I keep my eyes on the light as he undresses me, licking as he goes, groaning, grabbing my thighs and sticking his head down there. The lights are dancing, dancing. Then I’m on top of the bed and he is on top of me. It’s like the moment with the bottle: blurred, slow-mo and sped-up all at the same time, except this time it’s yer man that is pulling my strings, not some crazy lady in the sky. The same feeling of powerlessness applies here. I hear myself saying, ‘Condom,’ and try to open my bag, but he’s holding my arms down.

‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Clean.’ And in he goes, filling me up with him.

When he’s finished, he goes to the champers, makes a big show of opening it and pours bubbles into my glass and his, clinking the two together. Cheers. Thank you, kind sir. I swallow fast. The bubbles explode in my mouth, the fizz burns a hole in the lining of my stomach. I can see it tearing away in there and I glug.

‘Hey, slow down. You’re a greedy little one,’ he says, as he drinks in my body with his thread-veined eyes.

I wrap myself up in the sheets. Can I go now? Is it over yet? Evidently not, as he pries the sheet from me and starts his sucking thing again. I drink and drink and stare directly into the light, which makes black circles swirl in front of my eyes. I try to count them. They float up and swim away before I can get a grasp. He bites me on my inner arm, then under my arm, then on my breast. The guy is biting me.

‘Hey,’ I say.

‘Don’t like that?’

I decide not to say anything further, guessing that he would probably bite harder if I did.

It would be easier having to do a load of them in one evening; I reckon I could handle that better than this – this one-on-one intimacy. He’s fooled himself into thinking we’re engaged in some sort of reciprocal situation. And then my mind gets all tangled up in its own tripping thoughts, cos, really, I am here because I want to be. No one is forcing me, are they? No one is holding a gun to my head, are they? No, Sammy, you chose this for yourself, and it’s this thought that lands and punches me in the gut; it’s this thought that makes the tears come when the guy is asleep, snoring, his arm draped over me, spooning me to him, like we’re cosy lovers.