Read Unzipped for Free Online Page B

her fly. Buttons are not as easy as a zip but I have no problems. I wriggle her out of her jeans and push her down onto the bed, pull the jeans off her.
    Nipples on nipples, hips on hips, my hands between her legs, my face all over her body. Symmetry. I feel like we’ve blended. Become each other.
    ‘Why me, BJ?’ My first after-sex question. My face is sweaty and a bruise is developing on my thigh, courtesy of a brass bed-knob and adolescent enthusiasm.
    ‘Way to bring reality into the moment, babe. It was the dress and heels, and your hair, those big curls. And the “come fuck me” look on your face.’
    My chin is pressed into BJ’s stomach and my feet are poking through the cast iron uprights.
    ‘Am I that transparent?’
    She plays with my hair. ‘No, but I can pick ‘em.’
    ‘I’m thirteen years older than you. That’s nearly two whole sets of skin cells.’
    ‘Oh, that’s what that was.’
    I sit up. ‘What?’
    ‘Get back down here, I’m joking, you idiot.’
    ‘But, I was thirteen when you were born.’
    ‘Yeah, and when you’re a hundred, I’ll be eighty-seven. It’s about attraction. Age has got nothing to do with it.’ BJ waves a hand in the air, casual. ‘When I was in Year Twelve I had a massive, massive, massive crush on my English teacher. I wanted her to be my first and she must have been in her forties.’
    Jealous.
    ‘Three massives. That’s a big crush. Was she a lesbian?’
    ‘It didn’t matter.’ BJ smiles and there’s a dimple I hadn’t noticed.
    ‘You know, when you’re being filthy, you get a dimple, just here.’ I kiss the new dimple and slide back under the doona.
    BJ’s bedroom has a high ceiling, Art Deco plaster mouldings and a matching light-shade. Is the light-shade like BJ? A real original? I have never met anyone like her.Her jacket. I want it. Even though it will never fit. I’ll close it over my shoulders and wear it cape-style in bed.
    While my monogamy was round the corner having a smoke, I made love to a girl. Her lips on my nipples, her soft, hard kisses, me matching her kiss for kiss—it’s a revelation.

    In the hallstand mirror: do I look the same going out as when I came in? Pink cheeks, sweaty, a little too smiley. Not quite the same.
    BJ’s typing her number into my phone.
    ‘It’s in under Hot Lover,’ she says. She hands it back to me. She’s not joking. Up on her toes to kiss me goodbye. I push my hands into the back pockets of her jeans. I could stay like this forever but I have a husband and dinner guests to go home to.
    On the doorstep: ‘Well, you know where to find me,’ BJ indicates down the hall, ‘second on the left. Anytime.’
    Her front door closes and I jump off the porch clearing three steps at a time. Skip down the path and through the thigh-high gate. It’s been raining, but curtains closed, music up, my attention on BJ, I didn’t notice. I snag a rain-heavy branch of the plane tree on the nature strip and douse myself. A memory flares. Ruby and I on the long walk home from school, drenched. We glance at each other, sidelong, through our wet fringes, and try not to smile our ‘Sorry, Mum.’

    Does finetuning your sexuality affect the way you drive? My car feels different, the steering tighter, the leg room shorter. Mark is in his box on the front seat next to me. Is there such a word as de-visualise?
    ‘Nothing to see here,’ I say to the box.
    Tram tracks point the way to Mark, my house, my books, the space for my car. Not ready yet. I look over my shoulder, indicate, and pull into the kerb beside a new bottle-shop near home, run in, trying to remember the wine Mark likes. Search the labels, find it, Craiglee Shiraz, pay.
    With the key in the lock, I set my demeanour: I’ve done nothing wrong, certainly nothing sexual. An hour and a half until people are due.
    Mark is out of the box and in the kitchen. His beautiful smile is doing something to me I hadn’t anticipated. Cry, vomit, run like hell, I can’t