It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake Read online

  About the Book

  Noni Blake knows she wants more: more adventures, more joy, more romance, more orgasms, more pleasure…more everything. Now she just has to figure out how to get it.

  Noni didn’t expect to be starting over at the age of thirty-six. But eighteen months after the end of her long-term relationship, she decides it’s time to start living her life again.

  While an encounter with a sexy firefighter is a welcome entry back into the dating world, Noni soon realises she’s looking for more than just a series of brief, pleasurable encounters. She’s looking for more pleasure in, well, everything.

  That’s how she finds herself travelling to Europe to track down the one that got away: the alluring, elusive Molly. But Europe may have other surprises in store…

  CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  Here’s to you,

  and doing whatever feels good.

  Here’s to you,

  and all of your pleasure.

  1

  I hear the rumble of the garbage truck and my eyes jolt open. Fuck. I forgot to put the bins out. Again. Joan always put the bins out. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve remembered to put the bins out in the eighteen months since we broke up. When my eyes adjust to the light I realise, however, that I have not missed bin day, because my bin day is Tuesday and it’s not Tuesday morning, it’s Monday morning, and I’m not in my own bed, I’m in the firefighter’s bed. And I can’t remember the firefighter’s name. I can’t remember the firefighter’s name because for the past few weeks I’ve just called her the firefighter.

  Oh my fucking god I had sex. I had sex with the firefighter. I had very good, very drunk sex with the firefighter.

  The firefighter in question is sound asleep, her tousled bleach-blonde hair spurting onto the pillow. I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my teeth, and feel my insides squish in stunned delight. This is not how I thought yesterday would end up. I had only agreed to go to the station’s community barbecue because I wanted to drop off a carton of beer as a thank-you gift for the amazing presentations they’d done for my grade ten students. I mean, I liked the idea of seeing the firefighter. The two times I’d taken my students to the station for the car-safety presentations, I’d definitely caught myself staring at her when she wasn’t looking and smiling awkwardly when she did glance my way. On the second visit, we’d spoken briefly about the unseasonably hot weather. But that was it. So I had not foreseen staying for a drink, nor that drink becoming many, many more drinks, leading to me attempting to flirt with the firefighter, trying my darnedest to maintain a cool composure. Which I feel I navigated superbly right up until she asked me if I wanted to go home with her.

  ‘Abso-fucking-lutely!’ I’d said, high-pitched and way too eager.

  I grab my temples, feeling a surge of embarrassment at the memory of her attempting to go down on me as I flailed about distracted by the fact that I was wearing giant, beige undies.

  What time is it? I need to find a clock. Or my phone. Where is my phone? I get up with such stealth and quiet precision that I pull a muscle in my neck. I wince in pain as I stalk through her unit on my tiptoes, like a cartoon burglar stealing back my decency, as I bundle my things into my arms, trying to be as quiet as humanly possible. I look at the microwave: 5.53 a.m. What do I do? Do I leave a note? Do I leave my number? Do I want to see the firefighter again? I don’t think I do. Is that okay? Shit. I don’t want to be rude. I find a pen on her very tidy kitchen table and scrawl a note on the back of an envelope. You’re lovely, I jot down and before I realise what I’m writing my hand autopilots: Thank you.

  I look at it. Thank you? Thank you for having sex with me? Thank you for breaking my very long, sexless over-two-year drought? Thank you for not being a weirdo? Thank you for the orgasms? Thank you in advance for reading this bizarre note and nodding in mutual agreement that this was a painless and relatively well-executed one-night stand? I sign my name, Noni, and add xx to suggest an illusion of cool about the whole thing. But I am not feeling cool. Not even a little bit. I mean, is leaving a note the correct etiquette in this day and age? I’ve had a few one-night stands before, but they were at the beginning of the millennium, and things have most definitely changed since then. The last time I had a one-night stand people thought shrugs were a perfectly sound fashion choice.

  A note, Noni? Really. Don’t leave a note. I peer back into her bedroom to check that she’s still asleep as I chuck my dress on over my head. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I don’t want her to think she’s been used, because that’s not what last night was. Was it? I pick up the note and take two paces towards the door, before quickly spinning around and putting it back down.

  Fuck it. I leave behind the note, along with any suspicions the firefighter may have had about my one-night-stand expertise, and begin the walk of shame. Only it’s not shame I’m feeling, it’s a sort of pride. This is a walk of pride. And gratitude. Gratitude for the firefighter, whom I want to thank for being a pillar of the community, both as someone whose job it is to run into flame-filled situations to ensure the safety of others, and as someone who saw fit to run into the metaphorical bushfire that was my sexless vagina. It really was the best kind of community service. The firefighter is a big deal. A big symbolic deal. First, I’ve discovered, contrary to my own concerns, that my vagina still works, and I do still very much have a propensity for getting laid. That this propensity also leads to getting laid by attractive, very broad-shouldered firefighters is a nice surprise, indeed.

  Break-ups are tough. Break-ups from nine-year relationships, where there’s a mortgage, a dog and a history, are a straight-up ferocious inferno of feelings. I’ve basically spent the whole of these last eighteen months putting on twelve kilos, dyeing my hair too dark, spending way too much money on therapy, and vomiting all over myself in a hot yoga class. Twice. So, the firefighter is perhaps the symbol I need to confirm that I am finally ready to emerge from the microwave-meal-for-one, tracksuit-pant-clad chrysalis I’ve been living in, into a quasi-capable, adult-looking woman who can fuck firefighters back into normalcy. Yes! I think as I wait for my Uber. You’ve still got it, Noni!

  I call my best friend, Lindell, from the car on the way to work.

  ‘Push one if you didn’t go through with it so I don’t need to enter into a conversation with you about why not, because it is Monday morning and when I stepped out of the shower just now Julius told me that my penis looks like a guinea pig, so I am counting on you to offer me some kind of vicarious tale that will reinvigorate my self-confidence.’

  I had texted Lindell multiple times last night with messages that suggested my cool and aloof approach to the unfolding events. Things like, LINDELL I THINK THE FIREFIGHTER
IS FLIRTING WITH ME WHAT DO I DO? and fucking shitting fuck I think I’m going to have sex and what if I can’t remember how? and LINDELL IT’S HAPPENING I’M HIDING IN THE TOILET OKAY LINDELL I’M DOING IT GOOD GOD MY UNDIES ARE UGLY BUT SHE’S SO HOT.

  I laugh loudly. ‘Your penis does not look like a guinea pig.’

  ‘Thank you for affirming that the taunts of the hilarious four-year-old are not true.’ He laughs his signature guffaw before stopping sharply. ‘Hang on, you didn’t push one! What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I had sex.’

  ‘Eu-bloody-reeka! Was it good? Are you okay? How’s your mental health? Did you cum? Do you feel good? I’m sorry, I’m a little manic this morning. I’ve had three coffees already and it’s not even eight. How are you?’

  I don’t know how I feel. ‘I’m good. It was good. I’m okay. I feel a bit weird because I don’t feel weird, you know? It was very…’ I pause. ‘Normal.’

  ‘Did you leave your number?’

  ‘No, but I left a note.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Lindell’s rapturous laugh erupts into my ear. ‘The reputable nature of your manners will never be in question, Noni.’ He breathes in deep before he asks, ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘I think so,’ I say and I mean it. I haven’t been able to distinguish any kind of feeling apart from numb for the longest time, but this feels good, this feels like an improvement.

  ‘I am happy you think so,’ he says.

  I feel calm, and this makes me anxious. I thought having sex for the first time since Joan would be a bigger deal. I thought the sex itself would be a bigger deal. But it wasn’t, it was straightforward and good. It was good, and I was good at it. Probably too eager, if I’m honest. Once it was happening it was like my body remembered something it had forgotten, and the need for it reverberated through me like a shook-up bottle of champagne. I don’t think the firefighter minded, though. Or did she? It doesn’t matter anyway because I’m never going to see her again. I mentally add the firefighter to my list of sexual dalliances. All ten of them. Or eleven, now.

  People Noni Has Had Sex With: A List

  1. Jakob

  2. Randall

  3. Felicity

  4. Noel

  5. The British Bartender

  6. Othello

  7. Debbie

  8. Rachel

  9. Charles

  10. Joan

  11. The Firefighter

  I lost my virginity when I was sixteen. I’m now thirty-six. I have been having sex for twenty years. If you divide my number of sexual partners by the number of years I’ve been having sex, that means I’ve had sex with an average of 0.55 people a year. There are about seven and a half billion people on the planet, and I’ve only had sex with eleven of them. This feels strangely depressing.

  ‘Miss! How do you do question four?’

  I have a grade eleven Maths B supervision. I look down at the worksheet and then back at the class, bleary eyed. ‘I don’t know,’ I tell them. ‘How about this. I have a lot of work to do on my laptop, yes?’ The kids are curious. ‘So if it looks like you’re working, I won’t actually know that you’re not working. Good?’ Most kids get it and nod, pleased.

  ‘So, do you know how to do question four or not?’

  Kids groan and a water bottle gets thrown across the room. ‘Oh!’ the kid mumbles and I tap my nose twice, just as Niko, the school principal, appears in the doorway. I am instantly flustered, not because he’s a hard-arse but rather because he has a hard arse and I find him desperately attractive. This crush is the kind that makes me incapable of basic human function while I stare intently at parts of his body when he’s not looking. I stand up and walk over to him.

  ‘Teaching maths now?’ He smiles. ‘Is there anything you can’t do?’ He’s not wearing a tie today and a perfect tuft of grey hair is visible at the top of his unbuttoned shirt. Niko is tall, broad and a bit chubby. He has thick black hair and salt-and-pepper stubble, and he’s about fifteen years older than me. He’s a great boss, an excellent principal, fair, funny, committed to the kids and his staff. I am crushing hard. ‘I should’ve read the supervision sheet, I was just looking for Gary, but—’

  ‘His kid sick.’ I can’t even speak in full sentences. ‘Is sick,’ I add with a smile. ‘Apparently.’ Oh, god, Noni! Shut up.

  ‘Right.’ He pauses. ‘Did you have a good weekend?’

  ‘Yeah. Just…quiet. Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary.’ A flash of the firefighter’s tongue snaking its way up my thigh as my hand grabs at her hair smacks me in the face and I blush. ‘You?’ I fumble.

  He laughs. ‘Good. It was fine. Lots of paperwork.’

  ‘Ugh! Paperwork on the weekend? Bor-ing!’ What is wrong with me!?

  ‘Yeah. Great. Well, grade elevens, make sure you work hard for Ms Blake, please,’ he offers with just the right amount of authority to make the grade elevens’ butts clench and me swoon.

  He leaves and I sit back down at the desk, wondering if he could tell that I’d recently had sex. Something must be different about me this morning. Like, surely I’m putting out some kind of sex pheromone, or a heightened energy, or a look that reflects some newfound kind of intimacy. I must seem different. Surely. Because the most intimate relationship I’ve been in for the last eighteen months has been with my own loneliness. A relationship full of wishes, what-could’ve-beens, not doing washing, crying randomly in the liquor store, letting my roots grow out a little too far—to the point where it was obviously not a style choice. Missing my dog and my previous life. It had been my choice for Carson, our sausage dog, to go and live with Joan—we said we’d have joint custody, but I can’t deal with picking him up and dropping him off. It makes me too sad. Thinking about Joan makes the usual feelings arrive: an anxiety that starts in my toes, triggers tidal waves in my stomach, constricts my throat and causes me to cling to the desk just so my body knows it’s safe.

  Beautiful Joan. I’d thought she was the love of my life. Joan and I had worked at the same school. She taught grade one, I taught senior grades. We became fast friends, but I was too scared to ask her if she was interested in women, so we hung out a lot. Just the two of us. Doing things that could very well be considered dates or, confusingly, just two really good friends hanging out. We went on for a long while like that, until one night at the staff Christmas party we both got really drunk and she kissed me. I was thrilled. Later that evening we proceeded to have really, really bad sex on her kitchen floor. The morning after she cooked me scrambled eggs and we agreed that it would be best for everyone involved if we went back to just being friends.

  But very soon we fell into that strange territory of being in a pseudo-relationship with a friendship label and no sex. We’d hang out on weekends, sleep in the same bed, be each other’s plus-one to events, both adamantly telling anyone who asked if we were a couple that we were very much just friends. Until one night Joan called bullshit on the whole thing.

  ‘I am so madly in love you,’ she had yelled, frustrated with me, and us, and our refusal to admit what was really going on between us.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m madly in love with you too,’ I had stammered back.

  Joan and I had so much sex in the next forty-eight-hour period that I had to ice my vagina.

  We were together for nine years. We had sex with only each other for those nine years and up until we broke up I thought Joan was the only person I was going to have sex with for the rest of my life.

  The week f lies by so quickly that by Friday afternoon my brilliantly executed one-night stand feels like a lifetime ago, and the monotony of school and normal life has taken over.

  ‘Have a good weekend, Miss.’ A tiny grade seven kid waves at me.

  ‘You too.’ I smile at kids as they walk through the school gates and jump onto buses. I see Niko in the distance and curse our school sun-safe policy because right now I’m the poster child for sun safety in the wor
ld’s largest wide-brimmed hat. No teacher in the history of bus duty has ever looked cool in a wide-brimmed hat. Apart from Niko, that is, who swans down the fence line in a straw fedora looking like he’s one cigar and a pair of boat shoes away from Havana. I, on the other hand, look matronly and secretive.

  ‘Ms Blake, happy Friday.’ Niko smiles as he gets to me.

  ‘Thank you. I like your hat. It is, as the kids would say, spicy.’ What the fuck are you saying, Noni?

  ‘Spicy?’ Niko laughs. ‘Is that good?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s very good.’

  A group of grade ten boys walk past. ‘Spicy backpacks, gentlemen.’ Niko nods in their direction and the boys look confused. I laugh.

  ‘Was that right?’

  ‘Nailed it.’

  ‘So, big plans tonight?’ he asks.

  ‘Just dinner with friends. You?’

  ‘Hanging out with my nephew.’

  ‘Oh great. That’ll be great.’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiles at me and I’m thankful for the shadow that my tent-like hat is casting over my face so he can’t see my cheeks flush.

  Niko waves to parents and kids as they walk past. His presence is effortless.

  ‘Well, have a…’ He stops, smiling mischievously. ‘…spicy weekend, Noni.’ He dips his fedora as he walks off.

  ‘Yeah. You too,’ I squeak.

  2

  Lindell is my person. I call him that because, as an adult woman nearing forty, saying he’s my best friend feels immature, and also not nearly adequate enough to describe the impact he has on my life, nor the love I have for him.

  We’ve been best friends since grade three. I was the new kid. I will forever be grateful that Lindell saw fit to sweep me up and look after me on that first day, when Emmanuel Smith was picking on me for being fat. Lindell saved the day then, and he’s been saving my chubby arse ever since.

  ‘Say goodnight,’ instructs Graham, Lindell’s partner, with his hands propped on the shoulders of two children, steering them up a set of stairs with expert precision.