Bresaola: A story
On meat, money and being good
If you’re a lover of limited edition risograph zines, you probably already know about Scary Boots. If not, meet your new crush.
Inspired by the little magazine movement that flourished in the 60s and 70s, Scary Boots is a print only arts and literature journal that’s focused on work too unknown or too weird for mainstream publication. Each quarterly issue feels distinctly DIY, part collage, part love note, part scribbled poem on the back of a napkin.
Issue 4, on the subject of ritual, was launched last week, and it’s an absolute treasure. Inside you’ll find a preview of Katherine Faw’s latest novel alongside new work by geline pioneer Sienna Murdoch . There’s also some personals-inspired reader submissions about everyday rituals from cats with OCD to Christmas magazines, which have a peculiar sort of intimacy to them.
Looking back into the archive, I have a story called Bresaola in the desire-themed second issue, which is below. However, if you prefer a more physical artefact (or you understand that supporting independent print media makes you hot and smart) you can find all back issues of Scary Boots here.
Steven was 12 years younger than her, which was a first. In the lift up to a high floor, she’d begun picturing the rugby boys she’d doggedly avoided at university, a bulletproof hybrid of youthful swagger and ancient entitlement. But when he opened the hotel room door, she almost flinched. He was 22, but with such soft, babyish features and patchy wisps of facial hair, he could have been a teenager.
Quite the puppy dog, she said, softly, to hide her alarm, and wondered how awkward it would be to ask to see his ID.
With older clients, she understood her advantage. Beauty and charm, sure, but more crucially, youth, her body a wormhole through which they could slip back a full blooded, virile past. To a middle-aged man, 34 was still a novelty. When she unbuttoned their shirts or caught sight of them fucking her in a mirror, she was dazzled by the casual firmness of her body next to theirs, their buttocks and knees slowly collapsing downwards. Her body was still more akin to a daughter’s than a wife’s, and both of them knew it.
Steven had also booked her for an overnight for their first meeting, which was unusual. Most people preferred a shorter date to begin with, to check she justified the financial outlay and the inescapable intimacy of sharing a bed. But Steven had gone all in: A room at a fancy hotel and references from other girls that charged similar rates, all of which suggested that she had hooked a bored nepobaby with money to burn.
But now, backdropped by the suite’s panoramic view, she took in his badly fitting blazer and Topman brogues. As he began to unfold his life for her—a graduate accountant outside Guildford, a room in a house share, still holidaying with his parents—she realised she’d misunderstood. He had none of old money’s comfort with service, nor new money’s delight in being flashy. Over dinner, he asked her what bresaola was and clumsily deferred when she suggested, as she always did, that he order the wine.
I’m happy to, she said, breezily. It makes a nice change.
Out of compassion she chose a mid priced bottle.
Back at the hotel, a sense of pressure settled over the room, a kind that always arose when clients over-invested in a date. The ones that scrimped and saved to see her wanted their money’s worth, and the inevitability of falling short of their impossible expectations was paralysing. If the booking was to be salvaged (although what was the point, surely he didn’t have the money to see her again), she had to run towards the pressure rather than shy away from it. She lay down on the bed and beckoned him towards her. Beside her, she told him to close his eyes.
What do you like, she asked. What do you fantasise about?
I..I like to be dominated. Quite hard.
Oh really?
Yeah. I used to see dommes for a while. But I didn’t like how clinical it all was.
You need something a little sweeter?
I think so. I want to be touched as well as hit, if that makes sense?
Perfect sense, she cooed. I know exactly what you mean.
This was what a lot of men wanted; a form of domination that smothered them in compassion and affirmation. They wanted to be corrected and then held; their badness transformed through devotion. They wanted clear boundaries and to be tucked into bed. They wanted to be loved unconditionally and made to suffer a little as a result.
She told him to stand up and take off his clothes so she could look at him. He was ghostly pale and devoid of body hair, with a little bulge of stomach fat she found endearing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen someone this young naked. She contemplated all the older men who’d booked her when she first started working at 24. Had she seemed like he did now, nervous and new? Had they felt a similar compulsion to ruin her?
She appraised him wordlessly, stretching out the silence between them. He cringed under her gaze but his cock sprung hard against the soft folds of his torso.
Kneel down, she instructed. Open your mouth.
His lips fell open.
Wider.
Slowly, she pushed two fingers into the wet pink of his mouth.
Are you my good, obedient boy?
He moaned into her hand, she felt something in his demeanour give way.
Suck, she said, and look at me while you do it.
His wide eyes found hers in some overly-earnest imitation of porny eye contact.
Don’t do that, she said. Look at me properly.
She hated when they over-egged it, hiding behind a performance that they weren’t skilled enough to make natural. She knew he didn’t understand what she wanted from him, but it didn’t stop her feeling somehow annoyed by it all. She felt an urge for something uncontrolled from him, for a flash of honesty amongst all this cosplay. Her fingers snaked further inside him until she found the back of his throat, pushed his tongue down until he gagged. She kept them there, even as his body begin to protest.
Stay Still, Steven, she murmured, recalling suddenly the now-useless terminology she’d been taught at school to describe poetry: sibilance; assonance; consonance.
Back then, as a sexually precocious teenager, she’d had a sustained fascination with medieval torture devices. This included the scold’s bridle, an iron cage forced onto disobedient women’s heads with a plate that forced their tongue down. In some accounts, the women were then led around town on a leash to complete their humiliation. She had found it all frighteningly sexual, along with those lurid illustrations of hunger striking suffragettes strapped down to chairs with long pipes forced down their throats. This was what it all was, really, despite the insistence on positivity and safety that dogged everything now. The echo of all the windowless rooms that people disappeared into, subjected to the types of violence artfully crafted to keep you alive as long as possible. Our great shames and our morbid curiosities.
He was uncomfortable now, his retching stronger and more panicky and his dick gone soft. She wanted to push him further, to see how far he’d let her go. Then, as she began contemplating whether the hotel would charge him extra if he threw up all over the carpet, she pulled back, aware that her own interests risked overtaking his. She withdrew, let him catch his breath, told him what a good boy he’d been.
You’ve pleased me, she said, taking his dick in her hand. Do you think you deserve something pleasing in return?
If it’s what you want.
They always said that, washing their hands of responsibility for their desire. What she wanted was to be at home. She smiled coyly and reached down to jerk him off, feeling his eyes fixed on her as she did.
What did she look like to him? Did she look how he’d imagined, or worse? Had he noticed the crop of grey hairs that now sprouted abundantly above her ears, or the small bruise on her forehead from yesterday’s botox? Here, closer to the MILF end of the spectrum than the barely legal one, she wasn’t sure if he’d seen enough adult women naked to know that her body was normal, if not better than normal. Should she tell him? She thought of something a man had told her once. ‘As you age’, he’d said, ‘you can either look old or you can look weird. There isn’t a third option’.
Close your eyes, she said, no longer able to tolerate the scrutiny. Steven barely made a sound as he came.
They lay in silence for a long while after. She was loath to break it, to make more work for herself through engagement, but she couldn’t help it. The unsayable thing could not be kept down.
You seem quite young for this.
Do I?
Yeah. This isn’t something people normally do until they’re out of options, so to speak. Not when they’re just getting started.
It’s just hard to find people that are my type. That like the same stuff.
The things you like aren’t that weird. I promise.
With visible awkwardness, he asked her if they could cuddle before they fell asleep, a request she had never figured out how to say no to. She curled her naked body around his. Early on in their relationship, she and her partner had begun jokily referring to being spooned as ‘going in the chair’. Now, years later, ‘chair’ had evolved into a simple one word invocation that they would sleepily call to each other in the night; a summoning charm that entwined their bodies together perfectly. What would it be like if no one came when she called?
The bed was expansive, and the sheets impossibly soft but she didn’t get any sleep.
In her Uber home the next morning he messaged her.
I had such an amazing time with you. Thank you. I’ll think about it forever.
She blocked him.