Free The Not So Invisible Woman by Suzanne Portnoy Page A

references from my youth. Even a few hours with him was like a holiday, worlds removed from my celebrity-drenched working life with an entertainment company. He didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't take drugs. He only drank water when we went out. But he didn't seem to mind my ordering one, then another, mojito or glass of rosé, and maybe another after that.
    We carried on seeing each other for three months. We hooked up three times a week, initially, which for me felt almost like being married, as it had been years since I'd fucked anyone other than Karume so regularly. But after six weeks, I got bored and started making excuses, till we were getting together only once every other week. In part this was because a kinky new playmate, Carl, unexpectedly came into my life.
    I met Carl at the Night of the Senses, a party for perverts that follows the Erotic Awards, awards given to artists, photographers, sex workers, websites, basically anything connected to sex and the sex industry in the UK. I almost didn't go to the event, but I had spontaneously told my friend Tania, who was volunteering, as I had for five years running, to sign me up as well. As the big night drew nearer, I was regretting the offer of my time – and my big mouth. Tania and I had made plans to hit the after-party together, and I debated just staying home for some easy sex with Kafele.
    But I'd committed. So I drove to the Renaissance Rooms in Vauxhall, where the event was being held that year, and performed my duties, in the name of solidarity with like-minded sex-positive folk. Then I went into the after-party space to find Tania. I spied Claire, a fellow volunteer I'd worked with over the years, standing against the wall. She was wearing a vintage 1950s one-piece swimsuit and some 1940s platform shoes. Her shoulder-length black hair was pulled back into pigtails. Petite and cute, just over five-feet tall, she was a little pixie who could pass for 25 any day of the week, even though she was at least a decade older. But in the dim light, she almost looked like jailbait.
    'So, seen any action yet?' I asked. The party was always an anything-goes affair, complete with play areas with names like Fetish Palace, Massage Garden, Anything Goes Den, Women's Swoon Space, Boys' Back Room, Roissy Dungeon, in fact pretty much anything designed for adult pleasures. Yet, strangely, I didn't feel much electricity in the air. Every year I'd gone, I'd seen the same bald man get fisted by the same overweight woman spilling out of the same PVC leotard; seen the same droopy-tit woman in cheap chain-mail pissing on the same scrawny senior citizen in, probably, the same children's paddling pool. Though a full range of perversion and perversity was available to me, and I could have found something, somewhere, that might appeal, as a sex venue Night of the Senses didn't really work for me. I was always more successful at sex parties and small swingers' clubs. Typically, there's less female competition in those places, since women are hesitant to go to saunas, sex clubs and swinging parties on their own, and that means more men for me.
    'Action?' said Claire. 'Not really interested in any of this. But I'm going backstage in five minutes to help Rump Shaker prepare for his act.'
    'Prepare?' I said, raising an eyebrow. 'Rump Shaker?'
    'He's one of the strippers,' she said. 'He needs to get hard before he goes on stage. And I'm going to help him.'
    'Hmm,' I said, approvingly.
    'The thing is,' she continued, all wide-eyed and innocent 'it's so big that I really could use some help.'
    'How big?' I said.
    She held her hands about ten inches apart.
    'Do you think I could help you? I am a volunteer here, after all.'
    'That would be great!' she said. 'Meet me backstage in five.'
    Slowly I made my way to the backstage area, thrilled that I might actually get something that year. I stopped en route to watch the PVC-clad dom fist her partner, to kill a few minutes.
    'I don't get it,' I said,