The old ones are the best ones, sometimes.
Time to blog this post again, last published here exactly two years ago.  A few of you may even remember it.

I'll call her Jane. She was English, tall, thin, a museum curator I think. We met in the eighties, when I was working in Glasgow.

She sent me a valentine's card - with a phone number scribbled underneath - of a cemetry, a sewage farm or a drugs helpline I can't remember.  Can’t remember either how I learnt she was the one who sent it.  Probably I recognised her aggressive sense of humour

One evening we ended up at her flat in a middle class enclave south of the Gorbals. A besit, really, with an enormous iron bed. There were cats everywhere. Jane avoided telling me how many there were. Avoidence seemed to be her way of flirting.

Jane wanted me to stay the night in bed with her. She encouraged me to fondle her body - but only to a degree. Moaning, then clicking her teeth. Touch above or below her breasts - but move towards them and she would turn away, or lift one of the cats so it fell on the blanket between us. I could touch her stomach, her lower but not her upper thighs. She would make encouraging noises, do some provocative caressing of her own then brush my hand away. And the cats appeared to be trained to back up her pervisity. Sometimes she'd picked one up and caress it.

I endured seven hours of this. No sleep, no sex - or genuine affection, but as soon as I turned my back to her she cuddled up and gave me hope, so the whole process started again. It was almost balletic - Jane, me and the cats. A ballet danced to Stockhausen.

A couple of weeks later, Jane invited me to a party at her flat. I arrived late. There were only men there, and Jane, and the cats. Awkward silences. My 7 fellow male guests seemed strange in a way I couldn't at first quite define. Self important (for secret reasons) but at the same time... We all related to Jane and barely to each other.

Then it dawned on me. All eight of us had spent atleast one night in bed with Jane. An excruciatingly frustrating wrestle-dance with cats. And I'm pretty sure that each the other seven believed they were the only one. They were all manoevring to be the last one to leave. This time, each one was convinced he knew what he had done wrong before. This time, all 7 of them knew everything would be different.

I phoned for and caught a taxi before the final play-off. Perhaps I'm wrong, and of all them, on their own, followed me shortly afterwards, and by midnight Jane only had her pussies for company.