Tell others about this story! Over 300 choices.It's never been quite like this before I tell myself as I assess all my options. There are three willing “takers” or so my smart phone tells me, here, ready and waiting in South West Sixteen.
I take a cursory look at Ashanti89, admiring her sweet curves and lustrous skin. She looks a little overweight but definitely worth the effort. I send her a meet-up request, then move on to check out KaraKisses and SexySW, deciding swiftly not to do the same for either. Kara's profile picture shows a rather wild looking woman with brakish hair and a rictus grin. SexySW's pic is somewhat more verbose, a neatly trimmed and moist vagina appearing somewhere where her face should be. I shudder, move on. A STD would be the least of my worries if I ploughed that particular furrow so I set the application to alert me the moment my designated lay for the night responds. In all fairness, there are no guarantees Ashanti89 is in any better shape but her profile is more to my tastes. And that, you see, is half the battle.
Perhaps in prehistoric times homo-sapian was more promiscuous, probably...maybe. But our common ancestor never had anything like the choice, the variety, the sheer convenience that a man in this city now enjoys.
Because it's London son, but not as you know it. Every kind of sexual preference, every shape, every shade, every orientation and gender is on offer, every sexual practice blurred, distorted, rebooted and debased to the point where anything is possible.
Sex-for-free is a game of high risk but great reward. If you're lucky you'll hit gold and get a fuck buddy, one that lets you live out your fantasies with no strings attached. All you have to do is look clean, smell good and pick up the tab for a bottle of wine every Friday night. She may not be the prettiest girl in the world but she's somewhere safe to park your dick for the evening. And you don't have to bother with the pretence of a relationship. Just the wine.
Of course, if it's a tailor-made experience you're after, with the type of women that decorates your dreams, well, you can have that too. The only difference is you need a couple of hundred in your bank account first. You select your fantasy by ticking a series of check boxes and then forty minutes later she's ready and waiting for you at your front door.
This kind of debauchery was beyond me three years ago. But ever since my break-up and realising that that I could and ever since I got this phone and everything became so damn easy, I've found myself becoming the kind of man all husbands say they hate but secretly admire. A player. Although not really a true player, not in the strictest sense – after all, the phone does it for me. No, I'm a geek player, addicted to girls I select from the safety of my computer screen, be it the one in my pocket or the larger one sitting on my desk.
Because that's the truth of it, as uncomfortable as it is. One of the many faults that combine to make a man, a facet that makes me no different from the legion of cheats and love-rats that have walked these ancient streets before me. But it's causing my conscience a great deal of stress. Because back in the real world, the stakes are raising and I can feel the dice about to land.
I can't deny that I didn't miss my ex when we parted. I felt distraught without Bessie, like I was missing an arm or something, my back row of teeth. Every single girl I got with after that was fun, but only a superficial level. All the while, deep down, I found myself yearning to have Bessie back, longing for that sense of love that had become some kind of comfort blanket.
And so when Bessie and I got back together, I foolishly thought that everything would stop and I would go back to being the same man I'd always been. Reliable. Repressed.
Needless to say severing the contacts in my phone proved harder than I thought. After all, these women were just there, willing and waiting, no strings attached. And there lay the dichotomy, the one that perhaps afflicts every male soul I now realise, though to varying degrees. Being with Bessie feels like coming home. But I can't stop wanting to play outside.
Bessie doesn't suspect a thing, although perhaps that's not strictly true. For as well as being sweet, she's smart, bound to eventually wonder why I keep breaking into tears whenever I look her in the eye, why my phone is now password protected. I still love her, that's the most gut-wrenching thing about it. But something inside me has changed and I've muddied the waters. What was once simple and pure, a crystal lake, is now cloudy and polluted. Full of murk.
I think she thinks I'm mad. I am, but not in the way that she thinks.
It's like I'm a recovering from some kind of heroin addict, only with a limitless supply of the stuff buried underneath my mattress. I fight with the urges every minute of the day, the adverts of women in suggestive poses on the billboards, the videos on the internet, the nasty girls that gyrate their hips in front of you on the tube, the pavement, by the photo-copier at work. The moment I see it, my mind awash with filth as I imagine the myriad ways I could make use of them back in my bed. Some of the positions I imagine. The contortions.
I fear I've surrendered ground I can no longer recover.
It's killing my love for Bessie, deflowering the one and only thing I have ever come to cherish. I don't think I could live with myself if Bessie ever found out, if I ever left her even. Something has to change before I do to her what my old man did to my Mum.
But first there is the issue of Ashanti89x to attend to.
One last hurrah and all that.
*
“Babes?” she cries over her shoulder as I close the door behind me.
“Hey,” I exclaim, wincing as I put down my briefcase.
Her eyes brighten as I enter. She runs from where's she stood in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and jumps up into my arms.
I kiss her neck, then move up, pausing every few centimetres as she giggles and laughs. I get to her lips. She smiles and I grin back. I feel nothing inside me, just a pure sense of relief.
For there is no stirring in my groin now, no sexual urge. It's like that whole part of me is no longer alive. All that is left is an innate sense of peace, pleasure at my girlfriend's smile.
It was like this the whole way home, all day at work. I walk past women and the thoughts that run through my mind are almost child-like in their innocence.
The Doctors in the Ice House have done a good job, it seems. It was worth a large chunk of my life's savings to stay for the full course of treatment, three days within those high iron walls. Bessie thinks I've been away on a trip with work and in many ways I suppose you could say I have been. It could certainly be argued that I've been taking care of business.
Bessie makes a space for herself on the sofa and beckons for me to join her. She wants to play but I kindly refuse. “Later,” I promise her.
We flick through the television channels, the music videos and projections of damp women shaking their groins in time with the beats. I think of a time when this sight would have caused me nothing but anguish inside the brain inside my pants, the brain that seems to rule them all.
The only thing that hits me about the song is a fondness for its use of electric guitar, a refreshing change these days. I breathe another enormous sigh of relief.
I look up at Bessie. Something seems to be troubling her. Probably the fact that I spurned her advances. I smile. In time I'll activate the nannites embedded in my erectile tissue that can harden my penis on the occasions that I need to but for now I'm going to let lie. The beast is well and truly locked in its cage, the genie firmly popped back inside it's bottle.
It's better this way, simpler. She'd better learn to understand. Sure, she may get bored of me now, this new and dry existence. But better for my conscience that she finally end all this, not the other way around.
Bio
Oliver is 31 years old and lives in London, England. Working in Environmental Enforcement for Local Government, you can usually find him forcing entry into squalid homes or inspecting dodgy takeaway outlets. In his spare time Oliver likes to write science fiction, horror, speculative fiction and maintain his blog: www.oliverleawilson.co.uk. This is his first published work and he is currently working on two novels, amongst many other projects.
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