Summerwater by Sarah Moss (top 10 motivational books .txt) 📕

with whom you have simultaneous orgasms. Coming at the same time suggests a perfect symmetry of desire. A simultaneous orgasm means that neither participant is trying not to judge the other’s facial expressions and thinking, for example, about bacon sandwiches to pass the time. Milly’s not sure she fancies that. They might be getting married, becoming one in the eyes of the state until death do them part, but she can still get off on her own, can’t she? She’s still a separate person. She closes her eyes and thinks about Don Draper, an old fantasy but a good one. Well, she was at an impressionable age, still has the box set on DVD it was that long ago, not that she’s actually watched it for ages, not that she even has a DVD player, but some characters, some scenes, just become part of your own world when you’re that young. She rather likes that scene in season two or three where he seems to be – well, forcing himself, his hand, on the woman in the floofy dress in the hotel corridor, though maybe the woman likes it, after all she has been sleeping with him, and though she doesn’t exactly give consent on this occasion she’s not objecting either and you can’t expect, can you, that couples in the Fifties in sharp suits and big dresses would stand in hotel corridors having conversations about consent before a married man puts his arm around a woman married to another man, leans her back against the wall and thrusts his other hand up under her big red skirt. Was it red? Probably. And Don Draper would know what to do with his hand, wouldn’t he— Gently, she says to Josh, meaning the thing has a hood for a reason, stop mashing it as if you’re shooting something on a screen, and while we’re on the subject, about a centimetre higher would be nice. Well, nicer. She read – in a book, in fact a book about maintaining sex in long-term relationships that she picked up just after Josh proposed – that it’s OK for a feminist to have a rape fantasy because the whole point of a fantasy is that the person doing the fantasising is in control, is both aggressor and victim, and anyway no one ever fantasises about being given a black eye or a split lip, so it’s not about violence against women so much as about a partner who knows what you want without you having to take responsibility for telling him, and also rape culture limits our imaginations which means it’s not really Milly’s fault if her fantasies are a bit retro. Women, the book said, should learn to be responsible for their own sexual pleasure and to communicate their desires straightforwardly; Milly wondered if the writer had thought about the extent to which responsibility and straightforwardness might be sexy. Or not. And she wants Josh to do things she hasn’t even thought of yet, isn’t that the whole point of having sex with someone else, let him make up what comes next for once, not have to be writing, directing and producing Don Draper and trying not to think about if there’s enough bread for sandwiches while simultaneously trying to have a simultaneous orgasm? Not to mention she’s willing to bet that someone somewhere does fantasise about having a black eye, if there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the internet it’s that however unlikely or stupid or downright dangerous the idea there will be someone and probably a community of someones out there who get off on it. And she does earn more than him, and he does the cleaning and she takes the bins out, so isn’t she allowed to think about Don Draper and the big red dress? What do you want, Josh whispers in her ear, tell me what you want.

She opens her eyes, considers the tartan curtains and pine walls, the smell of air freshener that she sometimes stops noticing. A cup of tea and a bacon bap, she thinks, would be excellent, but she says kiss me and reaches up to hold the headboard behind her head, which turns out to be slightly sticky. Probably just the effect of damp on varnish but this is – no, don’t think that – this is his parents’ lodge. Don Draper. The one where he ties her up. Well, there isn’t one where he ties her up but there could be, easily enough. A hotel room, one of those silk negligées but him still in his suit. The suit, she suspects, is a lot of the appeal, and what with all the drink and drugs and steak dinners it kind of tests your suspension of disbelief when he takes his top off and he’s ripped. He could tie her up with the tie. Josh is kissing her but he’s working on her hip, which is ticklish, and ignoring the breasts she’s pushing forwards. She should do something to him. She sits up and strokes his head, which means her legs open and his mouth moves around her thigh. They’ve already tried that and it didn’t work and she really doesn’t want to try it again, though you have to give him credit for effort. She pushes his shoulders to bring him back to sitting, face to face, and then she wraps her arms around him for a hug, which is more or less genuine. She likes the smell of his neck. She likes the muscles of his upper arms. She likes his bum and his dick and all of him, Milly likes Josh fine, it’s just that she’s hungry and it’s pretty cold when they’re not under the duvet and she’d kill for a cup of tea.

He bites her neck and she sighs, which he seems to take as a sign of pleasure. There should be flags you can raise, she thinks, like the naval signals her brother still had to learn