Exhibit A

Two-and-a-half years ago I wrote this post about the nude sunbathing section of Berlin’s Tiergarten, and about wider public attitudes to ‘social’ nudity. It seemed to strike a chord at the time, and even now I get blog hits from people who’ve searched for information about going naked in the park, only to find themselves on my site.

I was back in Berlin this week for a conference, staying in a hotel on the southwest edge of the Tiergarten. I had a couple of hours to kill before my flight today, and the weather was stunning, so it felt only right that I went and experienced the whole thing for myself.

As I sat in a cab to the airport afterwards, I had an idea for a story. Or a piece of flash fiction, at the very least. I sketched it out on the plane and wrote it up this evening. It’s a scenario that really turns me on, so I hope it has a similar effect on at least a few of you – though as vivid as it was in my head, it’s based largely on fantasy rather than reality.

Maybe.

~

I don’t need to look up to feel his eyes on me. Even in a part of the park where men routinely allow their gaze to drift over the bodies around them, there’s something different about being actively watched. It ripples and shimmers through the air, surfing the sticky September heat. My skin burns under its touch.

There’s a mirror in her hallway, next to the front door.

I say hallway, but it’s more of a corridor, and when she kneels down in front of it to do her make-up I have to twist my body to squeeze past.

Not that I ever do.

—

If pushed, I think I’d blame it on her legs. In summer especially, she’s a ragamuffin – a glammed-up guttersnipe, with her wild, bouncing curls and stomach-flipping dresses – and her smooth calves are impossible to ignore as they stretch out from under her.

Or maybe it’s the concentration on her face. I’ve always loved that – the frowning focus of a woman wielding a mascara wand like it’s a paintbrush, each swipe across her eyes its own mini-masterpiece. Sometimes she catches me watching her from the bedroom doorway, and I grin and blush like a schoolboy, feet shuffling up against the lintel.

It’s sexy because there’s no artifice; it’s not a performance – or if it is, I never realise that I’m being played. She won’t mind me saying this, but I’m not sure I credit her with that level of subtle manipulation. What you see is what you get, in the best possible way.

Which might be why I can’t help getting it. Tonight was a perfect example. Her flat was sticky and warm, and our bags were packed, ready for the short hike up to North London. I’d been horny all day, but even with her fresh, summer scent on my skin I wanted to leave, my mind already racing ahead to everything we’d do once we got back to my place.

I guess there are just things that stop you in your tracks. Like a skipping record, they jar you out of whatever reverie has taken hold, and drag you back to a living, breathing, sweating, fucking reality. This time it was the dress that did it. Deep blue and wreathed in flowers, it combines (deceptive) simplicity with a clinging, sensual splendour. I allowed myself to look at it – at her, curled up in front of the mirror – for just a second too long, and when she glanced back at me, eyes shining in the glare of the overhead light, I knew we weren’t going to leave any time soon.

In the four or five seconds it took to cross the gap between us, I made a series of instinctive, broad-brush decisions. Blow job in the living room, perched on the arm of the sofa. Slow, deep fuck from behind, knickers pulled to one side, after I’ve flipped her round and bent her over it. Clothes strewn across the hallway floor, bed squeaking under us; fingers fanned out across her belly as she sits on my cock. Yeah, that’ll do it.

Not that it ever really works out that way. There’s always blurring – the running together of hands and mouths and eager, shuddering bodies – but that’s a good thing. Sex shouldn’t come with a Gantt chart; you don’t measure it out in iambic pentameter. Sex is free verse; loose, languid jazz.

It’s my fingers in her hair, digging up at the base of her scalp and pulling her towards me. It’s the nudge and bump of my cock at the back of her throat, and the soft exhale around the base as I reach down her dress to twist a nipple. It’s the squelch when she drives her cunt down onto me; the visceral force of her orgasms and the hunger in her kiss – in my kiss.

You can’t quantify those things – they’re either there or they’re not. Tonight it felt like I channeled something wild; something primal and urgent. I bruised her with my fingers and lips, and every swinging slap of my hand on her arse echoed through the empty flat. Her sweat dripped into my eyes, and mixed with mine whenever I curled an arm round her body to crush her against me.

—

Afterwards I rolled out of bed and wandered out into the hall, scooping shorts and boxers off the floor where they’d been discarded. She followed me out on Bambi legs, mascara smudged across her face and hair tumbling down around her shoulders – perfectly imperfect. I paused long enough to kiss her forehead as she slinked into the bathroom, to stand in front of another mirror – this time one I couldn’t see.

Probably just as well.