Mark: You don’t always get what you want
The first time in that meeting room I am so nervous. I booked it out for 14:30 on Monday. I send Mark the invitation. He had told me exactly what to wear: a black leather skirt, pink and black underwear, hold-ups. My heart races as I climb the stairs, I can’t get my breath. I walk into the room. I sit down. I fall over my words. He reaches over to feel my chest pounding. I move over to his side of the table, and sit on his knee. Shyly and delicately kissing his neck, deliberately avoiding his mouth. I turn my back to him, and grind myself against his left thigh, skirt gathered up around my hips. My right hand feeling his hard dick through his trousers.
When I kneel down in front of him, he orders me to keep my lips closed as he wipes the tip of his cock over them. Then he pushes inside my mouth — he has my hair pulled tight in his fist. This is really happening. We keep the noise down. I feel him clench and release, and he lets it go in the back of my throat. We sit down at the table in the meeting room for a few minutes. I tell him I want more of this.
That evening, I’m so turned on in the wake of what’s happened, I arrange to meet Chris. 25, works in finance, full of himself, shit-hot. One of the most extraordinary faces I’ve ever seen. I tell him about Mark, and we fuck at my flat.
A couple of days later. Early evening this time — lights on over the City. Mark wants to see me — he makes me wait until 6:30pm. The meeting room is dark. I drop to my hands and knees and crawl at his feet — I think he likes it. Dress hitched up around my waist. He unbuttons his trousers, forces my head down on the table with his hand — my cheek pressed against it. He makes me choke on his cock. He tells me to put my fingers inside myself, tells me pull them out to taste them, and tells me not to come. He slaps me hard across the face because I dare to look him in the eye. He comes in my mouth. Stains on my black dress. We walk downstairs back into the office. It’s late.
A colleague tries to have a conversation with me; something mundane, something about client fees. I nod and smile agreement with what she’s saying. I can’t process it. My face is stinging, and I can taste him. I feel like she’s trying to catch me out. Just leave me alone. I pull my coat around me, and put my laptop away.
That night, over text, Mark tells me not to wear perfume when I next see him, so I don’t. He tells me to wear less makeup, so I do. He tells me he’s coming to my flat next Tuesday evening, and I jump at it. Tuesday is five days away. He goes to Chamonix, and I don’t hear from him.
How did this start? We did not say more than ‘hello’ for four months, but I knew from the moment I laid eyes on him that I needed him. ‘Need’ might sound strong, but it was an itch for sure. Irritating. An irrational desire, based on nothing much at all other than chemicals. And boy are they toxic. Invisible substances in the air around us, which got under my skin.
I’d rush past Mark on the stairs not trusting myself to keep my cool — my mind would blank every time I saw him. I must have seemed like an uptight, unapproachable bitch. Well, I guess that’s not too far from the truth. Not entertaining the men I don’t give a shit about, but not trusting myself to be around the ones I can’t stop thinking about fucking. It leaves me with very little.
Locking my eyes onto the back of his neck during those Monday morning meetings — sitting so close that I could have just leant over and inhaled him. Closing my eyes tightly and breathing deeply. Wanting him to notice me; wanting to provoke him.
A few mildly flirtatious exchanges on email, a meeting over a ‘cup of tea’ which didn’t materialise, both of us skirting around the issue, never crossing the line. A great big fuck-off elephant in the office. Then two weeks ago he made his intentions very clear. Finally.
A Thursday lunch date happened. We talked about sex, our attitudes, other people’s attitudes. Our legs rested under the table, not quite touching. We reached an unsaid understanding. Parting ways after an hour, having barely made a dent in those burritos. Going for lunch was never really going to mean eating lunch. I knew our suggestiveness was a red rag to the bulls in both of us — there was no way either of us were going to think better of it.
A civilised parting kiss on either cheek. I went back to the office, while he flew to Istanbul to fuck a 20-something woman he’d met in Ibiza. I wrestled with the morality of the conversations we were having, and wondered how far we would go. He’s in a long-term relationship; one that was borne out of something similar, but went the distance. His girlfriend doesn’t know what he does, and I don’t want to assume she’d be hurt. Is that insulting to her? I don’t know. I don’t know him, and I don’t know her. I have no doubt he loves her. I know, I get it.
At the end of August last year, I discovered messages on my then boyfriend’s phone to his ex, which by comparison to this, were vanilla. One minute I wasn’t suspicious of Owen, and the next I was. I never really knew him. I can’t help but laugh at it now, and pity them both. He sexually impotent; her five months pregnant and not sending pictures of her tits when asked.
I swore I’d never be ‘that’ woman, and then all of a sudden I was. Sure, I thought twice, and then went with the feeling in my gut that I should just seize this. Grab it with both hands and shake it. Hard. Ones morals can go out the window pretty damn quick.
So I find myself writing on my thigh with a black Sharpie to brand myself as his. ‘Mark’s Property’. It’s a performance he’s choreographing: telling me not to touch myself, asking for photos, asking if I’ve been a ‘good girl’. The darkness of it appeals to every nasty, deceitful, shameful, guilt-ridden fibre of my being.
Mark gets back from Chamonix. Tuesday arrives. I spend it in a state of tension. I send him my address. A black gloss door just off the pavement in north London. I can feel the adrenaline — I wonder if I’m going to burn out after this is all over. I feel like I’m going at a million miles an hour. I race home to get ready — music pumping loudly through my headphones. Something to focus on. Overground, Underground, dirty pavements of Zone 2. Key in the door.
The suspender belt clips won’t fasten onto the stockings. I’ve put Radio 4 on to try and calm me down — music makes me think of sex, and I just need to focus. I’m all fingers and thumbs and sweat and a flushed face. It’s too fucking hot in here. Toys and restraints on the bed (just like he asked). I take gulps of gin from the bottle in the kitchen cupboard. I blow out the candle I lit so as not to make it look like something that it isn’t.
I put on my black lace dress. A total fuck-me dress that looks more like underwear than something you’d wear to dinner. I let him through the door — he’s had a long day. I pour us a vodka. Seeing him in this context is exciting. He sits there in a white shirt on my sofa, I want him more than ever. A white shirt will always do it for me. That face, that voice, that body. I kneel beside him – suspenders and stockings on show beneath the hem of my dress. He asks me to tell him a story while his hand creeps up my thigh and into my knickers.
He starts to spank me, and takes photos of me cowering on my sofa. This is just the beginning. He pushes me into the bedroom, securing my hands behind my back with cuffs. I know I don’t stand a chance, and there is no turning back. A few minutes in and he squeezes my throat so hard that I black out — at least that’s what I think happened. When I come round again and I can hear him telling me sternly to relax so he can put the butt plug in — I try and gather my thoughts.
I’m scared. For a few seconds I was in dreamland; thoughts of my ex, weird sequences, unreality. Is that what those cunts that meditate try to achieve? I wonder. Transcendence of sorts. That out-of-body experience. It’s fucked up. I think to myself, just stay conscious for the rest of this. For fuck’s sake. How hard can it be.
He flips me over, and pushes his cock so far to the back of my throat that I can’t breathe. My head is bent over backwards at the side of the bed. I retch, and keep retching and he tells me repeatedly that he doesn’t give a shit if I throw up. I try and reach round with my hands to push him away, turning my head, eyes watering. He fucks me, and he spits in my face. He calls me a filthy little whore, who no one would want to fuck. How much he pities me, how he normally wouldn’t go near a ‘girl’ like me. He gags me — tells me it’ll make me prettier with the ball shoved in my mouth. I come hard. He keeps spitting in my face. He comes over my mouth, rubbing his cock in it. I am alive.
We lie there hot and wet. Breathing. I don’t know if I can touch him, all I want is him to gently hold me. I know that’s not what I signed up for, though. He asks me to massage his right shoulder — he lies on his front, and I straddle his back. We talk as I press my fingers into his muscles and nerves— snippets of subjects. Affairs, admissions, fucked-up relationships, confessions, growing older, fears, thoughts, wants. But never going too deep; surface wounds. I do my best to consider and choose my words.
He says how ‘Sunday cuddles’ are a nice part of a relationship, and in my heart I agree, but the words won’t come out of my mouth. I flippantly say how I can just go and meet men in hotel bars and have sex on a Sunday if I choose. I thought about that afterwards. Yes, I want that safety and love of a relationship — but it’s escaped me so far, so I make do with my lot. My sordid lot. But I can’t say it’s soulless; it’s got soul alright.
I imagine his Sundays with his girlfriend in his house in the country. I remember my Sundays with Owen: treading on eggshells, waiting to be asked to stay the night in the days I wasn’t living in that empty house — and then later when I did live there, just hoping he’d want to stay in the same bed as me.
Mark showers, I pour myself a gin. I sit in the window wrapped in a blanket and smoke a Marlborough Light. The Doves are on. Black and White Town. A kid in the chicken shop window across the road looks over at me. I can see him smirking, and I know he knows.
And the days that follow, he makes me wait for him, sat at my desk on my black and blue bruises, while he makes up his mind as to whether he wants me to suck him or not. And I wait. And I love it. I love being made to feel so needy, so unwanted. It feels like I have whiplash — my whole body aches. Finding more bite marks as they start to show up on my skin. And a deep scratch on my rib cage. My body is a mess. I keep a black Sharpie and brown tape on my desk by my right hand as a nod to him. My phone by my left hand.
We have five working days until his deadline; the deadline which coincides with me leaving the company we both currently work for. The time when he wants it over. I’m well-versed at this, and I know part of me will revel in it. Wondering if he’ll be in touch, wondering if he’ll change his mind and call me one evening. Knowing deep down I’m just another name in his little black book — we can all kid ourselves that we’re special, that we have something the others don’t. But they’re all smart and beautiful and slightly unhinged— or at the very least, just plain beautiful.
I sit on the Overground in the morning and in Pret eating my lunch, legs tightly crossed, knowing those around me can see a hint of the top of my hold-ups — just a hint. Not too much so as to be obvious. Sat there poised and glossy. Pristine. And knowing it’s all for Mark. And when I don’t get his attention, it floors me.
We both know that for us it’s about the next big hit. Yes, we’re refined, we like quality — and in a way that’s where the problem lies. Continually hunting the next trophy, not content with quick wins or an easy ride. It has to be the best. We were four months in the making, and it will be over in a matter of days. And that’s what I live for. The best soon sours and becomes everyday. I never want to be that.
