I didn’t know what had woken me. I felt as if I had been drinking earlier without getting d***k and had woken neither d***k nor sober.
I considered the possibility. I didn’t remember drinking. I had come straight home, to my new home, after a frenetic week at work. I’d microwaved lasagne for one while Tom Waits growled about love from the stereo. Later I woke with my cold tea on the sofa’s arm and my paperback, page lost, in my lap.
Perhaps people who claimed alien a*****ion felt as I did when they woke after spaceships, interrogation centres, intergalactic zoos or whatever. The line between real and unreal seemed narrow. It must, I thought, be easy to slip into the oncoming traffic and find oneself crazy or philosophising.
I rarely dreamed pictures; mine was an audile mind. Mixed lines of songs passed through it. “I fell into the Ocean and you became my way”; “The ship is sinking . . . God’s away on business…” Discomfort with pragmatisms at work jigsawed with Waits’ lyrics. “Forget our virtue and put stones in our bed.” I wanted to turn over and go back to *****. My thoughts and bladder conspired against me.
I sat up and tried to open my eyes. The lids were glued then ballasted with sand. They sc*****d across my pupils. My eyes refused to focus as I stumbled towards the bathroom. The terrain of the bedroom and livingroom beyond were foreign.
Reality *****d itself on me. The strangeness of my bed and of the rooms were just that they were new. Part of my home of only five days. As I sat on the toilet the business in my mind faded. I grew aware of the real noises around my, and the bank’s, converted warehouse.
A tram clanked over the rails at the lane’s end. The last tram left the city before one; morning must still be far away. A slight breeze entered along with the loom from the street lights through the window above the cistern behind me. It carried the scent of night dust you only find in the city.
I became aware of people. I thought they might be downstairs; in the garage or, perhaps the tiny rear courtyard. I tried to fix my sensation of them. My stomach tightened and chilled. I sat naked, tiny, vulnerable and still. The plastic seat pressed into my buttocks. I had yet to relieve my bladder and no longer could.
Their’s was the sound of moving and voices not words. Almost not even tones. I strained to position them.
They were outside.
I took a breath. The ridge beneath my ribs stung. I bore down and the sound of my stream drowned out their noise. After I stood I sneaked a look out the window. Renegade bamboo ran between the fence and clothes line. The noise was from beyond the bamboo, from my neighbour’s yard. There was nothing to see.
Back in my bed, I was unable to return to *****. The sheets were too stiff or cold. I pulled the blankets high and grew too hot. I tried for my previous dreams. All the time I heard the neighbours’ noise. It was clearer than from the bathroom.
The bedroom had full height windows. Before winter they would need curtains but were presently bare. I would have turned on the light and read but felt embarrassed that the people would see I was awake and overhearing them.
Eventually my curiosity won out. Standing to one side of the window I could see past the bamboo.
I had seen my neighbour, a plumpish pleasant enough looking woman in her late twenties or early thirties, before. That night, she was kneeling in her court, naked. At first I thought she was ill or might have fallen. I stepped closer to the glass.
On her far side was a man. He was also naked and his hand was in front of him. I thought he was reaching towards her then recognised his motion. He was masturbating.
I kept still.
He spasmed. I was too far away to see him ejaculate but I did see my neighbour lean towards him and, apparently, catch his seed on her chest. There was a faint cheer on the other side of the glass. She rubbed her hands over her breasts and belly.
She was still massaging his come into her skin when another man took his place before her. The new fellow’s erection stood from him. His hands towards it before she stopped him, holding his hands in hers. She leaned over his prick, lifting her buttocks off her heels. She seemed to dribble spit onto him before releasing her grip. He took his balls in one hand and started jerking off withed the other.
My own hands were within the fork of my legs. I hadn’t consciously touched myself. My left palm was against my mons. Index and ring fingers split my folds and the finger between found my clit. My other hand folded over them. A finger entered me. It moved in time with the man.
My neighbour bent her head back. The man leaned so his cock was above her face. There was another cheer. His hand stilled. Mine didn’t. Before I even realised he had come across her face his place was taken by another masturbating man and then another.
I came straining on the tips of my toes and my forehead was against the cold window. My legs were wide. I had crowded three wet fingers into myself. My sight blacked out, returned and blacked out again. My nose and teeth ground against the glass. My legs shuddered and continued trembling as I eased myself onto flat feet.
After, my vagina still pulsed against my fingers. It was to delicate to remove then or leave them inside me. My sight returned again. There was a new man in front of her. Her face was thrown back. Her eyes were on me.
I pulled back from the window and sat on the edge of my bed. Sporadic cheers continued. I lay under my blankets and later went into the loungeroom. With the lights off I watched an old Grace Kelly movie on the television. Somewhere through it I fell a***** and woke to c***dren’s cartoons.
I remembered, as I showered, my neighbour and brought myself off again.
I had just dressed when there was a knock at the door. I clattered downstairs to open it. My neighbour was standing there.
“We’d better have coffee,” she said.