beach. We had found a new pastime for whenever we hung out. Damn, she even looked like the photograph I’d jizzed over. And then the overhead light went on, brilliant and white, and her parents looked in from the living room doorway.’
‘Bloody hell,’ I said. ‘You really didn’t get much privacy as a teenager did you.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he groaned. ‘Again I just froze and stared down at Phedra, who was sticky and gooey, and looking like someone who’d just woken up and found themselves dropped into a porn movie.
‘The mother squealed and begged the Lord to save them from my hideous urges then fled to the kitchen. Her father, in Greek, told me to get my pants up. Naturally, I did, pretty sharpish, didn’t want him messing with Mr Cobra down there. Phedra grabbed a red-and-white lacy shawl from the arm of the sofa, wiped her face, kind of – she missed a blob of cum just to the left of her mouth – then quickly dragged up the straps of her dress.
‘It’s then it becomes really shameful, if you can imagine it being more so. I told the biggest lie of my life. Her father, although a small man, managed to look like a damn ninja in that moment, and he asked me what my intentions were with his daughter. I looked to Phedra for support, but her face had drained of colour, her hands were shaking, she looked too shocked to even cry. I glanced around the room and my attention fell on a grainy photograph of Phedra’s parents in a silver frame. That’s when the lie came to me. I took Phedra’s hand, squeezed it tight and told him that my intention was to marry his daughter.
‘He still didn’t look too happy, though he did unclench his fists. So I kissed Phedra’s knuckles, dropped to my knee and looked into her eyes with as much sincerity as I could muster given the circumstances. I proposed then, and it felt kind of right. She let out a little sob, that blob of cum on her face wobbled, and then she nodded.
‘And that was how I became engaged, the first time, at least. Her mother came running into the room and hugged me, the father shook my hand, and Phedra finally stopped shaking and I managed to discreetly wipe the last of my excitement from her face.’
‘The first time?’ I asked, freshening up the water and spotting a tube of aqueous cream on the shelf. ‘Tell me about the second.’ I set about massaging the cream into his freshly washed feet. His toes were long, the arches deep, there were a few pale hairs on his two biggest toes. He didn’t react to my extra measures at preventing bedsores so I guessed he wasn’t ticklish.
‘I bought Phedra a ring, then much to her surprise informed her I was still going to Manchester to study. I told her this would mean a better life for us in the future. She cried to start with but eventually she saw my reasoning. Perhaps I wouldn’t have gone if Phedra had let me go all the way, but she’d barely let me touch her since I’d slipped a ring on her finger.
‘The thing was though, her look-but-don’t-touch plan backfired. I’d barely been in Manchester a week and I was in bed with Stella, a red-haired student on my marketing course. She was as in to it as much as me, and wonderfully experienced. She used to do this rotating thing with her hips and then squeeze her internal muscles. Damn, it drove me to the edge every time. God knows how we managed to get any studying done that first term, we were insatiable.
‘Did I miss Phedra? No, not a jot. I wouldn’t have admitted that even to myself back then, though, I liked to pretend I wasn’t that much of a scumbag. I even tried to justify it in my head that I was refining my technique ready for our wedding night. But really, I don’t know who I was trying to kid. I loved being with Stella. She was hot, naughty, and just like a bloke the way she wanted to get naked anywhere, anytime, anyhow.’
‘Sounds fun.’
‘It was, and after Stella it was Nancy, then Emily, and then a bunch of girls whose names all kind of merge into one in my memory. I was on a frenzy for the whole three years I studied. It helped being compared to Brad Pitt who was just making a name for himself as an on-screen god back then. Personally, I thought the resemblance was tenuous, but I wasn’t going to deny girls their fantasy and did my best to make them squeal in delight until the early hours of the morning.
‘I never saw Phedra again. And I’m ashamed to admit that. Not to break off the engagement nor to explain myself. I just didn’t go home in the holidays. My parents were shocked by my long absence from Greece and even came to see me after eighteen months with reports of Phedra’s distress and her family’s growing concerns for my commitment to her. I told them nothing had changed and I just wanted to be standing on my own two feet financially before taking on the responsibility of a wife.
‘They left after three days, not entirely convinced and seemingly suspicious of all the pretty girls who called “hello” to me around the campus. I never saw them again, my parents. And that last meeting, that was full of deception, pains me even all these years later. They were killed the next spring, in a plane crash. They were on one of these light aircrafts and it crashed into the sea in a storm. My parents and three of my father’s work colleagues and their wives were all reported missing. They’d been to Cephalonia on some work-jolly, wine-tasting weekend. It seemed the pilot had also indulged, so the inquest said.
‘The bodies were never found, so no funeral as such. They had a service, of course, but I didn’t go. My sister never forgave me for that, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it either. But the thought of seeing Phedra and her parents was just too terrifying. Why, I don’t know. I should have manned up and told her the situation, but while the authorities were searching for the plane for two months I fell into a place where only alcohol and shagging seemed to make the pain bearable.
‘My university course came to an end. I had a degree, plenty of inherited cash and had taken to fluttering on the horses, which just added to my list of vices – women, booze and gambling. I had a big win, on a horse at Cheltenham, and decided to use the cash to do some travelling. I hopped on a plane to Vegas, the city of lights and dreams. It turned out to be a one-way ticket for several years.
‘On my very first night there I met Cleo. She was tall, blonde, bubbly and from Texas. Her Southern drawl made my groin ache right from the first time she said “Howdy, cowboy, how ya doin’?” I bought her a drink and she sat with me at a roulette table in Caesars Palace. When she kissed my cheek and wished me luck right before a thousand-buck win came in, I was smitten.
‘Cleo became my world. I gambled a small fortune but won a larger one. My luck just kept on growing and for six months I didn’t need to work at all. Then a friend I’d made said he was opening his own casino, just off the strip. Not quite as salubrious as Vegas’ other signature hotels, but classy enough for me to want to invest. With inheritance and big wins I threw up fifty per cent of the cash he needed and signed the deal on the same night I proposed for the second time in my life.
‘Cleo, in her true spirit, yeha’d and leapt on me. I adored her enthusiasm for life, her ditzy nature and the fact that in her eyes I could do no wrong, despite my failings. None of which I’d ever tried to hide; she knew it all. I’d cocked up with my family, drank and gambled, but she still loved me. It made me love her all the more.
‘We married, but we didn’t settle in Texas, we bought a pad in Vegas. Cleo didn’t need to work. She had her nails done, went to the gym, wished me luck when I threw dice. She was there for me, I was there for her, and the casino I’d invested in was making me a good living with minimal effort required. We were on a permanent holiday and for several blissful years I was happier than I thought it possible to be.
‘Then Cleo began to withdraw and eventually confessed she hadn’t been taking her pill and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t pregnant. Technically she should have been – we were at it every opportunity we got. We were like a couple of rabbits on speed. And why not, she had a body made for fantasies and was up for anything, if you know what I mean.’
‘Mmm,’ I said, thinking what a lucky girl this Cleo was to be rolling not just a dice but also between the sheets with Ted.
‘I paid for us to go and see the best doctor in town. A ton of tests later, we got our answer. I was shooting blanks, no swimmers at all. Not one little bugger to even have a go at wriggling