Free Sweet by Julie Burchill Page A

DESIRE YOU?’
    Moira mumbled something.
    ‘TELL THE PEOPLE, MOIRA! TELL ALL THE PEOPLE!’
    ‘BECAUSE YOU DESIRE ME!’ Moira yelled.
    All around us people applauded. But Asif and I looked at each other amazed, then away to keep from choking with laughter. In that moment I became totally determined to have him. Even more determined than when I’d got a real close eyeful of the back of his neck once while we were queuing up to get our Toilet Duck. Or that time when I’d been pissed on gin miniatures the Dracule-Lambies had smuggled off a plane, given the lads in Security a quick flash of the puppies fighting to get out of their Wonderbra kennel and noticed that there was a lot more going on in young Asif’s trousers than his butter-wouldn’t-melt expression would imply. Forget butter, you could have melted brass down there from what I’d glimpsed before he scurried out of the rest-room. It’s funny how sharing a laugh, or better still suppressing one, can bring you closer to someone than a blow job will. Funny ha-ha, funny peculiar and funny quite-sad really, if you think about it.
    But as I think I’ve said before, too much thinking’s well bad for the complexion. So I just squeezed Asif’s hand and relished the feeling of him squeezing back. An old disco song Mum used to play a lot came back to me –
    ‘There’ll be twenty minutes of squeezing
    Twenty minutes of pleasing
    TWENTY MINUTES OF BLOWING MY TOP!’
    I went ‘Ooh . . .’ quite loud, without meaning to, just thinking about me and Asif eventually having our ‘Happy Hour’, so to speak, and wouldn’t you know it the pervy old pastor fixed me with a beady eye!
    ‘Miss!’ he only goes and yells. ‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’
    ‘Um, yeah!’ I yelled back, hoping he’d leave me alone and pick on someone else if I agreed with him.
    ‘Listen! From the mouths of babes!’ he screeched – bit personal, I thought, drawing attention to my looks in church! ‘And this is what the Lord wants from us – not for us to worship Him through duty – BUT TO WORSHIP HIM THROUGH DESIRE! So now, let us SING to him our final hymn – with DESIRE!’
    With this the congregation went ape, cheering and ‘Amen!’-ing like they’d just won the Cup. With the exception of Asif and me, that is – as one, we stood up and legged it out of there. Outside on the pavement we cracked up, hurrying down the hill to the seafront gasping for breath. It wasn’t till we were sitting on the beach looking out to sea that we spoke.
    ‘Well, that was a laugh and a half!’ I lit a gasper and offered him one. ‘Wunnit!’
    He shook his head. ‘Yes, it was. But church is not the place for giggles. Joy, yes, of course. But not giggles.’
    ‘Well . . . I’m sorry,’ I offered. Any indignity for the chance of a decent beach-shag!
    ‘No . . . I don’t blame you – why should you not find fun in the foolishness of those who should know better?’ He picked up a pebble and tossed it out to sea. ‘All that talk of desire – I didn’t like that too much. We were meant to be worshipping God – not his wife, nice as she may be.’
    ‘Yeah – why don’t they get a room!’ I agreed. And I meant it – but I also thought it was a good way to turn the talk from the holy to the hoochy, if you get my drift. I lay back on elbows and looked up at him from under my lashes. ‘Come to that . . . why don’t we . . .’
    But old Asif wasn’t having none – and neither was I, by the looks of it. He picked up a handful of pebbles and let them fall through his fingers; I arched my back and imagined them as kisses falling on my body. He frowned at them as they fell; I imagined him frowning down at me as I went to work on him, before the downturned mouth turned first up in an incredulous smile, and then into a pure O of bliss . . .
    ‘I keep looking for the right church, but I cannot seem to find it. The other week, at an otherwise excellent Catholic church near Fulking, there was a