In Fidelity Ch. 05

I call Lust first thing. I feel sick, dialing the number, and even sicker when the receptionist puts me through. She used to know who I am, but now there's nothing in her voice at all.

Lust wants to come around on Saturday afternoon, when I'm at work, to pick up some more of her stuff, and that's fine by me; we should have stopped there, but I try to have a different sort of conversation, and she doesn't like it because she's at work, but I persist, and she hangs up on me in tears. And I feel like a jerk, but I couldn't help myself. I never can.

I wonder what she'd say, if she knew how many different women I've had sex with since she left, and that I was already getting uptight about Vivian coming in to Championship today? Lust and I have just had a phone call in which I suggested that she'd fucked up my life and, for the duration of the call, I believed it. But now - and I do this with no trace of bemusement or self-dissatisfaction - I'm worrying about what to wear, and whether I look better stubbly or clean-shaven, and about what I should be doing in my free time today in case she walks in.

Sometimes it seems as if the only way a man can judge his own niceness, his own decency, is by looking st his relationships with women, or rather, with prospective or current sexual partners. It's easy enough to be nice to your mates. You can take them to strip clubs, buy them drinks, ring them up to check they're OK. There are a number of quick and painless methods of turning yourself into a Good Bloke. When it comes to girlfriends though, it's much trickier to be consistently honourable. One moment you're ticking along, cleaning the toilet bowl, and buying her flowers and expressing your feelings and making sure she orgasms during sex and doing all the things that a modern bloke is supposed to do; and the next, you're manipulating and sulking and double-dealing and fibbing and sleeping around and secretly wanking to porn with the rest of them. I can't work it out.

I phone Liz early afternoon. She's nice to me. She says how sorry she is what a good couple she thought we made, that I have done Lust good, given her a center, brought her out of herself, allowed her to have more fun, turned her into a nicer, calmer, more relaxed person, given her an interest in something other than work. Liz tells me that right now she thinks Lust was stupid to leave me as she'd jump me straight away if she had the chance given she knows how much I can help the girl I'm with. She drops a few suggestive hints at me, then tells me she doesn't think much of this Ian guy. We arrange to meet up for a drink sometime next week.

Which fucking Ian guy?!?!?!

Vivian comes into the shop shortly afterward. She's dressed like a pinup girl now, with a white dress with big black spots that comes up over her shoulders and hugs the top of her body tight, but flares right out from just below a purple strap around her bellybutton so it looks as if a constant breeze of air has elevated her dress up just that perfect amount to capture every wandering eye but revealing nothing; and right now has captured my complete sexual and mental attention.

"Nice place," she tells me as she looks through from to lobby to our adult shop. Thankfully we're in a bit of a peak time, so there are a few men who've arrived early hanging around in the lobby.

"Why don't you come with me back to my office and I'll show you some more of the place?"

We walk together down the hall and I gesture to all the rooms we have, then upstairs and back to the front of the shop to this portion of my office. The reason we took this route is less that I wanted to show Vivian the place in person, and more that the upper portion of my office is a lot cleaner and nicer than the lower, and I'm looking to create a good first impression.

I open the door to reveal a modestly large carpeted room, with my desk on an angle in the far left corner to where we stand, a large and comfortable sofa along the right, and the staircase down to my lower office on my immediate left. This is all lit at the moment by the backdrop of my windows, heavily tinted so that I can see out but no street voyeurs can look in. I walk over and sit behind my desk, and as Vivian walks for the sofa I roll back and indicate she can sit on my lap. "I figure it's how we had our last conversation, why change a good thing?"

The other benefit gained from Vivian being seated on my lap, apart from my own sexual gratification, is that from here she can see the tv screens positioned above the sofa, broadcasting a live feed from the cameras installed for safety reasons in each room.

"You'll see down here," I motion towards the lower screens, "our standard rooms; and up here," the top row of screens, "our deluxe parlours."

"Very nice," she tells me, as we sit together watching live amateur porn across two thirds of the televisions. We're seeing everything from straight up missionary (Why? You really go to a brothel for missionary sex?!) to role play (Alice is a student sucking her way out of detention for not doing her bonework.. ah... homework.. and Ebony is dressed threateningly in leather and high heels, hitting her client who's bound to a table with a crop whip. He looks close to jizzing himself from this experience alone.) to watching (Guinevere and Bronte are in a foaming jacuzzi passionately making out and touching each other's bodies all they can while their client watches on, playing with himself a bit while touching them a bit; just thrilled to be allowed to watch two women fuck each other in real life).

"So it's like this every day?" Vivian asks me.

"Most," I tell her truthfully.

"And you have sexy maids cleaning up the public areas, and these professional cleaners in each room after use?"

I can't help but smile. "Not quite. The maids are working girls. A recent uniform and role change that's already increasing revenue."

Vivian nods her head in acknowledgment before turning to look at me.

"So are you going to interview me first, or... how does this work?"

I have to look at her for a moment to properly gather my thoughts. She wasn't just some pretty whore of the streets who wanted to start earning a buck from her lifestyle choice. Well... she was... but she knows how to make guys think they need her more than just being graced with attention all her life.

"I've heard a lot about you, and seen you perform, and I was very impressed with your ability to make your movements about sex, to get money out of my pockets and keep me wanting.. needing.. begging for more! I need you to bring that to your worklife here. That's a big part of my selection criteria that I don't need to assess you on. Leaving..."

"Leaving..." Vivian has a wide smile across her face.

"Leaving other assessments. Now I'd usually like to see you perform in one of our deluxe parlours, but as you can see," I wave a hand to the screens we were watching before. "They're all in use."

"Oh no!" Vivian exclaims in mock-horror. "Whatever will we do?!"

She gets up from my lap and crosses over to the sofa, as if to get a better look at the security camera footage. I can't take my eyes off the hemline of her dress and all that's moving from side-to-side as she walks.

"Hummm!" She lets out a big thoughtful tone, and then bends over at the waist. The bottom of her dress is being held out by frilly fabric woven into the skirts, but in the centre of that circle of fabric, like a golden egg yolk, is her bare ass and pussy peaking through beneath it.

I cross from my desk to stand behind Vivian and place a hand against her warm cunt.

Vivian looks back at me over her shoulder, "Can I offer you an upgrade to office sex audition?"

I smile at her. "I can upgrade you to sex; but we'll still need an audition in a deluxe parlour. I can promise that this pre-audition sex will help earn you some extra credit though?"

I see Vivian think for a moment. By this stage I'm passed gently touching her and rubbing her clit, right through to now having two fingers inside her wet slit.

"Definitely!" She spins around to sit on the sofa and unzips my pants, then starts to slowly suck my dick to get me fully hard.

Now, she stands up and reaches up to unzip then slip out of her dress, leaving only her lovely naked body standing right in front of me. Her immense breasts bulge out at me, and I'm suddenly back in a state of needing her again.

"Well come on then big boy." The seduction is woven through her voice like a fog in the air. It's within and without it, in as much as I am immediately drawn forward and insert myself within her. She's not quite fully wet yet, so it's a bit of a squeeze, but after she's hitched her legs up alongside my hips and I've placed my hands down to grasp her knees at my lower back, and she bounces herself gratefully on my cock.

At first I slam her against a wall and fuck her there, before she's on her back over the side of the sofa with her ass up on the arm rest as I nail her there; then she's rolled off and is sucking me, before I lift her to sit on my desk, and nail her there also. The sex is really something, I'm feeling. To my perception anyway, it's not just dick and vag and two bodies; there's something more, like a harp in the background that's just adding to the scene. We keep fucking all over the top floor of my office, one minute I'm nailing her with her naked ass pressed against the tinted window, the next she's upside down still held in my arms and I'm licking her out as she sucks me good; and then she's back over with her big tits against the glass as I root her from behind.

Finally, her smiling face is below my cock as I cover her face with cum.

"Where are your showers?" Vivian asks me with a big smile on her face.

"Here, let me show you."

I walk her down the hall to the staff commonroom. I've slipped all my clothes back on by this point, but Vivian's just happy to walk naked and covered with sperm. A door opens as we approach the commonroom and a customer enters the hall with us. I notice him doing his best to get the best look at her he can as she passes.

I guide Vivian through to the bathrooms. It's something like a lockerroom back here already. The front area has the toilets, then walking around behind those gets us to a communal shower area where shower heads are positioned sporadically along the wall opposite a bench for clothes and towels. Brittany, Abigail, Sarah and Natalina are already here using the showers. It's the thing about this line of work for the girls; showers are needed before and after clients.

"Can I offer you the shower upgrade?"

"Customers aren't allowed back here, Vivian."

"They wouldn't be allowed in your office either," Vivian's smile is really pulling me in. "Plus, you're not a customer if I'm not charging."

True.

I get undressed and throw my clothes onto dry bench-space, then join Vivian under the jets of warm water. Vivian starts to soap me up, and in a matter of seconds, the other girls have migrated over to help her out. It began in fun, seeing who could cover the most of my body with soap and shower gel, but after I had stepped back beneath the jet streams of the second-to-last shower head, quickly descended into a game where the object was to gratify me and my body in every physical manner imaginable. It was as if I was less a person than a large sex-doll, and the pleasuring of me was causing the girls resultant pleasure. Under the strong spray of hot water, I quickly lost track of who was doing what and which parts were attached to which girl. My dick was being transferred between mouth and hand pussy and ass like it was a game of musical chairs and the girls were each progressing around, and there was always at least four tits or ass cheeks directed at my face.

When I feel I have used up enough of the ladies' time, and made the customers waiting for them wait long enough, I get all five girls in a tight circle around me on their knees, leaving me happily in the centre of ten beautiful breasts. I turn slowly on the spot getting sucked by each, till I cum and spray a spurt of jizz onto each of them in turn. The girls all wash themselves off as I get dried and dressed, then proceed to the lobby for their clients as I take Vivian back to my office for her clothes. We organise a follow-up meeting later that week, and I book out two hours in our surgery room.

She shows herself out after inviting me to watch her perform at the club again tonight, mentioning that she'll get me and a plus three on the guest list to assure free VIP entry and drinks, and that I can invite some friends, and I watch her exit onto the footpath and my mind jumps back to where it was before she arrived.

Which fucking Ian guy?!

I call Marcus up to see if he's available. He is, and he's told me he'll ring a few others to get us to a four so that I don't have to worry about them, which is a bit of a relief.

I don't know anyone called Ian.

Lust doesn't know anybody called Ian. We've been together over a year and I've never heard her mention an Ian. There's no Ian at her office. She hasn't got any friends called Ian, and she hasn't got any girlfriends with boyfriends called Ian. I won't say that she has never met anyone called Ian in the whole of her life — there must have been one at college, although she went to an all-girls school — but I am almost certain that since 2007 she has been living in an Ianless universe.

And this certitude. This Ian-Atheism lasts till I get home to my apartment building. On the windowsill where we put the post, just inside the communal front door, there are three letters amidst the takeout menus and minicab cards: a bill for me, a bank statement for Lust... and a Foxtel payment reminder for Mr. I. Raymond (Ray to his friends and, more pertinently, to his neighbours), the guy who until about six weeks ago lived upstairs.

I'm shaking when I get into the flat, and I feel sick. I know it's him; I knew it was him from the moment I saw the letter. I remember Lust going up to see him a few times; I remember Lust... not flirting, exactly, but certainly flicking her hair more often, and grinning more inanely, than seemed to be strictly necessary when he came down for a drink last Christmas. He would be they get type— little-boy-lost, right-on, caring, just enough melancholy in his soul to make him appear interesting. I never liked him much then, and I fucking hate him now.

How long? How often? The last time I spoke to Ray — Ian — the night before he moved... was something going on then? Did she sneak upstairs on nights when I was out? Do John and Melanie, the couple in the flat next door, know anything about this? I spend a long time looking for the change-of-address card he gave us, but it's gone, ominously and significantly — unless I chucked it, in which case strike the ominous significance. (What would I do if I found it? Give him a ring? Drop round and see if he's got company? Slash his tyres? Place large "pay-at-the-door" food delivery orders? Send a bunch of girls around for Lust to catch him 'cheating' on her?)

I'm starting to remember things now; his overalls, his music (always the 'next big band' that no one had ever fucking heard of before or since); his hysterical, nervous, nerve-jangling laugh; the terrible cooking smells that used to pollute the stairway and balcony; the visitors who used to stay too late and drink too much and leave too noisily. I can't remember a single good thing about him at all.

I manage to block out the worst, most painful, most disturbing memory until I go to bed, when I hear the woman who lives up there now stomping around and banging wardrobe doors. This is the very worst thing, the thing that would bring anybody (any man?) in my position out in the coldest and clammiest of sweats: we used to listen to him having sex. We could hear the noises he made; we could hear the noises she made (and there were two or three fifty partners in the time the three of us — the four of us, if you count whoever was in Ray's bed — were seperated by a few square metres of floorboard and flaking plaster).

"He goes on long enough," I said one night l, when we were both lying awake, staring at the ceiling. "I should be so lucky," said Lust. This was a joke. We laughed. Ha, ha, ha. I'm not laughing now. Never has a joke filled me with such nausea and paranoia and insecurity and self-pity and dread and doubt. Even when she said it, I listened to it as more than just a joke! Lust's 'joke' set me on the path to the lasting upwards of an hour guy I am today!

When a woman leaves a man, and the man is unhappy (and yes, finally, after all the numbness and the fucking around and the who-cares shrug of the shoulders, I am unhappy — although I would still like to be included somehow through an inside joke or special thanks on Vivian's next production)... is this what it's all about? Sometimes I think so, and sometimes I don't. I went through this period, after Crystal left me, of imaging her together with the new guy, at it, and Crystal's face contorted with a passion that I was never able to provoke.

I should say, even though I do not feel like saying it (I want to run myself down, feel sorry for myself, celebrate my inadequacies with a large amount of alcohol and food — that's what you do at times like these) that I think I was good in the sex department. We had it frequently, she orgasmed frequently.. that's enough isn't it? Isn't it? But in my fearful imaginings Crystal was as abandoned and as noisy as any character in virtually any of the porn I own. She was her man's plaything, she responded to his every touch with shrieks of orgasmic delight. No woman in the history of the world had better sex than Crystal had with her new guy in my head.

But that was nothing. That had no basis in reality. For all I know, Crystal and her new guy never even fucked at all and Crystal has spent the intervening years trying — but failing miserably — to recapture the hot, wild and creatively intense sexual ecstasy of the nights that we spent together. I know, however, that Ian was something of a sexually creative and dominant lover; so does Lust. I could hear it all; so could Lust. In truth, it pissed me off; I thought it pissed her off, too. Now I'm not too sure. Is this why she went? Because she wanted a bit of what was happening upstairs?

I don't really know why it matters so much. Ian could be better at talking than me, or cooking, or working, or housework, or saving money, or earning money, or spending money, or understanding books or films; he could be nicer than me, better-looking, more intelligent, cleaner, more generous-spirited, more helpful, a better human being in any way you would care to mention... and I wouldn't mind. Really. I accept and understand that you can't be good at everything, and I am tragically unskilled in some very important areas. But sex is different; knowing that a successor is better in bed is impossible to take, not only because sex is my profession and passion but... something else too.

I know enough that this is a stupid train of thought and won't get me anywhere positive. I know, for example, that the best sex I have ever had was not important; the best sex I ever had was with a girl called Rosie, whom I had sex with three or four times. It wasn't enough (the good sex, or the three or four times). She drove me mad and I drove her mad, and the fact that we had the knack of being able to cum at the same time (and this, it seems to me, is what people mean when they talk about good sex, no matter what Dr Phil tells you about sharing and consideration and pillow talk and variety and positions and handcuffs) counted fit nothing.

So what is it that sickens me so much about 'Ian' and Lust? Why do I care so much about how long he can go on for and how long I could go on for and what sexual experiences she shared with me and what sexual experiences she has with him? Just, I guess, in this end: that I still hear the man-slut of year's past calling me a fucktard and telling me he has had vaginal sex with my 'anal only' girlfriend. And that voice still makes me feel bad.