Id of Europe extract - Chapter 3

Back to St. Petersburg

Chapter Three

She wasn’t there and she was the last thing Steve remembered. The clagged-up eyes and starched throat he knew of these hungover occasions, the dent in the bed where a girl’s long body had rested, untouched or so he thought, were normal symbols of a night out. You invited disappointment just by leaving home, and by getting to whatever party and waking up again and were forced to face the truth of failure right next to you in the bed: that void. The woman who wasn’t there anymore.

He vaguely remembered her leaving. It had still been daylight then; now the same gloom of their arrival occupied the whole flat, then early morning, now early evening. While his long night’s intake of booze had left him pinned to the bed in deepest slumber, she had woken according to the rhythms of the day. Women often responded that way to their hangovers he’d learnt. They’d always get up at an earthly hour and enact their daily rituals while the sun still shone, even if they were destined a hour or so later to feel sorry for themselves in front of garbage on the TV until it was time for bed again. Steve preferred to sleep as much of his post-alcohol trauma off as he could, so that when he awoke he’d be able to do something mildly productive with what little remained of the day. Though he’d feel guilty for squandering the hours of sunlight he knew it was better to be awake and retain some control of body and mind, rather than have both nag him incessantly over the ravaging he’d given them via vodka and beer. If only she’d been more patient, whatever her name was, they’d be having superlative sex right now. Instead they were apart. He, scratching his balls under his quilt in a blacked out flat and she most likely in her dressing gown sucking her thumb in front of some inane film.

He could still smell her, however, and that lifted his heart. His cock stirred as well. A wank was inevitable. He thrust his hand under his pillow to rummage for the packet of paper handkerchiefs he normally kept there, but the search caused it to fall behind the bed to the floor, as usual. He’d have to get up, if he wasn’t to squirt into a section of sheet, which he thought about doing for a second. Steve’s landlady washed his bed-clothes and he didn’t want the embarassment of that sort of discovery coming between them.

So he flung aside the quilt and jumped out of bed. He turned on the bedroom light which made him squint and went looking for the fabric that could act as receptacle for the big wodge of sperm that had built up in his testicles. Why was that? He often asked himself. Drunkenness meant impotency but the hangover invariably caused the complete opposite: a raging appetite for a hump entailing jets of cum and all-round ecstasy that left one feeling like the king of porn. That only applied if there was a woman in the vicinity, however, unlike now.

Why hadn’t she waited, for fuck’s sake? He demanded an answer as he patrolled the flat looking for something disposable that might also take in the pent-up content of his lust.  He was naked, which added insult to injury, and his half-hard-on pleaded for a helping hand.

A visit to the drawer in his desk informed him that he had no more paper handkerchiefs left. He said “fuck” and his cock drooped, though there was still heat enough in it for a revival.

It was in the hallway, hands on naked hips, despairing that he might never find something to jerk off into other than his own underpants, that last port of call, when he clocked something strange hanging from one of the coat-hooks. Whether his eyes clapped onto to it to begin with, or the maddening fragrance it exuded got to his nostrils ahead of them; whatever, he was going to fuck that scarf.

She’d left it behind. “Fucking result,” he said to himself. He grabbed and inhaled it and felt some of the night’s memories come flooding back. She’d been the one who’d helped him out while he was being searched by the paramilitaries, she’d danced, very fetchingly, with him for a time and then she’d taken him home, her almost carrying him from taxi to flat.

What Steve’s memory was failing to remind him was that she had also undressed him and tried desperately to get him stiff with a focused blow job that he had fallen asleep to. She'd head-butted his groin foran age until it was clear he wouldn’t wake up. Yet, Steve was oblivious to the fact that if anyone had been the culprit in the sorry saga, it was him.

He was now beyond morality, in any case. He masturbated frantically with the girl’s silk scarf hooding his knob, with the odd peep into the wider world which it would next seek to conquer given another chance in a night club. And then he reached the point of no return. An escalation of a filthy sex-slick rode up his shaft in a juddering panic, until it burst asunder into the scarf where it fell in thick, hot-to-cooling drips over his hand and pubic hair. The accumulated glob in the thin material felt like spilt egg white wiped up in a fancy tea-towel. Steve squeezed it to both savour the moment of his excess and also save himself from his own juice slopping onto his toes.

He looked at the scarf and panted, naked on his hallway, as he threw it to the floor. He was done with it. This was an item of attire that was now un-returnable.