A recurring memory, I must have been in my middle twenties: walking home at 5am in shadowed half light of early summer and catching sight of my white, ghostly face in some store window. I was happy, smiling though the lines of tiredness were etched into the corners of my eyes.

Home then was two rooms in a shared house, but I’d spent the night with an accordion player who after some listless sex had leapt out of bed to share some accordion dreams with me.

I guess now I can see her need to play polkas as some slight critique of my sexual prowess, though back then all I’d wanted to do was to pull the covers over and sleep.

Instead she told me of early years recognition of musical technique then gradual decline into playing at occasional german beer festivals, bars and old timer weddings. She was good, no doubts about that, just that after the wine we’d drunk, indifferent fucking and lateness of hour, all I wanted was sleep.

And yet, my face in the window was happy. She finally put the accordion away, locked into some big cupboard with padlocks and chains so I, indeed, anyone, could be left in no doubt as to the preciousness of its contents and came back to bed.

We lay together, I wondering what had just happened, and whether that huge beast now locked away in the cupboard would come between us. I’d met her only a few days previously at a party, we’d both been drunk and had sat on the stairs while waiting for the bathroom.

Somehow, for some reason now beyond me I’d started kissing her and she’d begun kissing back. Her boyfriend didn’t like this and wanted to fight but I was too full of piss and beer to respond.

Instead she told him to fuck off and began squeezing my dick.

Later she told me of him and his sister, who really wasn’t his sister, just that for two years he’d told her that she was. It was only when she found them fucking and had thrown up over them, that he admitted she really wasn’t his sister but some floozy who loved sucking his cock while he spanked her backside and that this he felt unable to stop doing.

We were young then, and while some things like eating meat were unthinkable, sex with strange people was just one more thing in the everyday. He’s a politician now, not in any parliamentary way, just locally with his blonde hair shining in other shop windows or the local rag at election times and I know he thinks he’s still putting one over on people, but then which politician isn’t?

Finally I’d gotten 2 hours sleep before she woke me again, gently tugging at my morning hard on and wanting more. She was whispering, calling herself whore, slut and best of all: open cunted bitch. I lay there feeling hands working on me, hearing these words in the half light, excited/scared at the words, her hands pulling me on top, urging, asking me to call her names, whore, slut, open cunted bitch.

Wanting to fuck her, wanting to giggle at the wonder of it, then finally giving in to rhythm and needs. And she was good this time, obviously the words had power to turn her on, make feelings happen, I’d known this from others before her but finally understood that words do change what happens. 

Where before I’d heard words as noise adjacent to feelings coming from my skin, lips, fingers, dick, now words could increase, heighten these sensations. Words once used in anger-apart perhaps from open cunted bitch, could now be used creatively to turn insipid sex into torrid.

And I wanted more.

Not that she and I continued on for much longer, she went back to him after a while before finally giving up the accordion to work as a piano teacher. You know what happened to him but I never knew what happened to the sister who wasn’t. I know she split up with him after being thrown up on but then she faded as people so often did when I was young, they came and went, some creating fun only to go one day and never reappear.

I wanted more and like all new toys I tried it in all situations…

Neil Benbow

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