Sex in the City--Dublin Read online

  As soon as his still humid and odorous cock passed through my lips, it began hardening again.

  I diligently sucked him clean, from head to ball sack. He withdrew quickly from my mouth, visibly in no hurry to come again.

  ‘Good,’ he said. Offered me a cigarette.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘You’re missing out, girl …’

  I straightened up and rose to my feet and unrolled the creased skirt down my legs again. There were stains all over.

  ‘Don’t go, yet,’ he said, menacingly. He smiled at me. ‘Game for more?’

  I was tired, but caution dictated I not leave yet. He threw the cigarette end over the bridge into the still night waters.

  ‘Come,’ he said, taking me firmly by the hand.

  Bypassing Henry Moore’s bust of Joyce we descended towards the bank of the small, shallow lake. The moon illuminated the whole landscape like a neo-realist film set.

  ‘Strip,’ the driver ordered me.

  ‘It’s cold,’ I protested feebly, although I had already bowed to the inevitable. I had long lost control of the situation.

  ‘Strip!’ he repeated loudly.

  The traffic in the distance felt miles away.

  Once I stood in front of him naked, he grabbed my few fragile pieces of clothing and stretched them across the grainy sand of the lake bank.

  ‘Lie down. On your stomach …Yes, that way … Now raise that sweet rump of yours, Penny dear.’ I followed his peremptory instructions to the letter.

  I heard him unzip himself behind me.

  A nailed finger delved into my sphincter.

  I heard him spit into his hands and he then massaged his saliva into my opening, testing the resistance of my anal muscles. Already breached several times at the Gresham today. No doubt visibly red, bruised and partially stretched. He licked his lips in appreciation.

  ‘I see you like it there, my young bitch.’

  And impaled me on his savage cock there and then on the banks of the lake in the Green, and the whole wide world ignored my pain and I screamed as he hurt me and tore me and gaped me to unholy proportions and used me and defiled me as only a man can do. He just never stopped and very soon I was only half conscious as my body responded to the systematic pounding with a strange disconnect, a form of detachment I often experienced in the throes of sexual pleasure (if pleasure it really was?). It was as if I was watching the whole scene from above, a supernatural voyeur witnessing the event as the stump of his cock dug deeper into me with every motion until my entrance was bleeding and servile and a receptacle for his rage, observing as he now pulled his belt out of his trousers’ waist buckles and tightened it around my throat so as to control the bucking of my body as he fucked my arse, just enough to ride me and not quite to choke me and all I could think of, watching this strange movie, was how my French lover once took me there for the very first time and how gentle he was, taking absolutely ages to open me with tongue then fingers then his wondrous cock, playing with every nerve in my body like a wonderful musical instrument and I became a symphony no a concerto no still an oratorio or better a requiem mass until the fire of his love was unleashed deep into my stomach and I then later licked him clean and our combined unholy menu tasted of sugar and spices and oh yes my French lover said he would one day take me to Gibraltar where the flowers were sublime and New Orleans where the crayfish live and you can watch the fireworks explode over the Mississippi and Jackson Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve and you can walk along Bourbon Street in shirtsleeves in the deep deep of winter. Oh, he did promise me all that and more and fuck I miss him fuck I want him fuck I need him …

  I opened my eyes and the driver had departed, leaving me there sprawled helpless across the ground. The evening was cooling fast. I shivered. Rose unsteadily, my joints aching and other parts of my body still raw, sinews still stretched beyond endurance, synapses on fire, bare flesh bruised. I quickly picked my clothing up and dusted the few items as best I could and dressed. I must have looked a sight!

  I left the Green. In a daze, both empty and full, a ghost of lust, dirty and tousled, on automatic pilot. Past the Civic Museum, up St George Street, beckoned by the silent call of the Liffey’s peaceful flow, heading north like a siren on a homing beacon.

  The right heel on my Primark pumps broke, and I abandoned both shoes and continued on bare feet.

  I reached the river and sat on a doorstep on Essex Quay, catching my breath, summoning my scattered thoughts, attempting to somehow make sense of it all.

  What was I doing here? I no longer knew why I had come to stay in Dublin. A useless thesis about turn of the century Gaelic literature was just a poor excuse. After all, my academic area of expertise was web-based citizen’s journalism. More like running away.

  Damn, my throat was parched and I could still taste the bittersweet aftertaste of the driver’s cock against the inner walls of my cheeks. I changed direction and made my way towards Temple Bar. I needed a drink. My stomach lurched as I stiffened my pace. Food too.

  Yes, Temple Bar was the place to be. My panacea, my escape. Anonymous amongst the crowds again. Yes. The front of my skirt was badly stained. I ironed out a few creases with the back of my hand and only managed to spread the dirt over a larger area. Noticed I was still clutching wet earth inside my clenched fist. Maybe it would all go unnoticed in the dark, I hoped.

  Sticking to the back streets in my small quest, I found myself facing Christ Church Cathedral where the locals went to hear the bells ring out at the turn of the year, a full-circle ringing peal he had taught me that, besides the magic of New Orleans, was yet another wonder. I had no intention of still being in the city by New Year’s Eve. I must move on.

  Some passers-by gave me strange glances. The gaze of men lingered, alternately disapproval and unbound lust.

  My bare feet glided over the cobblestones. I headed towards Gruel where I always relished the roast turkey with stuffing and cranberry crammed into hot home-baked rolls.

  With one hand, I checked the inside pocket of my torn skirt. My emergency fifty euros note was, surprisingly, still there. After I’d eaten, I barricaded myself in the loo and cleaned up as best I could. Combed the dirt from the lake’s slope out of my thick, bushy curls and rearranged my skirt around my waist so that the worst indelible stains scattered across its fabric no longer betrayed their origin through actual location. All a bit crooked, but late at night in the joyous frenzy of Temple Bar no one would notice.

  The night’s bacchanalia was in full throw already, tribes parading up and down the street, girls with skimpy skirts unveiling their lower fleshy orbs, boys in tight tee-shirts and frayed jeans, boisterous, boastful, drunk by half and determined.

  This is how my French lover had once described New Orleans’ Bourbon Street to me, where music criss-crossed the road from side to side as duelling bands performed for the Yankee dollar, the smell of Cajun spices and stale beer mingling in unholy matrimony, and the criers stand outside the bottomless clubs and the crowd drains down the pavement like a river stumbling, sipping hurricanes in tall misshapen plastic glasses.

  I closed my eyes and for a brief moment stood still before I was sucked up into yet another amorphous group of celebrating youngsters, a hand neglectfully grazing my rump, a leg entangling with mine, a woman with too much make-up and shockingly scarlet lips taking me by the shoulder, inviting me to join them in their nocturnal expedition. Aimless, caught up in this wave of loud humanity, I followed in their footsteps.

  ‘We’re on the pull, girl …’ someone shouted out at me.

  Peals of laughter ensued.

  In step with my newly acquired bosom buddies, I retraced my steps towards the Liffey, crossed the river where another group, as dishevelled and merry as we were, joined us by some form of osmosis, and we all continued up O’Connell Street. A strange sense of the familiar. Past the Gate Theatre and finally landing in Parnell Square, across from the Writer’s Museum.

  The group w
e formed part of fragmented. Couples fading into welcoming darkness. Others staying together. The woman with the scarlet lips was sitting next to me on the stone balustrade. Her hand touched my cheek with uncanny delicacy.

  ‘I like your legs,’ she said. ‘You have beautiful ankles.’

  She bent over, took hold of my instep and appeared to be weighing me on some imaginary scale. I stretched my leg forward and my skirt shifted upwards across my thighs. She looked straight ahead and noted with a secretive smile spreading across her features that I was not wearing any underwear.

  ‘Wow, girl. That’s brazen,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Lost them earlier,’ I said.

  Scarlet Lips chortled, set my foot down and approached me. Her breath warm across my cheeks.

  ‘Kiss me,’ she said.

  I bridged the narrow gap separating our lips and kissed her.

  She tasted of alcohol and cigarettes. One of her hands ventured across my breasts. Her body was warm. Oh well. I closed my eyes. Capitulated.

  Thinking how my French lover had tasted, sweet and savoury both, hard as nails and sensitive, his breath heaving upwards from his lungs like a mighty wind that would subdue me in its victorious wake and oh he was good and oh he was mine and his touch was like a veil of spices spreading across my flesh, awakening every square inch of my surrendering body, playing me like a piano, every touch electric, every caress a terrible torture as he summoned my buried lust back towards the surface of my life, a primeval force I had long forgotten I owned, a web of ardent if contradictory desires concealed under the civilised veneer of the uncultivated fields of my skin and oh my French lover led that orchestra of the night like a virtuoso, my moans like wind instruments, my sighs like violins, my heart like a drum and the electric touch of his soft lips against my cunt and the stubble of his two-day beard teasing my perineum as his fingers delved with the cunning of a wizard inside every one of my openings and all I could say was yes yes yes my love amore tesoromy darling my professor of love and yes again to my French lover who bought me a vibrant red rose to plant in my hair like a gypsy when he took me to that restaurant on Bleecker Street and I would scream yes yes and jesus jesus jesus when he fucked me well and the windows were open and all the cities where we made love could hear me shout like a banshee across the wild roofs of night and every sheet we stained with our juices would turn into a sacred relic …

  ‘You’re not really into girls, are you, dear?’ her voice interrupted my thoughts. Her red lips retreated from mine.

  ‘No, not really,’ I admitted. My indifference to her embrace had been self-evident.

  ‘Pity,’ she said, stood up and waved me goodbye.

  I blinked.

  Morning arrived.

  About the Story

  I’ve only been toDublin twice. On the first occasion, it was more of an instance of passing through from airport to train station in order to visit J.P. Donleavy for a curious afternoon of editing and smoked salmon sandwiches on his country estate before returning to the city late at night to find that my hotel had relinquished my room, and being forced to sleep in a miniscule room under the roof, overlooking the Liffey, before rushing to the airport again before the breakfast room had even opened. A fleeting visit indeed. The second occasion was longer and more enjoyable and coincided with New Year’s Eve, which gave us good insight into local drinking customs along O’Connell Street, and inevitably, Temple Bar. On the first evening, we were invited out to dinner by local crime writers and friends John Connolly and Declan Hughes. There I was expecting an introduction to Irish cuisine, but curiously, they chose a curry house, albeit a classy one. But there was still a catch-up during the following days and a visit to the city at length, including the obligatory visit to the Guinness Brewery, particularly Ulysses, and a few hours in the now sadly closed Writer’s Museum was a great reminder of how Irish writers have left such an unforgettable legacy.

  I’ve already written a crime/fantasy story set in Dublin for an anthology and, this time around, there was no way I could not tender homage – although I recognise, in a somewhat harsh way – to Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. Thus my own Molly was born, for her sexual Calvary, yet another lost soul amidst the many women adrift in my books and stories. It could only happen in Dublin in my own mind, and, reader, be perplexed when I confess that I strongly identified with the character for a million reasons. Expiation, redemption, walking on the wild side, love or sorrow? You can make up your own mind.

  Abstract Liffey

  by Craig J. Sorensen

  ‘YAR LEFT-HAHNDED.’

  A woman with long, wavy red hair stared at the brush suspended a couple inches from the canvas. ‘Mmm hmm.’ I resumed painting.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I like the colours you used. Brighter than they really are. Guess you need that though.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Setting is kind of … well … plain.’ She studied the scene then the painting.

  ‘Are you an artist?’

  ‘Ah, you are a Yank.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I couldn’t do a proper job of painting a white wall.’ She stepped closer to the painting. ‘Where are the people?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the painting. Where are the people?’

  ‘I’m doing a painting, not a photo. People move kind of fast.’

  She chuckled. ‘Just trying to figure out why you’re painting the entrance of a shopping centre with no people.’

  ‘Thought you weren’t an artist.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Her fair face was sprayed with freckles. One freckle in her pale lower lip looked like a piercing. She hooked her thumbs in her faded blue jeans.

  ‘I’m trying to paint.’

  ‘I’ll leave you be.’ She turned away.

  ‘Wait. I mean, if you want to hang out …’ Truth was I didn’t know why I invited her to stay, but I felt compelled.

  ‘I’ll buy you a pint at the Stag’s Head when you’re done.’ She patted my shoulder.

  ‘Stag’s Head?’

  ‘The pub. It’s not far. Ya never been?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just what kind of tourist are you?’

  ‘The kind who’s trying to paint.’

  ‘So why are you chinwagging with the likes of me?’

  I laughed and resumed painting.

  Caireann set a pint of Guinness in front of me. She spelled her name, which was pronounced Karen.

  I politely sipped a bit of the foam. ‘I’m Sven Lundgren.’

  ‘Oh? Good Swedish lad, are ya?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

  She winked, took a hearty drink, shook her long mane and pushed it to her back to expose large golden hoop earrings. ‘So, where are you from in America?’

  ‘Near Philadelphia.’

  ‘Got shopping malls there, do they?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’ I took a deliberate sip.

  ‘Just trying to figure out why you came all the way to Dublin to paint shopping –’

  ‘I paint other things!’

  She jumped melodramatically.

  ‘I paint other things.’ I softened my voice.

  ‘Joost fookin’ with ya, lahd.’ She winked.

  I became aware that her eyes were deep green. Suddenly my heart pounded as hard as when the Aer Lingus jet landed.

  ‘So you came to Dublin to paint. Why Dublin?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t artists usually go to Paris, or Venice, or Rome, or …’ she bit her lip. ‘Barcelona or something?’

  ‘I hate to fly.’

  Her head lifted like a periscope from the sea. ‘Did you sail here?’

  ‘Well, no. I flew. I mean, it’s just that Dublin’s closer.’

  A big, wry grin. ‘So it was easier to fly from Philadelphia to Dublin, than to Paris, which I’m sure is host to many lovely shopping malls?’

  They say, in football of the
American sort, that the best defence is a good offence. ‘Why did you come up to me when I was painting?’

  ‘Cause you’re left-handed.’

  ‘So we’re sitting here, drinking a pint together, and for all you know, I might be an axe murderer –’

  ‘Now why woold you go mardering an ahxe?’

  I covered my mouth to camouflage a grin. ‘We’re sitting here together because we’re both left-handed? You do know like ten percent of the world is left-handed?’

  ‘I stopped because you’re left-handed. We’re having this drink because you come to Dublin and paint shopping malls without people, and now for the hope I’ll see you murder an axe.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ I’d heard it on movies spoken with an Irish accent; I figured it would convey.

  She donned a suddenly serious, attentive expression. ‘So do you mostly paint buildings?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s some great architecture in Dublin.’

  ‘You paint at Temple Bar?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Great shops, with people, there.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘Buildings are made for people, you know.’

  ‘I’m down with that. But they stand without people too.’

  A fresh, wry grin. ‘I sure hope so, can’t have them falling down.’

  ‘Christ you’re weird.’

  ‘You reckon? So, you ever paint people?’

  ‘As a student, sure.’

  ‘You look at me like an artist studies a model.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just that there’s some … thing you remind me of.’ It was incredible how much.

  ‘A thing, am I?’

  ‘Sorry, someone.’

  She winked. ‘Who is it I remind you of?’

  ‘I don’t want this to sound wrong.’

  ‘You worry about things that sound wrong hanging with the likes of me?’

  I laughed. ‘Guess not. You remind me of my first girlfriend.’

  ‘You fancied her?’

  ‘She was my girlfriend.’ I said it like duh.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You know how these things go. First girlfriend, first love.’