Rhiannon

Unless he manages to massively mess things up, my date tonight is going to get laid.

I want nothing more from this man than sex. I'm thirty-three and I've been more or less single for the last seven years. There have been dates in that time, and casual sex, but nothing of note, and certainly nothing in the past eighteen months.

To change this, I need to wipe the desperation and horniness from my face. I swear men see me and think 'bunny boiler'. So, my plan is to fuck a half decent man, get my self esteem back, and then, when I've been nicely serviced, commence my search for a proper boyfriend, someone who's not too ugly, not too poor and, hopefully great in the sack.

It was three weeks ago that I decided upon this course of action and right from the beginning, I've been methodical. I created an advertisement for myself on a sketchy online dating website, and waited for men to contact me. Thirteen did. Four were suitable candidates. I whittled this down to two, and then spent twenty-four hours making what I felt was an agonising decision.

Should I choose Russel, who is twenty-nine and socially awkward, but a professional office worker with his own home? Or should I take a chance on Alan, who is forty and lives over two hours away (when entering your search radius, take a tip from me; make sure you enter 'within 25 kilometres' instead of 'within 250 kilometres)? Russel was geographically a better choice, but Alan was nicer and easier to chat to.

It was a difficult decision, but in the end I decided to go with Alan. We live too far away from each other for a relationship to work, a fact he must surely already understand, so it should also therefore be obvious to him that I'm after nothing more than a discreet, hard fuck. He probably knows that all he has to do is act like a human and he'll be rewarded with pussy.

My bus is nearing it's destination. The journey from my flat to the Roma Street Transit Centre, and out to Toowoomba, has taken over two hours. It's summer and it's hot and I'm not a small girl. Short and dumpy and plain as pudding as my English grandmother used to say. She didn't like me much, as you might guess, and the feeling was bloody mutual, bitter old witch that she was. She never had a nice thing to say about anyone.

One of the candidates who contacted me - and who was quickly discarded - asked me 'how fat' I currently was. The answer to this is simple; I mostly fit into the larger sizes of normal clothing, but not always, and I mostly fit into the smallest size clothing in big girl's stores, but not always. Sometimes I'm both too fat to be a regular woman, and not fat enough to be a fat one.

I'm fit, though, a fact which has surprised more than one person. I can't drive, so I walk everywhere, and women's only gyms have always had my patronage. A lot of people think the latter is because I don't like men staring at me but I promise you that the skinny gym bunnies at 'regular' gyms can be even worse than the men. It's as if they can't grasp that a fat girl can run or lift weights or take a spin class.

I've booked an apartment just six hundred metres from the bus station, a distance I cover in no time at all. It's hot, and I'm perspiring, but there's air con and a pool at the hotel, so I know I'll soon be cool. For an extra nine dollars I upgrade from a studio to a one bedroom apartment. The reception staff are lovely and when they learn I'm in town to catch up with an 'old friend', they give me a second room card and allocate me a parking space.

As I'm settling myself into my abode for the night, Alan texts me. He wants to know if I've made it to my hotel safely. Does my room have everything I need? Do I want him to bring me coffee or milk or toothpaste when he comes around tonight to pick me up for my date?

That's sweet, isn't it? But I suppose he's always been kind to me. He's not a man who sent dick pics or had a profile filled with everything he required of a woman, and he's always been respectful in his conversation. That's why I picked him. That's why tonight, all going well, I'm going to make him a very happy man.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

To kill some time, I take a walk around Toowoomba. I thought it'd be another Childers, a town famous for a fire in a backpacker's hostel that left fifteen people dead, and not much else, but I'm pleasantly surprised. Ever been to Childers? If not, spare yourself a trip. I only ever went there twice, and that was only because an ex-boyfriend grew up there and loved the place. In my mind, it's a fucking hole filled with people who are rude as hell.

Toowoomba is pretty, and either I've come across a statistically under-represented portion of the population, or the locals are just nicer than I expected. Maybe it's because there's more money floating around here than Childers, or Brisbane for that matter. Maybe it's just them.

I do a lot of people watching, trying to figure out how the typical forty year old man around here dresses and talks and acts. Alan's profile had two photos; one of him peering grimly into a webcam, and the other a group shot taken a wedding, with him wearing a badly fitting suit. Terrible pictures that barely tell me what he looks like. If I was after a boyfriend, I would have skipped past him without giving him a second thought.

Today, however, I'm so horny that almost all of the men look good. The crevice between my legs is hot and moist, and my mind runs wild, as I imagine kidnapping the heavily built biker returning to his ride, or the scrawny young guy sitting at the pub with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other, and taking him back to my apartment. I can almost feel a cock slipping inside my wet cunt, and a man's hands on my tits. Maybe I could take both of them back. Let one of them fuck me, while I suck the other one off.

The biker catches me staring at him as he goes to pull on his helmet. He pauses, helmet mid-air, and narrows his eyes quizzically. I look away. He would never guess that the well-groomed fat brunette is fantasizing about his cock in her mouth. He'll never know that all it would take is a confident whisper in my ear for me to take him to my apartment. That's a pity, isn't it? I think there are a lot of men who'd like to know they were the object of a woman's lust.

The motorcyclist roars down the street, and I head to the chemist to buy condoms. I catch them just as they're closing. I expect them to be angry at having to ring up my purchase when they'd rather be balancing the tills, but like everyone else here, they smile at me and tell me to have a good night.

Then, before I know it, there's a knock at the door of my apartment. I'm in a black wrap dress, matching wedges and a lot of make-up. There's so much cleavage on display it's almost indecent and as for my underwear; let's just say it's as skimpy as a large-breasted woman can get away with.

'Don't let me down, Al,' I whisper to myself as I unlock the door. 'Don't mess this up for either of us.'

As I've said, Alan's photos were atrocious so I didn't really have a good idea as to what he'd look like. I was preparing to be disappointed. Instead, I'm impressed.

Average height, healthy weight, dark blonde hair cut short and only slightly thinning at the sides, iris so dark they're almost black and a tan that suggests he spends a lot of time outdoors. I take it all in within the first few seconds. He's in dark blue moleskin jeans, boots and a horrible checked shirt, but all the same, I like the style. I like him.

'Hi Rhiannon,' he greets, trying to keep his gaze fixed on my face. 'It's nice to meet you.'

'Hi Alan. Same.' I find myself smiling shyly, of all things. Oh, he's just fucking adorable. A real live country boy, just like the kind in chook lit. 'You ready to go?'

He's the kind of man who holds doors open for a woman and I don't care what anyone says, I fucking love it when a man does that. Bonus points if, like Alan, they continue to hold the door to the lobby open as a guest behind us also walks out.

Every man has up his arsenal the attribute they believe will impress women. They're studying for their PhD. They have an awesome career. They're set to inherit a motza. In Alan's case, it's his car. I've never even attempted to learn to drive, so I don't know much about cars. When I see his, I just see a black ute. I wouldn't even be able to tell you what make it is. It's nice enough inside, though, and when he tells me about it, I politely nod in what I hope is an encouraging way.

Honestly, I'm just surprised he's not driving something big and 4WD-ish, something that you would imagine someone who lives and works on a farm to drive, but when I make mention of this he laughs. He has nice, straight teeth, and his laugh is melodic. I remember from his dating profile that he said he had a bad habit of singing along to every song on the radio, but in his defence, he isn't a terrible singer.

'What made you give online dating a whirl?' I ask.

Alan shrugs. 'I started a new a year ago, and around the same time, my doctor told me I had to lose weight or I'd end up with diabetes. I got myself sorted out and I suppose it just felt like I was making a fresh start. I thought I might try and meet someone special while I was on a roll.'

'I never listen to my doctor when they tell me to lose weight,' I confess.

He chuckles under his breath. 'Women look better for a few extra kilos, men look worse.'

In other words, he likes bigger girls. That's fine by me, because with each passing minute, I realise just how much I like men in moleskins and checked shirts. I try to picture him naked. Hmm, yum. I can't wait to undress him. Please, Alan, don't say or do anything stupid. Don't make me dislike you.

'How about you?' he asks curiously. 'Why were you online? Is it hard to find a date in Brisbane?'

'I'd say 'yes', but it could just be me,' I reply. 'Maybe I'm not what men there are after.'

His eyes dart over to me, and to his credit, he again puts effort into not staring at my chest. 'They're insane.'

I ask him what he does for a living, because even though he's told me before, I've utterly forgotten. All I wanted to know was that he could afford to take me out on a date. I figured if I was the one travelling, and I was the one paying for a hotel room, he could pay for my dinner. Alan, in the comment that would ultimately lead to him to be the winner of my attentions, agreed this was fair; when I floated the idea of coming out for a night, he said in that case I had to allow him to take me somewhere nice so that the financial burden wasn't just on me.

'I'm a Farm Manager,' he replies. 'You're a corporate receptionist, right?'

'Yep. I get paid to dress professionally, ensure we're never out of tea and coffee, and otherwise be bored to death.'

'I thought it'd be a pretty high stress career. Receptionists always seem to be run off their feet.'

'Not the corporate ones. We're in blue chip, high end companies, with relatively little foot or phone traffic. Not much goes on. It's just about helping a firm maintain their image.'

'Huh. I never knew that.'

'To be fair, I have no idea what a Farm Manager does. I know it sounds self-explanatory but the last time I was on a farm it was grade four and it was an excursion to a dairy farm.'

'I like to say I'm responsible for guessing what the weather and markets will do, and making the most money for someone based on that forecast. Still, I think I'm kind of lucky. My mother was raised on the Darling Downs, but she moved to Sydney in her early twenties. She ended up inheriting a farm when I was in primary school so my family moved up to give it a whirl. It didn't work so well for them. They moved back down when I finished high school. They found me a job on a farm, as a labourer, before they went.'

'So how does that make you lucky?' I ask curiously.

'I'm no longer just a labourer,' he replies with a wry smile. 'It's fucking hard work.'

I don't doubt it. I saw the hint of a limp when we were walking to his car, a turn of his hips that suggested he'd been injured at some point in the past, or maybe just been over-worked.

'Why did they find you work on a farm?' I ask. 'Why not at an office, or hardware store? Or was it you that technically found the job?'

'The farmer who I went to work for was willing to let me live on an old shack on their property. It gave me a job and somewhere to live.' He pauses. 'And if rumours are correct, the farmer who employed me was also my biological father.'

My eyes widen at the bombshell. All the same, it comforts me that he's telling me this, because I've learned that when men are telling you their dirty secrets, it's because they don't expect to have a relationship with you. They just want to enjoy the freedom to speak freely about things they couldn't normally talk about, before they fuck you, release some tension, and go back to their lives.

'You don't know for sure if he's your father? Did you ever ask him?'

'I could never have asked. Besides, it was really only a rumour, and an old, rarely spoken one. It was only when I got older and the farmer's legitimate son's children were growing up, that I began to wonder if it was true.'

'Wait, so you worked on this farm alongside someone who might have been your brother? Did he know? Had he heard the rumours?'

'Yes and yes and yes,' he confirms. 'Anyway, Kyle - that's the farmer's son's name - had three kids, and the youngest one looks so much like me I often get asked if I'm his father.'

'Is it possible you're actually the son's father?'

'No, not a snowflake's chance in hell, although that idea's been floated by the locals, too. But the kid's not mine. I've never slept with the mother, and nor would I want to.'

The expression on his face as he speaks makes me laugh. 'Not your type of woman?' I inquire.

He laughs, too. 'No. Very narrow-minded.'

We're driving quite a bit out of Toowoomba but I'm not overly worried about being raped and murdered. Taped to my fridge, in my flat, are the details of where I've gone and who I'll be meeting with, just in case I don't come back home and the police end up doing a search. And, at any rate, I feel very comfortable with Alan.

I don't think he's wearing aftershave, but he smells clean and soapy. There are no flecks of dandruff in his hair, which is exceptionally well cut. He must've been to the barber recently because the hair at the back of his head is uniform in short, uniform in length, and is basically inviting me to run my hand over it. I'd forgotten how nice it is to touch a man's hair after he's had it cut.

'How long did you stay on the farm for?' I ask.

'Right up until a year ago. There was a workplace accident... it left someone paralysed... I knew I had to go.'

'It was an unsafe workplace?'

'Only because Kyle and I were fighting all the time. It should have been safe, but he and I would make stupid calls, just to prove ourselves right. In the end, he made a decision that proved disastrous. I was angry with him at the time and put all the blame on him, but in hindsight, I'm just lucky I wasn't the one responsible. I could easily have been that person. We were both idiots.'

'Why did you two fight? Was it because you knew you had the same father?'

'Probably,' he agreed. 'Ed - the farmer, who may or may not have been my father - was good at playing us off against each other. It was a stupid game to him. I think Ed liked to be the big, important man. He'd inherited a multi-million dollar farm and during his time overseeing it, hadn't really made an impression. He hadn't gone backwards, but he hadn't gone forwards, either. I think he was scared Kyle and I could change that. Kyle's very good with business people. I'm good at farming.'

'You're not good with business people?'

'No, I'm rubbish. I never understand what they're thinking, or what they're going to do. But I understand the weather. I loved that farm.'

I stare out the window. The sun is setting, and we've reached the outskirts of Toowoomba City and are heading further out of town and into farming land. The sky is streaked with gold and the fields beneath them glow in the last of the day's sunlight. If I'm going to the grave, at least I'm taking the scenic route.

It's a long way away from Brisbane. The houses are spread out, and often kilometres from their letterboxes. I can understand why he's remained single if he's spent a lifetime living and working out here. He obviously couldn't find a suitable local girl, and finding a non-local woman and convincing her to move to be with him would have been an onerous task. After all, it's not as if his job is transferrable. He needs to be on the land. The woman would always need to be the one who yielded.

As we drive, Alan tells me about the restaurant he's taking me to.

'Was I looking worried?' I ask.

He nods. 'You were.'

I can't remember what we talk about as we arrive at the restaurant and order our meals. It seems inconsequential and at the same time, the conversation is easy. Just like our messages to one another, it seems we never run out of things to say, and never run into contentious topics.

He's not a difficult man to spend an evening with. In fact, he's lovely, and I like that he's nervous. Sure, he tries to hide it, but every now and then he blurts out something that's a little uncool, or he blushes faintly, or chews his bottom lip pensively, as if concerned he's offended me.

As we're eating our main course, a woman in her early forties approaches us. She has skin that's tanned and ruddy and freckled and lined, and light brown hair that's streaked with sun-lightened strands of blond, and her teeth and straight and pearly white. She's a little fatter than me, and a few inches taller, and she gives the impression of being exceptionally strong and healthy and fit.

The expression on Alan's face is one of mortification and I realise that this is an ex-girlfriend of his. I wait to see what she might reveal. A lot of women see a man's ex and automatically assume she's a devil, but I personally find this to be ignorant. I always pay attention to ex-girlfriends. You'd be stupid not to. They know better than anyone what a man's flaws are. If this one is willing to spill the dirt on Alan, you'd want to believe I'm ready to hear it.

'Hi stranger,' she greets, eyeing up Alan. 'Who's this?'

'Rhiannon,' he replies. He turns to me. 'Rhiannon, this is Mel. Melinda.'

'Just like the tattoo says,' Melinda agrees.

Alan shoots her a poisonous glare. I'm just amused. Melinda wants to know if I've slept with Alan, does she? And Alan obviously liked her enough to have her name tattooed on his body?

'What tattoo?' I ask, giving Mel the answer she's after.

My reply meets her approval. Her eyes are blue-green like the sea, and they light up as she replies that Alan had her name tattooed on his right bicep when he was twenty-one. He'd told her he was going to get it done, and she'd warned him not to, because she had no plans on staying with him, but he'd gone and done it anyway.

Alan seems suddenly defeated, as if any chance he may have had with me has just gone flying out the window. I want to tell him it's okay, that I would never hold Melinda's appearance against him, but I can't, so I just smile ruefully at him. He gets the message and perks up a little, but you can still see that he's flabbergasted that this is happening.

I guess Melinda realises her appearance hasn't been welcomed, because she apologises. She didn't mean to interfere. She was just nosey about what Alan was doing with a woman because as far as she knew, he was single.

I feel bad because she feels bad, and Alan obviously feels bad, and the whole situation is now just awkward, so I tell her we're just two desperate people who met on the internet. Alan gruffly adds that I'm obviously 'very desperate', and Melinda assures me Alan's 'not that bad'.