Qing’s place was an old wooden house with a couch mouldering on the verandah. It had four bedrooms, and Qing shared it with five other students. Qing’s was a tiny room in a three bedroom house she shared with four other students.

In the kitchen she skillfully ducked my attempt to put my arms around her, but took my hand and half-led, half pulled me down a short corridor to her door.

Once we were in her room and I’d shut the door behind us, she did a spin with her arms close to her body but her hands at shoulder height, palms upwards. “Well, home swee home. So welcome, hey.”

She’d said her room was tiny but it seemed even smaller than that: spare, sparse and Spartan. Her only furniture was a small double bed, a work desk and a chair made of three-ply and metal tubing. The books on her desk were about accounting and business management. The most frivolous volume was something called The Seven Habits of Successful Companies.

Some landlord, long ago, had painted the walls the colour of mushroom soup. It looked like there’d been an explosion in a paté factory. There were no pictures on her walls.

Qing saw me looking around. She shrugged. “It’s what I can afford. It’s ugly but it’s got a bed and a desk.”

“I’ll beautify it.” I meant the room would look better if she was naked. But it was a bit obscure: Qing frowned, not getting me. But I took the top buttons of her pyjama top and fumbled with them. I stopped for a second and looked questioningly into her eyes. She gave a tiny, dismissive nod, as if I shouldn’t have stopped or asked her. Buttons were being too hard and too slow, so I pulled her top up, away from the pyjama bottoms.

She put her arms up. I pulled the top free and dropped it on her chair.

Her breasts were small and perfect, nipples hard as bullets in the cold. I could warm them with my mouth. Or I could pinch her and make the cold irrelevant with my fingertips. Qing stood with her hip slung forward, watching me. It was my decision.

Qing was poised in the front door, ready to leave. She didn’t seem to be in the same mood as when she’d offered to fuck anyone who was at the party. I wanted her back in that mood. I couldn’t tell if I was losing ground or doing reasonably well. Anyway, I’d got a smile for honest lust. “Yeah. Your bum is way cute.” She didn’t like ‘cute’. “I mean it’s hot. And, well, like two apples.”

“Apples? Tha’s your guess? You sure?”

“Well, apples with dimples at the side. No, more than dimples. Concavities. I’d have to get rid of those pyjamas to be sure, of course.”

She frowned, considering that, then nodded judiciously. “All right.”

So I took a step closer, like a man getting within stroking range of a spooked cat. Carefully. “And I followed your bum out of the room, didn’t I?”

But that annoyed her. “Well, you didn’ seem very keen before.”

“Qing. Course I was keen. More than keen. But I thought you were hanging out with your boyfriend. I didn’t want to get in your way. That’s completely the only reason I haven’t spent this evening talking with you. Um, and trying to fuck you.”

“Ok. Then why didn’ you get up, in the lounge? If you were so keen?”

That was too sharp a question, and the truth (cowardice, insecurity, etc) just wouldn’t do. “I had some guy sitting on my feet. And someone’s legs in my lap. I had to push them out of the way before I could get to you. You got to do that sort of thing carefully.”

“Mmmm.” But she was pretending not to smile, now. “Well, maybe you waited too long. The momen’s gone.”  

I laughed. “Nah, we’ve just wasted some time, is all. But it was a waste. So we should go to bed, right now. Really quickly. Your bed, wherever the hell that is.”

“Okay. You can walk me home. And fuck me.”

Qing was in the corridor, about to open the front door. She heard me coming and looked over at me. She didn’t react. I had no idea if she was pleased or disappointed that it was me. I said, “I’m Jaime. We were talking in that … revolving barrel thing in the park.”

“Yeah, why’d you leave all of a sudden?” The tone wasn’t friendly.

I took another step closer. “That guy, who grabbed you. Back in the park. I thought he was your boyfriend. So I left you to it.”

“Ah, you idiot.” Women sometimes say that with affection. This wasn’t. And she wasn’t going to explain what had really been happening, either.

Oh, _those_ tits.

I said, “Well, I got it wrong, but I had the sense to be sad about the idea of you having a boyfriend.”

She frowned sceptically. “Were you?”

Another step. She opened the front door, letting in a whoosh of cold air. “I was absolutely sad. Cause I really liked you.” Her face fell. She didn’t like, trust or respect that sort of statement. Not from men.

I corrected myself. “Liked your tits. Loved your tits, when we were face to face. Nice and biteable. And just now, when you were walking away…”

I got my first smile. “You liked my bum, la?”

Qing stood by the door, not wanting to come all the way into the lounge. She looked around. I hoped she was looking for me, so I made a “great to see you” face and waved, a wavelet really, with movement only from the wrist.

At the time I thought she was ignoring me. More likely, though, she couldn’t see me through the fug of marijuana smoke that swirled between us, underlit by the green and red glow of two coloured lamps. They were the room’s only light.

She frowned and said, “Well, it’s been a good par-ry. Thank you for a grea evening. But I’m going home to bed.”

I wondered if I should get up and say goodbye to her, try to get her number, try to walk her home, try to get into her bed with her, and that sort of thing. But I’d only had the start of a conversation with her, because we were interrupted before we’d got far with it. I didn’t feel that I had enough of a basis for doing that. So I sat where I was.

Qing looked back at the door she’d come through, and then at the room again.

“But. If anyone wants to come to bed with me… Well, I think I’d like to be fucked. Or fuck someone. Anyone here. Anyone?”

I don’t know what you’d expect to happen, if a pretty woman makes that offer to an entire room, or to anyone who happened to be in it. From a sample of one – I’ve never seen something like that happen again – the answer is that nothing at all happens. People didn’t look at each other, or smile, or make “you go” gestures to a friend, or put their hands up.

No-one moved. Including me.

So Qing shrugged. “Oh well, then.” She opened the door. “Good night.”

And she left. Various people said good night in return, but most were still a bit non-plussed by her offer. They could have thought it was gauche, but instead they knew it had been brave enough to be cool. But their reaction hadn’t been cool, and that had also worried them. They were cool too, weren’t they? And yet they’d reacted like a grimace of maiden aunts.

I was still thinking. I didn’t care about being cool. No-one there knew me, and nothing they said or thought could be as important as Qing and her bed.

It was her skinny but cute pajamaed bum that decided me. That bum was about to wiggle out of the room, on its way to a lonely bed. Well, that would be just a waste. A stupid waste.

So I got up, finally, and walked over people’s legs and belongings, until I’d reached the door. The corridor was dark. “Qing?”

Back at the party I met a blind French philosopher. Let’s call him Louis, because his name is nothing like Louis. He’s famous enough to be in a magazine (which was why I recognised him), but they didn’t put him on the cover. Still, it was odd to run into him in a provincial university town.

We talked about an argument he was having with an American philosopher about free will. They disagreed over the way in which free will isn’t real. It had got quite heated.

But he was getting bored with his one fan, and he asked if there were any ‘ot girls in the room. So I went up to a girl with long red hair, and breasts the shape of beehives in a tanktop. I asked her name, and then led her over.

“Louis, Rachel, I think you two should meet. You’re both interested in cooking, and baseball. And surfing, and 90s rock. Look, I’ll just leave you to it.”

I left, as promised. My introduction had been unhelpful, but I was confident that Louis would be able to parlay his (I expected) complete ignorance of baseball into something charming and impressive. Rachel was probably pretty clever, too.

After that I talked with another woman, but she was keen on making her lack of interest in me absolutely clear, so I said, “oh, excuse me a moment”, as if I’d just seen someone, and took myself elsewhere.

What a waste

“Elsewhere” was the kitchen, where a girl in a tight olive dress wanted me to help open her champagne bottle. That was a promising start, but then she started talking about the Bauhaus school’s influence on women’s fashion, which she was studying. Stupidly, I failed to disguise my contempt for all things Bauhaus.

I thought we were having a conversation, in which disagreement helps keep it lively. But she hated being disagreed with, and the people who did that terrible thing. We parted, mutually unimpressed. But I could be as unimpressed as I liked: I’d still blown it as a sex-and-fun opportunity. Sex and fun is way more important than Bauhaus. 

I decided I should shut up and dance. But first, I sat on the arm of the couch, watching the party. 

The over-the-shirt grope. But Louis had moved on.

In the corner Louis had his hand inside Rachel’s tanktop. She was fending him off but laughing. The laughter seemed to be real. Anyway, it was Louis who had his back to the wall.

His approach seemed to be to say something clever and then grab the woman and paw her like a drunken gorilla, or maybe the young Gerard Depardieu. But it seemed to be working. Being blind means you get to do a lot of touching. And a French accent lets you get away with all sorts of things. 

Anyway, introducing them was likely to be my one sexual achievement for the night. I sat for a bit longer, mildly displeased with myself. 

And then the door that led to the corridor and the bedrooms opened and Qing, the girl in pyjamas, walked in.