R18

I don't really remember the day that I turned 18. I don't know why. Perhaps, at the time, it was 'just another day'. However, I do remember, in some detail, a number of things that happened in the year following my 18th birthday.

For example, sometime soon after I turned 18 I moved to London.

I was born, in an old farmhouse, on my grandfather's farm, on top of a hill in The Cotswolds. Later, my mother, my cabinet-making father, and I lived on the outskirts of one of The Cotswolds' prettiest villages. And then, soon after I turned 18, I moved to the Big Smoke, where I rented a small flat within a short Tube ride of the West End.

I had originally been going to share a semi-derelict house with some musicians, one of whom I had known at school. On the day that I arrived in London, the lads were on tour up North, and so I was to collect a key from my friend's older sister. Dawn lived on the edge of Notting Hill. She knew the house. In fact she knew it well. And when I arrived at her place, she took one look at me and said: 'No. No, I don't think that place is for you.' And she set me up in the spare room of her own flat while we found something that she considered 'a little more appropriate'.

The abode we found was no palace. But it had a decent-sized living room with a small kitchen off one end, a small bedroom, and a bathroom. It was everything that I needed. And it was surprisingly affordable.

A couple of days after I moved in, I had a surprise visit from the estranged wife of a chap who used to work for my father. I think that my mother must have given her my address.

Joanna was probably in her mid-to-late 30s at that stage. She arrived with a bottle of vodka as a house-warming gift and, for a moment or two, after we had made a bit of a dent in the bottle, there was a possibility that she might have become my 'first'. But, at the last minute, we both backed away. Looking back now, it had probably been the sensible thing to do.

My actual first was Chrissy, a good-looking English Lit student with an IQ of about one thousand. She had been at school with one of my cousins. Chrissy came for supper one Saturday night and stayed for breakfast on Sunday morning. In between, we both did it for the first time. I think that we were both a bit underwhelmed. It was OK. But I think that we had both expected more.

Speaking for myself, I'm not sure why I had expected more. I'm not sure why I thought that it would be perfect the first time. When I first picked up a tennis racquet, I was certainly under no illusion that I would automatically be invited to play at Wimbledon the following season. Likewise, when I first picked up a clarinet, I knew that it would be at least a year or so before my playing was indistinguishable from that of Acker Bilk or Artie Shaw. But sex? Really? Did that require practice? It seemed that it did. Oh well, at least Chrissy was happy to sign on as my training partner.

I think that it was about three weeks after Chrissy and I first did it that I met Heather, one of my neighbours. Heather was a fashion model. She did a bit of catwalk modelling. But she mainly did photographic work. And she was stunning, absolutely stunning.

'And what do you do?' she asked.

'I'm a writer,' I told her. 'I write.'

She nodded. 'Oh? What do you write?'

'Anything,' I told her. 'Anything that pays.'

'Advertising copy?'

'Yeah.' (It wasn't a complete untruth. I had written a bit of advertising copy when I had worked part-time at the local newspaper back in The Cotswolds.)

Heather said that she knew a marketing guy who was looking for someone to write the copy for a major lingerie catalogue he was working on. Was that something that I could do?

'No problem,' I told her - with all the confidence of an 18-year-old who needed to eat.

Heather made a phone call. I met with Colin (her marketing friend) and, next thing I knew, I had three months of copywriting work: studying bras, and knickers, and other fripperies, and writing about them in some detail.

A few days later I took Heather a bottle of wine to say thank you. 'Oh, great,' she said, and she got out a couple of glasses and a corkscrew, and opened the wine there and then. About halfway through the bottle, she asked if I wanted to fuck. I told her that I already had a girlfriend. Chrissy. Heather looked at me with a rather puzzled expression. But then she said: 'Oh well ... if you ever change your mind, you know where I am.'

It was while I was working on the lingerie catalogue that I met Larry. Larry was in his last year at art school - Central St Martin's - but he had already developed a bit of a reputation as a more-than-competent illustrator. Even as a student, he was getting work from several top advertising agencies and a few magazines.

Larry and I hit it off right from the start. He had a studio - well, no more than an over-sized broom cupboard really - in an old warehouse overlooking the river. He was also one of the first people I knew to have his own espresso machine.

'I bought it second hand at a liquidator's sale,' he said. 'No one else was bidding. I don't know why. I figured that it must have been broken or something. But no. I brought it back here, set it up, and it worked just fine.'

I was at Larry's studio one afternoon, drinking coffee and chatting, when he asked me if I liked watching other people having sex. 'Don't know,' I said. 'It's not something I've ever done.' (I was, after all, only 18.)

'It's just that I've been seeing this chick,' he explained. 'Horny as fuck. But she's a bit weird. She wants someone to watch us doing it.'

'Just watch?'

'Yeah. Although you could probably get your todger out and jerk off if you wanted to. I don't think Angel would mind that. In fact I think that she might quite like that.' And Larry smiled.

I didn't know what to say.

I think it was that same day that I got a letter (there was no email back in those days) from the editor of Freedom saying that they would like to buy the experimental short story that I had submitted. Although she did want to edit slightly. She wanted to lop off the first three-and-a-half paragraphs. I was a bit disappointed. I had put a lot of effort into that opening. But when I looked at it again, I could see what she meant. Yeah, those first three-and-a-half paragraphs didn't really add anything.

When I telephoned Rosemary, the editor, she asked if I had any other stuff. I said that I was working on a couple of things. 'Well, no rush,' she said. 'But when you're ready, I'd probably like to see them. And if you're over this way, drop in for a coffee.' Freedom's office was over by London Bridge Station.

'Thank you. I will,' I told her.

As good as it was that I had some well-paid copywriting work, and that I had sold a short story, my main reason for moving to London had been to soak up the atmosphere and write a London novel. I couldn't see much future in writing a novel set in the West Country, the only part of the UK that I really knew well enough to write about. And, anyway, Laurie Lee had already done that with his novel about drinking cider - among other things - with Rosie Burdock.

In pursuit of my novel, I gave myself Friday afternoons to explore London. Rain or shine, armed with my notebook, I set off at about midday, and tried to be back at the flat by six. Most weeks, that was when Chrissy arrived to spend the weekend with me. It was on one of my Friday afternoon excursions that I found myself outside Freedom magazine's offices.

'Is Rosemary Hamlin in?' I asked the girl at the reception desk.

She looked me up and down, frowned slightly, and then said: 'If it's a delivery, I can sign for it.'

'Thanks. But no. She invited me for coffee,' I said. 'Jonathan Bridges.'

The girl frowned again, and then smiled. 'Oh. Jonathan Bridges. Yes. I'll see if I can find her.'

Rosemary Hamlin looked a little like Germaine Greer. She even peered over her glasses the way that Germaine Greer did. 'Jonathan!' she said. 'What a pleasant surprise. Come on in.'

I followed her into what I assumed was her office. At one end, there was a desk with a typewriter and six or seven stacks of 'stuff': loosely-bound manuscripts, single pages, magazines, books, etc. And taking up most of the room was a long table surround by mis-matched chairs. The table also bore its share of stacks of stuff.

'You're quite young, aren't you?' Rosemary said, eyeing me up and down.

'Twenty-two,' I said, adding on a few years for bad behaviour.

Rosemary nodded. 'From your writing, I expected you to be ... well ... older. A bit of a prodigy, eh?'

'Is that bad?' I asked.

'Oh, no. Not at all. It's just ...' And she smiled.

Chrissy wasn't coming over that evening. She had gone to visit her parents up in Lincolnshire. And so, after coffee with Rosemary, I made my way across to Chelsea to see if Larry was at his studio. (In those pre-cell phone days, if you were out and about, it was often easiest just to turn up somewhere and press the doorbell.)

Not only was Larry at his studio, but he had 'the weird chick', Angela (pronounced the German way, with a hard G) there with him. Angela was quite a bit older than Larry. And she certainly didn't look weird. She was wearing a smart brick-coloured, short-skirted suit with a navy blue silk blouse. I thought that she looked like someone important from a bank or something like that.

'Perfect timing!' Larry said. 'We were just thinking that we should stroll up to the King's Road for some Chinese. Are you a starter?'

'Umm ... yes. I suppose so,' I said. 'If you guys are OK with that. You know.'

I had never been to a Chinese restaurant before. Back then, Cotswolds' restaurants tended to serve good English country fare. 'Foreign food' hadn't really caught on. At my parents' favourite restaurant, the exotically-named Xanadu, the principal offerings were roasted hake with a creamy white parsley sauce, grilled steak with an earthy mushroom sauce, and duck with an orange sauce. You could also order the duck with 'game gravy' instead of the orange sauce. And many of the Gloucestershire locals - on their once-a-year outing - did just that.

'Are you happy with family style?' Larry asked me when the waitress, a petite Chinese woman, arrived to take our order.

I had no idea what he meant. But ... 'Yeah. Whatever. You're in charge,' I said.

Larry rattled off something in what sounded like another language. The waitress scribbled on her pad, smiled, and asked if we wanted char. Larry nodded and smiled back at her.

'So ... what have you been up to today?' Larry asked me.

'This and that. Oh, and I had coffee with my editor,' I told him.

'Your editor? That sounds very grown up.'

'Rosemary,' I said. 'Her office is over near London Bridge Station. We talked about a couple of possible projects.'

'Oh? A book?'

'We'll see,' I said.

The waitress returned with three small tea cups (no saucers) and a pot of jasmine tea. It was the first time that I had tried jasmine tea. I liked it.

I also liked the food that started to arrive: chicken with purple sprouting broccoli in some kind of thin sauce; slices of succulent pork with bright red edges; plump prawns with hot pepper and tomato; steamed asparagus with slivers of garlic; and a big bowl of fried rice with bits of ham and peas and baby corn.

'Help yourselves,' Larry said.

I watched while he and Angela (with a hard G) filled their small bowls with some of the rice mixture and then added other bits and pieces on top. And then, with bowls in one hand and chopsticks in the other, they started shovelling the food into their mouths like stokers on a packet steamer. I was not sure that my mother would have approved. But I assumed that this was how you ate Chinese food.

'And you, Angela, are you also an artist?' I asked.

Angela shook her head. 'I am auditor,' she said in her slightly accented way. 'I ensure that people have prepared their accounts correctly.' And she smiled the smile of a woman who knew where the bodies were buried.

After we had finished eating, we went to Larry's flat - which was about halfway between the restaurant and his studio. 'Brandy,' he said. It wasn't a question or an invitation. It was an announcement. 'You have to have brandy after Chinese.'

Not only had I not had Chinese before that night, I hadn't had brandy either. At home, we had always had a bottle of brandy in the back of the pantry for when my grandmother came to visit. My father was an ale drinker, and my mother's tipple of choice was Plymouth gin drowned in orange squash. I think she thought it exotic. The brandy just sat there waiting for my grandmother. And then, after my grandmother died, it just sat there waiting for no one.

Larry lined up three tumblers and poured a generous slosh of brandy into each. I waited for him to add lemonade. Or ginger ale. Or even water. But no. He handed a glass to Angela, and one to me. And then he raised his own glass. 'May all the dragons be our dragons,' he said.

Even before my glass touched my lips, my nostrils filled with the astringent-yet-sweet smell of over-ripe plums. Or maybe over-ripe grapes. And then, with the arrival of the first drops of the amber liquid, my tongue said 'Yum!' And then 'Yikes!' And then 'Wow!' And then someone lit a very pleasant fire on the back of my tongue, and the fruity embers slipped down my throat, setting fire to everything in their path.

'OK?' Larry said.

'Umm ... yes. Excellent,' I had to admit.

'Right. Bedroom,' Larry said. And Angela nodded approvingly.

'Umm ... well ... right,' I said. 'I'll ... umm ... leave you guys to it. Thanks for supper. It was great. I really enjoyed it.'

'Where are you going?' Larry said.

'Umm ... home.'

'Why?'

'Well, I thought that you guys were going to ... well, you know.'

'We are,' Larry said. 'You're coming to watch.'

'Am I?'

'It is all right. You don't have to do anything,' Angela said. 'Just have to watch.'

I looked at Larry, and he just looked back at me with one of those little 'I told you she was weird' expressions. 'Come on,' he said. 'Bring your brandy.'

Oh, well. I followed Larry and Angela into the bedroom - which was a bit like an art gallery with a bed in the middle of it.

'I'll grab you a chair,' Larry said. And he went and got one of the chairs from the living room while Angela took off her suit and looked for somewhere to put it.

'Umm ... would you like me to hold that?' I asked.

Angela smiled. 'Laurence will have coat hanger,' she said. 'You might need to use your hand.' And she made a suggestive pumping action with her own hand.

When Larry returned with my chair, he also brought the brandy bottle. 'Just in case,' he said.

When it came to the business of sexual congress, Chrissy and I were rank beginners. Enthusiastic rank beginners, but rank beginners, nevertheless. We normally started with a bit of kissing and cuddling. And then we quickly undressed and got ourselves under the duvet. Then a bit more kissing and cuddling, a bit of fingering, and it was time to follow the example allegedly set by the missionaries.

As I said, by the time that Larry returned with the chair and the brandy, Angela had already removed her suit.

'Here. Let me hang that up for you,' Larry said. And he did.

Then, for a few moments, Angela and Larry just stood there, looking at each other, and smiling. And then Angela stepped closer to Larry, leaned forward, kissed him lightly, and began to unbuckle his belt. Larry sort of had his back to me, but I was in no doubt as to what Angela was doing. She was freeing his cock.

Angela's blouse, shirt, call it what you will, had tails fore and aft like a man's dress shirt; and as she stood there, it looked a little as though she was wearing a rather classy nightshirt. And then Larry began to slowly - very slowly - undo her buttons. One. Then another. And another. And another. Until her shirt was hanging from her shoulders like a flimsy jacket.

Beneath her shirt, Angela was wearing matching midnight blue bra and knickers. The knickers I immediately recognised as La Belle Femme style 10-55. La Belle Femme was one of the brands in the catalogue that I was working on. Style 10-55 was a bikini brief style in tricot with tri-lobal lace trim. Angela's matching bra was also La Belle Femme, either style 861 or style 863. Both styles were lightly underwired . Both were tricot and Lycra with tri-lobal lace trim. The only difference between the two styles was to be found in the lower cup. Style 863 had a little extra padding. From where I was sitting, I thought that Angela's bra was probably unpadded. She seemed to have enough padding of her own.

For a further moment or two, Larry and Angela just stood there, looking at each other. They certainly didn't seem to be in any hurry. It occurred to me that maybe Chrissy and I had been rushing things a bit.

And then, finally, gently, Larry pushed Angela back towards the bed, and slowly lowered her style 10-55 knickers.

'What do you think?' Larry asked, and he stepped slightly to one side to give me a view of Angela's pubic thatch.

What did I think? I thought that it was brilliant. It was pink. Bright pink. And trimmed into the shape of a heart. Yes. Brilliant. And, from the smile on her face, it was clear that Angela knew it.

Larry gently pushed pink-hearted Angela back onto the bed, spread her elegant thighs, and crouched down between them. 'Tongue time,' he said. And in he went.

Of course, I couldn't see exactly what Larry was doing. But his head was bobbing about. And, in between sighs and giggles, Angela seemed to be 'steering' it with her hands.

Chrissy and I had not yet experimented with cunnilingus. Not properly. I had given her a tentative lick - just to see how she would react - and she hadn't pushed me away or anything. But we hadn't really got right down to it. I made a mental note to include it in our next practice session.

After about ten minutes - during which time Angela became quite vocal - both Larry and Angela stood up. 'OK?' Angela asked me.

'I am,' I told her.

'Good,' she said. And then she smiled broadly before turning and positioning herself - on her hands and knees, with her thighs spread slightly - on the edge of the bed.

The tail of Angela's shirt partly covered her womanly arse. But not for long. Larry helpfully raised it and flaked it - as one might flake a yacht's sail - across her lower back. And then he again stood to one side. 'How's that?' he said to me. 'Is that just about the sexiest fucking arse you've ever seen?'

I just nodded and decided that I needed to free my hard cock. Larry had said, when he first raised the subject, that it would probably be OK for me to jerk off. In fact, if I remembered correctly, he had said that Angela might enjoy it if I did.

Larry gave his own cock a few encouraging pumps and then positioned himself astern of the lovely Angela and, presumably, entered her.

'Oh, fuck yes!' Angela said.

I must admit that my view was of Larry's skinny arse rather than of Angela's perfect peach, but it didn't really matter. I knew what was going on. And that was enough to keep my cock interested.

And then, suddenly, Angela said that they needed to rearrange their position. 'I want to be able to see Jonathan,' she said. 'I want to be able to watch him working his cock.' And she instructed Larry to move to the foot of the bed so that they were side on to me. 'Yes. That's better,' she said. 'Tell me when you are just about to come,' she said to me. 'We will come together. Yes?'

I hung on for as long as I could. But it wasn't for very long. 'I ... think ... I'm ... about ... to ..., Oh, fuck!' I said. And I spurted gallons. Angela came just after me. And Larry came just after Angela.