect summer’s day.
‘Are you all right there?’ Gerri asked.
‘I think so. I guess it must be the gin. First time. You know.’
Gerri smiled. ‘Oh, well … just give me a few minutes to finish mine and then you can fuck me.’
‘OK,’ I said. And then I realised what I thought that she had said. Of course, she couldn’t possibly have said what I thought she had said. I thought that she had said: ‘And then you can fuck me.’ But I was beginning to realise that gin was a drink for sipping not gulping. Drink it too quickly, and you begin to ‘hear’ things.
For a while, we both just sat there. Quietly. Happily. The low-angle light coming in the skylight was casting fascinating shapes on the pitched ceiling and on the east wall, and it felt a little as though we were in some sort of sci-fi movie. And then Gerri said: ‘OK. Come on.’ And she led me through another cleverly-concealed door and into a seriously-stylish bed sitting room. Maybe she really had said ‘and then you can fuck me’ after all.
Eric, the bloke who had taken me under his wing when I first joined the project management team at the construction company, had said to me on Day One: ‘Big things’ (and he had held his large hands about a metre apart) ‘and small things’ (and he had held his thumb and forefinger so that there was a gap of barely five millimetres between them). ‘If you are going to make a useful project manager, you need to pay attention to both.’ I guess that I had Eric to thank for the fact that it took me less than about 20 seconds to size up Gerri as she undressed.
In a funny sort of way, Gerri was all of the things that Susan, the girlfriend who had moved to Scotland, wasn’t. Susan had the bean-pole build of a catwalk model: no breasts to speak of, virtually no waist, and no hips. Gerri had quite curvaceous breasts and hips, and a defined waist in between. Naked – or more or less naked anyway – Susan looked as if she would be blown over by the first gust of breeze. Gerri looked as though she would just bend a little. And then spring back for more. And whereas Susan was shaven or waxed or whatever – goodness knows why – Gerri had an attractively-trimmed, coppery-coloured ‘lady garden’.
‘Come on,’ Gerri said. ‘Or do you need Ayrancılar Escort Bayan me to undress you?’
Did I? Yes. That might be fun. In fact, the more that I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. ‘Yes. Why not?’ I said. (Of course, it could have been the gin talking rather than me. Who could be sure? I certainly couldn’t.)
Gerri laughed. ‘Well, at least help me by taking your shoes off,’ she said.
I remember, as she got down to removing my trousers, suddenly wondering how the gin would affect my, umm, performance. Would the Old Fella do his duty? Or was he just going to hang his head with a dopey grin? Happily, it turned out that he was up for the occasion. And I do mean up.
‘Very nice,’ Gerri said. ‘But first … what are you like at eating pussy.’ And she lay back on the bed and spread her thighs.
Susan had not been into oral sex. In fact, if I’m honest, she hadn’t really been into sex at all. She had been happy enough to give me a hand job from time to time. And she had occasionally let me finger her. But that was about it. And so there I was, with my head between Gerri’s thighs, with a serious wallop of gin on board, about to discover the art of pussy eating by trial and error.
‘Mmm,’ Gerri said, as my tongue set off on a journey of exploration. ‘Mmm.’ And then: ‘Yes! There! Right there! Oh, yes. Oh, fuck, yes. Just keep doing that. Right there. Oh, yes.’
‘Right there’ seemed to be centred on a hard, slippery bump that I assumed was the famous clit that I had heard about (but never really seen). Below Gerri’s clit (if, indeed, it was her clit), the fleshy folds of skin seemed to be getting slipperier and slipperier – and I don’t think that that it was just because of my saliva. And when my tongue traced the deepening slippery valley between the folds, I came upon the hot, wet entrance to her vagina, and my cock twitched at the thought of disappearing into it like a rabbit into a rabbit hole.
I’m not sure how long I kept licking and sucking and nibbling. It must have been quite a while. And then, just as I felt that my tongue was about to get cramp, Gerri (whose breathing had turned into a sort of rhythmic gasping) grabbed my head in both of her hands and tried to force the whole thing inside her. At least, that’s what it felt like.
‘Oh, fuck, yes!’ she said. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
Fortunately, Gerri let my head go just in time. Any longer and I think that there was a possibility that I would have suffocated. Or drowned. (There was a good deal of surface flooding in Gerri’s nether regions.)
‘Well … that worked,’ she said. ‘Now … how is that cock of yours?’
‘OK. I think,’ I said. ‘Or at least I think that it will be.’
Gerri half sat up and peered at my half-hard cock. ‘Oh, yes. Very nice,’ she said. ‘Right … let’s get you dressed for the party.’ And, from somewhere, she produced a condom and, after giving my cock a few encouraging pumps, she ‘dressed me for the party’.
I suppose that it was my first real fuck; the first time that I had really had my cock inside a real vagina. I knew that it would feel good. But it felt even better than I could have ever imagined that it would. Unfortunately, the more that I thought about how good it felt, the more I thought about how good Gerri felt, the more I felt that it was going to be a relatively short-lived experience. Oh, well.
As things transpired, I lasted rather longer than I had expected to last.
‘OK?’ Gerri said after I had filled the condom with what felt like a litre or so of hot cum.
‘Umm … yes,’ I said. ‘That gin and tonic is good stuff, isn’t it?’
Gerri smiled. ‘But now I think that we may need some food. Let’s get you cleaned up. I have a feeling that we might need your talents again before the night is out. And, in the meantime, the pizza place downstairs is not too bad. Nice thin crusts. Tasty toppings. My treat. I take it that you eat pizza?’
‘Oh yeah. Pizza … pussy … they’re all good,’ the gin and I said.
Gerri just smiled. Knowingly, I thought.