Extract from chapter 5. broken condom

An extract from earlier chapter. This is the introduction to the start of chapter 5. Maybe it's more raw than the style I've been slowly cultivating. Hopefully it's interesting to read. Yes, I am fully aware that each extract mostly doesn't contain the reference in the chapter's title. Once the novel is finished, in twenty-five years time, I will almost certainly remove the epithets. If anything, I use 'em as signposts for when I'm writing; almost like a mini thesis, something to keep me on track. Broom broom, vroom vroom, and all that.

Please note: there is some mild sex talk in this extract. Don't blush. 

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It was the start to his second week of working with the Reference Librarian. He had to construct a bibliographic list on the sub-genre of Mockumentary. It was purely an exercise in definition. The Reference Librarian was swamped with work and had passed the task onto Sean, so as to give him something to do during his stay at the library. As much as he enjoyed the distraction of the token work, his thoughts strayed back to Rachel. He focused on the excessive spending of the weekend and felt angry with himself for being tricked and used by a girl who wanted his money. He purely put it down to an expensive experiment that was now over with and a chapter in his life to learn from.

He made sure to leave his phone switched off during the day, partly so that he could focus on the work matter at hand but mainly to avoid her if she did ring. With no little anxiety he powered up the device at lunchtime but there were no messages waiting when he did, neither were there any voicemails for him with he finished at five o’clock. Sean had long given up on Sydney’s public transport at peak hour and made the long walk home. When he arrived in Darlinghurst he stopped at the bottle shop at the corner of the tributary road that led to where he lived. Sean was unaware of any of the name brands of wine in NSW and therefore settled for a six-pack of the flagship drink produced by a local whisky distillery. It wasn’t cheap in a fiscal sense, only in the matter of taste. Sean swung the heavy plastic bag from his side and slowly made the descent to the hotel.

From his vantage point he could sight her, sitting outside the Frisco Hotel on the corner of the block, two addresses down from the Woolloomooloo Waters. Rachel was smoking a cigarette and sitting at a table with a group of men. He wished for the earth to swallow him up and hide him. Rachel saw him immediately, and with no goodbyes walked over to him at a quick pace. She was still wearing the same dress he had purchased for her on Saturday. He considered whether she was homeless. He knew that to be a false thought, he had been to her apartment the first time they had met. Sean wondered why she would be wearing the same clothes for three days straight and whether she had been back to her house since the Friday. He held himself from sighing.

“Hi!”

“Hello,” he replied, in measured breaths.

She smiled at him with unwashed, yellow teeth. Her unkempt hair hung loose, down to her hips. After small talk she followed him upstairs. He didn’t know why he found it so hard to tell her to leave.

“Let’s have sex.”

“I’ve just finished work,” he whined. “Let me sit down for a half hour and relax.”

“Is that beer?”

“No, it’s bourbon and coke.”

“Oh.”

She didn’t ask for a bottle and he didn’t offer. She grabbed the bedding and stripped off her dress, socks and shoes, and then spread out on the couch naked.

“Take my picture.”

He grudgingly took a snap of her. She covered her breasts with her crossed arms. After clicking a single shot her arms fell away and she continued watching the television, pacified. Sean had a long pull from his drink and tried to think. He unbuttoned his blue business shirt, feeling self conscious in the presence of her slim, white body. She didn’t acknowledge his actions.

“You know what I think we should do?”

Sean looked at her.

“We should, like go to Club 77 and listen to our own music on a music player. And we can dance to different music to what everyone else is hearing.”

“Bit early in the week for that.” Sean raised his eyebrows.

“I didn’t mean tonight.”

“That’s good.”

“When we do it we can use your iPod.”

“I don’t have one,” he paused and thought as to whether she had been searching the apartment.

“I thought that was a charger for one.”

On the table was the battery apparel for his laptop.

“That isn’t for an iPod, it’s for a laptop.”

Her face was blank to the lies he was telling her.

“Do you have your laptop here?”

“No.” He thought fast. “I leave it at work, they have a charger. I don’t want to drag it there and back every day.”

“Oh, right.”

He had assumed that Rachel hadn’t been paying attention to anything other than herself. They sat on opposite ends of the couch and pretended not to look at each other.

“Let’s have sex.”

“Alright.”

“You’re not even hard.”

“That’ll change in a moment.”

Sean was glad for the change of topic.

She was hypnotised by her own image in the mirror. She always grinned at herself and made her eyes large and alluring, like an actor practicing their look for a role in an upcoming film. But to Sean, watching her dance in front of the nude figure in the reflected glass, admiring this figure’s body, it sometimes struck him how her obsession went beyond pure narcissism. He would often get the distinct impression that she was reacting to a new person who had only just entered the room. Rachel would sometimes spend upwards of twenty minutes just looking at her face, slowly turning her head left and right with a practiced expression. Tonight, what she saw disappointed her and she flopped over on the bed.

“I am so fat. I must be pregnant.”

“You’re not fat.”

Rachel stared into a distance deep within her mind. Sean lay next to her and stroked her hair.

“You’re worrying about nothing.”

“I am fat,” she looked into his eyes and didn’t blink.

“No, you’re worrying about nothing,” he repeated as a statement of intent. “And this worry about nothing is turning it into something,” Sean continued.

“This means you’re thinking about something, which is nothing, and that isn’t a good thing to do. Because by doing that you’re creating dead space inside your mind. A space that could used on thinking about something which really is there, instead of nothing which is not, and not good, and not something that you should worry about.”

As he breathed his spiel into her ear, he wondered if she realised what rubbish he was talking.

“I’m going to tell you I’m pregnant, so you’ll run away.”

“Yeah, I will.” He smiled at her joke.

“I told my good Jewish boyfriend I was pregnant and he left me. Boys are scared of pregnant girls.”
“You’re not pregnant.”

After they stopped kissing and he had laid on top of her and pushed his cock into her pussy, right before they started fucking in earnest, she moaned out at him with complete sincerity: “I’ve been gagging for this!”