= 69 LOVE SONGS,
  or the events leading up to a crime
  by Maxim Jakubowski

1 - It begins like a movie. With a white screen and a wash of music, massed strings or more likely synthesiser chords, rising to a majestic crescendo. Images coalesce and a melancholy melody emerges from the unshaped wall of sound... `Porcelain' by Moby maybe, or the soundtrack for an imaginary western whose ending will turn out to be particularly bitter-sweet. A tune that aims straight for the heart but hints at sadness to come. Sadness, yes; because tragedy is too strong a word. The credits roll and then shapes emerge out of blurry chaos throughout the rectangular geometry of the once silver screen. Panavision format. A woman's voice is heard, plaintive, across the fading sounds of the music. Is she singing? Has she a quaint, somewhat exotic foreign accent?

2 - Like all men with talent, he had many flaws. But his worse trait was how he romanticised over women time and again, never learning from experience. How the emotions they created inside his head and body skewered his perception of them and coloured all his relationships. He was aware of the fact, but knowing the existence of this Achilles' heel didn't help him avoid the same old mistakes over and over again. Was it the way he was brought up; the fact his father never had the guts to tell him all about the birds and the bees? How he mentally stored and interpreted the distorted facts about the way men and women coexist and war from tell-tale stories circulating amongst school kids? How he was savagely wounded by the unknowing betrayal of the first girl he felt longings for?

3 - Her presence in a world of men had nagged her from early teenage years. They fascinated and attracted her, but at the same time there was something fearful about these other creatures. They were different. She had always been accepted as a fun person by the groups she wove in and out of, at school, at play, mingling with her elder brother's friends. Always rough and ready for a game, a tumble, she was treated as an equal. Her breasts came late and were never quite as opulent as many of her girl friends. She would eventually grow into a B cup, barely. But from the moment those bumps made their bow inside her blue school shirt, the young men, the older men she would see in the street or in shops seemed to look at her in a new way. Thus did she discover lust.

4 - Catherine Guinard was not the prettiest young girl in the class during his first year in a mixed school. Nowhere near; Rhoona DeMole, Beatrice, Elizabeth and Jacqueline ruled that roost. But something about her touched him inside, where it mattered. Maybe that was his main flaw: he thought with his emotions, not with his cock. She was small, had thin, mousey light brown hair and slightly crooked teeth. But you know how it is, it's not just he way they look that does it; it's the way they laugh or their eyes sparkle at a given moment. He worshipped her from afar. Helped her with her class work. Then, one night, at a friend's party, Pierre what's-his-name in a game of Truth or Dare revealed he had already fucked her and, compounding the injustice, said she wasn't even that good in bed. His heart had dropped a thousand vertical paces to the ground at the unexpected news.

5 - Her parents were anything but intellectuals; her father installed shower units and her mother worked in a local government office but they both loved opera. So she was called Mimi, in homage to La Boheme. It puzzled her for a long time. Nobody in Estonia seemed to be called Mimi apart from her. That's because you're special, her mum and dad would say to her. Which became, as she reasoned it out, a reason for great satisfaction: her brother was just plain Pavel. When unhappy days ended and she lay in bed listening to the silence invade the room and darkness take over, she would invariably remind herself that she was special. I am special. Then fall asleep with a smile on her face. That expression later became almost permanent, and her lips always appeared to be smiling, whether she was happy or not. That was one thing that attracted men to her like fireflies.

6 - Catherine Guinard was the first to carve a deep notch across his damaged heart strings. Others would follow. Over 39 years, it became a gentle litany of hurt. Many of them were blonde. So he did learn to approach blonde women with the utmost caution. Maybe he wasn't good enough for blondes, he reasoned. Or they were too good for him. And sometimes, juggling memories tried to balance his past sexual statistics by hair colour. The results never made sense.

7 - Men liked Mimi. But they wanted more than she was willing to give them, she soon realised. As much as she enjoyed their company, dancing across the smokey floors of youth clubs and downing endless glasses of vodka, she knew that the roving hands caressing her body, clumsily fingering her, were just an overture to fucking her. And she also knew she wasn't ready to be fucked. As much as sex attracted her, and mad thoughts of its horrors and delights flew across her dreams and nights, something inside also told her none of the callow boys she went out with were right for her yet. Sex must mean something.

8 - He also had dreams. Dark eyed, always elegantly dressed Pierre was fucking Catherine. She lay passively on her back, legs held wide apart by the young man's weight while he thrust in and out of her. The scene was always silent. It brought tears to his eyes, but it also made him cock hard as he strained to move closer and observe the movement of the penis breaching her entrance. But he could never see enough. He would have to wait until his first trip to Scandinavia where hardcore films were legal to witness the copulation of others at first hand and on a large screen. 

9 - He was not a violent person, but he reasoned Pierre should die. But at seventeen, you have neither the imagination or the means. His betrayer being run over by a bus seemed to be the best option. But it didn't happen. Next time, he decided, maybe he should take matters into his own hands, and began noting methods of murder and execution in his notebook, gleaning necessary information from the crime paperbacks he was reading: James Hadley Chase, Brett Halliday, Peter Cheyney, Claude Rank, Jean Bruce. Although the latter seemed to be more interested in the minutiae of sexual torture. Which also provided him with regular erections.

10 - Catherine Guinard was quickly forgotten after the school year ended and she returned to France. He followed her to Paris a year later, but by then the world was full of blondes.

11 - At first, Mimi felt the men would be satisfied if she consented to let herself be kissed. Real kisses, of course, with tongues. It pleased them briefly, but failed to satisfy her. They tasted of stale alcohol and tobacco and she found the experience of kissing her dance partners and boyfriends definitely unpleasant. And still their hands, encouraged by their locked lips would venture further and they would suggest full sex; almost demand it. She confided in friends and the consensus was, if she wished to retain her popularity within her circle of friends, that she should give in or at least accept to give the men and boys blow jobs.

12 - Elizabeth was the first blonde to break his heart. Well, you have to begin somewhere. She was much more sexually experienced than him, and years later, he would marvel how in hell he had managed to hold on to her for all of six months. Her pubic hair was short and curling, thus initiating another of his obsessions, and a shade or two darker than her mid shoulder length straight blonde hair, which puzzled him mightily, ignorant as he was then of hydrogen peroxide. They fucked like rabbits. She found him fun but he made the capital mistake of falling in love with her. One day while she was sleeping, he read pages from her diary and discovered to his disappointment that he didn't even rate very high in her sexual pantheon.

13 - Mimi had never before given too much consideration to men's cocks. She knew they had them; had seen enough of her brother's dangling genitalia, even her father's. At first, the idea of taking one inside her mouth felt a bit ridiculous, but she was also curious to know what it would feel like to experience one swelling up and growing under her lips, tongue or ministrations. Would a penis have a specific taste? a particular texture? The thought intrigued her.

14 - When Elizabeth finally tired of him, she broke the news gently. After all, she had a good heart. Not ready for commitment and all that. Naturally, he took it badly and, melodramatically, a couple of weeks later slashed his wrists, cunningly arranging for her to discover him just in time. Which didn't bring her back to him. She even left the country to avoid seeing him again. Another lesson learned.

15 - So, while some of her girlfriends were losing their virginity time and time again in the back of cars or in the badly lit backyards of local jazz clubs or in the fields that bordered the fun fair near the chemical plant, Mimi became the blow job queen of their home town. After all, she reflected, it's only a piece of flesh, harmless in this form, and even though some men seemed overly keen on pushing their cocks too far and made her gag, she knew she was always in control. And however many cocks she sucked, she was still a virgin, waiting for the right man to come along. The one who would at last matter. Wasn't too keen on swallowing their come though...

16 - Even though his attempt had been far from earnest, he also developed an unhealthy fixation on suicide and death. And years before Woody Allen came on the scene, already equated love and death in strange juxtaposition. Even began making listings of how famous people, actors, writers had committed suicide or been killed. Columns for poison, knives, guns (broken down into manufacturer and calibre of course), car and other accidents, etc... But then he was a far from cheerful young man. The gloom surrounding him would not dissipate much until he turned thirty and had made love to further blondes in various countries.

17 - Cocks had no taste per se; come did. They came uncircumcised or cut, although the latter were few and far between since the local Jewish population had been decimated in W.W.II. Each one was different in length, thickness, appearance and smell. Mimi was unconcerned. It kept them out of her pants and, her nipples proving particularly insensitive she didn't overly mind their rough, often drunken hands grazing, twisting her nipples or kneading her small breasts. It made her popular, paid for drinks or cinema or club tickets. A cock was a cock. In a way, she felt, it wasn't even connected to the man. Just a transaction. You want to be sucked; so okay, I'll suck you but don't expect any more. She had no regular boyfriend, just men whose cocks she didn't mind taking in her mouth for the comfort of their company.

18 - Beretta.
   
     Sig Sauer.

     Colt.

     Luger.

     Smith & Wesson.
   
     Sawn-off shotgun.
   
     Digitalis.
   
     Cyanide.
   
     Strangulation.
   
     Smothering under a pillow.
   
     Swiss army knife.
   
     Asphyxiation.
   
     Carbon monoxide emissions.
   
     Death by drowning.
   
     Methods of revenge.
   
     In search of the perfect murder.

19 - She'd suck their cocks with her eyes closed. Almost pretending she was blind, her tongue moving over the head, licking the ridge, imagining the shades of pink, brown and purple of the aroused mushroom inside her cheeks. She would tease the opening, the slit, with the pointed tip of her foraging tongue, feel the tremor of lust surging through the man's body as she did so and retreat in time before he came so that the flow of hot ejaculate would either fall over her tongue or, preferably, outside her retreating mouth. Some guys came too fast, some couldn't and she would learn to finish them off by hand. But she learned to enjoy sucking cock. Even took some pride in her growing skills and the occasional compliment proffered.

20 - Then came Nicky. She was the sister of one of his best friends and they somehow drifted together. Light brown hair and cheekbones to kill for. Short and square-assed and prone to awful mood swings. At first, she was head over heels in love with him; he advised caution and patience. By the time he realised he loved her too, her own ardour had quietened and they faded apart following summer holidays spent separated. Bad timing, he reckoned and began writing crime stories in which the perfect crime always came undone because of a lack of attention to small details and deep-seated psychological flaws.

21 - Of course, she pined for actual sex, but Mimi was determined to wait for the right man, the right occasion. She wanted it to be so absolutely right. Even a blow job queen can be romantic. And six years is a lot of blow jobs and cocks in your mouth.

22 - After Nicky, there were others. After all, he wasn't unattractive and was particularly fluent and articulate, even displayed a witty sense of humour when the darkness didn't dominate his soul. There was Marie-Jo, followed by Anne and then Danielle, who was absolutely wild and insatiable and even, one night, moved from their shared bed to join an ex boyfriend who was staying over in the next room where their noisy sex kept him awake for the rest of the night. His first two men a night woman. For weeks, he would mentally kick himself for not having joined them which he realised she wouldn't have minded. Another obsession took root of a threesome with two men both servicing the same woman.

23 - So Mimi drifted through the final years of her teens, desultorily moving from school to menial part-time jobs with a live now, pay later attitude to life and that infuriating smile ever draped across her face. Often doubting her purpose, neither happy or unhappy, aimless in a quiet way. Somehow inside she knew there was something better waiting for her around the corner. So, she made her way down the road. Life wasn't bad after all: there was music, there was vodka, there was the flattering attentions of younger and older men, there was the beach at Nidas with its fine yellow sand, and the never unpleasant feel, texture and sensation of warm cocks as she swallowed them and offered a willing harbour to men's lust. Mimi was patient, seldom worried about tomorrow.

24 - He tried whores but they never engaged his heart and their embraces were too mechanical and unfeeling. He travelled. Prospered. Even one day married and settled down. The epiphany and beauty of babies briefly assuaged his unhappiness, but children grow and always disappoint to some extent, he discovered. And that hole in his heart, first opened by Catherine Guinard's treachery, kept aching and reminding him of all the roads never taken. Often, he would serenade himself to sleep with a monotonous litany that endlessly conjugated all the 'what if's' of his life so far.

25 - Mimi had been mixing with a group of friends attending the science faculty of the local university and, one balmy summer, met up with a group of young Belgian students who'd come to the city for exchange summer classes. Serge was the first man to make her heart leap. They paired off most evenings and she even introduced him to her family and he became a regular guest at their dinner table. She liked his cock, long and thin, somehow devoid of the rough vulgarity of most of the local boy's penises, she felt. One night, she invited him back to her room but somehow couldn't find the courage to go all the way with the Belgian boy, and after fellating him, found herself content with sleeping naked against him in the small bed, feeling his warmth permeate her to the core. Drifting off into the lands of sleep, she swore to herself that this was the first man she would let herself be fucked by.

26 - Serge returned to his studies in Belgium when summer ended and they began corresponding in broken English. 

27 - She took a job in the administrative offices of the chocolate factory and took night classes in English in order to communicate better with her foreign boyfriend. She would still suck other men's cocks on Saturday night after the dance, if they really insisted, but Mimi felt detached from the act now, already planning a nebulous sort of future. Serge wanted them to spend the following summer together after his graduation. He wrote that he was saving his money up for this already. She had agreed.

28 - He drifted into his first affair almost by accident. Then further opportunities for unfaithfulness arose. An American tourist one night in Athens with whom he had anal sex (Danielle, albeit willing had been too tight). Someone at the office. Another woman at a trade fair. The satisfaction of illicit sex was transitory, and never lasted very long, but what surprised him most was that he felt no guilt.

29 - The Belgian boy sent her a plane ticket to London and met her at Gatwick. When she noticed him waiting for her outside the luggage hall, she somehow remembered him as sweeter and more attractive. Mimi sighed. But she was now committed to this holiday. He had liquidated all his savings and had arranged a package to a Thai beach. The plane to the Far East left in 36 hours; in the meantime, he had booked a hotel room in London. So, Mimi lost her virginity in Bloomsbury. She was too tight and screamed in agony as she lowered herself onto his jutting cock and tore herself apart. She bled profusely and felt no pleasure this time. The water in the bathroom when she washed afterwards was tepid. Sleeping against the snoring man, she felt no affinity with him any longer. He had already become a stranger.

30 - He dreams of death. In dark alleys, in western shoot-outs, in soiled beds. He remembers his mother's cancer and darkness like a cloud settles over him. Publicly, he is affable and successful, always has the right turn of phrase to make a woman smile and get into bed with him. But he's on automatic pilot, wanting ever more out of life. 

31 - The beach was a sheer vision of paradise following the long, dusty journey by bus from Bangkok. Lying in the sun wearing the brand new green bikini he had bought her in London, Mimi lives again. The sex with him, every morning and afternoon and night, is relentless. She no longer feels pain, has been stretched enough to accept his cock inside her, but he is always the one to initiate it. At the end of the first week, her cunt is sore, inside and outside from all the pounding she has to submit to. She realises she is now paying the price of the holiday. He seems happy, unworried that all his money has gone and has been spent on her and this tropical idyll. She knows she is using him, but the thought comes easy. He doesn't even want blow jobs, goes straight for the missionary position and fucking her.

32 - He meets Edwina at a professional function and, despite his better judgement, the uncontrollable lust he feels for her turns to head over the heels passion following their first fuck. She is tall, blonde of course, also married but the sex between them is both wild and tender and out of control. For the first time, he feels fulfilled and loses contact with the emptiness that was laying waste to his guts. She takes him into her mouth on the first occasion they go to bed; they make love on floors, tables and in hotel bath tubs. He ties her hands and she flushes with delight. He breaches her sphincter ring with two fingers and she squirms and moans like no woman ever has before for him. He makes plans. Wants to take her to Cap d'Agde, New York, Barcelona, Bangkok. Promises her the world and more. He loves to watch the scarlet pool of her orgasmic flush spread from cheeks to chest while she lies there still dripping his juices in the penumbra of the room, the smell of their exertions and the echo of their whispered obscenities still hanging like a stain in the atmosphere. He is reborn.

33 - Following Thailand, he accompanies her back to Estonia before returning to Belgium where he is due to begin his apprenticeship in a lawyer's office. Mimi's family are delighted by the fact she now has a good-looking, responsible foreign boyfriend. Arrangements are made for her to visit him and his parents for the Christmas holiday. Mimi acquiesces, allows others to make all the decisions. When he is gone, she doesn't miss him and goes back to her routine of bestowing blow jobs on Saturday nights to her escort for the day. One Saturday, she drinks too much at a party and a Pole fucks her roughly in the tunnel near the railway station.  But she goes to Bruges for the holiday. On Christmas Eve, her Belgian boyfriend introduces her to a Dutch friend of his. The next day, Mimi moves out of his place and follows the Dutch man back to Holland. He has a beard, works for a business magazine and is ten years older than she is. Six months later, she is pregnant by him. Even precisely remembers the occasion it happened: the day they were both drunk and he had mounted her at the bottom of the stairs and smacked her bottom until it hurt. After she announced her pregnancy to him, he would use this as an excuse to fuck her repeatedly in the arse. But she wanted the baby, she really did, so she kept silent and allowed Marcel, the Dutch man to dominate and use her.

34 - Edwina returns to her husband and breaks off the affair. He is gutted. Never even saw it coming, or rather intentionally misread all the signs. He drowns his sorrow by listening to melancholy music with the volume turned up to maximum, imagining a soundtrack for his imaginary tragedy and he dreams of death. Her death in a thousand and one circumstances, as he'd rather she was dead than no longer his. Her husband's death in cunningly plotted scenarios. His own wife's, even. But the thoughts of revenge come to nothing. He is aware he is too much of a coward to do anything about it. 

35 - Following the birth of her baby boy, Mimi declares to Marcel she is no longer in love or even in the least attracted to him any longer. She refuses all further sexual contact. The authorities give her Dutch nationality and a passport and benefits. Everything about Marcel now disgusts her and she sleeps with the child in the spare bedroom of his canal side house, half an hour's drive from Amsterdam. He has lost his job in a reshuffle and now pens freelance pieces from home while he attempts to start up a small business. He doesn't understand her change of attitude and resents it. Secretly she plots to leave the house they uncomfortably now share and applies to the council for her own place. He strongly opposes this.

36 - Still emotionally damaged by the affair with Edwina, he stumbles almost by mistake onto an Internet chat room and soon begins new affairs with women he meets there. He is a man to whom words come easily and his voice over the phone was knowingly seductive. There was an overweight opera singer in New York. Then came an American banker in Paris who delighted in cybersex of the highest and kinkiest calibre but lied about her identity and never turned up for their assignment before disappearing altogether from view. Later came a woman in the South of France, who had five children, no husband but looked too much like his own sister for him to even contemplate seeing her again following their sweaty week-end together.

37 - Mimi loved her baby dearly but still she knew something was missing from her life. While Marcel was out, she would play around on his computer and, after typing in the words 'sex' and 'love' into a search machine, landed in an adult chat forum and began flirting with other men there. In her naivety, she never lied to them, always revealing who she was, her approximate whereabouts, even on occasion her mobile telephone number and the nature of her circumstances. They came running. Even faster once she scanned a colour photo of herself taken the previous summer on the deck of Marcel's canal boat.

38 - All the men Mimi came across on the Internet wanted to meet her. Although her written English was halting and riddled by mistakes, she enjoyed cybersex and graded her suitors by the imagination they displayed in their virtual embraces and sundry penetrations and variations on positions. She had never realised before how much the power of words could affect her imagination, and was surprised how wet she would often become, sitting there at the keyboard, her mind racing from situation to situation, imagining what the sex would be like in real life. She met a banker from Zurich, in Switzerland. He was particularly imaginative. He amused her. He came to Amsterdam. She arranged to meet him, leaving the baby with Marcel. After dinner, she followed him back to his hotel room at the Krasnapolsky and they fucked.

39 - Muted rumblings from the brass section emerge towards the back of the normally plaintive melody, interrupting his smooth, sad flow. The pace of the song, the music quickens.

40 - They meet online. He is 'melancholy'; she is 'estonian girl'. He declines her offer to have cybersex. She is surprised. He explains how words alone don't make it for him. They talk. His curiosity is piqued. She tells him her story. He tells her his. They speak daily, although there are times when she ignores him when he pages her. No doubt too busy indulging in virtual sex with others to pull herself away. But the dialogue continues over several weeks. He is being cautious, doesn't want to run before he can walk. She is intrigued by his reticence. The day after her Hotel Krasnapolsky tryst, she reveals excitedly that the man in Zurich wishes her to come live with him in Switzerland, and she can even take the baby with her. Will she? he asks. Yes, she answers, no one has made a better offer and it's a chance to start all over again maybe. He nods, facing the lines on his computer screen scrolling up and up until they are out of reach. He wishes her good luck and absent-mindedly hopes they will somehow stay in touch. He files her photograph away in an old folder, believing this is the last he will hear of Mimi.

41 - Marcel is furious when she informs him she is leaving to live with another man in Zurich; he makes dire threats, forbids her to take their child. He hits her on the face in the heat of the argument. She waits until he goes shopping to leave and takes a cab to Amsterdam Central railway station. The apartment in Zurich is beautiful and for a few days Mimi feels she has taken the right decision to travel here. But soon, the sexual demands of the Swiss banker become more extreme the moment the child has fallen asleep. He wants her to become his submissive. This goes against her nature. He orders to her keep her sexual parts shaven at all time although it sometimes brings her out in a rash, and buys leather harnesses and enjoys taking photographs of Mimi in revealing positions. He wants her to wear a dog collar and announces he will take her to parties as his slave, and might actually allow her to be used by other men in his presence if he feels so inclined to share her. Reveals that her cock sucking talents are indeed superior and should be demonstrated to the world at large. He gets uncommonly angry when she moves furniture or things around in the apartment. She finds him increasingly petty, and dangerous. She leaves Zurich in haste and lands back on Marcel's doorstep in Holland only two and a half weeks following her initial flight.

42 - Severely addicted, he continues to haunt the Internet chat rooms. Fascinated by the number of people who profess to be bi-sexual online, his mind wanders over risky waters and, one day, out of sheer curiosity indulges in his first man to man oral experience. It is not totally unpleasant.

43 - Mimi apologises profusely to Marcel for her escapade to Zurich but stands firm when it comes to resuming sexual relations. Her ex-boyfriend and father of her child just no longer attracts her in the slightest. She will accept his hospitality until the day she is given her own accommodation by the authorities, and remain in his house for the sake of their little boy. His anger gets out of control. She has to flee his blows several times and one day, furious at having to listen to her flirt over the phone with an internet acquaintance, he attacks her and rapes her. Mimi stays passive and when he finally withdraws from her, Marcel is in tears and begs her to have another child with him. She refuses.

44 - Mimi sends an e-mail to the man in London. Somehow she still thinks of him warmly. Explains that Zurich didn't work out after all. He answers and they resume their conversations, online and over the phone. He makes arrangements to stop over in Amsterdam for a night and a day on his way to an academic conference in Warsaw. He books a small hotel by a canal near the station through his travel agent. They agree to meet for dinner nearby. He, naturally, hopes for more but doesn't count on it. Mimi tells Marcel she will be away overnight staying with a girlfriend.

45 - She is taller than he expected. Conversely, she finds him shorter than she somehow thought from their conversations and mutual self descriptions. She is also prettier. There is a delicacy about her, a gentle sadness also, which allied to her peculiar accent and ever-present smile, make him feel all shy. The meal comes and goes, spoiled only by the boisterous company of a large table of office workers nearby. They walk back to his hotel. He doesn't ask her up, but she follows him silently into the lift. The door closes and he slowly moves his lips towards hers and they kiss. She remains standing as he undresses her, slipping off her panties and burying his nose and mouth in the short, matted hair of her cunt. He likes her taste. She thrills to the firm but gentle caress of his tongue opening her up. She comes. He is still fully dressed. They move to the bed.

46 - Her body is pale and her breasts slight. Her hips are high and firm like a Russian peasant's. He surveys the pale expanse of her flesh as he spreads her out beneath him, noting every mole and blemish scattered across the whiteness of her skin. A brown stain on the left side of her left breast, a hardened mole in the small of her back, a spot of darker pigmentation blending into the darker pink of her right nipple. He licks every exposed inch of her. She devours his cock with ardour but also delicacy, her clever tongue darting across his shaft, her hot mouth cupping and then swallowing his heavy, dark balls. He notes that her nipples are not overly sensitive. `How do you prefer it?' he asks.  'Doggie style', she answers quietly. He turns her over, holds his cock aloft and directs it to her entrance. The view is breathtaking. The puckered hole of her anus darker, inviting, vulnerable. He positions herself at her lower entrance, parts her now wet lips as she raises her rump further upwards, face buried in the blanket, her breasts hanging firm from her supple body. He thrusts himself inside her. She holds her breath and exhales with a deep sigh of pleasure.

47 - He would later reflect how much she enjoyed taking her pleasure. He woke her in the morning by sliding inside the bed covers and waking her with his tongue and teeth inside her still damp cunt, in which he could still taste himself. Other women always washed themselves out after fucking; Mimi was the first since Edwina not to do so and keep his juices inside her. Her whole body spasmed and she came. He then rose up, pushed her legs apart and inserted himself between her swollen cunt lips. While he moved in and out of her, her eyes locked on his, imploring, screaming silently, watching him as he fucked her, both wordless. Something about her touched him deeply. Before they rose for breakfast, he managed another erection and she sucked him off to completion, his thin, tired come jetting into her mouth. She said nothing and afterwards rose quietly to move to the bathroom where he heard her spitting it out and gargling.

48 - What affected him most about Mimi was the way she kept her eyes open throughout their lovemaking. A silent stare that spoke of a thousand words. And how she joked that her eyes were now all shiny and glazed and Marcel would know, without the shadow of a doubt, that she had been fucked. That it was written all over her eyes and would remain like that for days. And reassured him by stating that it didn't matter in the slightest. She remained with him for the whole day, his guide to Amsterdam on a cold and windy December day. He remembered her in the throes of sex; she, cheerful that this man could make her laugh so much, with his dry, almost absurd jokes and wit. They parted at the train station, both refraining from any kind of promises.

49 - She had told the Englishman of her dreams and plans. She couldn't stay with Marcel forever. Maybe she should advertise herself as a potential mistress for a rich man to subsidise and keep in comfort. After all, it would only be sex. A commercial transaction, but not as compromising as being a whore. The way his eyes clouded when she said this, she realised he disapproved so she dismissed the idea as a joke. But she did put an advertisement in a newspaper a few weeks later

50 - She received a handful of answers to her advertisement. She met some of the men. A drink, maybe a meal, at worst a blow job, she reckoned, even if they were unsuitable. Kept her out of the house for a few hours, looking after the now growing baby, away from Marcel's clutches. There was another Englishman. Commercial traveller across Northern Europe. He'd fuck her in his car, not even bothering to take her to a hotel room, but she kept on seeing him several times. The asshole, she kept on calling him, and afterward she would cry because she knew he was just using her, and treated her like dirt. Why was she punishing herself in this way? She confessed to the man in London. She knew it gave him pain, but he absolved her. So she saw the jerk again. He didn't even bother to undress her, ordered her skirt up above her waist, roughly pulled her thong off and indicated the back seat of the car to her. They were parked by the side of a small regional road. Anybody could have seen her moving bottomless to the back of the car. He positioned her on all fours and savagely entered her with no preliminaries. He grunted as he came, then, pretexting an important business appointment, excused himself from dropping her back to the bus station where he had picked her up and left her standing there in the countryside, his come still dripping down her thighs and legs. Never again, she swore, but deep inside was uncertain how long her resolve would last. Maybe she needed this humiliation?

51 - He called her every week and told her how much he missed her and how he liked her and just felt so natural and comfortable with her. Mimi agreed: it wasn't just the sex, they did feel good together, walking by the Rijksmuseum, the canals, Kalverstraat and across town, smiling in front of the window of the Condom Shop or nervously giggling at the windows of the Red Light District. Yes, we must meet again, they both agreed.

52 - She had told him how the man in Zurich had insisted she shave her sex, and this thought obsessed him and kept him awake, and hard, at night. She had a lovely cunt, hair straight and brown and thick lips pouting through the growth. When she positioned herself with her rear thrust towards him and on her knees, the spectacle of her cunt was better than any porn movie. Straight gash punctuated lower down by little hills of darker, protruding flesh which he liked to chew on, pull gently, play with, opening her cunt like a flower, unveiling the nacreous pink of her damp insides.

53 - Through the ad, she also met a younger Dutch boy. He was too good-looking by her standards but liked the baby and didn't mind her bringing him along when he took her for drives. They would help the child fall asleep and then would go to bed in his bachelor apartment. He worked in computers. The first time he undressed in front of her, she was shocked by the size of his penis. Seemed so enormous. She was really scared how much it would stretch her, but surprisingly he fitted inside her like a glove. However, he often had difficulty coming and would thrust away inside her for ages until she had lost all feeling and she would then have to tire herself out until her jaw ached helping him climax with her mouth. 

54 - Her eyes, below me, inches from my own, as I move inside her. Watching me. Judging me. Asking questions I have no answer to. Listening to the shortness of my breath as my climax approaches. Glazing with joy, shiny, luminous. Moving the thousand shades between grey and blue. Mimi's eyes. She's getting to me.

55 - They decide to meet again and he fed-exes her the money for the train journey to Paris. They arrive at the same station a half hour apart. He has booked a small, picturesque hotel on the Left Bank with a view of Paris roofs and migrating pigeons. They walk, see movies, shop on the Champs Elysees, eat too much and and make love with great abandon when their stomachs are not too full. Enjoying ice-cream at the Haagen-Dasz terrace on the Boulevard Saint Germain he cracks a joke, and Mimi laughs so much she pees in her knickers. Back at the hotel, he licks her clean. She is still laughing. The sound of her happiness alleviates his darkness. But the week-end quickly ends and there are trains home for the two of them, separate trains, separate lives. 

56 - He knows she is partial to words and whispers indecent suggestions and dirty deeds into her ear as they fuck and feels her whole body strain and react as her cheeks colour even further at the thought of what he is outlining. He intimates at another man joining them in their activities, watching this stranger mount her as she fellates him and then both males simultaneously investing her holes. He improvises a story in which they are both captured by pirates or gangsters and made sexual slaves and in which he has to suck to hardness the cocks of their male captors and then guide them manually into her and is made to watch as they despoil her repeatedly; to cap it all, he is then himself sodomised in her presence and gladly sacrifices his anal preserve out of love and affection for her. She listens in rapt silence, but the heat generating from her body, her cunt, her skin tells the story of her lust and her eyes acknowledge her increased excitement.

57 - He wants her again. By now, she has left Marcel's house and lives alone in a small cottage with the baby. A friend comes from Estonia to stay and arrangements are made to leave the little boy in her care. They meet up in the bright arrivals hall of a small airport by the Mediterranean. She has cut her hair shorter and coloured it auburn. She wears faded jeans and a burgundy chenille sweater. He hires a car and drive to a nearby port where someone has recommended a pleasant hotel. The room has a balcony overlooking the sea and he fondles her arse while they take in the view. He undresses her with all the slow, lingering ritual of a religious ceremony. He trims her pubes. Jokingly suggests she should not wear any underwear for the duration of their stay here. She smiles and agrees to his whim. They eat, they fuck, they talk, and neither of them wishes the week to ever end. One afternoon, he takes a short nap and she decides to go for a walk in the town. In her absence, he delves into her handbag and finds a photograph of her and another man, a good-looking younger man by whose side she is smiling blissfully into the lens of the camera. He knows it is not Marcel. Or the English asshole or the Dutch computer man. He guesses she is still seeing other men in the intervals between him. He says nothing to her.

58 - He knows it doesn't make sense and the relationship has no future. She is twenty years younger than him and there is no way he has the mental fortitude to even try and believe he could try and bring up another child, even more so that of another man. He knows she likes sex too much and will eventually tire of him. He knows she uses him, and the sex she grants him is her unethical, if Eastern European way, of paying him back for the gifts, the money, the travel. He often awakens at three in the morning in his marital bed at home dreaming of her, fantasising of the warmth of her body, of witnessing her being fucked by total strangers while he holds her head in his lap and wipes her feverish brow. He imagines taking her to a nude beach and exhibiting her to the unflinching gaze of others, her nipples and sex gash highlighted by scarlet lipstick, showing her off, maybe piercing her parts, and organising her ravishing in some fort of pagan ceremony. He plays with himself when he thinks of the way her eyes always betray her sexual pleasure. He pictures her with her erstwhile Dutch friend, he of the uncommonly large penis, and in abominable close-up watches the monstrous cock impale her to the hilt, stretching her apart like a peace of raw meat. In dreams, he has no shame.

59 - She sends him a birthday card in which she assures him he is special. You are my treasure, she says. Two weeks later, she calls him, desperate for some money. He obliges, relieved she didn't phone advising him she was pregnant. Apart from the first evening in Amsterdam, they have never taken any precautions.

60 - Christmas comes and Mimi has made arrangements to return for the festivities to her family in Estonia. She cannot afford to fly so is hitching a lift to the German coast at Kiel to catch a ferry with one of her girlfriends who married a Dutchman. Even though she hasn't asked, he sends her money and a gift for her little boy, whom he has never seen outside of photographs. The two year old is blond.

61 - He misses her intensely. Wants her like hell. Since she moved out of Marcel's house, she no longer has access to a computer so their rare conversations take place over the phone. In Estonia, her mobile is out of reach. Out of sheer stupidity, he logs on to their familiar Internet chat room under her old handle 'estonian girl'. Within minutes, he is deluged by calls. The majority of them are clearly just attracted by the reasonably exotic name, particularly the Yanks and have no previous knowledge of her. It's been months after all since she had last been online. But some clearly know her. He improvises his way through a half hour conversation with an architect in Brooklyn who has seemingly extended her an open invitation to come to America. Visibly they have often spoken on the phone. As he probes further to unveil any possible intimacy, he is rumbled and the other man disconnects.

62 - He compounds his mistake the following day and assumes her Internet identity again. He gets a call from 'infinity and beyond'. Another man who knows Mimi, and through process of deduction he uncovers the fact they are still in contact and have exchanged pre Christmas text messages on their respective mobile phones. The man has just returned from a trek to Tibet and wishes to meet her again. He blunders his way through the conversation by pretexting the mobile's battery is low and elicits more information. It is quickly apparent Mimi is fucking this guy on a regular basis; in a hotel in a place called Aalmark. He logs off angrily.

63 - He knew he wasn't her only man. How could he expect to be? But the smug assurance by 'infinity and beyond' that she was a great fuck and why didn't they have another session after Christmas, in the obvious expectation of an enthusiastic response, damn hurt. A lot. And made him so angry at Mimi. 

64 - Between the rage, the haunting images of her with others. Men as well as women (although he'd never been the sort of man who gave undue thought to women together). He remembered how during the courses of evening meals in restaurants on the mediterranean port, she had often remarked on the sexual attractiveness of, one day, a waiter who limped and the next evening a waitress who enjoyed using her poor English while serving them but was otherwise dreadfully plain looking. She said she took pity on them, but he knew her interest was also to some extent sexual and her mind was still excited by their bedside patter about a third person between the sheets.

65 - Still under the empire of anger, he felt the need to confront her. Tracked down her parents' address through directory enquiries and booked himself on the first flight to Estonia. He just had to confront her. On one hand, something unhealthy buried deep within his heart or loins, hankered to share her touching beauty with others, but not this way. Not without him. The jealousy burnt a hole inside him.

66 - He'd kept watch on the apartment block for a half day when she emerged. She held the little boy's hand and made her way, holding a heavy suitcase in the other, towards the nearest bus stop. He hailed a cab and followed her.

67 - Mimi and her son arrived at the docks, and, standing fifty yards back he observed her passing passport control and walking the gangway with another woman dressed in thick winter attire on to a large passenger boat. He checked the destination: Kiel. She was on her way back to Holland. He had over an hour to get his own case from his hotel room, check out and purchase a ticket for the boat. He saw her, the boy and her girlfriend eating at the ship's snack bar that first evening but decided against making contact. The next day, the ship held a large dance after dinner and, sitting in a remote corner of the cavernous room, he observed Mimi from afar as she kissed the child good-bye and her friend returned to their cabin. She sat at the bar, alone, slowly sipping a drink. The music began, loud and formless, a frantic aggregate of beats and naked rhythm. A man invited her on to the dance floor. She was smiling. Damn, why did she always smile? Another drink, then another dance partner. Midnight came and she was visibly drunk. But happy. He watched as her last dance partner whispered something in her ear and took her hand and moved towards one of the doors to the lower deck. He followed. He was already sea-sick and what he saw didn't help. There was Mimi, in a dark corner of the deck, on her knees, sucking the man's cock with an appetite that looked mighty indecent. The man gripped her hair between his hands, forcing her to take him ever deeper. From his hiding place in the shadows, he couldn't see whether she had her eyes open or not. He turned and vomited over the wooden deck.

68 - The man she had voraciously been sucking off had finally returned inside and Mimi stood on the deck, leaning over the guard rail, watching the sea at night, lost in her thoughts. What, he wondered, was on her mind? Did she feel there was poetry in the landscape of the night? sadness in the oppressive silence, broken only by the clapping sound of nearby waves? He moved quietly towards her, her silhouette highlighted against the brightness of the pockmarked moon. He gently put a hand on her left shoulder. She turned round to face him. Thinking maybe the other guy had returned for more. She was crying. 'You?' she gasped. 

'Yes,' he answered, a knot gripping his stomach. 

'What are you doing here?' the faint trace of a smile spreading across her cold lips. 

'I loved you,' he said, 'didn't you know that, didn't you realise it by now?' She lowered her eyes, accepting her fate.

69 - He raised his other arm and pushed. Mimi offered no resistance. Her body toppled over the rail and disappeared into the darkness and the sea. He looked at the illuminated face of his Tag Heuer: it was one in the morning. The distant horizon was 200 miles off both the coasts of Denmark and Germany. A time and a place for love and death.

(I acknowledge stealing the title of this story from Stephin Merritt's and the Magnetic Fields' wonderful triple-CD set) 

MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI is a British writer and critic who toils in the murky waters separating crime and erotica. His anthologies are secret bestsellers and his crime novels have just been collected in IT'S YOU THAT I WANT TO KISS AND OTHER EROTIC THRILLERS. He owns London's Murder One bookstore, reviews crime for the Guardian and co-runs the Crime Scene Film and Literary Festival. '69 Love Songs' will appear in NOIROTICA 4. His next crime book, KISS ME SADLY is scheduled for 2002.

Copyright (c) 2001 Maxim Jakubowski