The Perfect 10 (9 page)

‘Are you crazy?’ I looked up then, and the tears in my eyes were obvious.

‘He could do a lot worse than you, you know.’

‘I know. But I’m not interested, Jean.’ One tear spilt onto my cheek. Jean looked as if it were her heart that were breaking but said, ‘OK, I have to get back.’ She smiled at me, and brushed down her cardigan.

Of course, I couldn’t ask him out for a drink. The squirming embarrassment, the silence just after I blurted it out, the dawning realisation that he was going to have to let me down gently, because I was a ‘lovely girl’. A tiny part
of me did scream, ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get! Men aren’t that bright; they just don’t see it unless, like Mariella, you make it screamingly obvious.’ But then the voice of reason told me what we all know is true. If a man wants to ask a woman out, he will, especially a fat woman who isn’t exactly fending off admirers. I was there, primed and basted and ready to be plucked off the shelf, I wasn’t ‘intimidating’. If Adrian had any feelings for me he would have asked me already. But asking him, hearing the rejection out loud, was too much for me to bear. That was the day I realised I had to leave the Feel Good Company, before the irony killed me.

It took me another six months to pluck up the courage to hand in my notice. In that time Adrian slept with Mariella again twice. She was interested, but he wasn’t, and it fizzled out, but the threat of it always loomed the morning after a heavy night before, because it is, of course, so much easier to sleep with somebody a second or third time. My leaving drinks were held in the office itself, with four hundred pounds’ worth of drink consumed in reception by eighty-five people. We had a buffet, and I can never walk away from a buffet; they are my nemesis – even now, when I can tell you the calorie and fat content of every plateful of sausages on sticks and mini quiches and peanuts and mozzarella sandwiches and mini pizzas. All that food laid out in front of me is still hard to resist. Buffets for the serious dieter are to be avoided like wine tastings for an alcoholic.

Adrian with his big northern laugh was one of the last ones standing at my farewell do. I had masochistic daydreams that he wouldn’t even attend, or stay for a few beers, then head off for more fun elsewhere with his mates, or even worse, slide off with Mariella at about half-past nine. But at 11.30 he was opening one of the last bottles of red wine, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, laughing
with one of the guys from systems support. He poured out a couple of glasses and brought one over to me, as I stood teary-faced, waving goodbye to Jean whose husband, Jeremy, was waiting downstairs in the car and who was already angry because she was drunk and an hour late.

‘Here you go, love. Have another one of those!’ Adrian thrust a glass of wine at me.

I took it, but put it down behind me on the reception desk saying, ‘I’ve had too many already, I’m starting to feel a bit sick.’

‘Come on, it’s your leaving do! You can’t back out on me now! Where are we going afterwards?’ Adrian did a little dance and drops of red wine threatened to fly out of his glass.

‘Well I don’t know where you’re going, Adrian, but I’m going home.’

‘No! We have to go clubbing or something, give you a proper send-off.’ He flicked ash on the carpet. My mouth opened to reprimand him, before I realised that the carpets weren’t my responsibility any more.

‘I don’t go clubbing.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m too old.’

‘You’re only twenty-seven. What are you talking about – you’re younger than me! And I’m not too old! Come on, let’s go on the pull, pick ourselves up a couple of teenagers!’

‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

‘Come on, Sunny, why not?’ He was pulling at one of my hands, grinning, trying to get me to dance, certain I would be persuaded, because life was simple for Adrian.

‘Because … I’m dressed for work.’

‘You look lovely!’ He winked.

‘It’ll be all hot and sweaty!’

‘That’s a good thing!’ He winked again, but this time it was accompanied by a dirty laugh.

‘I’ll be twice the size of everybody else in there!’ I blurted it out because of the wine, and because I felt like I was being backed into a corner, and because it was the truth. He only looked embarrassed for a moment.

‘Shut up! What difference does that make? Come on, let’s go and have a dance.’ But he wasn’t dancing any more.

‘No, you go. I’m going to go home in a minute.’

‘Fair enough. Where’s Peter?’ Adrian smiled, but his bubble had been burst and he stumbled off.

He wasn’t hitting on me, although that’s what my nicer friends would have said, to raise my hopes. But in these instances I firmly believe in being cruel to be kind. It hadn’t even occurred to him that we could go home together, and I never would have let it happen: couldn’t have been naked with Adrian without feeling violently exposed and vulnerable. The sex would have lasted for minutes, if he could manage a sloppy erection after that many drinks, and the excuses would have lasted an hour. I’m sorry about my sagging stomach, my bulbous arse, my huge thighs, everything! Everything! Besides, I had never pictured Adrian and I just having sex, fucking. We would have to be making love, because he liked me, and I liked him. I didn’t have that animal instinct in me that craved thrashing violent passionate orgasms. I wanted somebody to love me, and to make love to me, softly, and without apologies, to look into my eyes, and only my eyes, and not even think about the body beneath them. I wanted the body to become completely unimportant, just machinery, and I wanted all the fireworks to be in our heads. I wanted mental and emotional orgasms. I wanted his eyes to stare into mine, and a moment of realisation to hit us both like a volcano erupting, convincing us both that it was the best, most intimate, most overwhelming orgasm either of us had ever had. And it would have nothing to do with how we looked, and everything to do with who we were.

But Adrian fucks with his eyes closed. I know, because they are closed now. The first time I had sex with Adrian I just wanted to prove I was good at it. He initiated the kiss, and I didn’t want him to regret his decision. And so it was a twisted sexual theatre of shivers and breaths and acrobatics on my part. I tried desperately to be energetic and adventurous and slightly filthy, while steering him away from my body parts that I still deemed unacceptable. My stomach still hung out hungrily like a deflated dart player’s belly, the skin refusing to tighten and just accommodate the muscles that were left. It was my restricted zone, to which I tried to deny him access, twisted and turning and planting him flat on his back any time his hands, or worse, his mouth, crept near it. But he managed to kiss my belly anyway, and didn’t seem to hate it with the vitriol that I did. I scratched and sucked and made vigorous, to prove a point. It was the ultimate vindication, after years of rejection. Now I was good enough to sleep with.

It was a bland encounter. Of course, I faked a couple of orgasms for his ego, while my own ego shrivelled inside of me, occasionally knocking on my conscience to ask, ‘What are you doing?’ I ignored it and kept on rocking. And in the thick of it I did feel good, if not satisfied. He kissed me with passion, not love, but it was a passion that hadn’t existed a year ago. Somehow, and I wasn’t even sure exactly how, I had made Adrian want me, and that was enough for that night, at least. To expect the sex to be good as well would have been plain greedy.

The second time I had sex with Adrian I tried to concentrate on enjoying myself. I spent far less time giving him oral sex, and focused all my attentions on having an orgasm proper. No such luck. Sex with Adrian was a pretty pedestrian affair. It was fine, if fine is not too damning a word. What man wants to be described as ‘fine’ in bed? In fairness, he had a
lovely penis, long and pale and smooth and clean, and thick as well. It was so pleasing to look at, it was almost sanitised. It just didn’t seem to hit the spot. I reprimanded myself mentally, while faking my second orgasm that night, for not relaxing enough to let it happen naturally. Maybe it was my own fault. Maybe I had, in my head, built this man into a sexual demi-god, able to dish out thrills with one thrust of his wand. The sexual explosions I had imagined were almost impossible to match in reality. Plus he was a little quick with his thrust, and not quite as deep as I’d hoped. I tried to make him go slower, and harder, but he had his rhythm and he was sticking to it, like UB40. It’s reggae or nothing. I imagine slow and hard is the thing that will really do it for me. I don’t know for sure. I’ve never had an orgasm with somebody else around. If that sounds tragic I console myself that at least I have had an orgasm, and if some sexual bright spark manages to get me there I will at least recognise it for what it is.

This is the third time I have had sex with Adrian, and doing anything more than twice makes it a habit. But this time we are approximately two bottles of red wine and eight minutes into the encounter, and Adrian has already begun his thrust for home. His erection is precarious; neither one of us expects it to last much longer. I’m a little bored. I look up at his eyes, squeezed tightly shut, and I imagine that he might open them, and slow down, and kiss me tenderly, and stir something in me that hasn’t been reached yet. I wonder if he has his eyes closed so that he can picture somebody else, but now they spring open, and he smiles, and says my name, and then carries on pumping, which sounds like a Sid James special set in a petrol station.

My feelings for him are old, and forgotten. I am having sex with him simply because I can. We are not in love, and never will be. He is a sweet man, but he doesn’t know how to hold my hand or stroke my hair in a way that will move
me. It is all mechanical, insertion and lubrication and squeezing and pulling. We make random impersonal sex noises, both of us lost in our own worlds, trying to please ourselves. We are not a couple, having sex. We are two individuals using each other to get off. I think this should be the last time we have sex, but I doubt it will be.

The first time, three weeks and four days ago, we met for a drink on a Thursday to catch up, and he had been astounded at how different I looked. Men often dish out ‘compliments’ lazily, and Adrian is no exception. His words were, ‘You look about two hundred per cent more attractive than the last time I saw you!’ I could have cried. Men don’t seem to realise that I have just lost weight, and not become a whole new person, and thus an insulting remark about my appearance last year is still an insulting remark about me, even if they are cushioning it with some current nicety. ‘You look good’ or, ‘You look great’ would have done nicely, but Adrian messed it up. I had to ignore it, if I was going to stay in my seat. Even the smallest reprimand for his choice of words would have made things uncomfortable. Plus Adrian isn’t the kind of man who thinks about things like that. He is ‘easy-going’. Intellectual effort is a fun time wasted.

He didn’t see the need to be subtle in his advances, because that would require thought. It didn’t occur to him to tread softly, or try to mask the fact that he now found me attractive, simply because my body shape had changed. My face was and is still the same, just thinner. My eyes are still my own. I haven’t had surgery. Yet. The words coming out of my mouth are exactly the same, the only difference being that Adrian seems to find them more interesting now, or is going to the effort of pretending to, at least. We had a few drinks and got a cab to go home, and he kissed me. Despite the two hours leading up to it, and how obvious it would
have been to any onlooker, I was still surprised when he did it. He had rejected me, albeit unknowingly, for four years, but his kiss wasn’t hard to earn. I just had to be thin enough. This confused me. Now, instead of being ‘Sunny’ I was ‘Sunny who he would like to have sex with’. Nothing groundbreaking had been said during the evening, no pivotal conversation had. It’s a depressing thought. I had been good enough all along, just not thin enough. We had both exited at my house, and we had the first night of sex. At the time it didn’t feel as rushed as it sounds – I didn’t feel like a slut – I’d been waiting for four years, after all.

We had sex twice that night, but not in the morning. He had promised to call me when he left for work the next day, and sure enough he did … two weeks later, last Friday, drunk in a cab and en route to my house but he couldn’t remember the number.

Foolishly I reminded him.

This evening, Monday, thirty-five hours after the ‘incident’ – I’ve almost forgotten all about it – we at least arranged to meet when we were both sober. We went for a coffee, but that turned into wine, and we ended up back at mine, and now we are having sex again. I am afraid that we have become fuck buddies, but I don’t want to confront him because I have nothing to say. Adrian is a nice but average thirty-year-old bloke, with a big laugh and good hair and trendy trainers. He works in IT. I know what I am getting, I know that his favourite film is
Rocky IV
, I know he prefers Indian to Chinese, I know he reads his horoscope, and is mildly left wing.

Adrian is still somebody’s dream man, if such a thing exists, but I am starting to wonder whether he is still mine, now that I am learning to differentiate between liking somebody and being attracted to somebody. I realise that I have to feel something deeper: he can’t just be funny, or bright,
or look right. There has to be something that makes him right for me, even though I admit that I don’t know what that something is. Maybe it will be something small. Maybe we will both like film quizzes, and sit late into the night on his battered old leather sofa making our way through two bottles of wine and a bar of dark chocolate, and quizzing each other, until we decide to go to bed … It could be that small, I think, but it will matter, of course.