The Sensual Revolution (7 page)

The first thing I did regarding the house was a massive - and I do mean massive - clean-up. All the rubbish was dealt with, I sorted out Mum’s and Dad’s clothes and personal belongings to see which I wanted to keep, which to send to thrift stores and which needed throwing out. That was so cathartic that I decided to do the exact same thing with the rest of the house. The pile of things to go to the thrift store grew so big that eventually I figured that I would keep it all and see if I could sell any of it at car boot sales, table top sales and local Bring and Buy events. For a couple of months while I was sorting out the house and everything I had a lot of fun going to all of these and became so enthralled about it all that I actually considered learning to drive, doing it professionally for a while and see if I could make a career out of it! In the end I never got any further than thinking about it, but it was fun.

Jamie’s Mum would take me and all the things I had to sell, along with a paste table and small gazebo and help me get set up. Then she would go and get us a cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich from the food stall which we were very glad to have to warm us back up again, especially in the colder months. It was quite amazing what people would pay for what I considered rubbish and a couple of regular car boot sales on the weekend every week gave me enough money to cover some my food and a couple of small bills, so it meant that I didn’t need to dip into my savings so much.

Weekdays,
sometimes well into the night were spent stripping the house right down to the lowest level of decor I could find. Jamie came home regularly over this period to help me out and often while his Mum and I were huddling round our coffee and bacon butties, he was just turning up at the cottage with his tool box in hand! He did all the minor repairs and assessed the major ones to see if they were something he could do by himself or if I would need to hire contractors. While the house had still remained structurally sound amazingly enough, there were some big jobs to do before it was ready to either properly live in or sell. The entire electric system had not been upgraded in the entire time my parents had lived there which was a good many years. This was the most major job of them all and Jamie was not qualified to do this by any stretch of the imagination.

So before I was able to decorate or anything I needed to get an electrician to completely overhaul the house. It was chaos living there for a while, everything was in boxes to protect it and I had stored most of my furniture in
Jenny’s garage. I still had the basic necessities but that translated into a mattress on the floor in my room, a fridge and a microwave in the kitchen and all the bathroom facilities. It was pretty bare, but I knew I could order takeaway or go out to eat in the meantime and it really needed doing. Not much point spending time and money on the house if it was going to burn to the ground soon due to faulty electrics. So I had duly trawled the yellow pages until I found a company that looked like they could do it and made inquiries. The man that had come to inspect the property and give me a quote was an older man, who was nice and friendly and was able to offer exactly what I wanted at a rate I could afford. I paid the deposit and arranged for them to start once the house was empty. I just hoped it would not take long, because as well as doing the electrics I was ready to start decorating and get on with living the rest of my life.

The agreed day dawned bright and clear and I was up with the sun, dressed in my decorating clothes and ready to go far before the appointed time. I was kind of excited but not entirely sure why. I felt like Tony from West Side Story, that something big was coming, but I had no idea what. Regardless I wandered around the house, my hair tied up and under a scarf, scruffy horrible clothes on and a smear of dust across my nose where I had rubbed a recently stripped wall and then scratched my nose! As you can imagine I was a sight for sore eyes, in that anyone looking at me would end up with sore eyes because I felt as if I looked that disgusting!

Around nine o’clock after several hours of pacing and worrying there was a knock on the door (the doorbell was disconnected) and I opened it to a beautiful sight. The man standing there was absolutely drop dead gorgeous, so of course I became all flustered and turned into a babbling fool! Mentally cursing my ineptness I invited him in and immediately screwed up again by offering him a cup of tea. His eyebrows shot up and he started asking me if the electricity was turned off as agreed. Groaning I buried my head in my hands, took several deep breaths and then dared to look up at him, convinced that on top of my dishevelled state I was also now as red as a tomato! Grey eyes, creased with humour met mine and a huge grin broke out on his face.

“Lemonade?”
I inquired trying to sound dignified and composed and failing miserably.

He nodded and told me that lemonade would be just fine and following me into the kitchen he leaned casually against the door frame watching me get glasses out of the cupboard and pouring the drink. Once I had served us both he started asking me to show him around the house so that he could see for himself everything that needed to be done and how easy or hard that would be. I couldn’t help myself as soon as he said hard, I glanced down at the bulge in his trousers, then realised what I had done and immediately resumed the tomato face! Despite my earlier optimism I had a feeling this was going to be a long day.

Excusing myself to him, once he had seen everywhere and was happy with everything I headed into my bedroom and flung myself face down on the mattress on the floor groaning at my folly. As if a gorgeous sexy man like him would even look twice at a fat, ugly lump like me. Of course this made me feel sorry for myself and get all down and dejected, before my sense of humour reasserted itself and I couldn’t stop laughing at what a tit I had made of myself.

I didn’t hear him come into the room, I had my head buried in my pillow to muffle the sounds of laughing in case he heard and thought me even more insane that I had already appeared. I didn’t hear him, but some inner sense but have alerted me because I looked up and over my shoulder to see him striding right over to the mattress an inquisitive look on his face. To my mortified horror (at first at least) he sat down on the bed beside me and started talking to me. Bearing in mind that at this point I was completely innocent of all sexual experiences you can imagine my amazement when he started stroking my arm as he talked. He asked me if I had a boyfriend or anything and then expressed surprise that such a beautiful woman could be single.

Surprise doesn’t even cover it, I was so stunned that I blurted out that I had never had a boyfriend; I was never likely to get a boyfriend and that beautiful had never been a word used to describe me before not even by those that loved me most. And then to cap it all I promptly burst into tears!

Although inside my mind emotions and hormones were jumping up and down to get my attention, trying to highlight the stroking and the word beautiful, for some reason I didn’t seem able to stop crying. He just sat there for a few minutes and then gathered me close in his arms and started stroking my hair. I tried to explain about everything, my Mum and Dad situation, boarding school the lot, it came out in a huge rush, while inside me my
hormones were all burying their head in their hands and groaning. I didn’t even know this man’s name, I looked a complete mess, with red, puffy eyes and now I was blurting out my life story to this extremely attractive stranger. If I had known that the something big that was coming was this… I would have, I don’t know duct taped my mouth shut or something!

Rather than being horrified though he just carried on holding me and stroking my hair until I finished speaking and then until I finished blubbing as well. When I eventually straightened up from his arms to clean my face up and sort myself out I was overcome with embarrassment and started to apologise. He just put his finger on my lip and made shushing noises.

I really couldn’t believe it when his own lips replaced his finger and he started to tentatively kiss me, feeling out whether I was amenable or not. I’m not sure amenable was the word I would have used to describe myself, stunned and terrified maybe. Stunned because out of nowhere this gorgeous hunk was kissing me and terrified because I had never been kissed before and had no idea what to do! He was really gentle though, just placing soft kisses on my closed lips and the eventually probing them with his tongue. I was so surprised upon feeling his tongue there that I opened my mouth to gasp and without hesitation his tongue was inside my mouth, touching my tongue, caressing the roof of my mouth, touching my lips. I sat there as still as a statue, heart pounding while he continued his assault but eventually my frozen state caused him to reluctantly pull away.

He looked into my eyes with a quizzical expression on his face and told me that he realised I had no sexual experience, but my never having been kissed before totally astounded him. He asked if I was okay and I reassured him but then I took a foolish risk and asked him why he wanted to have sex with someone that not only looked like me, but was completely untrained in even the art of kissing, although I was hoping he would do it again, I quite fancied seeing what his tongue felt like if I licked it back.

Although I had stripped my room of almost everything I had kept the large mirror on the wall until the very last moment, intending to move it, decorate and replace it. I had experienced enough bad luck in my lifetime, thank you very much and was not prepared to tempt fate by risking the mirror getting broken. Also of course the fact remained that I still needed to brush my hair, put on makeup and make sure my skirt was not caught up in my knickers on the odd occasion that I wore one!

He stood up, hauled me to my feet and dragged me to the mirror. “What do you see?” He demanded of me, gruffly but not unkindly.

I looked in the mirror reluctantly, I had a fair idea of how I looked on a normal day, I was fat – not blind! I had a fair idea of what I looked like now for that matter, blotchy faced with my hair everywhere and my scruffy clothes on. I wasn’t sure why he was trying to humiliate me this way, I had only just met the guy and it usually took at least a couple of hours before the insults and slurs began! I began describing myself, starting with a fat lump and when I said I was ugly he literally snorted incredulously. I swung round to face him, sure that fate had played me another cruel trick and that this stranger was going to follow the pattern of everyone else and highlight all the other imperfections and flaws I had missed before laughing at me. It was what I was used to after all, other than Jamie and his family and my few friends at school ridicule and humiliation were all I had known since my Mum died.

He must have seen the hurt panic flare in my eyes because still shaking his head he turned me back to the window and then placed himself behind me with his arms cupping me as he began to softly tell me how he saw me.

He started at the very top of my head and began to caress my hair again murmuring into my ear as he did.

“I see a woman with the most beautiful hair I have ever seen, cascading around a face that is pretty and lovely. Look at it and tell me what is actually wrong with it. You have beautiful skin, all creamy and lush and your cheeks colour up so prettily when you are embarrassed.”

He even had the bare faced cheek to grin about that. I was too spellbound by his touch and voice to pay much attention at the time though. I just listened in wonder as he went on…

“Your eyes are lovely, grey and filled with a sparkle that tells me, underneath all this self-doubt and insecurity lives a woman with the heart of a lion, prepared to take on anything and always strong enough to survive. One with a slightly battered sense of humour and an obliterated sense of self-respect admittedly, but a woman still strong enough to survive anything. I see lips that were just meant to be kissed, full and lush, soft and gentle like the petals of a flower, closed in at the moment but just awaiting the right moment to unfurl. I could carry on all day and you would probably think I was a right sap if I did, but listen. You are beautiful, your tits are outstanding; I could bury my face in them for the rest of forever. Everywhere there is skin I can see and touch on your body, it is so soft and such a glorious colour. You are like a pre-Raphaelite goddess, lush and ripe and just waiting to be uncovered and worshiped.”

I turned around again with complete incredulity plastered all over my face.

“I can see someone in the mirror too but to me she looks like a fat ugly blimp” I challenged him, “are you so desperate that you have to lie to me to kiss me?”

For a moment he just stared at me and then threw back his head and laughed uproariously. I was just preparing myself to be completely humiliated when he abruptly sobered and led me again to the mattress on the floor. Once there I again listened spellbound as he went on to describe why he loved big women like me. He called me a big, beautiful woman and admitted that he much preferred a woman he could hold onto than someone who looked like they would break if he cuddled them.

“Don’t get me wrong, all women are beautiful and obviously there are some simply stunning slim girls around, I have had my share of very beautiful slim girls and some less so and enjoyed them all and they have enjoyed me I think. At least they haven’t complained!” The broad grin was so wide on his face that he looked like the Cheshire
Cat, that combined with the suggestively leering eyes and I couldn’t help myself. I collapsed with laughter myself!

Once we had both finished laughing, he continued saying “Seriously though love, there is nothing ugly about you, so far from it that I am furious at all the people who brought you to believe this about yourself. Yeah so you carry a little extra weight, big deal, your weight isn’t what defines you. Anyway I am not the only man who likes a cuddly lady, there are millions of us. And underneath all that hurt and insecurity you are truly a very beautiful woman.”