I didn’t know it at the time, but Ray often used music to set the scene. On this occasion, though, he didn’t put anything on either deck, but I don’t think he had forgotten. He was just setting the scene with silence instead. Letting the silence build.
He fetched a can of beer from a fridge twice the size of the one at home, and settled himself on the sofa. There wasn’t much in the fridge besides beer, some milk and a sliced loaf. With anyone but Ray, I’d have thought it was a bit poncy, having a fridge so much bigger than you need.
When you switched on the lights in the bathroom, a fan came on with a whirr, which gave me a bit of a start. Ray had a shower head fixed to the wall above the bath, and a glass panel to intercept splashes. The shower at Mum and Dad’s fitted over the bath taps, not very reliably.
After I’d had my pee, I had a good look at myself in the mirror. Blue eyes are supposed to be an advantage, but I don’t see how they can be when they’re a mucky blue like mine. Blue eyes should be a strong colour like Ray’s. My eyes wobble the whole time when I look at myself in a mirror. I can’t seem to fix them so they’re still. I wonder if they’re like that all the time, wobbly rabbit eyes, or if it’s just me in the mirror that sets them off.
After my pee I went into the kitchen and wolfed down some of the bread from the fridge. I could see a big steel toaster but I didn’t want to keep Ray waiting, and I wasn’t sure how to work it. There wasn’t any butter but I found some jam. Then I put the kettle on. I’d not come across an electric kettle before — I knew they existed, obviously, I didn’t live in a time-warp, I’d watched Tomorrow’s World since I was eight or something, but my parents used the hob. Ray’s kitchen was all-electric, though, and the kettle looked more like a metal jug plugged into the wall. I filled it and pressed the switch so a light came on. To be fair to myself, that jug style wasn’t common for a long time after. Maybe it was a prototype or something imported.
I couldn’t keep still, and though I was trying to play it cool, I kept looking in on Ray in the lounge. I noticed he had put the dress gloves on — I thought then that he had retrieved them from his jacket while I had my pee, which he may have done, but I didn’t even consider the possibility that he had more than one pair. More than likely it was another pair.
He didn’t speak to me, or look at me directly. I kept shuffling from watching the kettle in the kitchen to hovering over Ray, and he was kind enough not to make me feel stupid by pointing out that I didn’t need to watch the kettle, which would turn itself off without my help when it had boiled. Of course I only thought of that later on. I can’t believe how patient he was. He absolutely didn’t rush me.
When he had finished his beer he shook the can significantly and raised his eyebrow. I didn’t need subtitles to know he wanted me to fetch another, and I wasn’t offended that he didn’t say thank you when I brought it. When I came in at last with my cup of tea, I must admit that I was a bit put out that he stretched out his gloved hand to bar me from the place on the sofa next to him. I suppose I was being a bit sneaky making myself at home, but he’d told me to help myself from the fridge so I didn’t realise I was taking a liberty in the lounge.
When he stretched out his hand, I thought he meant I should sit on the end furthest from him, but when I made my way over there he just shook his head — still without meeting my eyes. The leather of his one-piece suit accompanied his gestures with a supple creaking.
In a way it was insulting that he warned me off the sofa as if I was a dog that would leave stray hairs on it. But if he hadn’t given me any guidance, how would I have ended up where I wanted to be but would never dare to suggest, curled up at his feet? He didn’t tell me what to do. He didn’t say that I had no right to a chair, any more than my naff jacket had a right to a peg. In a strange way he freed my choices, though he seemed to take them away. There was a matching armchair opposite the sofa, and I could perfectly well have gone over to that. Of course I’ll never know whether he would actually have let me sit there, but knowing his nature better now, I think he would have. He just wasn’t interested in forcing people.
After all the palaver of making the tea I didn’t get the chance to drink it. Ray simply moved it out of my reach. Obviously he had realised that I needed something to do with my hands, and that if he just let me get rid of my fidgets I wouldn’t disappoint him. Ray was good at waiting. Even his waiting wasn’t like ordinary people’s waiting. His waiting was decisive. He decided that I had needed to make that cup of tea, but I didn’t need to drink it.
Ray took my glasses off for me. If I’d been told before it happened that I would be blindfolded the night I lost my virginity, I would have had one of my panics. But when Ray took a black handkerchief, folded it slowly and then knotted it round my head to blot out my vision, I was almost relieved. The thing I’d never been able to imagine about sex, as it might apply to me, was how anyone would ever have the patience to show me what to do. I couldn’t see it happening, not to me. Now as Ray deftly knotted the black hanky behind my head, I knew it was under way at last. It no longer mattered that I didn’t have the first clue. Someone else was taking responsibility.
When he started to take my clothes off, I minded a lot less than I would have without the hanky. He undressed me not roughly and not gently, just efficiently. I found I could cope with Ray seeing my body, as long as I didn’t have to see it myself.
Ray pulled me up to my knees facing him. Obviously he had decided that I needed something stronger than tea. It may not have occurred to him that I wasn’t any sort of drinker. On special occasions Dad would pour me a glass of ‘shandy’, which was really only lemonade with a splash of beer in it. He made a big show of it, as if two sips would have me roaring, and I suppose I believed I was being allowed into the world of the grown-ups. Mum and Dad drank advocaat on special occasions, and from the time I was twelve they let me have some at Christmas — only it was really only custard, in a little glass like the ones they were using. Since I was sixteen they’d given me actual advocaat, but I actually preferred the custard, and I would have asked to go back to the old routine if I hadn’t been afraid of seeming a baby.
Suddenly there was warmth against my mouth, and roughness and cold and wet. I opened my lips and Ray let beer trickle from his mouth to mine. I coughed and choked on the sour-tasting liquid. If I had been a beer-breathing creature from some sort of lager planet he would have been giving me the kiss of life, but I was only dazed Colin from Isleworth and I couldn’t cope. Then when I’d choked on the taste I realised there was another taste behind it, the elusive taste of Ray’s tongue. I wanted that. The tastiness of him inside his mouth.
Still, my fear of drink was stronger than my curiosity about kissing, and it paralysed me. Ray took another gulp of beer, but this time I kept my mouth shut against him, until he used his tongue as a slippery crowbar to overcome my defences. His tongue turned to a warm liquid inside the cold stream of the beer as it entered my mouth. It vanished before I could find it with mine.