Unicorns for Jesus

I look up as the door to my office beeps and opens. It's Hannah, of course. She's the only one who never knocks. I'm always leaving her stuff behind when I head home, so she persuaded the IT guys that, since she's my fiancée and co-worker, it was okay to add my door to her card.

"Lunch?" I ask, already closing down the documents on my screen.

"Nah," she replies. "I'm going to have to work through. The team is getting sandwiches delivered straight to our desks."

"Going down to the wire, eh?" I say. "Does that mean we're not going to have a Friday night?"

"Well, that's what I came to talk to you about," she says. "I'd made arrangements. Surprise arrangements. For some of those arrangements, I'm now going to miss the main surprise."

"That's a shame," I say. "Reschedule?"

"Oh no," says Hannah. "I think we can still go ahead. Provided that you trust me and you're not too much of a coward to face the surprise on your own. At least, initially..."

"Mmm, cryptically terrifying," I reply, licking my lips in an exaggerated style. "I don't suppose I get a clue?"

"Of course not," she says with a smile, but she inspects a formula on the whiteboard, changes an 'l' into an 'f', and adds a little two right above it.

"M F squared." I raise an eyebrow. "That's a thing that's happening? Tonight?"

We've talked about this. We've talked about it a lot. I had no idea it was actually anywhere near this close.

And I kind of thought I was going to have more say in how it happened.

"I found the perfect person," she says. "You're heading to an Italian restaurant in Birmingham city centre. Address is here. Seven thirty. Dress to impress. That is to say, imagine what I'd make you wear and wear that. I'll catch up with you later once the project is done and dusted. Oh, and I dropped a bag of ropes, toys and assorted implements into a duffle bag and snuck it into the boot when you weren't looking this morning."

I give her a withering look. "As the dom, surely I should..."

She quickly interrupts. "As a created and talented dom, I'm sure you'll be able to improvise and put whatever you're given to great use. Sorry, I thought I'd be driving up with you and sharing in the surprise. I'm actually gutted to be missing you face."

"I'll have to hustle a bit to get to Birmingham on time straight after work. So what is this? A meet and greet? Make a good first impression? Because I make a much better impression when you're by my side. Besides, packing a bumper fun pack of toys seems a bit presumptuous."

"Don't worry," she says. "It's a done deal. Just go, be friendly, and have a nice meal while you wait for me."

"When you say 'a done deal'...?" I start.

Hannah bites her lip. "Don't say no, alright. Just... it'll work, okay. Just don't veto it right out of the gate."

"I don't think it works that way," I say. "You can hardly veto my veto."

She's nervous. Lip biting has morphed into that thing where she puts one foot on top of the other.

"Yeah... but just... for me. At the very least, don't do anything to blow her off until I get there and we can discuss it properly. Work through any issues."

"Work through any issues... with the perfect person?"

"Yeah, about that... she's perfect. Really. But it may take you a while to come round to the idea she's perfect. This meal... just... if you have to, imagine it's a family meal with my extended family or something. A commitment, in other words. You know how you go to those and smile and make polite conversation, and you do it for me?"

"This evening is getting sexier all the time," I reply warily.

"Promise?" she says.

I sigh and nod.

"Birmingham, seven-thirty," she repeats, opening the door.

"Wait!" I blurt as she's leaving. "How will I know her?"

"Oh, you'll know!" says Hannah, and gives me a wink as she leaves.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hannah is completely right. I do know. Instantly.

The moment I step in the door, I see her sitting alone at a table for two, and it's both obvious and bewildering.

It's Henrietta!

Henrietta Morgan! Of all people!

How in the ever living fuck can it possibly be Henrietta Morgan?

She spots me instantly, waves, and then beckons me over. My instinct is to bolt out the door. No wonder Hannah defanged my veto!

I make my way around the other tables to the back of the restaurant, she stands, and we hug mechanically and uncomfortably.

"Ben, it's so good that our orbits have finally crossed again," she says.

"Wow," I say. "I did not expect... How are you?"

"Well... er... surprise! I'm thriving, thank you." She gives a little laugh, and we sit down again, awkwardly.

"How long has it been?" I ask.

"Four years," she replies. "No wait, nearly five. You graduated a year ahead of me."

"Oh, that's right," I say. "You took that year out for health reasons."

The word I've strenuously avoided dropping into that sentence ismental. Henrietta was always emotional. In that first year, I lost count of the number of times I heard her crying. Sometimes she'd just have a breakdown at a party or a dorm-room drinking session, usually early enough in the evening that there was no way to reasonably blame it on the booze. And you couldn't pin it on PMT either unless she had a cycle that ran weekly rather than monthly. Sometimes I'd pass her dorm room at midday, and there would be sobbing. Hell, sometimes I'd pass her in the library and, even though she was silent, I would see her eyes were wet. More common than any of those, though, was giving Hannah a call and being connected straight through to the middle of a total breakdown. Nine times out of ten, Hannah couldn't tell me clearly what the issue was, even after having spent multiple hours trying to comfort her neighbour.

"Yeah," Henrietta replies. "Uni was kind of an emotional nadir for me. It was before I had a true conception of my real self."

"I think that's actually true for a lot of people, actually," I say. "They tend to hide it because you're supposed to be having fun, right? I was lucky that I had Hannah the whole way through. It meant that I never had to make quite the same adjustment."

She nods and smiles. I'm being sympathetic for Hannah's sake, but every second, my heart is sinking further into quicksand. Now that I'm sat down and starting to deal with the fact that I'm actually on a 'date' with Hernietta Morgan, I'm also wondering about when her language became so flowery. I remember her always being a shy, stammering kind of girl. Still, I want to try to keep things so I try to keep the conversation going forward in a positive manner. "You still play the flute?" I ask. That's the thing I remember most about Henrietta, apart from all the tears.

"Yes, although I've moved on from classical music into more improvisational and expressionist stuff." I expect her to launch into a lengthy discussion of Sun Ra or Ivor Stravinsky or to tell me about some fusion quartet she's part of, but instead she just clams right up again. That, at least, is more like the Henrietta I remember.

God, that fucking flute! Hannah and I would be in bed in the morning, having whatever level of intimacy, and that flute would start endless fucking scales, up and down, up and down. However long it went on for, I was never allowed to bang on the wall and yell "Learn some Jethro Tull for Christ's sake!"

"Leave her alone," Hannah always said. She was right. Anything I did to set Henrietta off would just result in endless drama and a missing girlfriend for the rest of the day.

I cast my mind round for something else brief to say and come up blank. "Shall we look at the menu?" I ask. At least get the food on the way before I start to dig into her life after uni. I order mushroom and bacon pasta. She orders the plain cheese pizza and then frets if there's going to be too much cheese on it.

The mundanity of ordering gives me a moment to sit back and try to look objectively at the situation.

Henrietta isn't ugly. She's not exactly beautiful either, but there's nothing actually wrong with her. She's quite a small girl, both in height and in curves. Can I describe her as nerdy? It'd be great if I could because nerdy is my exact type. Hannah is the Queen of the Nerds.

The word 'frumpy' forms unbidden in my mind.

That's not fair, though. It's a memory. The woman sitting in front of me has clearly made an effort. She's curled her hair and put on fairly striking red make-up. She's wearing a long red dress that is more classy than revealing, longer sleeves than you'd expect in summer and a collar rather than a neck line.   There's still an air of fifties suburban housewife presiding over a dinner party about her, but that's actually kind of cute.

I'm suddenly visualising the image of both Hannah and Henrietta standing in front of me naked, and I realise that they must be pretty similar physically. Not twins, for sure, the faces are completely different, but close enough to add a particular frisson to this proposed threeway. Nevertheless, this concept is one that I'm still struggling to get my head around.

I open up my mouth and ask another polite catching-up question. I do my best even though she makes me work for it. I'm not one for scintillating conversation at the best of times, but, with all the ease of pulling teeth, I discover that she now works in an HR department for a large retail chain, her job is fine, her hours are fine, her colleagues are fine, and her commute is fine. I try to make my world of data analytics slightly more intriguing, but I'm not sure I succeed much. I launch into a lengthy description of a trip we took to Iceland a few years ago, and then start to tell her about the fantasy comic Hannah is drawing. I'm killing time, hoping for a message from Hannah saying she's on her way. If Henrietta is ever unhappy with the thrust of my conversation, she makes no attempt to guide it anywhere else.

As I offer her more wine from the bottle on the table, she raises her arm, and I see a dark mark peeking out from under the long sleeves of her dress. I glance at it, then fill her glass and then glance at it again, trying to make out what it is. She tugs the sleeve down and then gives me an embarrassed smile. Whatever it is, she's clearly self-conscious about it, and I'm going to let it pass, but then she explains anyway. "A tattoo," she tells me.

"Oh, can I ask what of?" I ask.

"Nothing," she says quickly. Her hand stays resolutely on her sleeve. "It's just a bible verse. Peter 5:7. I got it years ago."

That's one of the chief reasons why Henrietta has to be an impossible candidate for this threesome. In our first year, when she was on Hannah's floor, she was inevitably around all the time. When we advanced an academic year and she didn't, we lost contact with her. Then, when she came back, we used to bump into her every now and then on various corners of the university campus handing out flyers for some religious event for this weird university society --Youth for Jesus. Hannah would still make an effort to talk to her and even took a leaflet or two. Needless to say, I never went to any of them, although Hannah attended a couple, coming back and telling me how ridiculous they all were. And just like that, Henrietta was suddenly almost around socially again, just occasionally, just round the edges of our group and usually just disapproving of any fun we happened to be having.

"So," I ask gingerly, "does that mean your religious beliefs have changed? You were quite into all that back in the day."

Henrietta sighs. "There's a lot of hypocrisy around most organised religions. These days, my relationship with the divine is more personal. Spirituality is a journey, and I've found that my early years weren't so much a wrong turn as it was the long way round. I don't regret my time with them exactly. There was truth even amongst all the lies, and that was valuable, but my view of spirituality is now one that embraces the whole of human experience rather than represses it, and the Goddess I now worship is all-embracing and pansexual. I believe enlightenment is personal for every individual, and we must intuit both right and wrong and our own destinies from what the universe tells us."

"I see," I reply. It's ironic that the longest, most detailed answer she's given tonight is completely meaningless. What I got from all that is that she's still on the woo. Hannah knows how much I hate woo. Still, in my search for clues as to how on Earth Henrietta of all people is here eating dinner with me right now and apparently offering us a casual sex and bondage platter later, one word of that stew particularly jumps out. "Pansexual?" I ask, feigning only mild curiosity.

"I've come to realise that the way I was brought up, the indoctrination and the monolithic texts of organised religion are a chain around the necks of a free spirit. That God can be found through free sexual expression. These days, I practice transcendence through physicality."

I almost choke on my fusilli. "That is quite the change! I remember at uni you were quite shy," I say once I'm able to formulate a sentence. "How long have you been practising this... physicality?"

Henrietta suddenly blushes and almost clams up yet again. "What I meant to say is I intend to practice transcendence through physicality. It's a road I'm really just setting out on," she says eventually.

"Well, I guess we all have to start somewhere," I say. I'm curious to learn more, but I'm also struggling a bit with how much is polite to ask. I try another approach.

"So, I wasn't aware you were back in touch with Hannah," I said. "It was a pity we lost contact, but who reached out to who?"

"Oh, we never really lost contact. Hannah always sends me a Christmas card every year. But recently we really got chatting properly again, and now here I am," Henrietta says with a smile.

"Here you are," I say. Yes, Hannah always sketches her own Christmas Cards and sends out lots of them. On the other hand, I can always spot Henrietta's card as the most Christian, least festive on any given mantelpiece. As usual, her answer hasn't really told me anything. I press on regardless.

"Look, Hannah was going to be here, and she's got this thing for surprises. She loves keeping me in the dark, but I am kind of curious about what she's got planned. What are you hoping to get from tonight?"

That fixed little grin of Henrietta's stays on. "Deeper human connection," she says. "Transcendence, spirituality, physicality."

"Go on," I say, making an encouraging circling motion with my fork.

There's a pause, and she suddenly blurts out "Orgasm," just loud enough that I look around to see if any of the other customers heard. Luckily, the two tables closest to us are empty, and there's a party of six nearby that is noisy enough on their own to provide aural camouflage for us.   She puts a hand over her mouth.

"It's okay," I say.

"Pain," she says finally. It's funny how neutrally she pronounces that word.

"Ahh," I say. "I'm guessing that Hannah has told you that we dabble a bit in BDSM. You know what that is, right?"

"Of course," she replies. I feel like I'm patronising her, but I also can't help but wonder if she knew before Hannah discussed it with her. I have memories of us sitting in halls back at uni with Hannah trying to explain to her what that tired joke about men not being able to find the clitoris was all about. I wasn't completely convinced at the time that she'd ever found hers herself.   

"And you're interested in joining with us when we do... that?" I say, trying to pick my words carefully.

"I am," she replies.

"Just a second." I quickly check my watch and phone. Still nothing from Hannah. "We've never invited anyone to join us before," I say calmly. The thought flashes through my mind that that isn't strictly true, but that one minor exception isn't something I want to dwell on.

"Hannah thought it would be okay. She said you were looking for someone and that I'd be perfect."

I start to nod as a way to demonstrate that I'm listening, worry that it could be construed as agreement that she's perfect and then try to slowly stop nodding without it appearing like I'm contradicting myself.

"Ah, well," I say, "I'm glad she's so keen. It might be a good idea for us to talk. Normally, I'd suggest waiting until all three of us were here, but since she's delayed and you two seem to have already gone into detail, would you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"No, that's okay," she replies. "Are there going to be a lot?"

"Just a few," I reply. I read a lot of online articles about various forms of kink. I'm sure I've seen tons of articles about how to have a conversation with a new partner. Hannah and I kind of stumbled into the lifestyle, so, while we talk a lot, we've never had to take it from the top. I try to remember what I'm supposed to ask in this kind of situation. "I don't want to get too serious, but there are some pretty fundamental things that you have to know and be in agreement with before you can decide if this is even a good idea or not for us."

"Hannah seemed to..."

"Yes, I know," I say. "Please just humour me."

Nominally, you'd want to inject a whole bunch of warmth and friendliness into what can be a very serious conversation. I haven't been able to do that with anything else we've talked about this evening, so I'm not hopeful. Still, I make a start. "Okay, I'd like you to answer any questions as honestly as you can, but if there's anything you feel uncomfortable answering, just let me know."

"Sure," replies Henrietta.

"Are you in a romantic relationship right now?" I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I want to start out with an easy question.

"No," she says.

I decide not to pry further into previous relationships. I already know about two.

The first was a guy called Peter. He was one of those people you meet in your first week of university, and for just a moment, you think they're going to be your friend forever. As it turned out, not so much. A loser amongst losers, he nominally dated Henrietta on and off for about two months. They would go out on a terrible date, Peter would decide she just wasn't worth it, and then his sex drive would collide with his total lack of other options, and he'd have another go. He'd use the word 'frigid' to describe her but only when Hannah wasn't around -- at least not after the first time she explained that 'frigid' and 'not wanting to fuck your sorry arse in particular' were two very different concepts. Peter knew Henrietta was a flautist, American Pie was only a few years old at that time, and I think he was always waiting for a 'This one time at band camp...' moment that was never actually going to come. Still, my understanding was that, frigid or not, he'd eventually gotten his way with her one evening only for them to completely avoid each other for the rest of their time at uni.

Hannah hated him. I stood up for him not being a total creep until an incident not long after. Hannah and I had a spat. It wasn't anything serious, but I'd spent a few too many evenings out with just the guys, and she'd ambushed me about this on my return from the pub. I was just drunk enough that instead of just acknowledging her point, giving her some TLC, and quickly scheduling a romantic evening to follow on with, I'd blown up about how she was cramping my freedom. It was dumb, and the whole fracas didn't last more than a weekend and change. But Peter had seen that sliver of a window as an opportunity to put moves on Hannah in a fashion that she described as 'deeply disturbing.' Of course, he denied ever having done anything at all, but after that, he was dead to me.

The second was this weird 'pledge' relationship she'd had in the cult with this older American who'd been doing his PhD there for nearly a decade. I've got no idea what happened with that in the end, but I wonder if Henrietta's sudden discovery of the hypocrisy of religious organisations has anything to do with it. He always made me weirdly uncomfortable. I can only guess what kinds of other guys she's been dating since then, if any.

"There are two typical roles in a bondage session," I continue. "Dominant and submissive. Do you know what they are?"

"I think so," she replies.

"If you have any questions, please ask me," I say in what I hope is a comforting voice. Henrietta just shakes her head.

"Are you interested in being the submissive or the dominant?"

"The submissive," she says. "Definitely the submissive."

I smile at the speed of her answer. "Have you ever been a submissive before?"

She hesitates in a way that makes me uncomfortable.

"You would know if you have," I say. When she shakes her head, I move on. "What attracts you to the submissive role?"

There's no hesitation this time. "I want someone to hurt me."

"Is there a particular type of pain you are interested in?" I ask.

"No, whatever you want," she says again too quickly. "I just want to feel pain."

"Is your desire for pain something you feel you can express in words? Why do you want to be hurt?"

"Because I deserve it." She stops and then sees my eyes are asking her to continue. "Because I'm worthless. Because it feels right when it hurts."

Everything she's said so far has been a huge red flag. I'm starting to predict her answers.

"I know you haven't ever done a session, but where do you think your pain threshold is? How much pain is too much? Or maybe when does the pain stop feeling pleasurable and start feeling, well, painful."

"Never," I chorus internally with her answer. Well, that's game over then. "Okay, I think I get the

general idea. I think maybe Hannah should be involved before we go any further. Let's just relax and enjoy the rest of the meal until she gets here, and then we can see how things develop from there."

Henrietta gives me another fixed, vacant smile. "Excuse me... I'll be right back." She gathers up her handbag and heads to the ladies. I sit and wait, but she takes one heck of a long time. I wonder if it's nerves or if she's in remote consultation with Hannah. It briefly occurs to me that she could have made a run for it, slipped out the bathroom window. If that's the case, I'll get it in the neck from Hannah, but it might be for the best. Out of idle curiosity, I google that bible tattoo she was hiding. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. A surprisingly bland verse. I thought it would be worse.   

Finally, she comes back and sits down. I'm pretty sure she's touched up her makeup. I cast my mind around for something else to talk about. There's not a lot more I can do until Hannah gets here, except try to make the time go quicker. A minute passes in nervous silence. There's a clock on the back wall of the restaurant, and as I flounder, I watch the second hand revolve all the way round.

"This pasta is rather good," I say.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hannah texts me to tell me to wait at the restaurant for her.

Then she texts me to say it's still going to be a while.

Then she texts me to say she's leaving, but she needs to swing by the house first.

Then she texts me to say parking in Birmingham on a Friday night is a nightmare.

So, not even finishing the meal allows me to escape. Instead, I insist we both order large desserts and, after that, stare into the clouds in my coffee, waiting for it all to be over.

The restaurant empties until it's just the two of us, and the staff starts to hover and get resentful.

Finally, about one million years into my purgatory, Hannah finally arrives. It's ten to eleven.

Of course, she acts blissfully unaware of what she's made me endure. She and Henrietta hug, sit, and are soon settling into a long chat about the old times, much to the consternation of both me and the remaining staff. I don't know how the conversation comes so easy to her.

"Shall we?" says Hannah after the extended pleasantries.

Henrietta stands up and starts to organise her coat and bag.

"Oh, erm," I say, "what exactly is the plan here? Are we going back because..."

"Not back," says Hannah. "Onward. The night is still young. In fact, for some of us, it hasn't even begun."

That's good. We can show Henrietta a nice social time before deciding that nothing else is happening and letting her down gently.

"Lead the way!" Hannah instructs Henrietta.

I pay, and we are out into the Brummie night. As we make our way back onto the high street and then round the Bullring, we have to wind our way through crowds of youth also starting their Friday night. At twenty-seven, I feel old.

By the time we get there, Hannah still hasn't revealed wherethere is, which means that I'm fully aware that I'm being played. As we join the unmistakable end of a nightclub queue, I groan.

"Come on," she says. "Dancing. It'll be fun."

I don't know. It never was. I was lucky that I had Hannah throughout university. Too many of my mates spent every Friday and every Saturday in some god-forsaken dive. I was dragged along sometimes, but lacking their desperate need to pull, I always saw the clubs for what they were - overpriced, way too loud, and fun for at most about an hour.

"Could we not?" I already know my question is in vain.

"It's essential," says Hannah. "It'll set the mood nicely for everything that follows - the heat, the sweat, the darkness, the bodies, the energy, the beat."

"That intoxicating rhythm stirring the primal instinct deep in our animal souls," adds Henrietta helpfully.

As the bouncers open the door to let another group in, the sound ofKarma Chameleon echoes down the street.

"Seriously," says Hannah, "try to enjoy yourself for once."

And so we queue. Often my favourite part of going clubbing because it's still possible to hold an actual conversation. Although tonight, it's impossible to talk to Hannah about what is really on my mind because what is really on my mind is standing right next to us, hovering like the Angel of Fucking Death. Instead, I confirm that her project got finished on time.

As we talk, we move further down the line, and more clubbers join behind us. Most are your common or garden youth out for a good time. A few are more distinctive. As the doors open and close, the sounds of the club leak out.

After about ten minutes, I've heard Culture Club, Erasure, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Pet Shop Boys, and a theory is starting to formulate in my mind.

"So this club," I say to Hannah. "Just your average club, or does it have a particular theme?"

"It's very eighties," she says quickly. "You know, lots of eighties stuff."

"Just that?" I ask suspiciously.

The line suddenly surges forward a few meters as a particularly large group gets admitted. Suddenly, we're standing next to the beginning of a massive graffitied-on sign that takes up ten square meters of wall space. The wordsTemperature Rising are painted in all the colours of the rainbow. Underneath, there is a large masculine figure that looks like the artist was halfway through drawing Arnold Schwarzenegger before suddenly being told he should be doing Freddie Mercury just as he was getting to the face.

"This is a gay club," I state.

The two girls turn to look at each other for just a second. Hannah puts her arms around Henrietta, and they both announce in unison...

"Yes, and we're lesbians!"

Henrietta leans over and gives Hannah a proper snog.

It's hot. Sure, it's still Henrietta, but it's hot nonetheless. Why couldn't the evening have started like this?

"So, here's the deal," says Hannah, once the girls have made their point fully. "Me and Hen are a new couple. You're a close friend from work."

"Am I now?"

"You are. A bit of roleplay will set up the evening nicely," says Hannah.

"Your roleplay, I can see a use for," I reply. "I'm not sure me method-acting a single man going into this particular club is going to help my performance with two ladies later."

"Lighten up," says Hannah. "You can hardly cry 'no homo' when the two of us are going 'full homo' later on tonight."

"Yeah, about that..." I start.

"Two words -- 'I'm taken,'" Hannah continues, talking over me. "In emergencies, six -- 'No, really. Fuck off. I'm taken.' That should account for any and all eventualities. After that, you can do what you normally do and find a dark corner at the very edge of the dance floor and stare broodingly out at everyone else who is having fun until it's time to go home."

Yep, that sounds like a plan.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We enter, we order, we drink, and we dance.

The club is heaving and as I walk from coatroom to bar to dance floor, I can't help feel some eyes on me. Maybe it's paranoia. I'm not exactly the best-looking bloke in the place.

Then, as we make our way into the centre, a thin blonde guy unmistakably checks me out. I blush and push my way forward.

I survive three songs. The place is heaving, and the guys definitely outnumber the girls. That means I'm constantly surrounded, and I'm constantly worried about exactly why any one particular guy is occupying the space he is in right next to me. After all, I know the trick - the whole point is to put yourself in the same general vicinity as the chick you want to hit on.

I really don't like being 'the chick'.

I decide to be true to type and start to look out for a suitable brooding perch. I get another round in and set up on a little row of stools facing onto the dance floor. Periodically, the girls come to take a swig of their fru-fru drinks and to mock me for being boring.

"You go enjoy yourselves," I tell them.

Just as I'm reaching the bottom of my second pint, a middle-aged guy with a beard and shaved head approaches me. "Can I get you another?" he asks.

"Oh, er, I'm taken," I stutter.

"No problem," he says and wanders off. A few minutes later, I see him laughing with his mates and perving over at another group of younger guys.

I stare out onto the dance floor. Bowie'sLet's Dance fades out, and suddenly the lights and the mood change. They're playingCareless Whisper. On the dance floor, I see Hannah and Henrietta pull each other close, and it doesn't take more than one verse for their slow dance to become a kiss. And it's not the same jokey snog from the queue, it lasts the rest of the song. Hannah only breaks it once, to look in my direction to make sure I'm watching.

Of course, I am.

It's intensely erotic.

In my trousers, hidden under the wooden paneling, my cock starts to stiffen.

I repeat the mantra 'bad idea, bad idea' to myself over and over again.

I'm suddenly aware that someone has been shouting in my ear for the last ten seconds, but I can't make out what is being communicated. "I s__d is th__ s__t t_k_n?"

I turn. There's a woman standing next to me. She's a little older, a short, spiky-haired blonde with tattoos in a language other than English all the way down her arms. She tries the same message again, louder and slower, to no better effect.

"Yes, I'm taken?" I say vaguely. Any and all situations, I've been told.

The music stops for a second, and I get to hear her clearly. "Good for you!" she says. "Is this seat taken?"

She's indicating the seat next to me. Under Pressure by Queen starts up, the two pitch bass-riff getting the place shaking again.

"No, go ahead," I say. I don't know if she can hear me any better than I can hear her, or if she's just working off body language, but she sits down.

"You l__k l_k_ I f__l."

"Sorry?"

"I said... You [right]... Look...[ah-hah]... Like [got it]... I [mmm]... Feel [I see]?"

"That bad, eh?" I shout, "That... Bad... Ehhh?"

She nods.

I offer her a hand. "Ben."

"Ken?"

"No, Ben, Buh, buh, buh."

"Hello Ben." She reaches into a plastic wallet holding her phone and gets the on-screen keyboard up. She types a word and holds it up for me.

Zdislava.

"Yeah," I shout. "I probably wasn't going to get that."

"Sorry?"

"Never mind."

"You want to go somewhere quieter?" she asks.

I consider trying 'I'm taken' again, but there doesn't seem much point. I'm about ready for a break from the noise anyway.

"Hang on," I say. I catch Hannah's eye and point up and across to the stairs to the chill-out section. Normally me taking off with a strange bird in a nightclub would not be the done thing, but Hannah doesn't seem to mind, she just smiles, nods, and starts to fondle Henrietta's arse again.

Zdislava and I make our way there and find a couple of seats. There's ambient electronica playing, but it is at least possible to communicate.

"Why the long face?" I say once we've sat down.

"I was up for a wild night out, but I've just seen my crush with my ex," she says. "You?"

"It's complicated," I say.

She looks at her watch. "I've got time," she says.

"No, really," I reply. "It's complicated."

"Heartbreak complicated? Sexuality complicated? First time in a gay club complicated?"

"No! I mean, yes, it is my first time in a gay club, but it's not that." I sigh and give up. "My fiancée and I are considering having a threesome with a close friend of ours."

"Oh, so not that complicated then. Sounds like a good time."

"You'd think," I say glumly. "Oh shit! Actually, I don't think I was supposed to tell you that. They want to play at being real lesbians for the evening."

"Those two you were staring at on the dance floor? Yeah, they had gay for the day written all over them. Which one is your fiancée? The short, cute one or the short, cute one? Actually, forget it, you can introduce me personally."

Hannah and Henrietta are now making their way across the room. Trust is trust, but I guess she also wants to see what is going on with us.

We do a round of general greetings. "Hannah. Henrietta. Zdislava." As I get to the last name, Zdislava holds up her phone again, and the girls squint at it, and then Hannah gives her the thumbs up.

"So do you two know each other?" Henrietta asks us.

"No," I say. "We just got chatting."

"Cards on the table," Zdislava says. "I was sent to scout out Ben for a shy friend. We were getting mixed signals about what his deal was. You know the sort of thing - is he together with one of you? Does he have a naturally mopey resting face, or has he got an actual strop on?"

Hannah has the barest traces of an impish smile that is mostly in her eyes and doesn't even bother with her mouth. "No," she says. "Free agent. We just work together. And, yes, he is always like that." She puts an arm around Henrietta for just a fraction of a second, presumably as a means of further misdirection and then changes her mind. "Actually, could I just borrow my colleague for a second?"

Hannah grabs me by the arm, and I'm forced to step away for a moment as Henrietta takes a seat next to our new acquaintance.

"Hey!" I say, "Don't I at least get to find out who this friend of hers is?"

"Hello!" says Hannah mockingly, "Gay bar!"

"It might not be a guy!" I say defensively. Then I realise that I'm losing the initiative to speak first. "Right, we need to talk. This is the first opportunity we've had since you arrived."

"Don't!" says Hannah.

"You're crazy," I say. "She's crazy. This isn't going to work."

"It can," she replies. "It will. She's not that bad. You've just never liked her."

"That, in itself, is a problem. Isn't it?"

"She's changed. She's different. She's open to new experiences." Hannah is practically throwing her hands up as she speaks.

"And if I'm not?"

"The veto is the veto. But then you'd be crazy. She's our unicorn."

"What?"

"How many women out there are willing to sleep with you?" Hannah asks pointedly.

"Some."

"How many women out there are willing to sleep with me?"

"Again, some. Maybe a larger 'some' than my 'some'," I admit.

"What's the Venn diagram intersection of those two groups?"

"Not completely empty. Tamara, for example?" I say referring to our first and not entirely successful swinging experience.

"Which brings me onto my final question - how many women out there am I willing to sleep with? I said a clear no to Tamara, if you recall. You turn down Henrietta, and we might not find another unicorn for a while."

"I notice you didn't ask how many women I'm willing to sleep with. I get that, but somehow you've managed to pick one of the rare ones that is actually on the very, very edge of that large circle."

"Inside or out?" Hannah asks.

I should put in the killing blow right here. Instead, the vision of the dancefloor smooching and her point about the chance not coming around again soon gets me, and I prevaricate. "That remains to be seen."

"God!" says Hannah. "With that attitude, she's likely to jump herself right off the chart."

"Actually," I reply. "I don't think she would. That's part of the problem. I'm not sure she has any sense of self-worth or self-preservation. I get the impression that I could be as much of an arsehole to her as I like and she'll just eat it up."

"Oh, yeah, I heard about your impromptu job interview." Hannah now does her comedy impression of what she thinks I sound like. "So, Miss Morgan, you are applying for the position of submissive, junior entry-level position. Please tell me in no more than three sentences why you applied for this role and what unique skills you would bring to it." She stops and shuffles some imaginary papers. "Thank you very much for your time today. Don't call us, we'll call you." Her voice goes back to an angry normal. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"It wasn't like that," I protest. "And those kinds of conversations are important. Besides, if it was a job interview, she flunked it badly. To the point where the panel is writing a strongly worded e-mail to whoever is responsible for vetting the CVs."

"We should have had that conversation together! Henrietta is complicated. I know some of her answers probably needed more context!"

"I don't believe this!" I tell her. "Imagine I were to write this into one of those BDSM advice columns. We're contemplating taking on a new submissive, but my partner wants to vet her answers to basic safety questions for quote-unquote 'context'. How should I deal with this situation?"

Hannah relents. A little. "Look, I'm sorry, I should have been there. Or I should have cancelled. It wasn't very fair. Honestly, from the email conversations I've been having with her, I thought she'd moved on further than she has. I thought you'd both get on better at the restaurant. I thought the promise of a new play partner would have gotten you on a charm offensive. I thought lots of things, and I guess I was wrong. Look, the bondage stuff is something that Henrietta wants very much. Needs, even. But we all know that's gone for a Burton tonight. We're now on Plan B."

"Plan B?" I ask.

"Yes, this club. Look, Henri was quite upset..."

"Wait! Are you calling her Henri now? You've already got me in a gay club. Giving her a guy's name isn't selling her any better."

"Okay, how about Etta?" She exaggerates the pronunciation -Ate Her "Is that more suitably lesbian for you?" She doesn't wait for confirmation. "Thing is, we were going to go straight back to Henrietta's and break out the toys. But clearly, we all need more time to feel comfortable. We thought it would inject a bit more fun into the evening. Refocus the evening on hedonism rather than discipline."

"You know how much I hate clubs!" I say.

"Yeah, well, amazingly, we couldn't find a public Dungeons and Dragons game running at midnight on a Friday. We thought the next best thing would be a bit of live action role-play in a suitable venue." Sarcasm drips off her voice. She's not being fair. I'm not hugely social, but I haven't been a dungeon master since my second year at university. And she played too.   

"It was a nice idea," I tell Hannah. "Logical even. I'm just not sure Henrietta is actually that into me."

"She's into you," Hannah says simply.

"I don't get that vibe," I tell her.

I've exasperated Hannah again. "Ben, Henrietta has been into you ever since university. Really. I lost count of the number of conversations about how 'finding a nice relationship just like you and Ben' would solve all her problems. Sister, if she only knew..."

"What, really?" I say taken aback. I replay several semesters of our interactions back in my mind in the space of a few seconds. "Nah!" I say finally.   

"Look, just hold off on judgment for the moment. Let's just have some drinks, have fun, see where this leads, and we'll check in with each other in an hour or so. And Ben? Dance with her. Properly. Then you'll see how into you she is."

We go back. Henrietta is deep in conversation with Zdislava. Hannah sits back down and puts her arm around her supposed lover. The conversation shifts to nightlife in Birmingham with a focus on the LGBT and an extra focus on the L. Hannah talks as if she and Henrietta are going out, and Zdislava does nothing to indicate that she knows I'm the boyfriend. They make such a cute couple that, for at least a moment, I'm worried that Zdislava is going to think I'm the one bullshitting her.

By and by, we finish the latest set of drinks.

"Right, once more into the breach," announces Hannah. Henrietta gets to her feet, and Hananh pulls me up as well. "Come on, you too!" she tells me.

I find myself looking towards Zdislava. "I'd better go back to find my friends," she says, "I can't ignore them all evening. But I'm sure we'll bump into each other again later in the evening. It's been cool meeting you all."

I give a tip of my imaginary hat as a farewell, and we make our way back downstairs. I'm heading back to my perch when Hannah pushes me in the direction of the dance floor. "Right, I'm on brooding duty. You dance. With Henrietta. Have fun. With Henrietta."

Okay, my mission is clear enough. Forget what she says and see how she acts. Maybe Hannah is right, and she'll be as quick to get together with me as she was with Hannah. The problem is, seconds into dancing, it's clear Hannah is dead wrong.   Again, I know how the dance-within-a-dance goes, even though I never had to do it. You dance next to them, then closer and closer, and, if they're up for it, you'll end up body to body. In truth, my university mates being who they were, I've seen it fail far more often than I've seen it work. It's sure as sugar not working now. I take a step towards Henrietta, and she takes a step back. I wait a few bars in case it was just an accident, then I try again. The same thing. If I keep trying this, I'm going to back her into a wall, or she's going to end up falling down the fire escape. She's clearly having some kind of fun, but that's all to do with the music and nothing at all to do with me.

I decide I can afford to be cocky. Overconfidence does not always become a nerd like me. But I've been told I'm onto a sure thing. There was talk of me domming her earlier tonight. Thus, confidence seems not just appropriate but an actual prerequisite.

I get her attention and beckon her over. She stops dancing, and it seems to take her a moment to realise what I mean. Then she does take one nervous step towards me, and I put my arms around her. I feel her body stiffen. She's rigid. I try to move with her to the music, but any sense of rhythm or fun has completely drained from her.

We stay like that through two verses and a chorus ofMaterial Girl. If she relaxes any, it's only very marginal. I look over at Hannah from time to time. The third time, she gives me the thumbs up.

Eventually, I decide that it's time to proceed with the mission. A kiss. A proper snog on the dance floor. He who dares wins. Those are my orders. And mine is not to reason why. I mentally draft and redraft battle plans. At an appropriate break in the music, I lean forward and whisper-shout in her ear.

"I want to take you to another astral plane this evening."

It's not great, is it? But I've tried to tailor it for my audience. I'd have tried "You're beautiful and I'd be honoured if you would let me or us make love to you tonight," but that would have been too many syllables and gotten cut off when the next song started up.

Henrietta is smiling, but not laughing. I thought that line could have played as funny, but she looks like she's taken it seriously. That works as well. For just that moment, she looks as ready for me as she's been all night.

I kiss her and she lets me.

By which I mean she doesn't actually draw away. Her lips remain for my lips to touch. She doesn't move except to close her eyes. And the rigidity is back with a vengeance. I give it a mortifying ten seconds just in case she 'melts', and then pull away.

When I look down, I can read her easily.

She's terrified of me.

"Excuse me," she says quietly, so I have to lip-read over the din. She walks off the dance floor towards Hannah. I don't want to stay here on my tod, and I don't want to chase her back to Hannah, so I decide to get the next round in, even though the current round is only three-quarters done.

As I'm leaning over the bar, I feel a hand pressed onto my back and shoulder.

"Heya!"

I turn, and it's Zdislava again. "Hi," I reply. "Can I get you something?"

"Nah, you're alright," she replies. "It's my turn to get them in for my group. How's that threesome coming along?"

"It's... yeah... coming along," I say. "For sure."

"I shouldn't pry," she says. "But I think I finally understood what you meant by 'complicated' earlier. I saw you two on the dance floor just now. Are you sure that this threesome isn't going to be a twosome with an audience?"

Normally, a woman querying my dating prowess would be a great insult to my machismo. Somehow, though, I feel that Zdislava gets me, and I also feel that I really, really need an ally right now. I turn to talk to her and, in doing so, lose my place in the queue for the barman's attention.

"Not in the least bit sure, to be completely honest," I tell her.

"You want some advice?" she asks.

"Sure, I'll take whatever I can get," I shrug.

"Just remember that a view to a twosome is most guys' fantasies. If you leave here tonight with just that, you'll be doing a hell of a lot better than most dudes out and about clubbing tonight."

"That is..." I turn the idea over in my mind. "... a really fucking good point."

"Wait, there's more," says Zdislava. "If I were you, I'd commit to the twosome right now. Spell it out. Reduce some of the tension. Then, when things kick off, everyone knows where they stand, or rather where they lie, and you don't ruin everything by trying for an upgrade that's never going to happen halfway through."

"Interesting," I say. Suddenly, Zdislava's arm darts over my head. She's managed to get the barman's attention, and she rattles off a list of seven or eight drinks, some of them double or triple orders. Then she looks at me and then back at the barman. "Oh, and two Lispian Crouches and a pint of Carlsberg. My treat."

The order takes a while. Halfway through, I take our drinks back to our table. Hannah and Henrietta are deep in a conversation that dries up as I approach and then kicks right back off when I head back. I'm going to help Zdislava with her drinks, but by the time I get there, there are three blokes already picking up multiple glasses in each hand.

"You want to come and say hi to my friends," Zdislava asks.

"Sure," I reply. This will be a good opportunity to put the identity and indeed the gender of her curious friend to rest.

I take some of the glasses out of her hand as she takes me over to one of the larger tables -- there are about ten people sitting round it. My heart sinks as I realise the mates are, to a man, all male.

"Hey, guys, this is Ben. No, not Ken -- Ben." Then we go round the table. "This is Mike, Barry, Nick, Big Rob, Eddy, Dave, Little Rob, Will, Vince and Other Rob."

I smile, wave, and shake hands with some of the closer clubbers. Despite twenty-seven years of very politically correct upbringing, I still find I want to put my arms around Zdislava or maybe even just yell out, 'I have a girlfriend! Over there!' as a very clear assertion of my orientation. That would raise more questions than it would answer, especially as Hannah and Henrietta are back on the dance floor and all over each other.

"Come and sit down," Zdislava says. The group scoots round enough for me to just about get one arse cheek on the edge of the circular sofa.

"What's up, mate?" says the guy on the end who has practically the only name I remember, Other Rob. "You getting lucky tonight?" His voice has just the slightest of hints that if I'm down on my luck, he can personally help me turn it around.

"I'm here with someone," I say quickly.

"Ben here is having relationship problems that I'm helping him with."

"That makes both of you, eh?". Rob gives a short laugh. "Ah well, c'est la vie."

"So, as I was saying," Zdislava starts, "my advice is to take yourself out of the equation entirely. Deeds speak louder than words."

"And how exactly am I supposed to do that?" I ask.

Zdislava licks her lips. "Tell me, have you ever worn a cock-cage?"

I think she intends me to be shocked. Most men would be. I, on the other hand, have been in a relationship with Hannah for nearly a decade. "Yeah, once," I shrug. "For a laugh."

"For a laugh?" she says. "What's so funny about a cock-cage?"

"Well, I was dressed as a gothy Marilyn Monroe at the time, so the contrast was mildly amusing if you have the right twisted sense of humour."

"I like you," says Zdislava with some certainty. "I think you're going to fit in with this group."

Suddenly, I realise that the whole table is looking at me. I'm not sure that Marilyn Monroe is exactly an aspirational partner for many of the guys around the table, but there is a certain amount of, I don't know, sudden respect regardless.

"Oh, Zee," says a guy who might be Eddy, "again with cockcages! You never saw a relationship issue you didn't try to fix with a cage." Eddy is a larger guy with a thick beard who has a younger, slimmer guy sitting in his lap.

"Not at all," Zee pouts. "I find they are of very limited use in lesbian relationships. Besides, you're one to talk," Zee says. "I'd put money that you are wearing one right now. That's how you roll, isn't it? Dave goes commando and you go prisoner of war."

"No comment!" maybe-Eddy replies.

"Thank you for the suggestion," I tell Zdislava. "But even if I were to take it, I'm not sure where I'd get a cock-cage in Birmingham at this time of night. Mine is stuffed in a box halfway back to Leicester and would need the cobwebs dusting off it first anyway."

"Zdislava has three in her handbag," a wag from the other side of the table yells out.

"I do not," Zdislava fires back and then corrects herself, "I don't have any at all with me," just as the table starts to throw out random guesses of increasingly higher numbers.

"Make sure you get the right key." Eddy laughs. "She once turned up to a session and spent ten minutes trying to get it off the poor guy before realizing that she'd picked up some other poor sod's key up by mistake."

"You liar," said Zdislava. "That was just a pure hypothetical about the sort of thing I was worried might happen."

"Yeah, anyway," says Dave. "Don't listen to her. What's that idiom? When all you have is a cockcage, every problem looks like a cock that needs caging."

The laughter eventually dies down. Despite being one of the figures of fun, I realise that I'm enjoying myself for the first time this evening. A moment later, there's a mass exodus. About seven of the guys get up and head for the dance floor, some in pairs and some on the prowl. Those who remain form their own little conversation groups. I'm left back talking to just Zdislava.

"So, you're pretty kinky?" she offers as way of a conversation restarter.

"You could say," I tell her. "Hannah's the really adventurous one."

Both pairs of eyes dart to the dance floor again.

"Yeah, I can see that," Zdislava replies. "So what else are you into?"

"Well, we'll try anything, but I guess the main thing is ropes," I tell her.

"Interesting," says Zdislava, looking like she means it. "Tell me more."

"Well, you know," I say, "we just started off simple with some YouTube videos, and we enjoyed it. That is to say, I enjoyed the intellectual puzzle aspect of doing some of the fancier patterns, and Hannah enjoyed, well, you can ask her yourself what she enjoyed later. Hannah bought me a formal course in Shibari. I ended up getting a certificate and everything."

"You look like the kind of guy who enjoys getting certificates." She smile. "Don't be offended. Nerds make the best doms."

"And the best subs, too, I find." I'm thinking about Hannah here. "We ended up getting quite advanced - full body stuff, suspension."

"You know," says Zdislava. "I'd be interested in exploring some of that stuff. I've done restraints before, but just the easy-to-operate stuff. You know cuffs and leashes."

"Well, honestly, that'll get you ninety per cent of what you need in most sessions. The crazy Shibari stuff is more for art than it is for practical session use. It does add a frisson if done right, but, honestly, you get too involved with the ropes, it can often suck the energy out of a session rather than add to it. Especially if you're not absolutely what you are doing or you stuff a bit up."

"Yes, I can see that," said Zdislava. "Still, I'd be interested in learning a bit. I'll have to get you to show me the ropes one day."

I wince.

"What? Too cliché?"

"Yeah, it's only the title of every beginner's guide to Shibari ever written," I say with a grin.

"You want to dance?" Zdislava asks out of nowhere.

I nod, and she drags me into the heaving mass. I look for Hannah and Henrietta. Zdislava is looking as well, but when we spot them, she keeps on looking. She tries to pull me away from them, and I refuse to be pulled. I indicate the two girls. "I'd better," I say and Zdislava relents.

There are four of us in the group. That should mean that we dance in a square. Instead, it's more of a trapezium. Me and Zdislava a sensible distance apart. Me and Hannah a sensible distance apart. Zdislava and Henrietta a sensible distance apart. Hannah and Henrietta really fucking close. I'm sure I'm not supposed to be on the diagonal from Henrietta, but that's how it has gone down.

We dance. I try to jockey for position. Somehow, about five minutes later, the shape has changed again. It's now a kite. Hannah, Henrietta and Zdislava really close together, and me looking for all the world like the world's biggest loser perving on a completely separate group of women. I've no idea how that even happened.

It doesn't help that the three girls are drawing a crowd. There's another group of ladies there drawing their own geometric shape, a pentagon, and when, with the flow of the music, the two shapes start to intersect, one of the girls, an almost-teen with blue hair and a nose ring, leans over to Hannah and says something. Of course, I'm far too far away to hear what it is, but Hannah laughs and whispers something to Henrietta. The two groups amoeba and I'm soon left outside an octagon.

It should really be Hannah, but instead it's Zdislava that notices I've got another 'strop on' from all of this. She comes over and dances closer to me. We end up floating independently of the group, off and away from the others.   

"Don't take it too badly," she says. "They're just having fun."

"I know," I reply with a shrug.

She suddenly puts her arms around my shoulders. It's slightly more than a friendly gesture. "Request time," she says. "Just, for the next few minutes, could you look like you're into me?"

"Into you how?" I ask.

"Deeply into me," she replies. "Just, please?" she says. She's looking around again.

"Oh, I get it," I say. "The ex!"

"Ssshh. And the crush," she reminds me. There's not a lot of point shushing me in all this noise.

"Where?" I ask.

She jerks her head back, indicating a couple a few feet away. The girl is lanky with bleached blonde hair, and the guy clearly wants to be Nick Cave but doesn't have the jaw for it. It's becoming increasingly clear that I just don't see what anyone sees in anyone else these days, but between the four of us, we are just about the only heterosexual dance partners in the building.

"Oh," I say.

I'm about to follow up with a question about which one is the crush and which one is the ex when I realise that it doesn't matter. The important thing is what it confirms about Zdislava.

I 'pretend' to be really, really into her and wait until the next song ends. I interpret that as dancing slow and close and giving very smouldering looks. About halfway through, there's a moment where I'm wondering if I'm expected to kiss her as well. She's definitely giving me stronger signals than Henrietta. It's a toss-up whether an attempt on goal now will allow me to even up the score or see me going two-nil down. In the end, I miss the shot I don't take.

Mostly because I know I'm offside. Hannah needs to sign off on this.

My pulse is racing from more than just the music when I split apart from her. "Excuse me for a second," I say and head off in the direction of the loo. Luckily, Hannah and Henrietta are roughly on my route and I'm able to scoot by them.

"A word," I tell Hannah as I pass.

Our old set of seats have been occupied, but we meet up just outside the toilets. As we start to talk, the music changes again andCome Up and See Me by Steve Harley starts to play.

"I have a counter-proposal," I say. "Zdislava."

"Zdislava what?" asks Hannah, confused.

"Me, you and Zdislava," I say slowly. "For the threesome."

Hannah busts out laughing. "Yeah, no!" she says, when she's regained some composure.

"What?" I say. "It's not that crazy of an idea. Not tonight, obviously. We get a phone number, we let Henrietta down gently, and then we call up to arrange matters as next weekend starts to roll around."

"Veto!" says Hannah immediately.

"What? Just like that? What's wrong with her?" I ask.

"Nothing," says Hannah. "I just don't want to sleep with her. Not my type."

"How is she not your type?" I ask. "She's sexy as all hell. Kinky too."

"I'm just not into her."

"It's about Henrietta, isn't it?" I say. "You've decided that it must be her and only her, so... that's it."

"It's not that," said Hannah. "Look, I didn't want to say it, but..."

"What?"

"Well, dream on, basically!"

"You don't think I can pull her? You should have seen how close I was just now."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I just don't think she is into guys."

"Oh, well, I think she is," I shoot back. "More to the point, I think she's into me. And she's called you cute already. Seriously, she's a great fit for us. She's kinky in a lot of the same ways we are, she has a great sense of humour, and I think she's incredibly hot."

Hannah is having none of it. "Except you forget that she basically came out and said that she was only talking to you on behalf of her gay friend."

"I feel a challenge coming on. If I can pull her, would you agree to a threesome?"

"No," says Hannah. "But you're going to try and pull her anyway to prove a point now, aren't you?"

"Come on," I say. "Meet me halfway here."

"Well, let me see," says Hannah. "Halfway of a threeway would be a one-and-a-half-way. That's what? Me giving you a disinterested handjob at the end of the evening because, let me tell you, Sunny Jim, that's the way things are currently heading."

"Right," I say. "You realise that this means war!"

"Ben, don't," Hannah says, suddenly switching from strident to almost pleading. "Not in front of Henrietta. It'll destroy her."

"So what?" I ask. "She's a big girl. This is just how nightclubs work. Hell, it's how life works. If the guy or girl you're angling after ends up copping off with someone else, it's bad form to get a case of sour grapes about it. If things end up awkward, it's because you keep signing my name on consent forms before you've even shown them to me. Besides, I don't really think she'll care. Hell, why not put a foursome on the cards? You and Henrietta can get up to whatever you like, and I'll see what Zdislava is into. A lot, would be my guess. Same room or different rooms. It's no skin off my nose."

"Ben, Henrietta will care. Tonight was supposed to be special. Intimate. She likes you," Hannah tells me.

That does it! Hannah's been living in cloud cuckoo land all evening. "No, Hannah, she doesn't. Not like that. Not at all. How you have somehow reached the conclusion that Henrietta is into me and Zdislava isn't is frankly completely baffling. It's the willing disregard of facts in pursuit of your predetermined agenda. What? You think that just because you've stuck your tongue down another girl's throat this evening, you've suddenly been blessed with the gift of gaydar and now are the world's greatest expert on who is and who isn't a fucking lesbian?"

The music is treacherous. I've timed the very last part of that outburst to exactly the famous pause in the song. A group of alternatively dressed ladies are giving the evil eye from across the room. Hannah froze completely in time with the music and doesn't unfree even when it kicks back in -There ain't no more. You've taken everything. I turn around. Henrietta is standing behind me.   

"What's up, guys?" she says. I don't think she can not have heard what I just yelled, but nothing on her face indicates she's offended.

"We were just talking about if Ben could pull Zdislava," Hannah says. She's always been quicker on her feet than me and a better not-quite-liar too.   

"Oh, great idea! She's hot." Henrietta pauses. "Oh, she's not a lesbian, by the way. She was telling me about her ex earlier. She's definitely bisexual so..."

"Yes, but we planned that tonight was going to be all about us three," Hannah says. "It wasn't going to be about Zdislava."

"How could it have been about her?" Henrietta asks. "We hadn't met her then. It's like fate. The universe calling them together. If there's a well of sexual energy there, then Ben should definitely sup from it and see where it leads him. Unless the answer is too far away from his soulmate. You wouldn't object, would you?"

Hannah's face is priceless. Her lips move a little before she forms an answer. "Object? No, I don't object. No exactly. I was just telling Ben that he's overestimating his chances."

"No, I don't think so, they're about evenly matched as I see it. Their chakras seem nicely aligned," replies Henrietta. "Still, I could be wrong, and there's only one way for him to find out, isn't there?"

I watch bemused as Hannah puts up a little more resistance. As a nerd, I've developed a lot of useless obsessions over the years, as well as a deep love of science-fiction movies such asBladerunner. I pick up a couple of leaflets on sexual health from a stand near the toilet door, and, as the girls continue to debate, fold them together into a little origami unicorn. I put it in Hannah's hand and head to the dance floor.

I find Zdislava with those remaining guys from her group who obviously haven't quite found love yet. They make a space for me, and I join in.

"Another drink?" I ask Zdislava after a short interval.

"Sure," she says.

I know. It's an age-old male strategy and a cheap one at that, but as I always say to Hannah when we're playing Street Fighter -- if you never learn to block it, I'm going to be doing it to you all evening. I get the barman to line up the salt and lime, and then we're both knocking back tequila.

"Right," I say. "How about we make your ex really jealous?"

"What do you have in mind?" she says.

I lead her back to our earlier position on the dance floor. The ex/crush partnership is still close, but not too obviously close.

The DJ is playingIt's Raining Men, but I've no particular reason to think the next song will be slower, so I just go for it. My arms go round her, and I hold her close. We end up just swaying back and forth for a moment or two to a completely different rhythm, and then I kiss her.

The comparison with Henrietta is like night and day. This is a woman who either really, really wants me or else really, really wants their ex back.

We both hold it for a long time, but when we break, we look in different directions. Both Hannah and Henrietta are watching us. I don't know what Zdislava sees, but we lean in again to make absolutely sure.

"What happened to that threeway of yours?" Zdislava asks. "Still on?"

"It looks doubtful," I say. "Perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions here, but you strike me as the kind of girl who might just have had the occasional threesome. With the right people." It's a hell of a thing to say, and I'm not sure if I've got the tone right. I've put a little laugh in there to indicate that maybe, just maybe, I'm not completely serious.

"Threesomes, foursomes, moresomes," she laughs back, mocking but completely serious as far as I can tell.   

"I see," I say slowly.

"If your threesome isn't working out for you," she says. "I've got another suggestion."

"Really?" I give her an innocent smile.

She puts three fingers up. "I was thinking... let's see... me."

She drops one finger.

"You."

Down goes number two.

"And Other Rob."

I have to admit, I don't handle that very well. I pull back slightly and have a grimace on my face for just a fraction of a second.

"Oh," I say.

"Right," she says. She's suddenly got a rather iron look on her face.

"I wasn't really expecting that," I apologise.

"No," she says. "It's okay. But I don't date guys who aren't bisexual. I enjoy women, but whenever I've been with a straight guy they fetishize the shit out of it like you wouldn't believe and I haven't got time for that. And those gold-star lesbians are equally judgmental just coming from the other side."

"I can understand that," I sympathise, "but if you weren't interested in straight men, then why did you approach me?"

"I thought you were cute. And you know, in a gay club! Then you were talking about your time as a drag queen! Don't take it the wrong way, but how you pulled back just now. That's the sort of phobic reaction that says we'd never work out. Maybe it wasn't fair to string you along, but, right up till just now, I really thought you might go for it."

"I'm sorry," I say. "I'm not queer, just kinky."

"You absolutely sure I can't tempt you?" asks Zdislava. "Your girl can watch if she likes. Hell, your girl's lover as well, if she's into that, although we might be running out of space in the bed by that point."

"She's not my girlfriend's lover," I say quickly. That just feels weird. "Not yet anyway. The way things are going, she might never be."

"Why not?" Zdislava asks. "She's hot. Your girlfriend is hot. Together, they're steaming. What could go wrong? Is it the old joke about lesbianism and Uhauls? Are you worried she is going to leave you for Henrietta the moment she works out how much better girls are in bed?"

"No, it's not that," I say. For all that Hannah has never been a bird that can be caged, I'm pretty sure that however far she flies, she'll always find her way home to me.

"So?" she says. "Go have fun!"

"Yeah, I guess," I say. She's not convinced me, but I don't see much point in arguing with her further.

"Well, off you go then!" she says, shooing me away.

I turn to go. I've got the kiss, which should be enough to make my point, but then I suddenly work out a way to really achieve total victory. I turn back. "Hey, were you serious about wanting to learn how to do Shibari ropes?"

"Oh, that, I'd forgotten about it," she replies. "But, come to think of it, yes, I would love to learn."

"Give me your number, and we can set up some kind of lesson. I'm sure I can talk Hannah into modelling for us."

"Or Henrietta?" Zdislava suggests.

"Err, yeah," I reply. That's a more difficult image to picture. I hand over my phone, and she puts her number into it.

"Take care," she says and then leans in for a quick goodbye kiss.

As I get a couple of feet away from her, I turn, and she makes a 'call me' signal with her hand.

Perfect!

When I get back to the new set of seats the girls have acquired, Henrietta high-fives me. "Way to go, stud!" Then she pulls me in for a hug, and for the first time, her hug feels almost human. She's excited, and there's a genuine warmth and happiness as she throws her arms around me. I feel her breasts squeeze into my chest and, for just a moment, I get a whiff of her scent -- an available female, my libido suddenly yells at me. We half-separate and look at each other and the way the light catches her expression, it occurs to me that in another context, this would be exactly the moment to try kissing her.

But not again.

"Okay, you've made your point," Hannah grumbles, spoiling the magic. She places my unicorn back into the palm of my hand. "Shall we get out of here?"

"Sure," I say. "My work here is done."

"If we're going, I'll just use the ladies," Henrietta says.

"So, if we're going, where are we going exactly?" I ask Hannah once she's gone. I'm still pretty fed up of being led around blind all evening.

"Back to Henrietta's," I'm about to protest, but Hannah puts a finger up. "Neither of us can drive, and I don't fancy springing that much for a taxi all the way back home. We've obviously reached a stalemate here. Veto and veto. Don't worry. I'll find some way to explain to Henrietta, though God knows how. Let's just crash with her, and we can do a full post-mortem in the car home in the morning."

"Amen," I say.

As we wait for Henrietta to return, I play the events of the evening back over in my mind. Somehow, I started tonight with the offer of a bondage session with two willing subs and have managed to somehow negotiate myself all the way down to sleeping on a sofa. I'm reminded of that book I read recently by the comedian Danny Wallace, where he decided to say 'yes' to every offer anyone ever made to him, no matter how obviously a con, just to see what happened. It's entirely possible I've been overthinking this.

I turn to look back at the dance floor. Zdislava is talking conspiratorially to Bargain Basement Nick Cave, who seems to have lost the accompanying beanpole for the moment. He leans in for a kiss, and she immediately draws back and storms off. For some reason, that makes me feel a little better.

Henrietta returns, we get our coats, and then we get the hell of out Dodge.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Once we're back on the streets, it takes ages to get a taxi to Henrietta's. And it's only once the taxi is underway that I discover that Henrietta doesn't exactly live in Birmingham, but in Redditch, which is only kind of Birmingham. We sit in the taxi in silence. Hannah is muted for a change, the wind taken out of her sails. I rarely knew what was going on in Henrietta's mind, back in the day, but now she spends the trip looking out the window, for all the world looking contented. I find myself wondering if Hannah is going to havethe talk with her then and there in the taxi, but no. It's not necessarily going to be a good conversation for me involved in, and she's hardly going to want to talk in code to avoid letting on to the taxi driver what is going on. Or, rather, what is no longer going on.

Finally, we end up outside a nondescript terraced house in a nondescript street. As Henrietta lets us in and we crowd into the living room, I see evidence of at least one housemate generally, but no evidence of a housemate or housemates actually being present. Henrietta, while not exactly noisy, isn't making any attempt to 'creep' us into the house, so I'm guessing they will have cleared out for the weekend.

"Up this way," Henrietta says, and she takes us up into her bedroom.

As we get in, Hannah makes a show of yawning and checking her watch. It's nearly three o'clock.

"Hey, erm, would you mind if we just kind of went to bed?" Hannah says casually. "We ended up out way later than I thought, and I don't know about you, but I'm beat."

Henrietta hesitates for only a second. "Sure," she replies, apparently carefree. "You guys can have up here. I'll sleep downstairs on the sofa."

This is not the approach I was expecting. The approach I was expecting was going to be long and drawn out and full of tears, but I can't help but admire Hannah for the ballsiness of her simplicity. Nevertheless, I then proceed to balls it up completely myself with undue gallantry. "Nah, you're okay," I find myself saying. "You guys have the bed, I can make do with the sofa." It's an almost Pavlovian guy thing to say, and I find Hannah staring daggers at me.

Henrietta still doesn't miss a beat. "Great! Anyway, I need a shower before bed. I'll put some bedding down in the lounge."

She goes bustling off. Hannah looks like she wants to say something, but also clearly doesn't want Henrietta bustling back in halfway through my dressing down. We end up standing there in silence, and I have a chance to look around properly. Henrietta's bedroom is mostly what I expect. She has clearly been going through some life changes, but her décor hasn't quite caught up yet. There are parts of it that are very familiar from her room in uni. True, it's slightly less pink than I remember, slightly, and her herd of fluffy animals has definitely been culled somewhat, but I still find it's all a bit much. With Hannah, I've never had to deal with anything more girly than a statuette of Princess Peach playing tennis.

My eyes find themselves scanning along her bookshelf, knowing they are going to regret it before they even begin. On the bottom shelf, she has two bibles -- a King James and a Good News and those are swiftly followed by a series of books about religion, including one promising fifty reasons why evolution is wrong and a 'pray the gay away' testimonial. The next shelf up has a series of fantasy books dominated by the complete works of C. S. Lewis and the Twilight Saga, but notably not Harry Potter. Finally, an only half-filled shelf covers books about spirituality and meditation handbooks, all written by 'gurus.'

In fairness, the only other overt symbol of religiosity is a statue of Christ Redeemer. He's up on the windowsill looking down on the bed. I've never been entirely comfortable with the idea that God is always watching us, even when we sleep, so this is a bit too on the nose for me. He's probably more of a souvenir than an icon, but Hannah is obviously thinking the same thing because she turns him round so he can bless the back garden instead. Eventually, we hear the sounds of water, and Hannah lets rip.

"What the hell did you say that for?" Hannah asks. "You wanted out of this, and when I got us out, you pushed me straight back in!"

"No, it's fine," I say, embarrassed by myself. "I just thought it's not really fair for her to have the sofa. We're imposing on her, after all."

"And you're not worried after we've been all over each other all evening that we'll be getting up to all sorts once the bedroom door is closed?"

"No," I say. "I trust you. Besides, I'm not particularly bothered if you do."

"What do you mean you're not 'particularly bothered?' You've been 'particularly bothered' by everything we've done all evening."

"I vetoed any bondage play because I don't think she has any idea where her boundaries are. And I vetoed my having sex with her because I don't think that she is that into me. I never vetoed her and you together."

"You didn't exactly green light it either, did you?"

"More to the point, you haven't exactly been stopping for any traffic lights, regardless," I say.

"You've been trying to run every red light I've switched on."

"You know me," says Hannah. "I like to be spontaneous. You usually come around. I don't understand why you're being so stubborn today. This was going to be fun. But explain to me why is me and her together okay and you, me and her together not okay."

"You know why," I tell her. "Don't make me say it again."

"You still think she's a lesbian? She's bisexual."

I go over to the bookshelf and pull the 'curing homosexuality' volume out just far enough that she gets the point. "I know you're not supposed to question whatever someone claims their identity is, but do you think maybe, just maybe, she's in denial?"

"Henrietta is complicated," Hannah admits. "For what it's worth, I do believe she's bisexual. But she's torn. And her sexuality is a work in progress. There are reasons why female-female relationships might be easier for her right now. And, you're absolutely right, there are powerful forces pulling her in the opposite direction."

I take a deep breath "You keep saying complicated. Are you sure it's not just very simple? Look, I'm not the sort of guy who thinks that every girl who doesn't fancy him is a lesbian, but I don't think it's just me. Remember what happened with her and Pete Marshall back at..."

Hannah winces. She even takes a step back. "I thought we'd agreed never to mention that guy's name ever again."

I know I should probably drop it, but he is making my point for me. "Yeah, I'm just saying that he spent all that time trying and..."

"Oh, Ben, don't be so fucking dense. You've had five years to put two and two together!"

"What?" I say, momentarily baffled.

Hannah takes a moment, fuming, but also, it seems calculating. "Ben, you know Henrietta had issues during that first year at university. She told me a lot. Things I didn't tell you at the time. Things I'm not going to tell you now. But... I guess I have a confession myself."

She pauses to make sure I'm listening, and I take a step closer to her. "What?" I ask.

"You remember I said that Peter hit on me that weekend we were kind of half broken up?"

I nod.

"Well, that wasn't true. Not even remotely. I only said it because I couldn't bear you hanging around with him anymore. That was what the argument was about in the first place, although I don't think you even really got that at the time. You just thought I was nagging you and trying to break up your friend group. That wasn't it at all. There were things I'd been ordered never to say."

There's a pause. She clearly thinks this puzzle is solvable from the information she's given me, and indeed it only takes me a second to recontextualise Henrietta's sudden departure halfway through the year.

"Oh," I say.

"Yeah," says Hannah. "Oh. So when you say that Henrietta has no sense of self-worth or self-preservation, you're absolutely right. She also has lousy taste in men. And now she's talking about getting into BDSM, and that scares me."

"Well, just tell her not to!" I say. "It sounds like she's trying to fly before she can walk."

"And if she doesn't listen to me?" says Hannah. "You said yourself, left to her own devices, she's going to get eaten alive! So, she doesn't know the right answers to any of your safety questions. We can teach her. Look, believe it or not, there are some very good reasons why I thought her getting into BDSM might actually be healthy for her."

"Such as?" I ask.

Hannah is silent.

"Oh, come on! Jesus! Communicate!" I cry.

"If we were doing a session together, there would have come a point when either Henrietta would have pulled you aside and had a conversation with you, or else I would have on her behalf. As we're not doing anything, it's not exactly your business now, is it?"

Her ferocity takes me by surprise. "Okay, okay, that's fair enough, I guess." I wait for a second until I see she's relaxed a bit. "Then let us at least communicate properly about the things that are our business," I say. "Let's just take it back to basics. You still want to experience lesbian sex, right? Eventually?"

"Yes," said Hannah. She's cautious, almost as if she thinks I'm setting a trap.

"And you think Henrietta is the perfect person for you to experience that with?"

"When I said perfect earlier this evening," Hannah admits, "perhaps that was overselling it a bit. Ideal for many reasons, shall we say."

"Explain those reasons," I say levelly.

"We're both inexperienced. I like that. You know I like to feel, well, if not in control, then at least equal in a relationship. Or an encounter or whatever you want to call it. And this has come about naturally. It was something that was always there, rather than us going out and trying to make it work with someone off the Internet or someone from a club. I know Henrietta, and I can kind of imagine what it's going to be like with her. Not as much as I can imagine your reactions to the thing we get up to, but enough to feel comfortable. Most of all, I guess I'm realising that I only want to have sex with people I genuinely care about." She says this last part cautiously. "People I have a bond with."

That actually kind of stings. Hannah has only ever had sex with one other guy, and I was blindsided by the strength of the bond she actually had with him. Her with Henrietta would be different. I understand the emotional link they've had on-and-off since university and how it's a particularly close friendship. Plus, Henrietta doesn't have a penis. Don't ask me to justify how that works logically. It just does.   

"Okay, I can accept that," I say. "On that basis, I'd be happy for you two to proceed."

"You'd want to watch us?" she asks.

"Is that a good idea?"

"I think it's essential," says Hannah, firmly. Again, she's referring back to her former one-time lover. Letting her do her thing on her own was a mistake, although I doubt me having been in there would have been much better.

"In which case, I'd like to watch you," I say serenely, as if it isn't every guy's fantasy.

"Okay," says Hannah. "And to be clear, you don't want to join in?"

"No," I say. "I'm going to watch, but I think it's better that it's not sexual for me at all. I'll just be observing. Afterwards, we can discuss what happens next."

"I think I can work with that," says Hannah. She disappears. As I sit on the bed, I hear her knock on the bathroom door, and then the sound of water becomes louder for a second as she is admitted inside.   

I wait, and eventually Hannah returns. "Okay," she says, "it's agreed." She reaches down under Henrietta's dressing table and gets a hair dryer. She goes out, the water stops, and then she comes back. "Henrietta will be along in a moment." She's suddenly nervous again. "Ben, there's something I have to tell you before we... get started. I don't want it to be a shock to you."

"What?" I ask.

"Her arms...," Hannah says and then pauses. A moment ago, I had no idea where she was going, but it suddenly hits me. Hannah knows my feelings about religion. She's going to tell me about Henrietta's tattoos.

"Oh, that!" I say. "Don't worry, I saw."

"You saw?" says Hannah, taken aback.

"Yeah, while we were having dinner. Her sleeves rode up a little bit, and I caught sight of her forearms."

"Oh, okay," says Hannah. "Well, that makes things a lot easier. Why didn't you say earlier?"

"Yeah, it's no big deal, not really," I say with a shrug. "I don't care."

"That's cold." Hannah is suddenly annoyed again. I have no idea why. "Would you like to rephrase that?"

"Don't worry," I tell her. "I'm not going to say anything. It's all water under the bridge."

Hannah relaxes slightly. I should probably shut up. I don't. "We all know she was a nutter. She's changing. She's less of a nutter than she was, perhaps with a little help and guidance she can be almost no nutter at all."

"Fuck you, Ben!" Hannah says. She's gone from tense to nuclear. "In all the years I've know you,

I've never actually thought you were an actual arsehole, but now..."

"What?" I say. "You know how I feel about religion. That weird cult she used to be in."

"That's rich," she says. "That's pretty fucking rich. Yes, they were a bit overbearing, a bit too fundamentalist, there were a few too many actual creeps, but there were still people in that group who actually cared about her. Tried to help her. Actually did help her for a while. What did you ever try to do for her? How have you ever tried to help her?"

"I..." My long-term instincts tell me that Hannah wouldn't be so mad at me if I wasn't in the wrong somehow, and the best thing I can possibly do right now is climb down completely. A possibly insensitive turn of phrase aside, I'm not entirely sure what I've done. "Okay," I say. "I'd like to help her now."

There's a knock on the door. In her usual fashion, Henrietta has chosen just the perfect moment to pop back up. She sticks a head round the door. "I'm ready if you are."

"Just a second," chirps Hannah.

"Okay, I've got a surprise," says Henrietta. "I'm just going to go down and get it started."

That boggles the mind. I try to think which sex toys need significant time to get warmed up. For some reason, the only image my mind can focus on is a lawn mower.

Hannah glares at me. "We've been back and forward with Henrietta all evening," she says. "So I'm going to push on regardless, but you need to be on your absolute best behaviour. Remember, even when you're unlucky, you're still incredibly lucky."

"Absolutely," I say.

Hannah opens the bedroom door and yells down to Henrietta. "We're ready."

About a minute later, we hear footsteps come back in, and Henrietta comes back in. She's put on new clothes. I would have expected something sexy, but she's instead gone for a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms. More to the point, she's carrying the biggest bong I've ever seen.

"To get us in the mood," she explains.

This, as far as I'm concerned, is a Henrietta change for the better. "Great," I say. "I could definitely use that."

Henrietta is about to pass it over, but Hannah interrupts. "Nah-ha-ha!" she says. "Only the two of us need to be in the mood. You're not partaking tonight, remember." 

I look at my watch again to make a point. "In which case, I need a cup of coffee."

I go down to the kitchen and find some instant in the cupboards. By the time the kettle is boiled and I'm back in the bedroom, cup in hand, the girls are already sitting on the bed, taking turns puffing away. I take up position on the dresser stool and sip my coffee while I wait for the curtain to go up. The caffeine is welcome. Whatever buzz I had from the club is already well-faded.

There's a lot of giggling even before the narcotic can have set in. They're still nominally chatting, and they are in no rush, but as they take one hit and then another, some of their earlier 'friendliness' returns. Hannah is doing all the running. Sure, she's stoned too, but she's also deliberate. It is her that cozies up first, her hand going round Henrietta's waist. I'm watching her like a hawk, and I'm aware that I'm in the presence of a master of slow seduction.

At one point, she even says, "Is it hot in here?" and somehow that doesn't come across as corny at all. Henrietta barely even seems to register it as a move. Hannah pulls off her dress and is left in just her bra and knickers. When Henrietta starts to do the same, Hannah comes and helps her pull the sweatshirt off over her head. For a moment, it gets stuck around Henrietta's head. That means she is blinded while I get to see that she isn't wearing a bra. My first reaction is that Hannah and Henrietta aren't so similar physically after all. I hadn't counted on just how much more she has upfront. I've no idea how she has kept those hidden away all these years. They're not massive by any stretch, but

Henrietta has definitely been dressing to minimise all these years.

I've been told I'm the audience. As I look at Henrietta's breasts, I'm left wondering how much it is appropriate to perv. I need to set rules for myself. Clearly, I can watch. I can enjoy. I must not stare.

I break that rule instantly. As the two girls struggle with it, the sweatshirt comes up a little bit more, and I get a clear look at Henrietta's arms.

On her left arm, I can just about make out the verse she told me about. It readGive all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. 1 Peter 5:7 On the other arm, there is a different one, though it's too far angled away from me to be readable. Seeing them on her body, though I suddenly realise what Hannah has been talking about. These are not declarations of faith, nor are they merely decorative. They have a clear, unambiguous purpose.

Behind each one, running down from the top of her shoulders to the start of her inner elbow are hundreds of scars. They vary in length but most are an inch or so. They sit in row, some perpendicular with the bone and some running diagonally. Some sit in rows and columns, organised, but others are chaotic.

Just as the top comes off completely, Hannah looks in my direction. She sees my shock, and a moment of understanding passes between us. Whatever she thought I said earlier, she realises that I didn't know about this. The moment Henrietta is free, Hannah reaches forward and kisses her full on the lips. I'm guessing her rush is less about moving things forward than it is protecting Henrietta from my expression. I'm profoundly grateful.

Henrietta is not less into it and, after the initial surprise, she starts to play an active role in the lip wrestling. The two of them have been kissing on and off all evening. This is quantifiably different though.

This is foreplay.

With Henrietta topless, I know Hannah's bra is going to come off quickly. Knickers stay on, but Hannah has no problems getting a hand inside with almost immodest haste. Hannah lies back and pulls Henrietta on top of her. My girl remains in control, even from underneath, a skill of hers I'm all too aware of. Henrietta is encouraged to take the lead, a hand firmly on her back, a leg opening up just slightly, and, more than anything, eyes imploring. Hannah tilts her head back, and Henrietta is suddenly chewing on her neck.

My erection is straining at my trousers. Again, I'm left wondering about the etiquette. Can I release the caged beast? I decide that can in no way be covered under 'best behaviour', so I decide to practice self-restraint rather than self-abuse. It's fucking hot though.

Perhaps this wasn't such a bad idea.

Hannah reaches up and starts massaging Henrietta's breasts, and Henrietta tosses her hair back and moans. Hannah comes and takes a large nipple in her mouth and suckles on it for just a second. Then she looks directly at me and winks before grabbing the other one.

The initial hotness starts to turn into frustration. If this threesome is like having your own live pornographic movie then not being able to wank to it is torture. Moreover, I start to get the truth behind all those jokes about men and foreplay. I start to wish I had a remote control to fast-forward some of the more extended touching sequences. I develop a weird obsession with the knickers. Surely they're coming off now? No, how about now? Oh, come on!

At some point, they change places, Hannah ending up on top. I've seen Hannah in all kinds of modes sexually. Here she is caring and slow, but also firm. She has one hand round Henrietta's back and another disappearing where I can't see. She makes sure Henrietta's legs are wrapped firmly around her waist, and, as she kisses her, my attention goes to the two women's chests pressing up against each other.

The breathing becomes heavier. Hannah attacks a nipple again, and I think she even bites it. At least, Henrietta lets out a little gasp of shock. Hannah just laughs. Then she reaches down and pulls Henrietta's knickers off - finally!

This marks the moment at which foreplay becomes play. The next ten minutes are still not rushed but are a deliberate and continuous attempt to bring Henrietta to orgasm. Annoyingly, I can't see the action - there is just a mass of heaving thighs at the critical area, but at one point, Hannah brings her hand up to her own mouth and licks her fingers clean. I shift my chair slightly to get a better look.

Henrietta leans her head back, closes her eyes, and remains like that. If anything, she becomes quieter. I watch the smiles dance around her face. When she cums it's muted, but unmistakable. Her whole body quivers for just a second, there is a pause, and then she shakes and expels a single gasp of air before biting down hard on her lip.

Then both women are collapsed next to each other and giggling.

"How was it for you?" Hannah asks Henrietta.

"That was... that was... that was..." Henrietta is still struggling to get her breathing and giggling under control.

"That good, eh?" Hannah says.

"It was good for me as well," I say, and immediately regret my contribution.

Henrietta looks at me. Then her eyes almost imperceptibly flick to her own arms. She leans over, reaches down and picks up her sweatshirt from the floor and quickly pulls it over her head. The two girls snuggle down together, arms wrapped around each other. They become one lump under the duvet. It's difficult to make out what exactly is going on. There's definitely some more touching and kissing of skin and 'post-coital intimacy.' Shortly after, there is also snoring.

I sit on that rather uncomfortable stool until I'm sure we're done. Then I find a spare duvet in the airing cupboard and make my way down to the sofa.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We don't get up until after ten, but you can't really count it as 'a lie-in' if you're still getting less than six hours sleep. At one point, I'm vaguely conscious of some interaction with the housemates as they come in, realise there is a strange bloke asleep in their living room, and then bustle out again. I form no other conception of them, and by the time I rouse myself, they've gone out again.

The shower is going and I confirm it's Hannah by shouting through the door. I find Henrietta in the kitchen, but what I was really looking for was coffee. I always work on auto-pilot even when I'm not sleep-deprived, which is a problem because that auto-pilot is calibrated for my own house. Despite having made a cup last night, I open about three different cupboards looking for the jar of instant before Henrietta pours me a proper cup from her French press.

"Milk is in the fridge," she tells me. "I'm doing breakfast."

My hopes of a Full English are quickly dashed. Henrietta is doing boiled eggs and soldiers in a range of cutesy egg cups. Of course, I have to specify whether I want the chicken, the rabbit or the kitten. I, of course, go with the chicken because it was first on her list and also just seems right. I peel the shell of my first egg, scoop off the top with my spoon and discover it's a hard-boiled egg. I'm not sure if Henrietta is also operating at less than peak efficiency or whether it's just another thing I'm going to have to start classifying under 'her quirks.' I choose not to say anything about it.

"Have a good time last night?" I ask instead.

"Yes," she says. "Yes, I did." She sets up Hannah's plate at an empty chair and then comes to sit next to me. I'm just about to pick up another soldier when she reaches across and touches my hand.

"Ben, I know I'm not always very good at communicating," she says. "I know things didn't really turn out the way they were originally planned. I'm sorry if you were disappointed."

"No, it's okay," I tell her. I find her sudden touch makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps that's hypocritical of me.

She lifts up the sleeve of her T-shirt just a little. "I want you to understand," she says. "This is not who I am," she tells me. "But it's who I was, and it's who I struggle every day not to be. You asked me about pain. I want somebody to hurt me so I no longer need to hurt myself. Someone who loves me and knows when to stop."

"Thank you, I think I understood that last night," I tell her. I put my hand across and drag her arm away from the sleeve.

"I was hoping that you and Hannah could be that people. I am attracted to you. Very much so. I just struggle with intimacy. I know I'm tiresome and not attractive, and I'm not worth your attention. I would like to try sex with you. We could even try this morning, if you like. Hannah always tells me what a great guy you are. I'd like a great guy."

"Come here," I tell her. I stand up and offer a hand to let her rise with me. "Tell me if and when to stop." I reach over and hug her. Her body tenses up again and remains rigid.

"How does that feel?" I ask.

"It feels good," she says. Despite her words, her body remains taut. I decide to believe her words. I hold her for a minute straight. Finally, I speak. "I think us having any kind of sexual relations right now is a bad idea."

For the first time, she pulls away just a little bit. I let my arms loosen so she can escape if she wants to. Instead, we're ending up just a little less close than we were, but still in a hug.   

"Listen," I tell her. "I think it's a terrible idea because you're worth more than that. I don't deserve you. I haven't behaved particularly well towards you. Not last night, and maybe not really ever. Hannah said last night that she only really wants to have sex with someone she has an emotional bond with. I can't speak for you, but that maybe isn't such a bad rule for me either. And I don't think such a bond is impossible between us, but I think it probably needs to start with us working at being proper friends. And I know that your life is changing a lot right now, and you probably need the right kind of friend. I'd like to be there for you."

Henrietta doesn't say anything but reaches up and kisses me on the cheek just a little too strongly to be described as chastely.

We separate. Hannah comes into the room, wearing a dressing gown and her hair wrapped in a towel. She takes a swig of my coffee and tries to dunk a strip of my toast in the solid yolk. She stares at it for a second and then takes a bite anyway.

"So, what are we up to today?"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's Wednesday around noon, two weeks later. I'm sitting with my feet on my desk, reading a book. My office door beeps and opens. Hannah tosses a wrapped sandwich onto my desk, plonks herself down in my guest chair, and makes a start on her own lunch.

"Not much on then?" I ask.

"Nah, we're still waiting for the client to read and digest what we wrote, and we wrote a lot, barely any of it digestible. It's going to be Easy Street until at least the end of next week."

"Alright for some. It's going to be my turn to work late tonight once Rebecca delivers the new data," I reply and start to unwrap my food. I cautiously peel up one corner of the bread and then take Hannah's already-bitten sandwich out of her hand. She apologetically takes the repulsive tuna sub from me in exchange.

"What are you reading?" she asks. I hold up the cover for her. "Oh, no! They got you too?" she asks in mock horror.

The book isLeaving Homosexuality, Finding God by Pastor Robert and Doctor Steve. Just like the one in Henrietta's bookshelf. "I'm just seeing where she's starting from," I tell Hannah. "Don't worry, it's a second-hand copy. I didn't give them any money. By the way, did you check your Facebook today?"

Hannah looks at me, confused. "No, you know I only do a twice-weekly catch up with all the cat and nephew pictures." She grabs her phone and scrolls through. I know when she's found it because she stops and breaks out in a broad grin. "Benjamin Mathews, what did you do?"

"I hope you don't mind," I tell her.

"Mind? Why would I mind?" she replies. "This is wonderful."

I can't see, but I'm guessing she's on the first set of pictures. They're all variations on a theme. Henrietta and Zdislava are in a nightclub, probably the same one from the other evening. They're hot, sweaty, and all over each other. In one of them, Henrietta is puckering up to give Zdislava a kiss.

"Keep going," I tell Hannah.

The next set has the two lovers now in a park, in daylight, but no less draped all over each other.

"Keep going."

The final set, for now, is in a restaurant. It's the same deal, but now with candlelight.

"I merely tried dialling the number Zdislava gave me," I explain. "Amazingly, it didn't connect straight through to the local pizza place. I had a conversation with her and she agreed to introduce Henrietta to her social circle, take her out for some fun, but also keep a discreet eye on her."

Hannah glances back at the photos. "She's keeping more than just an eye on her, by the looks of things. And not very discreetly either."

"Sure looks that way, doesn't it?" I tell her. "But anyway, I have a surprise for you."

"Another one?" Hannah asks.

"Yes, except it's not really a surprise because it's happening on Friday, and I'm telling you about it now so we can work out the details and boundaries well in advance. I've invited Henrietta and Zdislava round."

"Oh, goodie!" says Hannah.

"Zdislava seems cool, but ultimately we don't really know much about her. That's why I've suggested to Henrietta that the two of them start exploring BDSM in a controlled environment with a pair of friendly experts. Us."

"Zdislava is okay with that? She didn't strike me as exactly a beginner," Hannah says.

"She understands where all this is coming from. She's seen some shit herself. Not going to be two dates and a U-Haul with Henrietta, she says, but quite probably well worth it anyway. Besides, she says she's never had any formal training before. I'm going to be showing her the ropes and going over the basics again."

"Formal training!" Hannah laughs. "That's too funny! So what, you're now the Master of three willing subs, yours truly included? How do you manage it?"

"Master? Oh, God no!" I say. "Henrietta is calling me their guru. We are purely going to be advising and modelling good, healthy behaviour."

"A guru? My, and at only twenty-seven as well!" Hannah now turns serious for a moment.

"Honestly, it sounds like a great idea. I'm proud of you. But I'm guessing gurus are going to have ethical boundaries?"

"I'm afraid so," I tell her. "At least for the moment. Slow and steady wins the race."

"But we are running in that race?"

"I think so," I tell her. "At least I think we're going to be serving as pace-setters."

"Okay," says Hannah. "In which case, as and when, in due course, and assuming you will abide by all appropriate ethical boundaries until such time as it becomes appropriate, I hereby withdraw my veto against you sleeping with Zdislava."

I brace myself by taking a deep breath. "Yeah, about that..."