Suzanne

It was well after midnight when my phone rang. I was in bed although I wasn't asleep. There were way too many hamsters running in circles behind my eyes to even think about sleeping. I pushed back the duvet and reached for the Demon-haunted rectangular slab of silicon that has become my one, true faithful companion for the last decade.

There it is again. The unmistakable ring tone. The caller's initials, "CJ", writ large in the middle of the display.

The Boss. El Supremo. The Man.

The urge to roll over, to pull the duvet back over my head and to just ignore the incessant, insistent 'ring', 'ring', 'ring' was overpowering.

But no. My conscience got the better of me and I was somehow strangely compelled to respond his child-like demands, or else face the rest of the night tossing and turning, wondering what form this latest crisis might take.

"Hey, sorry to call so late," he said. "But can you be in the office for a nine o'clock meeting? It's Ten-Seventeen. They've called an emergency meeting."

His tone suggested that he was somewhat preoccupied. Maybe he'd bitten the head off one too many street urchins at dinner or perhaps they'd cancelled his subscription to "What Sadist?" Or maybe he actually had a family life after all. We know more about the surface of Mars or the bottom of the Marianas Trench than I do about my Boss's private life.

"Sure, no problem," I replied. "But I had planned on working from home this week. I need to get the US stuff sorted before I go, and I would prefer to do so without distractions. Is it okay if I slide off home afterwards?"

"That's fine," said CJ. "I need you there. I need your expertise, as backup, in case they try to pull the wool over our eyes. Again."

"No problem," I said.

"Great," said CJ.

"Super," I replied.

The line went dead.

This exchange would be lost on any reader not immediately familiar with the sitcom "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", which aired on the BBC in the mid-seventies. I have it on DVD, on rotation. Still funny. Still relevant.

Ten-Seventeen. This company had become the bane of my life. They promised much and yet failed to deliver. The Yellow Brick Road leading to the Emerald City, they said. And yet, not once, ever, did they do what they said they were going to do when they were supposed to do it. They excel in only one sphere of operation - they're very good at generating excuses, a bit like the classmate who never, ever finished his homework on time, forgot his swimming kit or who was permanently late for lessons.

I dutifully rolled through the front doors at half past seven the following morning. My first port of call was my own office, mainly to sort out any niggling little issues back at the ranch before preparing myself for the Battle Royale to come.

Once sorted, I took the stairs up to the Conference Room on the sixth floor. The lift was hopelessly busy, crammed full of various competing clans vying for the all-important kill. I really did feel sorry for poor saps that Ten-Seventeen were sending along for today's blood sport. Sacrificial Lambs to the slaughter. Think of "Spartacus" (The TV series) but with less blood and fewer severed heads and you have an idea what this particular arena will look like in an hour or so.

The room was already more than half full when I entered. Therein, I found the usual crop of executives and middle level managers, all with a beady eye on the Boss's chair. I went directly to the back of the room and sat down with my technical team. Why do technical teams always seem to gravitate towards the back of the room?

I drew my team around me and began with a quick pep talk. The usual stuff. We did everything right. The specifications were approved and handed off. We've reviewed their work and it's readily apparent that the work they've produced is not to specification. By they're own admission, they're over budget and low on deliverables. They faked the software demonstrations and openly lied when they stated that the project was on time and under budget.

A nod circulated amongst the team. We're all singing from the same Hymn Sheet.

The room fell silent as the Vice President for Research and Development entered. She sat at the head of the table, opened her various folders and paused before smiling. "Show them in, please," she whispered in the direction of her Lieutenant.

The Consulting Group from Ten-Seventeen entered in single file, trailing their Senior Technical Systems Engineer, a pompous dick called Ian who knows less about Banking Services than I know about laying mastic asphalt. There were six of them in total, all bedecked the latest pseudo-Armani power-suits. The over-abundance of hair cream and fake smiles left an uneasy feeling in their wake. They're like a soap opera, an episode of Dynasty, come to life.

From their individual expressions, I could clearly sense that each and every one of them wanted to be miles away, a million miles away. Certainly somewhere else. Anywhere but here and now.

They smiled politely. Some nodded. Many shake hands because they've convinced themselves that shaking hands and smiling might just improve their situation one iota. This is the Corporate Way. And they are good little drones.

The group sat, as one, at the far end of the table, little automatons acting in unison, thinking in unison. If Star Trek's Borg had a Human Resources Department, this is what they'd look like.

There were some new faces in the line-up. It was also readily apparent that some of the old faces, individuals we've come to know and despise over the last few years, were missing, presumably either sacked or re-assigned.

Collectively, their body language screamed, out loud, that they were on the defensive, on the back foot. They were here to bargain their way out of a pickle of their own making. The room expected fireworks. Blood on the carpet, perhaps a head hanging from the flagpoles at the front of the building before the sun had passed the Yardarm. I'm not one to enjoy the sight of a fellow programmer being stretched across the carpet and kicked in the soft and Danglies but I thought through all of the pain and misery, the frustration and the lost sleep, that this shower had caused and decided that this could be fun after all.

My Boss, CJ, stood and waited until the room was calm and still.

"Good morning," he said. "The purpose of this meeting is not to apportion blame. Rather it's to determine what we can do, in both the short term and the long term, to rescue this situation."

The room remained silent. Completely silent.

Ten-Seventeen were content to let their manager, Ian, do the talking (and wriggling) for them even though this was a collective effort. And Ian certainly laid it on thick.

I leaned over to one side and whispered to a member of my team, Andrew Landis. "He's certainly well versed in the art of bullshit," I said. "In fact, he could bullshit for England. We should poach him. Put him to work in Marketing."

Andrew laughed out loud and then instantly regretted his outburst. The ever watchful, ever vigilant eye of CJ scanned the room in search of the culprit, like Sauron probing Mordor for Sam and Frodo but could find no sign of the errant Hobbits. Lucky for Andy, I thought.

I stared at the faces opposite, scanning each in turn for any sign of a response, or any trace of humility or contrition.

But then I stopped dead in my tracks. "Huh? What the?"

An alarm went off in the back of my head and I suddenly found myself jerked back into another version of reality. My mind began racing ahead of itself. I started to panic.

"Surely not?" I whispered under my breath.

The woman at the back. The rather large lady at the end of the line. She's new. She had short, cropped hair, big glasses and a tight, ill-fitting suit replete with Miss Marple shoes.

"I know her..."

She turned to face me. Our eyes locked.

"Is it her? I think it is..."

I turned away, unable and unwilling to meet her gaze.

"Fuck...." I mumbled. "It's her,"

She did the same, looked away, the corners of her mouth turned down, plainly terrified and with a startled, nervous expression on her face.

I remembered her. I knew I'd seen her before. And I wished I hadn't.

I'd met her at University.

Back then, her name was Suzanne. Suzanne Mason. She's probably changed her name by now.

But I knew it was her. No doubt about it.

Oh Lord. I wanted the room to swallow me whole, right then and there.

"Fuck..." I whispered. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuckety-fuck..."

And this is why...

We were in the Second Year of University and deep in the middle of a truly shitty, evil computing assignment - a variation on the Salesman's Walk Problem. Don't know what that is? Okay, a salesman has thirty houses to visit across various towns and cities, and there's only one car to travel between each of the many destinations. As an assignment, you had to come up with an algorithm which would calculate the optimum route so that the salesperson could cover all of the destinations within a given time. We'd do it these days with Graph Theory but, back then, Graph Theory, hadn't been invented or, if it had, I was oblivious to the concept.

I'd already finished the assignment, or more correctly, I'd copied the solution from someone else who had, no doubt, copied that same solution from someone else. And so on. Except I'd carefully adorned my finished work with a fair number of comments, comments which were so painfully missing from the original source. My version actually looked like I knew what I was talking about.

Forgive the lengthy preamble. Here's where Suzanne enters the story.

I'd partnered Suzanne on a couple of early assignments and had very quickly come to the conclusion that Suzanne was a bit of goody-two-shoes. Suzanne hadn't or wouldn't copy anyone else's code. She wouldn't cheat, hack, lie or steal code. She preferred to write all of her programmes from first principles so that she understood exactly what was going on.

"Balls to that," I said on several occasions. "Why reinvent the wheel? It cuts down on Pub time."

Suzanne said my attitude was lazy and imprecise. I agreed because she was right. But... still...

Fair to say that we didn't exactly hit it off, eh?

Back at Halls, Suzanne and I got talking over dinner and she asked if she could see my solution, maybe walk her through the difficult bits. I agreed. It seemed wrong not to do so. I was helping a fellow student and I couldn't really be all that precious about something I'd pinched anyway so... "Yeah, me!"

Straight to the point... I wasn't into Suzanne in any way. She wasn't my type at all. I prefer my partners (male and female) to be thin and elfin, and I don't like being squashed into submission by those of, let's be polite about this, a 'bigger build'. I don't mean to sound cruel or rude (although that will). It's just a personal preference.

I went to my billet, grabbed my stuff, and then walked over to Suzanne's room on the other side of the campus.

Finding her room wasn't difficult. All I had to do was follow the high-pitched shrill that was Suzanne's best friend, Hellen, who was never, ever away from her side. They were pretty much inseparable.

Thankfully, Hellen left Suzanne and I to our work, albeit without much of a "Hello" or "Nice to see you". Did I care? No. Hellen was a bit of a stuck up so-and-so with airs and pretensions well above her intellectual ability. So, no.

Suzanne's room was unusual in that it was utterly bland, save for a small picture of her cat, Biggles, so named for his habit of jumping out of top floor windows. No posters on the walls. No books lining her desk. No clothes casually discarded. Not even a laundry basket. Just a bed, a desk and a single chair. A Monastic Cell if ever there was one.

Suzanne pulled up the chair whilst I perched myself on her bed and we began to go through my (borrowed) code, line by line, block by block. Nothing wrong with that...

However, there was something odd in her behaviour. Certainly, Suzanne was nice and friendly, had changed her clothes, brushed her teeth and had tidied herself up a bit in the short time since we'd left the dining room. She'd even made drinks. Tea for me. Coffee for her. Was she wearing make-up? Eye shadow? Lip gloss? Surely not? It was a Tuesday evening. Overkill, perhaps?

Then the penny dropped.

Suzanne was playing the 'Closer and Closer' game.

Yeah, I was familiar with this tactic. Hell, I'd even used it myself when I wanted to get jiggy with my next victim. A sly touch to the forearm. The delicate whisper, the smile, feint and barely noticed, and coupled to that, the unmistakable glint in the eye which screams "Darling, you're going to get your bumps felt."

Here we go.

Yeah, I was certain. There it was again. And again. And again.

She's trying to seduce me.

Surely not? Not Suzanne? I had no idea. I'd never picked up any vibes from her. Never noticed anything in her behaviour that suggested, even remotely, that she might be into the gentler sex.

Hmmmm....

Is wondered if there was a polite way of saying "I'm not really all that into you..."?

Because I wasn't. Truthfully, I wasn't. I didn't find her at all attractive.

She persisted, and I kept backing off, and shifting positions so that we weren't touching and...

Eventually, when I could go no further because there was no further to go - you can only get backed up against a wall so many times before it starts to become uncomfortable, I just blurted out something like "Are you trying to seduce me?"

Suzanne simply sat back, smiled and whispered "Yes..."

Okay, fair point. She wasn't making a huge song and dance about it, or lying her arse off. There it was. Plain and simple, right out there in the open. "I want to fuck you."

What did I do?

Well, nothing. I kinda just sat there with my mouth open, shocked.

What did I say? Did I have some sort of smart-assed quip, a witty aside that would dampen her ardour?

No, I didn't.

I just sat there, like a steamed pudding, face blank, mind blank, head full of butterflies. You'd have thought I might have been able to come up with a better response than just... nothing.

Suzanne laughed, took a sip from her coffee cup, and then went back to the coding problem.

Somewhat shellshocked, I turned away from Suzanne and, head down, stared hard at the computer printout in front of me. In my naivety, I thought that ignoring the (literal) elephant in the room might work. It didn't.

"Hey, don't fret!" she whispered. "I'm okay if you're not into... But I kinda, sorta, thought you were."

I turned to her and smiled. "Well... err... Yeah... Dunno..." was the best response I could manage, and it was just monumentally shite. Even now, twenty odd years on, I berate myself for such a dull, boring, utterly vanilla reply.

Suzanne smiled, stood up then pulled her plain white t-shirt over her head and dropped her jeans. No fuss. No nonsense. Here you go. Eat me.

"Don't worry," she said. "The door's locked..."

Bloody hell. She's going for it.

Except that, even then, it used to take a bit more than just dropping your trollies to get me going and still more to get into my pants. I'm choosey, you know.

She was a big girl, easily size sixteen or maybe eighteen but she carried it well. I also found myself staring at an underwired bra, my first ever experience with such a diabolical device.

Yes, she was big and, well, there's no easy way of saying this... I find that big girls are a challenge. Specifically, I have problems locating the essentials. There's that little magic button at the top of the vulva for starters. The 'Giggle Switch'.

When I bedded Sally Rhodes some years before I was puzzled by her lack of sensation and her inability to orgasm. She flinched every time I touched her and she eventually withdrew her favours. Some years later, the truth dawned on me. I am convinced that I was not actually fingering her clit. I think I was actually frigging one of those deeply unpleasant, thoroughly nasty little pimples you get in your pubes from time to time, the ones that convince you that you've got the plague, or worse. Why? Because I couldn't see past the folds of skin to be sure I was actually touching the right spot. (Okay, so I was a bit of an amateur in those days. A clumsy amateur to boot! Sheesh! Don't be so judgemental! We all have to start somewhere.)

Okay, the next question dawned upon me. Do I just make an excuse and walk out or... What?

For reasons which still escape me, even to this present day, I stayed.

Suzanne rather expertly rolled her jeans over her ankles and then dropped her knickers.

She stood in front of me, as if to say "Here you go. Come get some."

I didn't immediately respond.

She then clambered onto her tiny student cot with her head up against the wall.

"Ermm... right..." was all I could say.

Suzanne then spread her legs and began fingering herself under my somewhat puzzled glare. Truthfully, she had the biggest pubic triangle I have ever seen, an acre or so of dense brown hair which spread up over her belly and down her thighs.

Now, remember, this was the early Naughties and the art of depilation had been more or less perfected some years before when Ronald Reagan was still President. I looked down at this dense, undulating fanny foliage and thought "Howway Man! Have you not got a bloody razor?" I mean, a gal (or a guy) could get lost in there. I half expected to see Percy Fawcett's party of Jungle explorers emerging from this enormous thicket to ask for directions towards Machu Pichu.

Okay, so that's a major exaggeration but, still, she had a lot hair on her Pussy.

Suzanne seemed to be enjoying herself so... I kicked off my trainers and my jeans and sat down next to her at the end of the cot. She didn't say anything but just continued to finger herself, eyes closed, mouth agape, utterly lost in her own little pre-orgasmic world. She ran her fingers up and down the gap at the top of her thighs in time to a rhythm only she could hear, and soon began moaning gently.

Strangely, I began to get more than a bit moist. Uncomfortably so. That wasn't like me. I had a habit of being a little bit prissy and uptight about the people I wanted to fuck.

Without really thinking, I decided to go with the flow. I mean, why not? I hadn't had sex in months and here was a willing victim. I didn't even have to beg or plead or get them drunk or even work through any of my usual seduction techniques. (Yes, I have seduction techniques that go well beyond 'Hey, please fuck me...')

I took my leggings off and tossed them at the chair in the corner. They missed but I figured that at least I could find them in an emergency, should a quick exit become necessary.

Next, knickers off and similarly discarded. The sloppy-Joe sweat shirt and scruffy off-white bra/vest combo was balled up and thrown in a delicate arc towards the far wall.

Suzanne sat up, smiled and then cupped my tiny breasts. "Nice," she whispered. "I like boobs that are petit and manageable. Not like... "

She looked down at her own tits, which were as big as my head and then some, and swinging about like the Pendulum in Edgar Allen Poe's "The House of Usher".

"Stand up, lemme see you..." she said.

I did as i was asked and let her examine the goods. She leaned forwards and kissed my belly. That was nice. Actually, it was very, very nice. Then she held me by the waist and pulled herself closer so that her big round face was up against my sweating torso.

"You have a gorgeous body," she said.

"Thank you..." I whispered.

She turned me around, paused and then kissed the small of my back. Fuck, I nearly exploded. I mean, wow. A first. A total first. Who knew that the simple act of planting a delicate, intimate kiss in the space above your buttocks would feel so utterly intense?