Long Weekend's Journey into Rubber

Part 1

I have just had a week-end like no other. I have just had a life-changing experience. I have just found myself – I hope: and maybe someone special, as well

My name is Andrew, Andrew Welch. I’m a childless widower, aged 39. I live alone, in the house that Jenny and I had hoped to make our first home. Where? That doesn’t matter, but it’s in England, on a small development about two miles from the city where I work.

I can talk about Jenny now without too many pangs, but Oh! How her death hurt. Yes, it was an accident on the motorway (and I can never read the statistic about the motorways being the safest roads without wincing), and no, the other chap wasn’t at fault. He wasn’t killed, but he’ll spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair: he was on the opposite carriageway, when a wheel came off a truck in front – he couldn’t miss it, and flipped over the central reservation, and hit my Jenny’s car like a 16-inch brick.

And that was that. Jenny’s life ended then and there, and my future came to an end when the policeman called at my office about two hours later.

Jenny’s parents were devastated, too, of course (mine are both dead, and I was an only child), but they were all kindness to me, but, of course, that wasn’t much help. It’s three years ago, and we still keep in touch, but that’s about all there is to my family life now.

So I worked. Heavens! How I worked. I’m an accountant (dreary, you’ll say, and you’re not far wrong, but someone has to do it). I have a one-man practice, with a young man studying for his finals as an assistant, and an office down by the city’s railway station (shows my age that, doesn’t it – everyone says ‘train station’ today).

All this is my background, to show you how far down the road to middle-class, mid-life, mediocrity, I’d gone in the three years since Jenny died. There wasn’t a woman anywhere in my life (nor was I gay – each to his own, but I’ve never felt any urges that way), and I suppose I’d given up on sex (gets worse by the minute, doesn’t it?). Which is why what has happened to me is all the more exciting.

Jenny and I had had a good sex-life – I think. I found great pleasure in her body, and I like to think I satisfied her. We both took pleasure in the other’s orgasms, but our sex was, on the whole, pretty vanilla. I know Jenny had had a vibrator when she was single, but I hadn’t seen it since our wedding. (Perhaps that showed that she was satisfied.) Our sex was mostly confined to the bedroom, though before we married we’d had one week-end camping when we’d made love in the open, naked under the stars on a rug on a bed of bracken. (We may have been abandoned, but I was too much the accountant to run the risk of being bitten to bits in odd places by bugs in the bracken!)

The happenings of this past week-end started about three weeks ago. Jenny and I had met when we were both members of the local Athletic Club, and we had continued to go for training runs together after we were married. When she died, I’d given up club membership, but I did continue to run, fairly regularly – I knew that, with a sedentary job, I’d pretty soon go to seed if I didn’t. One run I did do regularly was a short one – about a mile-and-a-half each way – across the fields which separated the small development where I live and a small arcade of shops on the fringe of the city where I work. I go there every Sunday to collect a newspaper, and to pay the bill for the week’s newspapers which had been delivered.

The first mile or so was over turf, along a path which ran beside the grounds of a large house: at the end of that mile, there was a small lodge, and then the track was over a tarmac surface which led from the edge of the city to the lodge. It was half a mile from the nearest other house, and I’d never seen anyone in the lodge, though it seemed lived-in: a window would be open, or there would be vapour from a vent on the wall, and once, when I was going on a longer run on a summer’s evening. there was a car outside, and I heard a piano being unskilfully played. When I returned past the lodge, a woman came out with a small boy, and drove away.

Three weeks ago, I was returning along the tarmac track when I noticed a magazine lying on the verge – I picked it up and saw that it was called The Rubberist, and the front featured a picture of two masked women in full-length capes, embracing each other. Feeling intrigued, I took it home with me, and later that evening looked through it. Talk about a revelation! For the first time I entered the world of the rubberist – well, I skirted round the fringe of it. The magazine wasn’t new – in fact, it seemed to be about ten years old, so it hadn’t been dropped by someone taking it home from the newsagents. I guessed it could only have come from the dust cart, which I knew would have been down the lane to the lodge earlier in the day. And that suggested, but no more, that it might have come from the lodge.

The images in The Rubberist were stunning, and the text and letters gripped my attention. Clearly there was a parallel world out there, whose inhabitants took pleasure in dressing in rubber and latex, who found the touch and aroma of rubber turned them on sexually. Reading their letters even started to turn me on, when combined with pictures of girls – women – dressed from head to toe in black rubber. I took the magazine to bed with me, and, I don’t mind admitting, masturbated furiously as I read it.

The next night I went down to the pub, and asked the barman casually if he knew who lived in the lodge. His reply was unhelpful: “Dunno, don’t think they ever come in here.” So that didn’t get me any further.

The next two nights were no more help, either; the first one I was away, anyway, and the next I was so busy in the office that I didn’t get home till after nine. I had a look on the net for links to The Rubberist, but couldn’t find anything up-to-date, though it was obvious that there was a lot – and I do mean a lot – of rubber and latex out there on the Web. I found a site called Gromet’s Plaza which really added to my education; bondage, total enclosure, you name it, it was there

I told myself that I had no knowledge as to whether there was a rubberist, or rubberists, at the lodge – the magazine could have come from anywhere else on the dustcart’s rounds, and might have merely been from someone clearing out a pile of old magazines which had nothing to do with them.

But, of course, I was curious. I found myself jogging that way more often, and ten days ago I was in the lane when a car came down the track from the lodge. I stepped aside to let it pass, and the driver raised a hand in acknowledgement. The car passed three feet from me, but all I could see was a female figure in a belted Macintosh: the hood was raised so I couldn’t see her face, but I do know a female figure when I see one. Well, that was one question answered – almost certainly the magazine had come from the lodge, and almost certain the occupant (or perhaps it was occupants?) were into rubber.

I was excited by the discovery, but didn’t know what to do about it. I mean, I couldn’t just knock on the door, and say to whoever answered it, “Are you a rubberist?” I could, I supposed, ask around a bit more, but I didn’t want to seem too obvious: nor could I hang around the lodge, or go past it too often, although the path was a public footpath, used by dog-walkers.

In the event, fate took a hand. Three days later, I took my usual Sunday morning run – well, it was little more than a jog, to be honest – to the newsagents, and, as I approached the lodge, I smelt burning. My first thought was that they were burning rubbish, but then I saw that there was smoke, not much, but definitely smoke, coming from a ground floor window. (The lodge was all on one level – part of it clearly old, probably nineteenth century, but it had been cleverly added to in a similar style, and clearly had several rooms and a garage – all of it standing in a hedged-in garden.) As I passed the window, I could see smoke inside, but there was no sign of any movement.

My thoughts were ‘Is there someone in there?’ and ‘You stupid man, you’ve left your mobile at home’. I sprinted the ten yards round the corner of the building to the door, and rang the bell and banged the knocker. No reply! I swore. I hammered again – nothing! If the window was open, someone must be in there. I ran back to the window – it was a top light, hinged at the top, and I scrambled up on to the sill and reached up, and lifted it as much as I could and called “Is there anyone there?”

There was no reply (I didn’t really expect one), so I reached my arm in and down and found the catch of the main casement. Luckily it opened, and in ten seconds I was inside, coughing and spluttering a bit. Luck was still with me, because I found the source of the smoke almost immediately. The room was the kitchen, and an ironing board stood in the middle with an electric iron flat on it, and blackened material and smoke all around it on the surface of the board, and from the pile of clothes on the end of the board. I traced the lead to the plug and switched it off, unplugged it and took the iron over to the sink. I then threw the board out into the garden through the window by which I had entered.

Whew! That was my good deed for the day!

I then thought – ‘The iron was on – somebody must be in. Are they in the bathroom? Have they had an accident?’ So, still being in Boy Scout mode, I thought I’d better look around. Next door to the kitchen was the living room, and these two rooms seemed to make up the whole of the original lodge. Leading out of the living room was a glass-fronted corridor, with what I took to be the front door in it, which led to the newer block There were three doors at the end – the first, on the right, was open and was the bathroom; no-one in there. To the left, also open, was the master bedroom, which looked like a woman’s room – cluttered but tidy. That left the closed door straight ahead. If there was anyone in there they were either dead, unconscious, or zonked out.

They weren’t any of those, and they were ‘it’, or that was my first reaction. I didn’t knock – if someone was in trouble, no time for these little politenesses. I just grabbed the handle, turned it, and took two paces inside the room, and stopped dead. It was another bedroom, not much less in size than the master bedroom. It was furnished with a large bed-frame (I call it that – it certainly didn’t come from Habitat, or any other regular furniture store), and on that bed there lay a spread-eagled figure in black rubber. How did I know it was rubber? Most normal people wouldn’t automatically assume that something black and clinging was rubber, but for the last three days I’d been conditioning myself to believe that a rubberist or rubberists lived in the lodge, and so I leapt to that conclusion. The figure was clearly enjoying herself – my initial assessment of ‘it’ had been rapidly replaced by ‘her’ (as I said above, I know a female figure when I see it). Her head was covered with an inflatable hood, from which there came unmistakeable noises of ecstasy, while from between her legs there was a purring sound.

So, not only there was a rubberist living here, but she was into bondage or self-bondage. Okay, Jenny and I had never really gone in for these kinks, but we weren’t totally naïve. Was she in trouble? Well, she would have been if I hadn’t happened by, but how was she going to release herself? Or did she have a partner who had hopped out for a few minutes, or something – stupid so-and-so? Should I intervene? I decided not to – my motives might have been misunderstood. Then I noticed that there was a bedside table close by the figure’s left hand, and the chain from her wrist went round the bedpost and though a cunning little electrical device operated by a time-switch, plugged into a wall socket. She clearly knew what she was doing.

I withdrew as quietly as I could from the room, and closed the door behind me: time to go. But, I thought, I’d better tell her what had happened – if there was anyone else who lived there, male or female, they might come back at any time, and explanations might be inconvenient. I stopped in the hallway, where there was a phone and answerphone, with a pad and pencil. So I quickly scribbled a note: ‘You nearly had a fire in your kitchen. I knocked, but you seem to have been Otherwise Engaged, so I broke in: sorry. Any problems, I can be contacted on – ’, and I gave her my e-address.
Then I let myself out through the front door and went home, my mind in a turmoil (I completely forgot my Sunday paper).

What could I make my next step? I still didn’t know if my rubber lady had a partner – of either sex. Despite my overwhelming fascination for her apparent lifestyle, I felt I couldn’t just go back that afternoon, and enquire if she was OK – if there was a partner, he or she might be suspicious – and I didn’t want to run the risk of seeming to be importunate, or of being – like – a stalker. So I just stewed in my own juice for the rest of the day – not even the Sunday ‘funnies’ to distract my mind. And I managed to burn the potatoes I was cooking as part of my Sunday dinner.

But that evening, about 10 p.m., when I was about to close down my computer and e-mail for the night, the “You’ve got mail” ding-dong went, and there was an e-mail
Subject: “Fire”
Hi, Andrew – I hope that’s your name, but I guess it is from your e-address.
I think you probably saved my life this morning, and I want you to know I am very, VERY grateful. I would like to meet you some time, so that I can tell you how it came about – I’m not normally so stupid.
I won’t say more now, I don’t know anything about you, nor where you live, and maybe you have reasons why you wouldn’t want to meet.
Deeply grateful
Lisa Lynch.

I felt like crawling down the wire then and there, but restrained myself, and replied at once
Hello, Lisa,
Yes, I’m Andrew, and yes, a meeting would be fine. Unfortunately I have to be away until Wednesday evening – may I contact you again on Thursday?
Andrew.

The next three days passed in a blur – I don’t think I gave my client good value for money, and I got home on Wednesday about 7 p.m. I had a shower and was just thinking of raiding the freezer, when the door-bell went. I answered it – and there she was, in her belted sky-blue rubber coat, with a pizza box under one arm, and a bottle in her hand. I gawped at her.

“Hi, I’m Lisa.”

“How – how did you know where I live? I mean …”

“You’re the only Andrew Welch in the phone book and your address is close to mine, so I guessed it must be you. And I guess from your response that you must be the right one. Er … can I come in?”

“Oh! … Sorry, yes, of course, where are my manners, my wits . . . please, please come in.”

I stood back, and she rustled in.

“I bought a pizza for my supper, and I thought we might share it – and a bottle?”

“Oh, gosh! Yes, of course, that would be delightful. Let me . . . give me the pizza and I’ll put it in the oven and find some glasses.”

All this time, we were standing in the narrow hallway, and the aroma of her rubber coat was filling my nostrils for the first time. I took the pizza and the bottle and backed into the kitchen, where I put them down, and turned back to her – Lisa as I can call her from here on.

“Er … shall I take your coat?”

“Why, thank you, yes.”

She unbuckled the belt, undid a buckle at the collar, unbuttoned the front, and slipped it off her shoulders and handed it to me. I took it as though it were a hot potato, feeling the cool rubber for the first time. I draped it over the post at the bottom of the stairs, and turned back.

“Do just go on through and make yourself comfortable – I’ll just bring the glasses.”

Back in the kitchen, I pinched myself, decided this was all real, and found two clean glasses – something of a wonder. And the corkscrew was even in the right place. I put them all, glasses, bottle, corkscrew, on a tray, shoved the pizza in the oven, and went back to my living room.

I opened the bottle (I scarcely dared look at Lisa), poured us each a glass, and went over to her. As I offered her the glass, she reached up and gave me a kiss – oh! What a kiss!

“There, that’s for saving me! And I don’t apologise for doing that if you’ve got a wife or girl-friend or some other significant other – I might well have been a crisp if you hadn’t come along at just that moment.”

I gulped – I hadn’t been kissed for months (I got a peck under the Christmas mistletoe from our office cleaner last year) – and not like that since – well, since my Jenny died.

I gulped again, took a deep breath, and said,

“No, there’s no one else – I’m unattached, now.”

And I looked at Jenny’s smiling photograph, the only one I’d kept of her. I nodded at it and said, “She died”.

Lisa just said simply, “I’m sorry: was it so very long ago?

“Three years. I guess I’m just about through with grieving.”

Lisa said, “I know it’s trite, but in a way, you could be lucky: death is so final. A broken relationship can be like a running sore. I hope you don’t mind me being so personal when we’ve only just met.”

I said, “Is that how it is with you?”

“Yes: it’s over, and I’m not bitter now – well, not very – but it’s left a gap in my life which I need to fill. You’ve had grief: I’ve only had anger, and I want something more positive.”

All this time, I’d been looking at her – she sat easily in my chair, her knees to one side. She wore tight needlecord jeans, and flat heels on her shoes. On top, she had a loose angora wool pullover which her breasts filled very nicely. Her make-up was conservative, and her hair was tied back in a low ponytail held by a ribbon bow. I thought, fleetingly, ‘This doesn’t go with self-bondage in rubber’: Have I got the right one?

Then I smelt pizza, burning pizza, from the kitchen.

“Oh, shit!” I said leaping to my feet. I rushed to the kitchen, pulled the pizza from the oven, burned my fingers, said “Oh, shit” again, but with more force. I found two plates (odd ones), knives and forks; rummaged in a drawer and found some paper napkins (with holly – last Christmas, too), put them all on a tray. I took the pizza and cut off the burnt edges, and took it in to the living room. When I got in there, I saw that Lisa had picked up the copy of The Rubberist”, and was just riffling through the pages with a smile flickering round the edges of her lips.

“Ah!” she said, waving it at me. “Did you come by this honestly?”

“Well,” I said, “I picked it up in your lane about a week or so ago, after the dustmen had been. I thought it might have come from your place, but I didn’t like to return it, in case it wasn’t yours. I mean … it describes … er …less than usual activities. At least, that’s what I thought until I found you in your room.”

“Yes, you did, didn’t you. Well, the magazine was – not so much mine as my partner’s, and I was chucking his collection out as part of exorcising his memory, I suppose.”

“Do you feel the way that the people in that magazine feel about latex and rubber? I couldn’t help but notice that your coat is rubber – let alone what you were up to the other day on your own.”

“Oh, yes – I’m a rubber fetishist – that’s how I met my ex. We were in the scene in London about seven years ago. Then he got a job with an IT company down here, and I followed him. I bought the Lodge, and I paid for the extension and modernisation, because it offered us marvellous privacy. I can roam about the house in rubber without worrying about visitors or passers-by. And I adore my rubber – it’s all sorts of things – it’s so sensuous – it flows around your body. Or you can use it to put yourself into total enclosure, like you found me the other day – that can be so-o-o relaxing.”

I said “Relaxing? I didn’t think you were exactly relaxing when I found you – that was one of the reasons I left you, and didn’t interrupt you.”

She laughed – have I said she had a marvellous voice? Authors write about women with “musical” voices – well, Lisa’s was like a ’cello, low and soothing.

“Ah”, she said, “well, no – that’s the other side of it – without him, I have to pleasure myself, and I can combine the two to increase my pleasure tenfold, and when I’ve reached my climax, then the relaxation comes in.”

I couldn’t believe that we were talking so frankly so soon after meeting. I’m not too inhibited, I think, but Lisa seemed never to have heard of the word.

Lisa said, “I can’t think how I came to be so stupid with the iron last Sunday: I’d finished doing the ironing, and was longing to get along to my play-room, because I’d planned to spend the morning there. I know I thought I’d switched it off, and I thought I’d left the iron upright on the end of the board, but I guess I only flicked the switch, and didn’t actually turn it off. If it weren’t for you, that pile of ironing would have caught fire and the whole room would have burnt.

She went on, “When I’m in my self-bondage, my ears are plugged and I can’t hear anything: nor can I see anything, so, when my timer went off at eleven o’clock, I undid my bonds and undressed, and went out to have a shower. As soon as I got out of my room, I smelt smoke, and rushed to the kitchen. All I could see was my undies all over the floor and an open window. I nearly died – someone had been in. I went back to my room, put a dressing gown on and a pair of loafers and went outside where I found the ironing board.”

“My first thought was to phone the police – but it was Sunday, and the chance of getting a response wasn’t high, and anyway, the intruder had, seemingly, only done me a good turn. Then I saw your note and realised what had happened. And I realised too, that you must have found me on my pleasure-bed, and had had the tact to leave me alone, which was another point in my intruder’s favour.”

“So, I e-mailed you, and the rest you know. Now, tell me about yourself”.

We’d finished the pizza by this time, and the wine was getting low. I told her more or less what I told you at the start of this tale, and asked her what she did, and wasn’t she nervous, living out where she did on her own.

Lisa said, “I’m a music teacher – I teach piano and singing at two local schools, and I have some private pupils – I’m dressed in my teacher’s dress now – I’ve just come from school. And, no, I’m not really nervous at living on my own out there. I don’t think I’d have gone there originally on my own, it was different when Peter was there. But when he went, it was, in the end, a great relief and I could continue to live there as if nothing had happened.”

I said, would she like some coffee, and she said she would, so I went out to make it, while she picked up The Ribberist again. She spoke to me through the open door.

“You must be rather lonely here – do you have much contact with your neighbours?”

“Not much – we always say ‘Hello’ when we see each other out in the Close, but most of them have young kids and we don’t have a lot in common.”

I brought the coffee in and she said “I’ll pour, shall I?”, and proceeded to serve it out as though she was the hostess.

“Oh, this is nice”, she said, “I haven’t had a social evening for months.”

She took a lady-like sip of her coffee, and said,

“Tell me, does rubber intrigue you? Did you …, I mean, have you ever …?

“No,” I replied, “we weren’t very adventurous, Jenny and me. We enjoyed our sex, and it was exciting enough, or so I thought – do you remember, there was a magazine called Forum – I don’t know if it’s still around: we got some ideas from that, but we never joined up with anyone else for any other experiments. I mean, we knew about bondage, and fetishism in a general sort of way, but we had ourselves and that seemed to be enough.”

I went on, “But yes, I am intrigued by rubber and latex. That magazine has opened my eyes to all sorts of possibilities, and you’ve said enough to make me feel that it might be fun to try it – Heaven knows, I could do with some fun these days.”

We left it there. Lisa said, “I must get home – I really do have to get up early tomorrow, and I need my beauty sleep.”

I said, rather hesitantly, “I’d love to meet again”, and Lisa said, “Yes, sure – you’ve got my e-mail, here’s my mobile number.”

So, feeling a bit deflated, I rose as she rose, and held her coat (that aroma) for her to slip on, and opened the door. She slipped past me, but turned swiftly and kissed me and squeezed my hand – then she was gone. I went back inside, cleared things up perfunctorily, had a shower, and went to bed.

In the morning I went to work, uncertain of where to go next. She had said she’d like to see me again, and if the farewell kiss was no more than that, the squeeze of the hand was a bit more encouraging. I went home, intending to ring her and invite her out to a proper meal. But again, I didn’t have to make the running. When I got home, there was an e-mail saying
Subject: Rubber
Hi, Andrew
Sorry if I left a bit abruptly last night, but I wanted to think a bit and have time to check some things out. So . . . if you really are intrigued by rubber and latex, come on over here tomorrow evening – about 7 - and I’ll help you to experiment. Just bring yourself – but it may be a long evening
Love
Lisa.

Without pausing, I hit the ‘Reply’ button, and said “I’ll be there, LoL, Andrew.” (And I was, too – laughing, I mean.)

I bolted my supper, then went on line to look to see if there were any fetish shops in my part of the country. As luck would have it, there was one, in the next big town. (Our town was a real city, with a cathedral, but it was small, with little club night-life, and a staid (well, staid-ish) atmosphere – the next town, twenty miles away, was twice the size.) So, next day, in the lunch break, I drove over, found the fetish shop, and entered. I knew what I wanted – a pair of penis briefs – I had to have something to show Lisa that I was serious. So I approached the male assistant (there was a female one, but no way could I have asked her) and said “Er, Latex briefs?” “Certainly”, he said, “plain, with a sheath, with a dildo?” “Er, just the sheath, thank you,” I mumbled. I paid, left the shop, and drove back to the office, feeling as though I had an unexploded bomb on the back seat of my car.

At five, I went home, and took my package out of its bag. I opened the plastic enclosure, and there was that smell again. I knew about using talcum, so I took off my underwear, powdered my prick and bum, and stepped into the briefs. They were just briefs – a pair of black latex y-fronts with a bag for my balls and a sheath for my penis. The effect didn’t hit me until they were up at my thighs. Do you remember your first rubber or latex experience? I’ll never forget mine – it was electrifying: I’d no idea I could get a hard-on so quickly. I stuffed my crown jewels inside the pouch – the prick was OK, but it wasn’t easy to get my balls into the pouch. So I left them where they were, sort of half in, half out, and put my shirt and trousers back on.

By now it was about 6 p.m., so I hit myself with a large whisky, and tried to calm my racing heart (I don’t know if whisky will do that. but I needed it, anyway.) And at 20 to 7 I set out to walk the mile or so across to Lisa’s Lodge – no business about being a polite ten minutes after the time I was invited for – I couldn’t wait to see her again.

 

23.11.09