My birthday comes after Xmas. My fiftieth. With a landmark like that on the horizon I’ve been thinking a lot about my life, the good times, and the mistakes. You know, taking stock of how I became the person I am today. When I say thinking about things, really I mean one big thing: The thing I did when I’d just turned twenty. These last few nights I’ve lain awake in the early hours remembering, going over it again. I know if I write about it I’ll get it out of my system. Writing has worked for me in the past, dispelled obsessive thoughts. Catholics have got it right with confession. Trouble is for a confession to work you have to confess to someone. Looks like it’s you lot. And of course, as well as being an exorcism for me, I will do my best to make things as titillating as the real events allow. The sex starts about two thirds down, if that is all you want to read.. I have changed some stuff to protect myself. My husband of fifteen years knows nothing of this episode in my life. When I was twenty I worked as a receptionist at small hotel in Birmingham. To start with I liked the job a lot. I was a friendly and outgoing young woman who really enjoyed meeting new people. I still do. After I had worked there a few months, a male customer who visited the city once a week began to show me more attention than guest usually did, taking time to chat with me, ask stuff about in my life. He was in his mid-fifties and time hadn’t been kind. On the whole men keep their looks for longer than us girls. You only have think of George Clooney to see how a man can continue to make the best of himself well into late middle age, but this guy had the air of someone who had gone to seed years before. When I was on the desk alone he would tell me how nice I looked, and that if he was twenty years younger he would ask me on a date. With each new visit his remarks got increasingly suggestive. Once, when no one else was around, he asked if I spat or swallowed. Came out with it just like that. It must have been the expression on my face that made him laugh out loud. Him saying that made my flesh crawl. And then he began to actually ask me to go out with him on a date, was quite straight face about it, said it almost earnestly. I thought it was ridiculous a man his age asking a girl like me for a date. I politely said no. Obviously too politely, because it did not put him off one bit, my adamant refusals washing over him. After that, every time he visited town he would ask me if I would go for a meal with him at one of the better restaurants in town. I tired to be nice about it, laugh it off, make out he was just trying to compliment me. I even tried to convince myself he was only joking, just a way of connecting with me. When it went on week after , I told him I had a boyfriend and that I loved him very much. When my understandable refusal failed to discourage him, he said why would having a boyfriend be a problem? Everyone cheated, didn’t I know. What the eye doesn’t see . . . His insistence began to unnerve me. I wondered how long I could remain professional in the face of his badgering. I knew one day I would not be able to help myself: I would have to tell him to fuck off. I even mentioned it to Chris my manager. He said, “you’re a beautiful young woman and he’s a bloke. What do you expect?” And that was what it was like back then. Women just had to put up with unwanted sexual advances, handle it the best they could. But then he offered me money. I never saw that coming. It was about nine months after his first visit. I was on my own behind the reception desk when he came up and, right out of the blue, offered me two hundred pounds for two hours with him up in his room. Later I learned this was the going rate at the time for a decent upmarket escort. The look I gave him should have killed that idea in an instant. It Didn’t. Three weeks later, after my third refusal he came to me when I was on my own, looked at me intently, and said he’d just had a bad diagnosis, that he didn’t have long to live, that all his money would be no use to him when he was dead and please would I re-consider -- for two thousand pounds. That was equivalent of five thousand in today’s money. I was really taken back, it was a hell lot of money for me back then, He even reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out bundle of twenty-pound notes, unrolled the wad and began to flick through them, counting it ostentatiously on the reception desk. I just stood and watched, shocked into silence and hoping no one would see. There was something about the sight of that money, though . . . But I did not believe a word of his sob story about being ill. After that I tried to wrangle my shifts so my days off fell on Thursdays, the days he usually booked in, and Fridays when he checked out. But I couldn’t always get the shifts I wanted and so inevitably we would come face to face. As usual, if there were other staff about he’d wait till I was alone, come over and up his offer, usually by a hundred pounds. After a couple more months it stood at three thousand pounds. It was then I began to think half-seriously about doing it. At the time, I was a living with a bloke named Dave. He was a year older then me -- a humble warehouse operative back then -- and at that time we really were very much in love. I wanted to tell Dave about the offer. I wanted him to be the sort of partner I cold confess anything to and have him understand. But he wasn’t that type of man and never would be. In fact, looking back, he was a bit of a gorilla. When it came to sitting him down and talking him though it, I could not pluck up the courage. Even though we so could have used the money, I knew Dave would never have gone along with the idea. He used to get irrationally jealous if blokes showed me too much interest. He was my first real boyfriend and I had never been with anyone else. Perhaps Dave’s latent jealousy prompted me to do what I did. I mean, it was not because I fancied my admirer, -- who I will call Mike. Something else compelled me -- not just the cash. And that is what still puzzles to this day. Why did I do what I did? Mike might have been a handsome bloke thirty years before he propositioned me, but by this time his pot belly was struggling to break free of his suite jacket, his hair too long at the sides for the amount of it he still had, and his face was red and blotchy, which I guessed was because he drank too much of an evening and ate all the wrong food. But somewhere beneath the flab of his face, good bone structure still fought a brave rear-guard. In his favour, he was always immaculately turned out. His clothes and shoes looked expensive. After weeks of agonising, I decided the chance of that much money was too good to pass over. All week I psyched myself up so that when Mike asked again -- as he invariably would -- I could look him in the eye and say, Yeah, I’d do it.” Me and Dave argued that week. No I did not tell him what I intended to do, but he must have sensed something was in the air. He said I was acting different. He demanded to know who I was seeing behind his back. I managed to reassure him, to lie. But after that everything he said to me became a prod, irritated me. Guilt on my part? Who knows. But on that Thursday afternoon when Mike booked in and I was face to face with him, confronted once more with the unpleasant reality of him, I lost all the misplaced enthusiasm I’d raised during the preceding week. Looking into his weary eyes, seeing his podgy face and over-ripe lips, I just couldn’t get the words to come out. I thought I never would. And it was such a relief. No more agonising. But then that evening Dave went and phoned me at work to say sorry about the blazing row we’d had just before I left the house. Even though he was sweet, I was pissed with him for phoning me at work. He knew I was not allowed to take personal calls. Late that night Mike came in and asked for his keys. Was me being annoyed with Dave the reason I said it? Or had a long hidden side of me been stirred into life and now wanted to come out and play. I really don’t know, but out of the blue I found myself saying, “Mike . . . You know your offer -- the one you made last time? Does it still stand?” There was no need for him to answer. His face said it all. He asked what time I finished. Would I come up to his room. That was impossible, of course. There is no way I could be seen coming and going in and out of a guest’s room. And besides, Dave would be expecting me home at the usual time after my shift. So I told him no; he would have to make other arrangements for us if it was going to happen. I told him that on his next visit he could perhaps stay at the Regency instead of here. I would be willing to visit him there. He said he would arrange it and told me he would phone me on the desk when he was settled in. Straight away I said I was not allowed to have personal calls. He said that he was a regular customer, why would it be a problem. I said, okay then, told him to watch what he said if Karen answered. It was only after he’d gone to his room that it dawned on me how hard it was going to be for me to get to over to see Mike at the Regency. Karl would never let me out on my own so it would have to be in work time. I decided to pull a sicky while at work. I got Mike’s phone call on Thursday evening at five-thirty, the following week. I had been anticipating the moment all day. All he said was, “Come over now. I have your money.” Pretending to be ill was not hard. A flock of moths and butterflies had set up a rave down the dark cellar that was my belly. I felt sick to my core. I told Chris, my line-manager, I had bad menstrual cramps and could not function. He was so sweet, straight away called me a cab. I felt vile lying even to Chris, let alone my Dave. I had to travel over town to the Regency in my work uniform, white blouse, tailored trousers and jacket and sensible shoes. Not the most alluring look. I think deep down I would have liked to have dressed up for the occasion, mainly for myself, really. Just to get into the scenario, become the person the role demanded. In my mind I’d been imagining myself turning up in suspenders and stockings underneath something outrageously low-cut and seductive. But I did not even own any stockings, let alone a suspender-belt. Tights not quite the same thing. So I told myself, Mike liked me enough in my working clothes to offer me three-thousand pounds to spend a couple of hours with him, so he would be happy enough with me as I was. I can’t describe how nervous I was by the time I got out of the cab at the Regency -- Sorry.! That should be: I cannot tell you how terrified I was when I got out of the cab. For any amount less than what I was expecting to walk away with for a few hours work, I would have told the cab driver to carry on and take me home. All I wanted at that moment was to be back home in Dave’s muscular arms holding me, him loving me. I felt so obvious walking through the Regency lobby. I imagined all eyes on me, whore stamped on bright letters on my forehead. Of course no one paid me the slightest attention, especially dressed how I was. Just another anonymous corporate female. Not even the young girl on the desk bothered to give me a second look. I wondered if Mike would perhaps proposition her after he had done with me. She was very pretty. I’d imagined Mike jumping on me as soon as I entered his room. But no, to begin with he was the perfect gentleman. Perhaps I took him up on the offer of a drink a little too eagerly, but I really needed one to calm my nerves. He handed me scotch on the rocks. It made me cough when I swallowed, but the alcohol untangle my twisted nerves. He was without his usual jacket, in just his shirt sleeves; I had not previously seen him without it. The size of his belly was a shock. Enormous! All that flab spilling over the belt of his trousers. For a moment the though of him on top of me made me queasy. I asked for another drink. “When you’ve finished it,” he said handing over the glass, “take a shower. I want to lick you everywhere.” He looked at me intently and said, “And I mean, everywhere.” I’d brought along condoms for him to use. Now I took the box out of my bag and laid it on the bedside table. “What the fuck are they for?” he asked. “For you.” “You can forget about them, young lady.” “Well you can forget about tonight,” I said. “No condoms, no me.” He looked devastated. “If allow me to go bareback, I’ll pay double what we agreed.” I had to sit and think. I was on the pill so that was not an issue. I’d hardly given a thought to disease, but I suppose it was the back of my mind. This was really before all the hoo-ha about aids, though I suppose it was out there in the U.K. by then, but at first we all believed only gay males got it. Fact is, I just did not want his raw cock in me, have his sperm on my skin, in my womb. “Triple it and I might re-consider.” I blurted out, just another day to day transaction, as if I were at wholesalers doing a deal for produce. I could hardly believe what I was saying even as words leapt of my tongue. “Okay,” he said, without so much as a blink. Immediately I felt I’d sold myself to cheap. I wondered how high he would have gone. I took a long time showering, trying to put off the inevitable. While I soaped myself I thought about his cock, how would he get it inside me with all that flab in the way, but more than that I thought about his cum and how he had asked if I spat or swallowed. Back then I hated male sperm. I even found having to swallow Dave’s a real chore, a girlfriend’s duty. So I scrubbed and scrubbed for as long as I could, as if to make cleanliness a barrier. But I had to come out eventually. I dried myself and put on one of the hotel robes that hung on the bathroom door. He was lying on the bed completely naked, sipping Whiskey from a tumbler. I eyed him all over, from crown to toes and thought of a beached, albino whale. His skin so pale, so much of it. “Come join me,” he said. I lay by his side on my back, my robe pulled tight at the waist by its cord, and rested the back of my head on a pillow, spreading my thick dark hair out like a dead princess. I was terrified and just looked blankly up at the ceiling. What I had been dreading for so long now began. He turned to me and opened my robe with hands that were actually trembling. His breath was hot on my face and laden with whiskey and nicotine. His ghastly tongue quickly parted my lips and began licking my teeth, prising between them to hunt down my tongue, jostle it into life I closed my eyes and allowed him his way. And it wasn’t so bad after all, in fact it was nice, in a strange sort of way. I found myself letting down all the psychological barriers I had constructed, let them be dissolved by the kiss. As he kissed me, he switched position and pressed his bulk against me. There was so much of him and I felt overwhelmed, but he was soft and fragrant, almost womanly. So different than Dave with his workman’s muscularity. He had me sit up and removed my robe, then stood with it and placed it over a chair. When he came back, he stood and looked at me, his eyes scanning every inch of my body. He sat back down on the bed and took my hand and kissed each finger in turn, then still kissing, he moved his lips over my palm, my wrist, slowly all the way up the soft flesh of my inner arm. He lavished my armpit with his tongue before licking his way to the sides of my breast and under them, slathering the crease beneath each, doing it over and over, then up and on until he had my nipple between his teeth. A storm of electric shudders surged when he nibbled my nipples, back and forth. Between my legs a whirlpool spiralled and twirled. In spite of myself and my revulsion at Mike, I became overwhelmed by sheer physical pleasure. I kept my eyes tight closed, not wanting the sight of him to spoil this unanticipated enjoyment, did not want to dispel the illusion of a real lover by looking at the actuality of this fat old man. I imagined I was being treasured, was not just the paid whore I now was. And if I am honest, he did treasure me -- absolutely treasured me. But he’d had to pay me more than any working girl, pay me way over the odds for that privilege. That thought pleased me a lot. He kissed me everywhere, took his time, licked every inch of my soft, young flesh. His mouth attended to parts of my body I never, ever imagined a lover would take the time to seek out. Each foot was lavished: sole, heel, ball and instep, but especially between my toes, his tongue slithering between each. The pleasure of it almost unbearable, his capacity to produce lubricating saliva unbelievable. When my legs were done, next his tongue between my buttock cheeks. He spent longer there than anywhere else apart from my cunt. He became a pig snuffling for truffles, parting my cheeks and burrowing deep, then letting my buttock flesh enfold his own cheeks while the flicker of his tongue in my most intimate spot was almost too much for me. The way it curled and probed made me want to call out, but stifled words under my breath were all I managed, a plea not to please me so much, “Oh, Mike! Mike! My god! You’re licking my arse. Oh, please . . .” But I did not tell him to stop. All those soft caresses, his licking, nipping, and sucking, were an unappeasable primer for orgasm. In spite of myself, I endured two orgasms in that first hour. One when he licked my arse while simultaneously fingering my clit; the other also from his tongue, but this time on my clit while three fingers eased in an out my cunt. I hated the cum my body insisted on lubricating his hand with I was not given time to get my breath back after orgasm, his tongue in my mouth again. Then he was lapping at every inch of my face, my cheeks and nose, chin and throat, over and over, his tongue as slobbery as a great mastiff‘s. He was frantic for me now, licking and groaning over and over. It seemed an eternity before he actually mounted and fucked me. But for that time before it happened it was a dream of tactile and oral attention. After all that licking and kissing, I was in an inner space I’d never knew existed. A place Dave had never taken me to. He probably never even fantasised about half the stuff Mike was doing. At one point Mike was flat on his back and had pulled me vertical so I was sat up straddling his face with legs spread wide. He pushed down on my hips to force my cunt and arse onto him. I remember the feel of his cold nose between my buttocks as He encouraged me to rock my hips, rotate them so that my cunt squelched his face. Even though he had shaved, the rasp of whisker chaffed my buttock cheeks . I can’t remember everything now. I spent two hours with him. For a while I let myself drift away under his soft caresses kisses. I was abruptly brought back to reality when he began his manoeuvring to fuck me properly. I lay there waiting for him to get his cock inside me and watched in disbelief as he kind of lifted the great substance of his belly in one hand while guiding his cock into me with the other. When he was in me, pushing deep, he let the bulk of his belly down over my abdomen. It kind of overflowed over the sides of my own belly, a mass of gelatinous flab enfolding my torso. I was such a slight thing back then, a real sylph, no more than a size eight. I remained very slim until my mid-thirties I suppose this was the most horrid bit of it all. Me looking up at his red face, seeing the so much lust me in his eye. It was if he were searching inside me for something or someone he would never find. Then him kissing me full on with those over-ripe lips, lips that had just given my body so much pleasure. Getting into his rhythm, between our kissing, he kept telling me to pinch his nipples. So I did. The harder I pinched the more frenzied his fucking became. God, those man breasts! As substantial as any woman’s. I pinched them spitefully, rubbed them in circles with both palms and then pinched them again, over and over. This made him almost whimper. His rutting became convulsive and his fat undulated in waves over my torso. Thankfully he only managed about a minute of this lumbering fucking before ejaculating deep in side me. The way he juddered and moaned, I thought he was in the midst of a coronary. He was utterly breathless when he rolled off me. I think if he had continued any longer I may have been calling for an ambulance. God! Now that would have been hard to explain. You hear about such things, though: older men dying in the arms of their young lover -- or a whore’s embrace. It was getting late. While Mike lay there panting, struggling for breath, I said I had to go. I told him Dave would be expecting me back from work in half an hour. If I was late he would want to know where I had been. I got off the bed and quickly left the room. I showered in a near scalding torrent, scrubbing his spunk and saliva from me until I was raw. So much of it had got in my hair -- oh yes, I forgot to tell about sucking his cock and how I had to let him cum on my face. Now guilt was kicking in. I dressed in a panic, struggling in a fluster to fasten my brad. When I came back into the bedroom he handed me the envelope containing forty, crisp fifty pound notes. He said I was worth every penny. A natural, he said. I slipped it into my bag without a word. Before I had chance to leave, he took me in his arms and kissed me. No longer aroused by his caresses, his tongue in my mouth made me nauseous. And standing pressed against him like that only emphasised his bulk in comparison to my own slight frame. I was suddenly utterly overwhelmed with shame for what I had allowed myself to become. When his tongue had finished with mine, he looked into my eyes and thanked me. I now had nothing but contempt for him. I think he saw that. It must have hurt. It was then that he said he wanted to show me something before I went home to my husband. I sat on the side of the bed while he went into the wardrobe and pulled out his overnight bag. From it he took a wallet containing twenty large glossy photographs, glamour shots of a girl on a park bench wearing a mini skirt, strappy heels and white silk blouse. She had long chestnut hair,, shapely legs, a pleasing if slightly embarrassed smile at been posed and photographed in the way she was. The thing about her was: she looked just like me. Could have been my sister, my twin even. He told me the girl was named Angie, his first wife. She had been just eighteen when they had married, he much old at twenty-four. He said she had been killed by drunk driver while walking home from work the Friday before Christmas. Nineteen seventy-four, I think he said it was. I looked at each photo disbelieving what I saw. Our likeness was uncanny. For a moment I was there on that bench smiling back at the photographer as he coaxed me into the pose he wanted me to assume. “I loved her with every iota of being,” Mike said as he watched me work my way through the shots for a second time. “She was so beautiful -- just like you are so beautiful. When I saw you that first time it all came back to me. I thought my heart would break all over again. Perhaps you can understand now why I wanted you.” And I did. I leaned into him and kissed him gently on the lips. And so we kissed in way that I would never imagined I could have kissed someone like Mike. For a moment I was his long dead young wife Angie. Afterwards, as I put on my jacket and made for the door, he asked if he, could he see me again. He would pay, of course. I said I did not know. Coming home to Dave that night was strange. It felt like a part of me had been stolen. Dave asked if I was OK. I told him what I had told Chris, that I was not well. I went up to bed and soon after he came up and got into bed naked and spooned against me, holding my breasts. He made me feel so safe, as if he had forgiven me for all my sins. But he never had chance to forgive me, never found out about that night. And the money? It was a problem. How was I going to get it into my life so I could spend it without the need for explanations, treat myself to all those the things I hankered after became. It became like money laundering. Took months, dribbling it into my life little be little. Mike didn’t book in at the hotel where I worked for another month. I thought he’d got me out of his system. When he did he had another offer to make -- which I’ll maybe write about later. In those weeks immediately after our first session, my mind was completely screwed up. One side of me was disgusted over what I’d done; another part of me was thrilled by the whole thing. It was real a head-fuck. I did not know if I was coming or going half the time. At one point in the weeks that followed I considered going on the game. If I could do it with Mike, I could with anyone. We had lots of wealthy guest at the hotel I worked at, it being a five star place and all. I tried to imagine how I could approach the right kind of man. I soon realised I hadn’t a clue how to go about it. For a start I did not have the brass nerve. This was years before the internet. It would be so easy today. And what about the older me, the me who sits and taps at the keyboard today? During these last few years, with my present husband’s okay, at clubs and parties, I have allowed over-weight blokes fuck me. It really has not been a problem. I find them less arrogant then the beautifully muscled ones. I would never turn down a guy because of his weight. I wonder if I would feel like that if I had not had Mike all those years ago Looking back, I think I would have made a good whore. I reckon five years servicing the right type of clients and I could have set myself up financially for the rest of my life. But I never asked for money for sex with anyone other than Mike. In the months after my first night with Mike I did go a bit wild. I Started this thing with Chris. That lasted a few months. Ironic that I ended up getting shagged in one of the hotel bedrooms after my refusal to visit Mike in one. Then there was Chef -- not to forget Lucien, our Maitre d’. Dave and I divorced a year later. I can hardly blame him. I broke his heart. What a slut I became in my early twenties! Hey-ho! I feel so much better for getting that out of my system.