85. It's only a minor fetish

****No Contact for the next two weeks as I am on holiday****

I walk down the corridor towards my office. I'm safe for now, and I know it; Chris isn't going to tell on me just yet. That wouldn't be any fun at all. No. He'll want to play with me a bit first.

I was at Martin's house last night. It was the first time I had been over. We went to the pub and then I went back to his flat and he got some vinyl on the decks.

I watched the concentration on Martin's face as he pulled off some impressively tricky scratching, which I knew was intended to let me know he wasn't just an amateur. I've known him for years. I had no idea he could do this. I had no idea he was even interested in it.

He was trying to impress me and he succeeded. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, and I was feeling disturbingly sexed-up and I wasn't sure how I felt about that either. So I said goodnight to him and went home. I wondered afterwards whether I should have done anything about it. I probably should have done something about it.

Is there ever a “should” about sex?

I've always found DJs sexy. It's something about the way they flick the buttons and rub the records with their fingers. Makes me wonder what else they can do with their hands.

All that scratching is making me itch.

I have the same reaction to guitarists, drummers, piano players. Physical dexterity combined with intense concentration, the creativity, the beautiful noise. There are men who I wouldn't usually look twice at in the normal way of things. Then they start fiddling about on the piano, or pick up a guitar, and I fall in love with them.

I mean, it's only a minor fetish. And as fetishes go, musicians are pretty socially acceptable. Not quite as socially acceptable as the big tit fetish which is so common no-one even believes it is one (but it is; if you require a woman to have large breasts in order to get turned on, you have a fetish. Sorry, that's the way it is. Same goes if there's anything else which automatically gets your motor running. Fetishism is normal; the people society thinks of as “fetishists” are actually just people whose sexuality is attached to something different from boobs or abs).

Martin's going to get fired. He's been targeted because of me. It's quite possible I will get fired as well, once Chris has extracted whatever humiliation he requires.

I wonder what I did to deserve Chris. What I did to deserve Matthew. Why these people keep cropping up in my life. Whoa, not these niggas again, these grown-ass ignorant men with hair-triggers again....if I was Dr Dre, I'd deal with Chris and Chris would stay dealt with. I wish I was Dr Dre. I wish I was anyone else. I wish I was a big motherfucker with biceps you couldn't get your hand around and terrifying tattoos, with a samurai sword strapped to my back. I wish I could grab his neck and pin him up against the wall and talk to him in a language he would understand. I wish I was someone not to be fucked with.

But I'm only Alice, five foot five and out of shape, with a habit of looking at the floor when I meet someone intimidating. I look like a fucking mark, like a big fat “come on over and screw me up” victim, and I know it.

I sometimes have a fantasy about Matthew. How he might turn up in my life again, asking for my forgiveness. People find God, get raped in prison and realise the error of their ways, get therapy, get counselling, it happens. I know exactly what I would ask him for. An simple apology just won't do it. Money? There isn't enough in the world.

No, I want the little finger off his left hand. I want him to cut it off himself. I want to see him fucking bleed. Then maybe I can say he's paid.

What the fuck am I going to do?