Saved By The Bell

In all the years we have been married, in fact in the almost 30 years we have known each other I have never been unfaithful to Heather. And yes, Mr Clinton, blowjobs do count. In fact, Heather is the only person I have ever had sex with in my entire life. Now I’m not holding this up as an example and saying ‘admire me’ or even ‘pity me’. That’s just how things turned out, but it could have been quite different.

In the late eighties I had been married five or six years and Son was just learning to walk. I was employed by a major university and working in a large research institution. I had my own lab and I spent my days happily pottering around inventing things and learning how to use these new-fangled ‘Personal Computer’ thingies. I had a lot of cool toys like digital storage oscilloscopes (before they became cheap and you could buy them in Tandy/Radio Shack), infra red night vision scopes (ditto), lasers and optical benches. I got to play with tanks and to fly a bit in military aircraft. It was hog heaven. I worked among Physicists, Physiologists, Psychologists and Ergonomists.

One firm tradition in the department was the Friday Lunchtime Drinking Club in one of the convivial local pubs. Everyone from the Section Head downwards would be propping up the bar from about 12.30 onwards and as long as you were back in the office before he was there were no problems. This, coupled with the fact that Friday is POETS day* meant that not a lot of work was done in the afternoon.

We had a placement student, Mel, a fledgling psych. She was pretty, vivacious, blonde, and an outrageous flirt. Think: Jennifer Ehle in ‘The Camomile Lawn’. She had a penchant for lacy underwear and seamed stockings. She was, in short, Sex on a Stick. She would often hang around my office, and those of the other guys in the building, but maybe because I was ten years her senior and possibly also because I was married, she seemed to see me as a father figure and hung around my place most. She would ask me for advice on her latest boyfriend or share with me some nugget of information on the physiology of sexual arousal. I would counter with suggestions of new positions to try or refuting the research findings with anecdotal evidence. We got to exchanging increasingly naughty messages on the wonderous new 'electrical-mail' facility of the departmental intranet. It makes me shudder to think of it now, but the SysAdmin was a good mate. At one stage I sent her a series of short stories, my first venture into writing erotic fiction. I think I’ve still got them somewhere, probably on one of the 5 ¼” floppies I still have from that time. Somewhere I might even have a computer that can read them.

On one occasion I mentioned to her that I had just seen the film ‘Half Moon Street’ on TV and lent her the tape I had made of it. I had found it quite a turn-on, more so than the overrated ‘9 ½ Weeks’ IMHO. She was disappointed with it, though, thinking it was going to be a bit steamier. So I started bringing her examples from my growing collection of own import Scandinavian Hard Core, both tapes and magazines. She would return the latter with little bookmarks made of Post-it notes in them to show me which pictures she particularly enjoyed. Which positions, which outfits, which girls. (She was bi, she confided in me.) I still keep those bookmarks in place. She gave me a vibrator. She had used it once and found it too knobbly and unyielding; perhaps Heather could find a use for it? I still have that vibrator.

And then, one Friday afternoon, she came to my office. She was bored and so was I. Half the department was away on a field trial somewhere or other and the place seemed deserted. I was more than usually relaxed after the lunchtime drinking session.

“Come on, Mel, let me show you my lab”. One of the great chat-up lines of history. I was trembling with anticipation. I knew exactly what I wanted to happen. So did she. She followed me in.

I locked the door behind us and we fell on each other. I hoisted her up onto a table and she wrapped her long silk-clad legs around me, her skirt sliding up her thighs. I slid a hand around the back of her neck and pushed her head, with those immaculate carmine-coloured lips towards mine. My other hand fumbled at the one button on her crisp white blouse that would give me access to that lacy bra, that pert little breast….

Alarm bells started ringing. No, not inside my head, alarm bells really did start ringing. There was a sound of voices outside, someone was thumping at the door. There was a bloody fire!

We hesitated, both of us, but only for a second. With a last regretful look at the prize that had been snatched from me I lifted her down off the table again and we slipped as unobtrusively as we could into the stream of evacuating colleagues that had suddenly materialised as if from nowhere. Maybe there were others there who had been disturbed in quiet offices, stationery cupboards or cleaners’ cubby holes. Who knows?

At the end of our corridor there was a corner office inhabited by a once-great researcher, now living off past glories and becoming increasingly absent-minded. We were convinced that the only reason they kept him on the staff was because his wife had begged them to. He could bore for England, but we respected him because in his heyday one of his discoveries had saved lives: Many lives. He was sitting in his office that Friday afternoon enjoying a post-prandial pipe. He had knocked the pipe out in his wastepaper basket and pottered off on some inconsequential errand…..

When the fuss had died down and the fire service finally left I made my way back to my office. Mel had gone back to hers, in another building. Though I knew the moment was gone, I e-mailed her inviting her to pick up where we left off. I shall never forget the reply:

Behave yourself, methinks that alarm was an omen.

I replied:

Shame on you, you call yourself a scientist?

And we left it at that.



Postscript:

The flirting cooled off after that, though we remained good friends. Mel got involved with a married squaddie (she had always had this thing about squaddies) and got herself embroiled in a very nasty divorce case, complete with threats of violence and court appearances, the whole nine yards. Eventually she changed jobs and so did I.

Five years later, completely out of the blue, I got a phone call from her. She was getting married. An Army Captain, of course. Her father, who I had known vaguely, had died some years previously so she needed someone to walk her down the aisle. Who else but her father figure?

So I was to ride with her in the limousine to the army chapel at Sandhurst and walk her down the aisle to her waiting groom, resplendent in his dress uniform, sword at his side.

When I reported for duty the kitchenette of her little flat was in turmoil. There were bridesmaids everywhere, fussing round the bride with curling tongs and God knows what else. I was the only guy there, the only person with no function. I felt like a spare….. Well, you know. Then suddenly they were all gone. The first of the cars had arrived and it was just Mel and me waiting for the Roller

“Would you mind checking my seams are straight?” she said, turning away from me, bending over the counter top and hitching up acres of taffeta. “and I don’t think the suspenders are sitting quite right, would you mind taking a look?”.

Dutifully, I crouched down behind her, then hesitated. I could so easily have run my hand, both hands, up her thighs, pushed her expensive silk knickers up between her cheeks and nuzzled her there while slipping both hands around to the front…But her husband-to-be was waiting in that chapel, as was my wife, and you just don’t do that sort of thing to a girl on her wedding day.

Or do you….?

*POETS day. A great British tradition. 'Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday'