Metroland by Julian Barnes

Author:Julian Barnes [Barnes, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-79777-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

It was the sort of letter you half-read, smile at, and put aside. There’s some point in advising the totally inexperienced; but advice to those on whom life has turned either sour or ridiculously sweet – it’s a waste of postage. Besides, Toni and I were beginning to drift apart. The enemies who had given us common cause were no longer there; our adult enthusiasms were bound to be less congruent than our adolescent hates.

So, the only advice I was open to at the time was,

‘No, not like that.’

‘Sorry. Like this?’

‘Almost …’

‘Well, it’ll only be luck if I get it right you know.’

‘More like this.’

‘Oh, I see. You mean …’

‘Mmmm.’

And, in due course, I was mmmming and aaahing myself. Practical stuff, I began to discover, really was different from written stuff. At school, of course, we’d done all the necessary reading. We’d pored over Lady C. and dreamed of breasts hanging down above our heads like bells, and raindrops glistening during atavistic entwinings. We’d absorbed the great classics of Indian literature (and, as a result, practised PT a lot more energetically for some months, with a heaving sense of anticipation). We’d wondered, half-scared, about unguents.

I can’t say that the texts we studied did us any harm; all I’d reproach them for is their misleading implications about the layout and functioning of muscles and tendons. The first time I tried anything remotely exploratory with Annick (I didn’t particularly want to; just felt that if I didn’t I might be thought someone with no sense of natural, inner rhythm), I got a shock. I’d been lying on top of her in what I would dismissively have called the missionary position (nowadays I reckon that the missionaries knew a thing or two) and decided to swing myself, casually and spontaneously, into the astride-kneeling-position. I swung my right leg out over Annick’s left, bent it up, and smiled at her. Then I tried to move my left leg. I had just got it on top of her right one, when the movement sent me pitching forward, my head landing square on her ear as she tried to twist out of the way of my involuntary butt. My left groin was being torn open, my cock was trapped and near to snapping point, my right leg frozen at an untenable position, my eyes, nose and mouth were put out of action by the engulfing pillow, and my arms capable of pushing only in unhelpful directions.

‘Sorry, did I hurt you,’ I mumbled as I twisted my head sideways (ow, again) and got some air.

‘You nearly broke my nose.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What were you trying to do?’

‘I was trying to do this … ooowwwww.’

I was stranded again, though this time my discouraged cock slipped out, and I keeled slowly over on my side.

‘Oh, I see.’

She tucked me back in, twisted and raised her body slightly as I moved each leg in turn, and suddenly we were there. We were doing it! We were doing a position! Astride-kneeling – it worked! The man with the football rattle was delighted.

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