True Instruction

In today’s inbox, an invitation to an annual summer reunion party, the principal attraction for me being the possibility of running into Christelle, a French exchange student of my second year at university, she in her third.

Sharing notes on an assignment one day, she choosing me, making me think that it was the other way round. Soon, the nightly drinking of red wine in brasseries, her continental radiance burning away my boyish boorish ways. She quietly repelling my sexual forays. Then one weekend, a switch clicking in her mind, a night together.

Soon regularly making love. A true instruction. She in ready acceptance of sexual practices viewed vaguely by me as aberrant. Not that she wanted to do everything, in fact she definitely didn’t want to do many things, but in the way of choosing from a menu, I’ll have that thing, others may want other things.

Her special preference, especially after champagne, anal play. Contemptuous of Anglo reticence, and of Anglo lovemaking in general. A feminine French ppfffff, you English screw your faces up in disgust, we French have been sticking medicines up our bums since we were children, we don’t see it all as dirty.

Late one afternoon after a long lunch, jazz sounding out of tinny speakers, sixty-nineing sideways on her bed, she looking up, a glimmering smile, adjusting the tilt of her hips, one hand pulling apart her cheek. Initial puzzlement from me, then recognition, pause, commitment.

My tongue tickling her sphincter, gently playing, probing. From her, soft surrendered moaning like a whimper, and an electricity through her body. For me for the first time, that clean distinctive vestigial taste and smell and delicate clinging ligamental tightness.

Years after, seeing her at reunions, all of this never referred to, it’s a long-gone secret belonging to a different world, still precious but only if unspoken. Lucky guy, the one sharing her new secret world now.