Christmas With and Without Carol

Last month, at the party, the Year's Last Virgin had failed in his attempts to have sex with Carol. Could an encounter with a haunted TV from the Twilight Zone alter history...?

Electro rhythms pulse up through the floor. They vibrate the bed softly. And the crumpled duvet and mound of coats that rock in warm drunken waves of darkness. And Carol. Mounting her is like sinking into an airbed of warm flesh. She's grinning up at me like some kind of challenge, short skirt hitched up somewhere around her waist, as though she's simultaneously trying to get out of it, or trying to get back into it, bare legs spread as I fumble between them stupidly. The sound stops abruptly. A muted drift of conversation from the party filters through whoever's bedroom this is. I try to kiss her – girls expect that sort of thing, don't they? But she doesn't seem too interested. 'Put it in' she teases, 'put it in.' Sensations crawl up and down my spine as I shift around. A surge of alcohol canting in the back of my brain, transmitting a tingle of anticipation to where my quivering penis bobs out bare and eager between my shirt-tails.

The music resumes, a slightly different rhythmic throb, one that matches my own accelerating sexual momentum. I hold my breath desperately, bite my lip as it begins. 'Come on' she hisses in growing impatience, 'put it in.' And the first thermonuclear-storm hits my gut, the first spurt of orgasm, gushing white fluid spasming wildly across her fluffed-up pubic hair and soft white belly. Gooey strands of festive Silly-String bursting prematurely. 'You dirty sod... you dirty sod... you dirty sod...'

Her voice repeats in his head like a looped sample on a Dance track. The same accusation. The same disgust as she wriggles away from him, and he's wiping and apologising, wiping and apologising. Premature Ejaculation – hell, that's the kind of thing that takes all the poetry and romance and tenderness out of shagging the arse off someone. He stalks up and down his flat trying to drive the memory away. But it persists. It haunts like a ghost of Christmas Parties Past. The TV is dead. His room is drab. He crosses to the sideboard beneath the bookshelves and scattered DVDs, and hefts a can. Genuine German Lager. He slumps down deep into the couch. It should all have been different. It should all have been better. He rips the ring-pull back and it foams up in spurts of white fluid.

One month ago tonight, at college. They'd quit the Night-Class Computer Course for Xmas recess, and drifted down to 'The Tiger' in the Old Town. From high-brow to Lowenbrau. He had nothing better to do, and when someone mentions a party, an open invitation, he goes along for no particular reason. He seldom gets a party invite. The year's last virgin. The city's last virgin? Probably. He's seen photographs and facsimiles. Books and magazines full of it. Milan Kundera, Charles Baudelaire, Georges Bataille, Henry Miller. He's seen films and blu-rays – Nagisa Oshima's 'The Realm Of The Senses' (1976), Luis Buñuel's 'Diary Of A Chambermaid' (1964), Béatrice Dalle in 'Betty Blue' (1986), and 'Nine-And-A-Half Weeks' (1986). But sex is touch and taste too. Love and sex and eroticism and desire and sweaty bodies stuck together in lust too. There's nothing like actually DOING it. Nothing like actually having a proper wriggle in the naughty naked nude with a greedy sexable nymphet.

So why can't he achieve that squelchy moist reality? Gangly-tall and greasy-dark, acne like meteor impact craters, but not too bad looking, surely? He studies his face in the mirror, looking for clues. The night was sharp and cold as they gang-scrunch down the row of terraced houses towards the party address. The thump of electro-beats audible a street away. He's nervous and awkward already. The house is crazy with people. A shag-fest of erotic alchemy. Festive? Humbuggery! Once inside he hangs around feeling conspicuous, studies the array of CDs defensively, reading and rereading the liner-notes while the rest of the class dissolve into the girls and the booze.

And then there's Carol...

He curses and slurps viciously from the can. Another stupid month gone by. And still the city's last virgin.

He thumbs the remote and the TV fades up into... a Game Show. The prompted laughter ripples artificially at each of the slick Host's well-scripted innuendos. The girl contestant smiles up coyly at her live-in lover. He looks back deep into her eyes. Layering her soul-naked in their shared intimacy. He hits the button. A wildlife documentary. Turtles flip and shimmer across a white beach into a crystal-blue tide. Undulating down through swaying fronds of weird weed, ugly rainbow fish and Disney castles of coral. Two of them touch tender flippers and nuzzle snub snouts. Curling around each other in some spiralling aquatic mating ritual. He hits the button so hard his index finger hurts. The screen is dark and mottled. Which button did he select? What channel is this? The red LCD says '888'. It separates out slowly. There shouldn't even be a station tuned in here.

He pulls a long self-indulgent mouthful of amber fluid from the can and thinks dull thoughts. This must be some new digital station he's picked up by accident. A programme beamed in from somewhere just south of Saturn. He applies pressure to the volume control. A soundtrack of edgy electro rhythms that pulse through warm drunken waves of darkness. A bedroom of heaving shadows that sprawl across a mound of coats and a crumpled duvet on a bed that vibrates softly. He watches in dumb incomprehension. His crotch crawls in prickly anticipation. He runs through the channels again just to be sure. The Game Show. Copulating turtles. American football. The Minister for the Environment attempting to explain away the latest eco-disaster toxic-spill. Then channel eight-eight-eight again... and that same bedroom. That same party.

He watches intensely. His palms moist with sweaty arousal. The drab room around him becomes less distinct as he concentrates his attention obsessively on the expanding screen which draws him in like heavy heavy gravity.

Electro rhythms pulse up through the floor. They vibrate the bed softly. He can feel the slight roughness of coats and the smoothness of crumpled duvet on his bare knees in warm drunken waves of darkness. Carol smiles up at him, smiling in a way that could be teasing, or inviting. She'd approached him at the party as he was reading and rereading the Utah Saints CD insert. Mousy hair in long untidy curtains. A short skirt that does little to disguise her slightly over-generous plumpness. But SHE'D approached HIM. In a party full of strangers it was Carol who makes the first move. He glances around as muted drifts of conversation filter in through whoever's bedroom this is. That same bedroom. The same girl.

The ghost of his Christmas past come again through a haunted TV screen. The year's last virgin. He looks down at her, short skirt hitched up somewhere around her waist, bare legs spread as I fumble clumsily between them. She's nervous too. I realise that now, so I run my hand down her face as gently as I can. Perhaps she needs some tenderness as much as I do?

'Come on' she murmurs gently, 'put it in.' The kind of sounds that jelly your knees, lap your earlobes and finger-crawl around your glans. She's not pretty, but she's warm, soft and feminine.

'I don't do this all the time' I whisper.

'That's OK. Neither do I. But you seem nice. And you looked so sad...'

'YOU DIRTY SOD... YOU DIRTY SOD... YOU DIRTY SOD...' I force the image away. She must have felt so humiliated when that happened. PREMATURE EJACULATION!

A surge of alcohol cants in the back of my brain. An answering tingle of anticipation trembles up the length of my quivering cock. No – not this time. I won't disappoint HER this time. Mounting Carol is like sinking into an airbed of soft flesh. The sound stops abruptly. All I can hear is our breath in a pulse of mutual rhythms. We curl into each other like some spiralling aquatic mating ritual. My cock nuzzling into her darkly luxurious pubic triangle, sinking deep in a whirlpool of flesh that clings lasciviously. Not the hard pelvic bones of an anorexic supermodel in the magazine spreads I've wanked over in furious desperate isolation, but softly yielding woman in huge amounts that stirs that answering tell-tale rippling in the pit of my spine. Her thighs lift to receive me. How I've dreamed and fantasised of applying long hot pokes of cock to receptive cunt-tunnels of sex. But this is different. She smiles up almost coyly at me. I look back deep into her eyes. Layering her soul-naked in intimacy. Touching her self-conscious loneliness, as acute as my own.

I hold my breath desperately and slide into her all the way until I'm fully embedded, her head rearing back, and she gasps so low I almost miss it. Lying together as the rage of erotic sensations stabilize, the music from the party below resumes, to a slightly different rhythmic pulse. 'Come on' she hisses in eager invitation, 'fuck me hard you randy sod.' We laugh together in moist tangles of tongue as I slide back out until only my cock-head is still inside her, creating a terrible trembling tension as she gyrates her hips to re-trap me, then I thrust deep and she groans in her throat, louder this time, as my balls slap up hard against her arse.

'That's nice' she purrs.

'You make it nice, Carol, you're beautiful.' I should have told her before, even though it's not exactly true, but I was too scared.

'Just fuck me now.' And I do. Finding the smooth softness of her large wobbling hand-fitting breasts and thick stubby nipples. As her tongue searches out my throat. The momentum accelerates through long intense thrusts, her whole body trembling with the motion, her cunt walls responding in a way that feels like ringlets of lips racing up and down the length of my cock from base to tip and back again. Until the meteor-storm hits my gut uncontrollably, and she yells out loud 'I'm cumming, I'm cumming you randy sod!' The first spurt of orgasm bursts furiously inside her, white fluid pulsing and pulsing until the sweaty sensations subside, moist belly to moist belly.

She licks my lips carefully with me gradually losing rigidity in the moist clasp of that beautiful cunt. 'I'm Carol. What's your name?'

Then she says 'Phone me, my mobile number is...' she recites the number, and I repeat it.

The screen dissolves into a swarm of dark mottled shadows. He's slumped down deep into the decayed upholstery of the couch. A can of lager in his fist. He's squeezed it so hard the tin is indented. The remote control in his other hand, holding it so tightly his index finger hurts. The stillness is huge and calm.

This can't have happened. Things like this don't happen. Either he's nodded off and drifted into some bizarre fragment of a wish-fulfilment dream. Or he's intercepted some rogue digital transmission in freak reception conditions. Something from the Twilight Zone. He channel-hops. Two turtles lie together in post-copulatory longueur on a sun-drenched beach where the long green fingers of palms fringe the lagoon. He hits the button. The Game Show girl contestant smiles coyly into the camera and winks an erotic knowing wink directly at him.

He stalks up and down his flat trying to work out the aspects and angles. But it haunts like some kind of Christmas ghost, past, present – and future. The TV is dead. His room is drab. He crosses to the mobile on the sideboard and hefts it up. What number was it she'd said? 'Phone me. My number is...' 'Phone me. My number is...' 'Phone me. My number is...'

The burrs seem to go on forever. He almost loses his nerve and slams the phone down.

'Hello...?' A girl's voice. Sensual. Instantly recognizable.

'Carol, is that you? You probably don't remember me. We met at a party some time ago. I was just thinking about that night, what happened, what should have happened.'

A pause. His crotch crawls in prickly anticipation. 'Dave? I can't believe it's you. I've thought so much about you since that night, and wondered about you.'

'If you don't think it's stupid, and you've got nothing better to do. Perhaps we could meet up?'

'I'd love to, Dave. I'd love to.'

The city's last virgin? But not for much longer. This time he'd make all the right moves. He owes it to Carol.

by Tristan Trotsky