I was telling Wendy about how Trina used to take me to expensive hotels and then, a day or two later, would turn on me, telling me how horrible and selfish I am. "It's not worth it," I said. "Yes," she said. "Take me to a posh hotel and abuse me."
I turned this idea over for a second or two. "What a lovely idea Wendy. If you ever fancy doing that, let me know."
I had a job interview, two days a week on the minimum wage, down a shop "bakery" that sells the kind of pies that microwave cheese into a liquid. "Right here we go then," I texted Wendy, "my job interview. And if I can't get a job in a pie shop, it'll come down to sucking blokes off down Preston bus station."
"Oh ho ho," she replied. "What if you failed at the butty shop, went down the bus station and some horrible old pervert said you're not coming anywhere near my cock :)"
(A minute later): "And then the old pervert says, you can wank my dog off if you wear gloves. Sorry -- bit sleep-deprived."
(Again). "And the dog says I wouldn't let you make me a butty. Anyway, I haven't had the urge since they had my knackers off. So sorry Xx."
Kitty suggested we all go to see I Was A Wife by Polly Lister, a one-woman show about a relationship break-up. She used the idea of being a wife as the most difficult role she'd ever taken on. It was one of the best things I've seen in a theatre for a long time, an episodic, lurching piece that mirrored the way that emotions can swing within seconds in such a situation.
We were all stoned, and to the evident dislike of the woman sat to my left we also commenced the second half with what I thought was a politely discreet bit of refreshment done quietly on wettened fingertips. Wendy got the giggles at one point, laughing loudly and for a bit too long. Polly Lister looked over, wondering momentarily whether she might have to cope with the girl with teary, running eye-liner.
Afterwards, we sat in the bar for an hour or so, drinking the theatre's drinks at Stockholm prices. Wendy had had to tell her ex that she was only going with Kitty; had he known I was there too, he would have meanly truncated his begrudged child-sitting shift even further.
Sitting there in the bar with my two favourite people, I felt giddy and delirious; my affection for them and the sensual pleasure of being with them, indissolubly together; light took on a washed and newly-windowed quality, and every glance and scan of Wendy was novel and sexy. The radiance of her browned skin and the way her tits pushed out her dress slightly so that there was a gap of a couple of inches between her shoulders and her tits where it didn't touch her, but shaded and darkened her beautiful décolletage and cleavage. Her blackly-clad legs, the contrast of the softness of her draping dress over the tight, polymer chemistry of her tights. Her hair, that I want to scrape my fingernails down and through.
Wendy had to pick up her daughter. I went back to Kitty's for a while, and we chatted in her cosy front room, all armchairs and wine and fairy lights and pictures and postcards and glittery low lamps.
Back at mine, I went to bed, but couldn't keep off my hands off my...phone. "I love you Wendy. I love how you look, and how you treat others. I love your witty, dirty, literate talk. I love you from my stomach, like now, when it's so difficult to stop thinking about you. I love you, I love you, I love you Xx."
Predictably, the following morning. "I do apologise Wendy. The disinhibiting effects of drink and drugs strike again, and I'm sorry about having yet again given you practice in deleting my night-time drivel."
"Good morning petal! No need to apologise! Yes, yesterday was lovely Xx"
In a couple of weeks we're going out dancing in Manchester all night. I wonder what she'll say to him then? He'll be powerless though, because her auntie is child-sitting that night and morning. She said that she's bought a new dress for it. Oh dear.
Coming soon: a post that is not exclusively concerned with Wendy.
