Before She's Thirty

Standing together, she was initially very grateful when Carl joined the self-service queue, but then winced visibly when the bacon wouldn't scan and an, in her opinion, annoyingly helpful assistant came over and stood over them as they scanned in each item. The condoms were the last item to be scanned and, giving that machine was now working, it was highly unnecessary for her remain, but remain she did. Susan was sure, rationally, that the assistant, a middle-aged Indian lady, wasn't judging her, and didn't in fact give a damn. Still she hated the idea of a stranger knowing she was going to be having sex. It was ridiculous, but it was just one more ordinary part of life that she'd never really got to experience before.

That ordeal being over, they left the shop, Carl taking both of the shopping bags.

"This way," said Carl. "We've still got a lot to do. This way." He led her further into the backstreets away from Piccadilly and towards Regents Street. Susan got the impression that he kind of knew where he was going, but not a hundred percent. He was preoccupied with finding their way, and didn't engage her in conversation much, which she was happy about. It was a nice evening. Finally, having peered at the signs for a number of side-streets, they eventually came to the one he wanted. After they passed a few shops they came to the one he wanted, a posh-looking hair salon.

"Right, this is the place," he said. He was greeted at the door by one of the junior assistants. "Mr Williams, I called to make an appointment for my wife just a little bit earlier. Thanks for fitting us in at such short notice," Carl said.

"Ah, yes, anniversary wasn't it. In truth it's no bother. Tuesday evening isn't usually our busiest time," said the assistant, showing them to a discreet little semi-circular alcove in the corner of the salon. "If you'd like to have a seat. Miriam is just finishing up with the previous client. There are some books of styles on the table. Coffee? Tea?"

"We'll both have a black coffee," said Carl quickly. That was unnecessarily thought Susan, who usually took hers white. She'd agreed to be 'controlled', but there was no need to be a dick about it. They'd skipped out on coffee at the restaurant though, so one would be welcome nonetheless. She idly picked up one of the catalogues of hairstyles and started to flick through it.

Carl was sitting fairly deeply in the alcove and, once the coffee arrived, discretely twisted the tops of the rum, and, lowering the cups underneath the table one by one, carefully poured a shot in to each one, without taking the bottle out of the bag or the bag off the chair. He offered her one cup with a smile and she took a sip. She found the rum more comforting than milk.

After a few more minutes, the stylist came over, a tall, slim woman with a bleach-blonde, Annie Lennox hairdo, a nose ring and neck tattoo.

"Hiya, Mr and Mrs Williams? Welcome. I'm Miriam, I'll be your stylist. Vivien was it? Do you mind if I call you that? Now what are we having done today? Bit of a special occasion, I understand."

Susan sighed inwardly, but decided that it would just be easier giving up being a Rachel for the moment than to confuse things by running the gauntlet of a socially awkward drastic correction. Carl had obviously used the name Vivien when he'd called ahead from outside the bistro. Why did everyone these days insist on first name? In any case, she had not the faintest idea what she was having done today, so she waited for Carl to speak.

"Yes, today is our tenth anniversary," as he started to speak he stood up and moved round such as to draw Miriam into a little conspiracy circle in the alcove.

"We were hoping to have a bit of a change. You know, just for fun. The kids away with the grandparents. House to ourselves for a change. We'd like to put a bit of spice back, just for an evening or two. You know how it is."

"Well, I know about the spice part certainly. All that nuclear family stuff, not so much." Mirriam laughed. Is she flirting with him, Susan thought, or is she warning him that she's a lesbian?

"Now, I want a surprise, but Vivien's always been a little shy about this, a bit conservative, but, I'm guessing, Mirriam that you've never given a boring haircut in your life, so I'm counting on you not to let her talk you down. I want to come back and not be able to recognize my own wife," Carl was all charm.

"Any particular style you're thinking of?" she asked.

"Well, why not think about your own personal fantasy woman and go from there? The women you'd most like to spend the night with." Carl said. Susan wanted to curl up and die.

"Oh, well, that's quite the brief," Mirriam said with a giggle "I've got a few femme fatales bouncing around my head. I'm sure we'll be able to rustle one up."

Miriam's working day had clearly just gotten a little bit more interesting for her. "Well Vivien. I tell you what, I usually get the assistants to do this, but why don't I give your hair a good wash so we can have a good brainstorm about what we're doing."

"Okay, darling, I'll be back in a little while. Just got another errand to run," he gave her a little peck on the cheek, their first actual physical contact, and got up to leave.

"Oh, I'd better leave you some money. There's a coffee shop next door in case you finish before I come back. Do you want cash or the card?" Then, by way of explanation, he turned to Miriam and said "Vivien left her purse back at home today."

The salon was open late and she could have easily have waited there after she'd finished for him to pay, so what was his game now? A test of trust? An extra little detail to make them seem more like a couple? Was she supposed to take the cash or the card? Cash she supposed simply because she didn't know the pin for the card, though these days she could never keep up with when it was and was not required.

"I'll take the card," she said just for the sake of being contrarian. Then, rather clumsily, she tacked a "Darling" on the end.

Carl didn't seem to mind giving up the card in the slightest. He handed her the card with a "Don't lose it," then left the shop.

Susan wondered if Carl had deliberately promised her an evening of no more choices, then dumped her on her own to choose a brand new haircut. Didn't he realize that was the one of the single most difficult choices a women had to make? Was this deliberate maliciousness or just male obliviousness? Anyway, she supposed, how better to start to build a new persona than with a new haircut?

As expected, as she began to have her hair washed, she found that she had very little common ground with Miriam, who preferences clearly leaned towards the classic queer icons; the butcher the better. She a lot suggested the shorter, more extreme modern cuts -- cuts which, not only was she not sure Carl would appreciate, but which would also most likely provoke howls of laughter from her class of eight year-olds, if she turned up to work rocking them and which, most importantly, would take ages to grow back. She wasn't sure it was worth it for one night, even for a night that turned out to be the night.

Susan always felt uncomfortable having her hair washed and cut. She'd never liked being touched by a stranger. She felt extra self-conscious what with Miriam talking about all the women that she could become, women Miriam clearly wanted to bang. As she felt the other woman's touch, she mused to herself on the topic of lesbianism. She was lucky enough that her class was still young enough that they were yet to develop any of these concepts and largely obvious to human relationships outside of their own mummy and daddy. A lot of the single, unmarried teachers of older classes had to put up with a lot of shit from the various rumours the pupils spread. A woman without a man was a dyke, plain and simple, thus spake the playground. She was sure a lot of her colleagues had her pegged that way as well, although as a very liberal faculty, no-one would actually have a problem with that. Hell, even Mindy had one asked if it was 'a road she wanted to go down'. That had kind of hurt, but officially she could be mad with her though, due to their long standing rule that anything said after the third glass didn't count.

After the wash and dry, they looked through a bunch of retro 60's style haircuts in magazines, which, although more to Susan's tastes, weren't substantially different enough from what she was currently sporting, bar a few extra curls.

Just went it seemed like it was a Gordian know which no scissors could cut through, the break-through came in a flash, pushing itself rudely from the back to the front of her consciousness. Pulling her phone out of her handbag, she googled for an image. "I want this," she told Miriam.

"Ohhh," Miriam cooed, "Olivia Newton John in Grease. The bad girl version from the end. We don't get many requests for that." She thought for a second, "It may take a while."

"It doesn't matter. He'll wait. This is the one I want." Susan said firmly.

"Doo, doo, doo," sang Miriam cheerily, taking a closer look at the photograph.

It did take a while, several hours in fact. Well past when the shop officially closed, but Miriam was enjoying doing it as much as Susan and was happy to stay. They got chatting, and Susan was required to start filling in Vivien's back story. Though she wanted to avoid it, Miriam kept bringing the topic back to sex and what Vivien had planned for this evening.

"Do does he go down on you?" she asked about an hour into the process.

"Sorry," said Susan, who hadn't really been paying attention to the previous stretch of conversation.

"Your husband. Does he go down on you? That was always the bit for me, back when I didn't know I wasn't straight. Used to have this guy go down on me for ages back in my teen years. Come to think of it, it was when I realized that his tongue was the only think I enjoyed about him, that it clicked that I was, like, properly queer. Never looked back really."

One the one hand, Susan, wasn't sure she really needed to hear this, but, on the other, she was happy that Miriam's musings were taking her further and further from having to answer her original question.

"Of course, just like gay men give the best blowjobs, lesbians give the best cunnilingus. You can train a man, but women just have the knack for it. Come naturally. Ha, cums! Speaking of, are you blowing your guy tonight? Ten year anniversary, so I'm guessing yes, but is it, like, a regular thing for you guys or are we talking Christmases and birthdays. I never could, you know, back when I did. Never wanted to look at it, let alone taste it. Still, different strokes."

The nice thing about Miriam was she rarely stopped to let any of her questions be answered. Susan let her talk.

Carl came back after an hour and a half and been stopped at the door by an assistant. He was told to get a coffee next door and he would be fetched when needed.

Finally, the mirror was brought out, the back and sides were checked and it was all over. In fairness, however prone to oversharing she might be, Miriam was a damn fine hairdresser, and, despite the unusualness of the request, had absolutely nailed it. Susan could have gone straight onto the stage in a production of the musical.

Everyone else having left, Miriam nipped over to get Carl and he was brought into the shop. Susan leaned on the arm of the barber's chair.

"Wow," he said. "That's, wow."

"You did say you wanted different," said Miriam.

"No, wow, I like it. It's, it's very, well, eighties," said Carl. "Big, confident decade".

Well, 1978, thought Susan, but she wasn't really sure if Carl would get the reference even if she tried to explained it to him.

"Okay, well, thank you for staying so late. We'd better get home before our anniversary is over." He retrieved the card from Susan, and swiped it, leaving a very generous tip on an already pretty substantial bill.

Just as they were about to leave, Carl turned back to Miriam. "This may seem a little forward, and I don't like to mix business and pleasure, but, as I said, we are, as a couple, trying to expand our horizons. No pressure, but if you ever have a free evening, it'd be nice if you could take Vivien out for dinner, alone of course. She's a bit shy, so you might need to work hard to open her up."

Mirriam reached for a scrap of paper and pen and scribbled a number. Handing it to Susan, she said "That so sweet. Call me if and when you're ready."

Susan took it wordlessly. They left the salon.

"What the hell was that?" she asked, truly angry with someone other than herself for the first time tonight.

"Persona building," he laughed. "Just trying to give you a sense of alternatives, people you could be."

"I'm not," she said.

"Ok, ok, that was too far. Look, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. Really."

Forgive, but remember, Susan thought.

Given the time, they took a cab rather than the tube.

3.

Carl lived in a spacious studio apartment in Shepard's Bush. If the divorce had hit his wallet, it didn't show in his accommodation, though like many men, the money probably went more on the technology than the décor: big TV, big stereo system, simple furniture. Still, he clearly took care of his living space just as he took care of himself. Susan was pretty sure the apartment was usually this clean, not only on days when he might be bringing a date round.

She stopped herself. She was weighing Carl up as a potential romantic partner again. If she wasn't careful, she'd be picking new curtains out for him. She had to be careful. In fairness, she knew exactly what type of curtains he needed.

"Have a seat," he said, indicating a large leather sofa. She sat, clutching her handbag like the maiden aunt she always felt like. He went over to the stereo to put some music on. I bet its jazz, thought Susan. It was one of the slower numbers from West Side Story, so she was kind of right. He dimmed the lights slightly.

He came and sat next to her. She'd sat next to men before a thousand times, but now he felt incredibly close. She felt uncomfortable.

She could call it off. It would be rather difficult at this stage, at this time of night, and after having accepted a two-hundred-pound haircut that she didn't, strictly speaking, want. She'd just got out of a cab, she didn't want another one. But she could still call it off. Maybe.

He put her arm around her and moved close. She stayed still. Frozen.

"We don't have to," he said.

"No. I want to," she replied. Not a jury in the world would have believed her.

He moved closer, turned her face to him gently and kissed her. It was long, and warm. She'd been kissed before; she wasn't that much of a prude, but it had been years ago. She'd forgotten how fleshy it was.

She was suddenly aware, in the periphery of her vision, of the bulge in his trousers. As they locked lips, it grew, not just in size, but also in importance in her mind until it was all she could think about. It was there, waiting for her.

Suddenly she broke free. She was breathing heavily. "Sorry, back in a sec," she gasped. She stood up, handbag still in hand, and ran for the bathroom. This was difficult because she didn't actually know where it was and the first door she tried was the cupboard. Carl indicated a door at the back of the lounge.

She flung herself through and sat down on the side of the bath, trying to catch her breath. Susan, Susan, Susan, come on it's not that difficult, she thought to herself. You can do this.

She couldn't. She really couldn't.

She sat down on the loo.

"Are you okay in there?" Carl enquired, sounding genuinely concerned.

"Sure, be out in a moment," she said.

She fumbled her phone out of her handbag. There were twelve messages from Mindy. She hadn't had the bag to hand during the haircut and she'd lacked the privacy in the cab to check her messages. She typed out a message. "Help, I think I'm having a panic attack.".

Mindy's replies were usually instant, what with her phone being surgically connected to her hand. This time it took a good minute for a reply and it felt a lot longer. By the time it arrived, Susan's heart was beating a little bit slower. She looked at the message waiting. It was, she reflected, part of her character that she always used perfect English when writing text messages, right down to the apostrophe even in the middle of a mental breakdown or whatever the hell this was. She was a teacher after all.

"R U OK? Where R U? U want me 2 come and get U?". Mindy wasn't as fastidious as she was.

"No, it's fine. I'm better. At Carl's. About to do it," she texted as one block of text.

"Maybe," she added as another.

"Want a call?" Well, Susan thought, did she? Mindy was a good sport and always there for her, but what was she going to say that was actually going to make a difference. Their plan had gone exactly as hoped. She'd done enough for her. It was now her own question of 'do' or' do not do', and they both knew they agreed 'do', at least in principle. Anything else would be going round in circles. No, once you got Mindy on the line, it was difficult to get her off again.

"No. Thanks.", she typed.

The first was "Dont do anything U dont want 2."

Then secondly, "But dont not do anything U do want 2. "

Susan sent back a thumb-up emoji. Was that helpful? It had felt helpful, but then the thought of the bulge in his trousers came back to her mind. She slowly stood up from the toilet as if to make for the door. Once more into the britches, she thought to herself. She started to giggle manically, and sat back down.

"Can I get you anything?" shouted Carl. Fuck, he must have heard. Where was her mind?

"No. Okay," she said, composing herself. She stood up again. She couldn't spend the whole night in the bathroom, one way or another.

She went over to the sink and splashed a little water on her face, being careful not mess up her make-up. She washed her hands, less for hygiene and more to suggest to Carl, if he were still listening, that there had actually been a real purpose to this bathroom visit.

She looked in to the mirror and caught sight of her ridiculous hair.

"Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee," she said bitterly.

"Lousy with virginity," the mirror replied.

"Fuck you," she said to her other self.

"What was that?" asked Carl from outside.

She took a deep a deep breath. She took one more look deeply into the mirror and changed places with her reflection.

"I said, I'm ready to fuck you now," she replied, matter of factly.

Calmly, she took off her heels, then her skirt and blouse. She hesitated for just a second then off came the tights, pants and bra. She was now completely naked. She looked at her body in the mirror. She felt fully armoured for battle.

She opened the bathroom door and leaned on the frame. She knew that the contrast between the bright light of the bathroom and the dim light of the lounge would show off the outline of her body perfectly.

"Hi," she said, "Call me Sandra."

4.

In the end it was wonderful.

More to the point, it was easy.

She stepped out into the room and was embraced. She tilted her mouth up and accepted his kiss. She moved both of his hands to her naked buttocks and put her hands round the back of his waist, pulling him close so she could feel his manhood pressing against her belly. She let that moment go on, savouring it.

Next, she led him to the bedroom and begin undressing him. She pulled down his trousers, then his underpants. She let him take his own shirt off. Then they held and kissed each other just like before. Before long her hands started to wander, up and down his back, and he did likewise.

She pushed him down on the bed and started to kiss his chest, the up and down his body again and again. On the first few passes, she skirted his cock, instead moving from his abs to his stomach and then on to his thighs. She hadn't even looked at it properly yet. It wasn't important that she did so. On the third lap, she gentle put on hand on his dick, straightened it up slightly, and then took the tip in her mouth.