Superslut

"What are you drinking?" asked one of Kulthoom's friends.

"I'm not sure," said Judith honestly. "Orange juice. Fruit juice. Something like that."

"J2O, then," said the girl, teetering on her heels and heading to the bar through an unmannerly scrum of immodestly dressed young women and leering young men.

And so, Judith's first experience of alcohol was in the form of alcopops, a concoction she'd never been warned of and had never heard of. And that, with the noise, the bright lights, the smell of perspiration, made the evening even more chaotic. The little shouted conversation she had was far from profound and was generally merely to confirm that she was a friend of Kulthoom and studied the same subject at university. There was no opportunity for her to mention her religion, how this was her first time dressed as Superslut and how totally out of her depth she was.

Judith's confusion was only intensified when—after stretching out her alcopops to several hours and still feeling giddy and light-headed—she found herself queuing for more than half an hour in wholly the wrong clothes for the night temperature. She was then let into a night club whose entrance fee cost her almost as much as the train-fare to Middlesbrough. And once inside, it was far worse than her ordeal in the pub had prepared her for.

It was both too bright and too dark under the bizarre lighting. It was certainly too crowded and, most of all, it was too loud. Judith had had very little exposure to contemporary dance music. What little she'd heard usually leaked out of iPods or car stereos and she'd never been able to make any sense of it. Now she was wholly immersed in it and it was incredibly loud. More than that, the massive bass rhythm thundered inside Judith's bared stomach and its sheer volume shook her teeth. Its only consolation was that, by making conversation even more difficult, it spared her the embarrassment of anyone attempting to converse with her.

Judith imagined Hell was probably pretty much like this. A confusion of lights and demonic noise, while all around her was more bared flesh than she'd ever anticipated. No one was actually naked as such, but so much skin was on display from the men and women dancing to the thunderous music that there was little left to the imagination. And in no time at all, Judith lost sight of Kulthoom and her friends.

As Judith wandered about the club, skirting the huge dance-floor, past the chill-out room, around the perimeter of the central podium, she became less and less sure of herself. She might imagine herself as Superslut, ready to rock and roll, and gagging for a fuck, but her overwhelming sensation was of disorientation and confusion. And the men, the object of her desire: they approached her like lunatics, swaying and gurning and staggering, often in some kind of sympathy to the music emanating from the DJ's turntables high above the dance-floor. This was not the invitation to romance that a virgin like Judith could contemplate. Even if she was secretly Superslut.

Eventually, Judith could bear it no longer and was thoroughly relieved when by chance she stumbled out of the club and was back in the open-air. No more of the teeth-grating noise that still buzzed residually in her ears. No more press of flesh against hers as she dodged past the flailing dancers. No more puddles of beer to avoid slipping in. No more maelstroms of strobing bright lights.

But, despite her relief at being free from Hell in the corporeal world, she was also aware that she was lost in Exeter. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know how to get home. She didn't know whether there were any buses to catch, although being after midnight she thought it unlikely. And, worst of all, she was dressed as Superslut and the clothes belonging to Judith the Jehovah's Witness, who was the one who lived in her student lodging, were still lying on the bed in Kulthoom's flat. It was enough to make her swear.

Judith practised a few profanities. "Fuck! Shit! Bugger! Damn! Arsehole!" Although she was sure that each of them was enough to condemn her to an eternity of hell-fire and in combination would increase her torments a billion-fold, letting loose a stream of invective, however poorly she understood the words, did make her feel better.

But the comfort it gave her didn't last very long, and soon she was crouched on a bench by the canal, shivering in her few clothes, a face collapsed in wretchedness and hair plastered over her face. And then, as if this humiliation and disgrace wasn't enough, it started to drizzle.

"Oh no!" cried Judith, who found that swear-words were definitely no substitute for an umbrella or a water-proof.

"Judith! It is you, isn't it?" she heard a man's voice. "I could hardly recognise you. What are you doing here?"

Judith raised her head and squinted at the dark figure of a young man through her wire-framed spectacles (about the only thing she was wearing in her alter ego of Superslut that was what she'd normally wear). It was Yu, a student from her Viruses and Bacteria course. He was Chinese in ethnic origin, but spoke with a distinct Home Counties accent.

"I've just been to the night club," said Judith through a voice choked with gulped phlegm, just as her face was streaked by tears.

"You have?" said Yu, surprised. "I really wouldn't have thought… But you're going to get soaked if you stay out here. It looks like it might actually rain for real. Where's your lodging?"

"I don't know."

"Sorry?"

"I'm lost. I don't know where I am. I went to this night club… I shouldn't have… I was so…" spluttered Judith, and then she burst into tears.

It was inevitable that Yu should take Judith back to the small bedsit he rented in the town centre. He couldn't very well leave Judith on the bench by the canal, especially when, while they were speaking, there was a sudden squall of rain in amongst the drizzle that, although it lasted very little time at all, was a harbinger of more inclement weather to come. Judith was very nearly delirious. The combination of the alcopops she'd drunk and her disorientation left her in a state that Yu attributed to a much greater degree of hedonistic abandon than that to which Judith had actually acquainted herself.

Judith wasn't even properly aware of her surroundings when her distress subsided sufficiently for her to study them. What had Superslut let her in for? What fresh sins had she committed?

In fact, Yu's room was about as innocent as any student's could be. There were books and folders scattered about the shelves and around a small laptop computer. Posters on the wall celebrated Arsenal football club and last year's World Cup. The CDs piled up by the stereo system featured rock music unfamiliar to Judith, but unlikely to have been played at the night club. He was sitting on the bed, nursing a cup of coffee, while Judith noticed she was sitting on an armchair with a cold cup of coffee and biscuits in front of her.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Judith blurted. "I really shouldn't have…"

"Shall I order you a taxi?" Yu asked.

"A taxi?" Judith wondered.

"Well, you'll want to go home, won't you?" Yu remarked.

Judith considered this momentarily. Did she want to go back to her lodgings? She thought about the implications. Her clothes were at Kulthoom's flat. The clothes she was wearing would precipitate a confrontation with her co-believers that she was ill-prepared for. She was slightly drunk and she'd not achieved anything that she'd hoped to from this evening. And what was it that she'd wanted to achieve? What did she hope to get by letting loose her alter ego into the world?

Judith looked up at Yu. He was a nice boy. Very nice. Short, perhaps. Certainly shorter than Linus. Judith hadn't really spoken to him much before, even though he was in the same lectures and seminars as her. But he was in full possession, Judith was sure, of whatever it was that made him a man. And he'd treated her with kindness.

What would Superslut say?

"I think I'd rather stay here," said Judith with more firmness than she'd expected, tugging at her top in the first of a series of movements that would prepare her for bed.

And, unlike Linus, there was no resistance from Yu, who must have, to a certain extent, half-expected what was to come.

It was at this point that Superslut finally revealed herself. Judith had been right to believe that inside her was another girl, eager to be set free, who would have the carnal appetite that would overwhelm, well, certainly Yu. And although it was Judith's first time—and rather more painful than she'd anticipated—the passion she harboured was at least as great as Judith had imagined.

In practice, Judith was rather less wanton than she'd imagined Superslut would be. She didn't indulge in anal intercourse nor did she let her face be pasted by semen; not that it occurred to Yu that this was a necessary part of their love-making nor did he offer it up as an option to her. The love-making (and it felt rather more like that than 'fucking') was actually quite gentle and slow for most of the time. Even languid. And the most physical and passionate phases of it, during the thrusting in the prescribed missionary position, was punctuated with rather fewer of the obscenities and grunts that Judith had expected.

And it was on this day, also, that Superslut died. While Judith rested in Yu's bed, her head nestled on his bare chest and her legs entwined around his, she decided that the love she wanted was probably not, after all, anything like that she'd imagined it would be. She'd be far happier with one man, rather than several. She'd be more content to get to know the man in her life as a person, rather than as just a fuck-machine. Not only was she not ready for Superslut, it was also the case that Superslut wasn't really what she wanted to be.

She turned to face Yu, who was stirring. His eyes opened slightly, but he wasn't really awake.

Judith put a hand on his penis, which she was pleased to see was half-tumescent and would take very little effort to bring into full life. And then the Sabbath could be properly desecrated.

She sidled down Yu's thighs, cupped his testicles in the palm of her hand, and took his awakening penis in her mouth. "May the Lord bring me sustenance…" said Judith to herself, as Yu's penis came very much into life.

Perhaps Judith wasn't Superslut exactly, but she could certainly learn from her alter ego.