One became five

There are things you do in your life that become stories.

Things you laugh about with friends.

Things you exaggerate after a few drinks.

And then there are things you never tell anyone.

This is one of those.

Even now, years later, I sometimes wonder whether I should feel ashamed of what happened that night.

Part of me does.

Another part of me knows that if I could go back to that exact moment, standing in that room with my heart pounding and five men looking at me, I might make exactly the same decision again.

That is probably the part I find hardest to admit.

I was forty-three.

Old enough to know myself.

Old enough to have spent years behaving responsibly.

I had been somebody's wife. Somebody's mother. Somebody people relied on.

I organised things.

I remembered birthdays.

I worried about bills.

I apologised when I was five minutes late.

I was not the sort of woman who disappeared home with a man after midnight.

At least, that was what I told myself.

The evening had started normally.

Drinks with a girlfriend.

We had both had difficult weeks and decided we deserved a proper night out.

One glass became two.

Two became cocktails.

Somewhere after midnight I stopped counting.

I wasn't incapable of knowing what I was doing.

But I was definitely enjoying the dangerous version of myself that appears when responsibility starts feeling very far away.

Everything felt warmer.

My face was flushed.

Music sounded better.

Men looked better.

I felt desirable.

More importantly, I wanted to be desired.

My friend eventually decided she'd had enough and went home.

I said I would get something to eat and follow shortly afterwards.

That was the plan.

Then I heard my name.

I turned around and saw him.

I had known him socially for a couple of years.

Not well.

But enough.

Tall.

Dark.

Athletic.

Broad enough that whenever he stood close to me I felt noticeably smaller.

He had the relaxed confidence of a man who never seemed to worry about whether women noticed him.

They did.

I did.

There was another reason I had noticed him.

Rumours.

Women talk about men.

Particularly men like him.

And his reputation had been discussed more than once.

The details varied depending on who was telling the story, but one thing remained consistent.

He was apparently... unusually gifted.

I'd laughed whenever people mentioned it.

Pretended not to care.

Probably asked more questions than someone who didn't care should have done.

And standing there that night, slightly drunk and significantly less inhibited than usual, every one of those conversations came back to me.

He smiled.

"You look like you've had a good night."

"I've had too much to drink."

"That wasn't what I said."

I laughed.

"No. It's been good."

He looked me up and down.

Slowly.

Normally I would have called him out for it.

That night I enjoyed it.

"You heading home?"

"I was."

"Was?"

There was a pause.

I don't know what possessed me.

Actually, I do.

Wine.

Curiosity.

And the sudden desire to behave badly.

"I've heard things about you."

He immediately understood.

His eyebrows lifted.

"Have you?"

I nodded.

"What sort of things?"

"You're not getting that out of me."

"Then why mention it?"

I smiled.

Because he had me there.

He stepped closer.

Close enough that I had to look slightly upwards at him.

"Curious?"

I should have laughed.

Instead I said:

"A little."

His expression changed.

That was the moment.

Everything after that followed from those two words.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting beside him in a taxi.

The absurdity of it wasn't lost on me.

I remember watching streetlights move across the window and thinking:

What exactly am I doing?

Then his hand settled against my thigh.

The thought disappeared.

I turned toward him.

We kissed.

There was no tenderness to it.

No testing the waters.

It was immediate.

His hand tightened around my leg.

Mine moved across his chest.

He was solid beneath my fingers.

Much stronger than me.

That difference sent a completely unexpected thrill through me.

He kissed me again.

Harder.

The driver must have known exactly what was happening behind him.

I didn't care.

By the time we reached his house, every sensible argument I could have made to myself had already lost.

The front door barely closed before he pulled me against him.

My bag fell onto the floor.

One shoe came off somewhere in the hallway.

The other survived a little longer.

He wasn't gentle in the conventional sense.

He was controlled.

Certain.

He moved me where he wanted me.

And I let him.

That distinction mattered to me.

I knew, even in that moment, that I could tell him to stop.

I simply had absolutely no intention of doing so.

Clothes disappeared.

His.

Mine.

And then I finally got the answer to the question I had pretended not to be curious about for years.

The rumours had not been exaggerated.

If anything, they had been polite.

I remember staring.

Actually staring.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed.

He gave me that infuriating smile men give when they know exactly why you're looking.

"Still think people were exaggerating?"

I didn't answer.

Mostly because I couldn't think of anything remotely intelligent to say.

The combination of his height, his build and what I had just discovered about him made the entire situation suddenly feel much more intimidating.

Which, for reasons I still don't entirely understand, made it considerably more exciting.

He seemed to enjoy my uncertainty.

Not fear.

The hesitation that comes from wanting something and simultaneously wondering whether you have been overconfident.

He told me to look at him.

I did.

He asked if I was sure.

I nodded.

That was the last sensible conversation we had for quite some time.

What followed was physical in a way I wasn't accustomed to.

Hard.

Demanding.

Messy.

At first I tried to retain some dignity.

That lasted perhaps five minutes.

I remember feeling his hands around my waist.

Being moved almost effortlessly.

The strength in his arms.

The feeling that every time I recovered my breath, he stole it again.

My composure gradually vanished.

So did any pretence that I was simply indulging my curiosity.

I wanted it.

I wanted the recklessness of it.

I wanted to be overwhelmed.

I wanted to wake the next morning and wonder who the woman from the night before had been.

And then the door opened.

Everything stopped.

Four men stood in the doorway.

For several seconds I didn't understand what I was looking at.

My first instinct was embarrassment.

Absolute, immediate embarrassment.

I became conscious of everything.

My bare skin.

My hair.

My clothes scattered around the room.

My flushed face.

The fact that I was standing there almost completely exposed while four strangers looked at me.

My stomach dropped.

I looked at him.

Then at them.

Then back at him.

Nobody moved.

One of the men looked away briefly, almost as though he was trying not to make me uncomfortable.

Another smiled.

Not leering.

Waiting.

The man I'd come home with stepped closer to me.

"Do you want them to leave?"

That question brought reality rushing back.

I could say yes.

The night could return to what I thought I had agreed to.

One man.

One mistake.

One secret.

I looked at the four men.

Then at him.

Five altogether.

Even thinking the number made my stomach tighten.

I was nervous.

Very nervous.

But underneath it was something else.

Something I wasn't proud of.

Excitement.

The kind that frightens you because it reveals something about yourself you'd rather not know.

"What happens if they stay?"

He looked at me carefully.

"Nothing you don't want."

The room remained silent.

Nobody approached me.

That made the choice worse somehow.

Because it was completely mine.

I looked at each of them.

Different ages.

Different builds.

One particularly tall.

Another heavily built through the shoulders.

One leaner.

One standing quietly at the back.

And I was suddenly very aware that every single one of them had been invited into a situation that, until seconds earlier, had involved only me.

I could feel my heartbeat everywhere.

"You're sure?" he asked again.

I don't know where the confidence came from.

Maybe nowhere.

Maybe I was terrified and simply refused to show it.

I said:

"They can stay."

Nobody moved immediately.

Then one of the men closed the door.

Click.

That sound remains one of the clearest memories of the night.

A tiny sound.

But after it, everything felt different.

One man moved closer.

Then another.

I was suddenly conscious of being completely outnumbered.

Five male bodies around one female body.

Five different voices.

Five different sets of hands.

Five different ways of looking at me.

For several seconds, I felt genuinely shy.

Which sounds ridiculous considering the situation.

One of them touched my waist.

Very slowly.

Another stood behind me.

I felt his breath near my ear before he even touched me.

The man I'd originally come home with watched my face carefully.

"You okay?"

I nodded.

"Say it."

"I'm okay."

"You want this?"

I looked around the room again.

That was the moment where fantasy became choice.

"Yes."

After that, the room seemed to shrink.

There was nowhere to look without seeing one of them.

Nowhere to move without brushing against somebody.

I became intensely aware of scale.

Their hands looked larger against me.

Their shoulders seemed broader.

Whenever one of them moved behind me, I felt suddenly small.

At times two of them crowded close enough that I barely knew where one ended and the other began.

It should have felt intimidating.

Sometimes it did.

And then that intimidation transformed into something completely different.

Attention.

That was what overwhelmed me most.

The sheer amount of attention.

There was always someone touching me.

Someone watching.

Someone waiting.

Someone whispering something filthy enough to make me laugh and blush at the same time.

At one point one man lifted me as though I weighed nothing.

I instinctively grabbed his shoulders.

Someone behind me laughed.

Another man said:

"She's not quite as confident now."

That should have embarrassed me.

Instead it sent another rush through me.

Because he was right.

The brave woman who had told five men she wanted them to stay had suddenly realised what agreeing to five men actually meant.

I was overwhelmed.

Completely.

But I wasn't asking them to stop.

The opposite.

The atmosphere changed as my nervousness disappeared.

They realised I wasn't fragile.

I realised they were watching me for cues.

And once that understanding existed, I let myself disappear into it.

There are parts of that night I remember almost photographically.

Being surrounded so closely that I could feel heat coming from bodies on every side.

Looking up and seeing someone staring directly back at me.

Being held firmly at the hips.

Hands in my hair.

A palm across my stomach.

Fingers closing around my wrists for a moment before releasing them.

Voices asking whether I wanted more.

My own voice answering yes far more quickly than I ever imagined it would.

There were moments when I thought I'd reached my limit.

Then somebody changed the rhythm of the room entirely and suddenly I was somewhere else again.

Everything became more demanding.

More intense.

At times I had to stop simply to catch my breath.

I remember laughing once because the situation had become almost absurd.

One of them asked what was funny.

I said:

"There's too many of you."

Someone immediately replied:

"You invited us."

That shut me up.

Mostly because it was true.

At another point I was surrounded so completely that I couldn't see the room anymore.

Only bodies.

Chest.

Shoulder.

Hands.

Faces above me.

I remember thinking:

Nobody who knows me would ever believe this.

That thought became strangely liberating.

Nobody needed to know.

Nobody would ever see this version of me.

I could be completely shameless because daylight David—no, daylight me—would never have to explain her.

Every time I thought the situation couldn't become more intense, it did.

The men moved around me almost instinctively.

I stopped keeping track of whose hands belonged to whom.

At one stage I realised I couldn't even remember where my dress was.

I didn't care.

One of them whispered that I looked like I had finally stopped pretending to be respectable.

I remember answering:

"I have."

That was probably the most honest thing I said all night.

The strangest thing was how quickly embarrassment disappeared.

At the beginning, I'd wanted to cover myself whenever someone new looked at me.

Later, I wanted them to look.

I wanted them to see exactly what the situation had done to me.

I wanted them to know I'd stopped resisting the experience.

I wanted to feel completely wanted.

And I did.

That was the intoxicating part.

Not simply what happened physically.

The scale of it.

Five men focused entirely on one woman.

For those hours, I was the centre of the room.

I was praised.

Teased.

Overwhelmed.

Challenged.

Asked again and again whether I wanted to continue.

And every time, even when I could barely form a coherent sentence, my answer was yes.

At one point I caught my reflection.

A television screen had gone black and was reflecting part of the room.

I saw myself.

Hair destroyed.

Makeup almost gone.

Skin flushed.

A man standing behind me.

Another beside me.

Two others visible over my shoulder.

And the man I'd originally followed home watching from only a few feet away.

I didn't recognise myself.

Not immediately.

Then I saw my expression.

I was smiling.

That image unsettled me afterwards more than anything else.

Because it proved something.

I wasn't merely tolerating what was happening.

I was enjoying it.

Completely.

Eventually the intensity began to disappear.

Bodies moved apart.

The air felt cooler.

Conversation returned.

Someone brought me a glass of water.

Another man found my underwear beneath the sofa and tossed it toward me with an amused smile.

I covered my face.

"Oh God."

That made everybody laugh.

Suddenly these intimidating men were behaving like ordinary people again.

Someone was checking his phone.

Someone else was looking for a shirt.

One man asked whether anyone wanted a takeaway.

The normality of it was surreal.

I sat on the edge of the sofa trying to restore some resemblance of the woman who had entered the house.

My hands were slightly unsteady.

I wasn't upset.

Just overwhelmed.

The adrenaline was fading.

And reality was beginning to reassemble itself.

I found one shoe.

Nobody could find the other.

Eventually it appeared underneath a chair.

I pulled my dress back on.

Someone zipped it for me.

I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror.

My first thought was:

You look guilty.

My second was:

You look happy.

I tried to fix my hair.

Impossible.

I found lipstick in my bag and immediately realised there was absolutely no point.

When I returned to the living room, the man I'd originally arrived with looked at me.

"You alright?"

"Yes."

"Sure?"

I nodded.

Then he asked the question I had been avoiding.

"Regret it?"

I looked around the room.

Four of the other men were now dressed or half dressed.

The entire scene suddenly seemed almost respectable again.

I thought about my life outside that house.

About the woman people knew.

About what they'd think if they ever discovered where I'd been.

And I said:

"No."

He smiled.

"Would you do it again?"

That question landed differently.

I picked up my coat.

"I don't know."

"That's not a no."

I looked at him.

"No. It isn't."

Outside, the cold air shocked me.

The street was silent.

It must have been close to dawn.

For several minutes I stood alone waiting for the taxi.

I felt completely sober now.

Not physically.

Emotionally.

The enormity of what I had done began arriving piece by piece.

I had gone out with a friend.

I had intended to buy food.

I had met a man I knew.

I had decided, impulsively, to satisfy a curiosity.

And somehow that decision had ended with me spending hours in a room surrounded by five men, behaving in ways I had never even admitted to fantasising about.

I should have felt ashamed.

Perhaps I did slightly.

But another emotion was stronger.

I felt alive.

More alive than I had felt in years.

The taxi arrived.

I got inside.

The driver looked at me through the mirror.

"Long night?"

"You could say that."

"Good one?"

I looked back at the house.

A curtain moved upstairs.

I caught the shape of someone standing behind it.

Then another.

I smiled.

"Interesting."

The driver laughed.

"One of those nights?"

I turned back toward the window.

I could still feel the evening in my body.

I could still hear their voices.

I could still see that black television screen and the woman reflected in it.

A woman I had spent forty-three years pretending didn't exist.

Maybe that was the confession.

Not what I did.

But how much I enjoyed becoming her.

Because I had left home expecting an ordinary night.

I had planned to go home alone.

I agreed to follow one man through his front door.

And sometime before sunrise—

one became five.