Chapter 2: N's penthouse

There are two reasons why eastern girls are, on average, so much superior to Americans or even Europeans on bed. The first is a simple and universally recognised fact: eastern cultures lack the notion of sin associated to body pleasure. The second one is somewhat more subtle, and I only apprehended it after our years in Asia. Down there girls make love with their brains, not obsessed with western non-senses such as ‘clitoral orgasm’ or ‘G-spot’. A human brain weighs nearly one and a half kilos. The clitoris, clumsily defined in anatomy, a few grams at its best. Hands can rotate 360 degrees; stick out up to ten fingers in a myriad of different combinations, pinch, tap, squeeze, scratch and stroke, and perform dozens of moves out of reach for a human sex, either male or female. Girl on girl fingering and mixed hand-job contests are commonplace in many Asian amateur events, but the temple of manual sex is the Japanese tekoki pro circuit. When N first competed in Japan she hadn’t studied male anatomy and she had never heard about neural bundles or acupuncture, but she already shared with the rice-eating chicks the same principle: brain is the largest (and most creative) sexual organ in the human body. And that was the key for success. But again, I’m going ahead schedule.

Fortune struck me one fine day of autumn, my favourite season being myself an incurable sceptical. Weather was still benign and holiday makers were ALL gone, even the late season ones. In the aftermath of her birthday party, my sister Nadia run down the stairs, dragging her new best mate by her hand. All other guests had departed and the two teenagers had been exchanging confidences, locked up in Nadia’s room. The creature sported a smart black jacket whose lapels were forced open by a potent chest that stretched a silky white top.

‘Val, can you give my friend a lift back home? She lives at the other side of the park. It’s too far to go walking.’ ‘Dad took the car to the garage’ I cursed. My sister’s girlfriend was a divine creature with ocean wide wet eyes trapped in the buxom body of a Japanese manga. Nadia sighed. ‘Oh, ok, I’ll dial for a cab.’

‘Perhaps I can go straight across the park, is a twenty minutes walk’ said the divinity softly, with her warm contralto voice, picking a bang of blonde hair off her coal black eyes. ‘Please Val, walk with her, it’s no good for a girl to cross the park on her own.’ I didn’t know exactly where she lived, but to get through the Forest Park was at least half an hour with a swift pace. ‘Yeah, my brother will escort you’ decided Nadia squeezing her girlfriends pale forearm. ‘No danger with him.’ The divinity fluttered her eyelashes, perhaps pondering the different meanings of Nadia’s assertion. Her hands were the same size as mine.

In fact to reach Cidade Jardim, where N’s family had settled down, we should have taken the main road, and the route across the park was a 35 min diversion through an uphill winding path but, typical of her as I’d find out later, she’d never admit that’s a mistake. Rather a pleasant opportunity to chat and get to know each other better. On top of that she could talk non-stop and stride at 20 km/h at the same time. If competitive race walking would make all-along conversation compulsory she would be Olympic champion by smothering any rival to collapse.

‘Come up my room, I want to show you the views’ she commanded gently, as though she would did the same with every stranger, as soon as we reached the old but charming villa N’s family had rented upon their arrival. N pointed at the penthouse that crowned the villa facing the seafront. She led me up there pulling at my hand with a tight but affectionate grip, as if I was blind. To reach her room you must climb the twelve flights of a 7 feet-wide chestnut wood staircase and get across a colossal door the size of a ping pong table but twenty times thicker and, as I felt as soon as I tried to push it, twenty times heavier also.

‘Shoes stay out here,’ she commanded revealing her delicious tender feet and pushing me to do the same. The door had a rustic metal handle you can’t lock from inside, which is not unreasonable because the enormous metal lever of the bolt, that you must lift to open clear, weighs about half a stone, and the door itself, as I mentioned, is so heavy that could resist the combined shoulder-block assault of a firemen brigade. Therefore, a determined attempt to get through demands to invest enough time and noise to set the room inhabitants on guard. Still I wondered whether it would be enough to conceal us from the curiosity of N’s family. Dad was out of town for a hunting experience with the kids presumably all-weekend, but mum was expected at any time, after her custom Saturday’s game of cards which occasionally turned into a green tea drinking contest at the Hartley’s, the only other eastern residents around. Anyhow, N thought she could lock me and her rampant libido together in her cell behind that quarter-ton wooden wall. I found it myself a risky plot.

Inside, a narrow balcony with thick wooden shutters filtered zigzagging light on a surprisingly large bed covered with an eclectic assortment of silky cloths untidily coiled around. No signs of pillow, which prevented from knowing for sure where the head and the feet should go. On top of that epical chaos lays a smartly turbaned, giant cuddly tiger that mum had brought all the way through the multiple flight connections and security checks from her last visit to her Indian relatives.

When I grasped the bolt of the double door wardrobe she slapped my hand. ‘Hang off, nosy boy, that’s private.’

As N unclasped the balcony doors and pushed them open the salty breeze invaded the room and the emerald clarity of the ocean blinded us. My eyes communicated the amazement and her cheeks bulged with pride showing two dimples carved in the ivory.

The sloppy ceiling is lined with glossy images of oriental themes, most depicting Hindu females heavy in jewellery but with their characteristic spherical breasts and round bellies exposed, often joyfully entangled with male counterparts. N clasps my hand and drags me to leap on the bed for closer inspection, explaining every image with a stiff forefinger that sports a trimmed, unpainted nail. As we did so she pushed the stuffed tiger down to the floor in order to clear space for me. I sensed something symbolic in her move.

‘This is Draupadi,’ she says pointing at a dark-haired beauty surrounded by a bunch of hefty complexioned, bare-chested males. ‘She married the five Pandava brothers, strong warriors, and punctually fulfils her demanding Hindu-wife duties with them all.’

She turned her stiff, virtually nail-less, little finger to the next Hindu beauty. ‘This is Kartika, a 14 years old Balinese maiden who in ancient times bested a snow-cold demigoddess at the Kandari festival, a ritual test of self-control where the contestants must endure with a relaxed smile all kind of stimuli while striking yoga stances. Her mighty endurance came from practising amaroli, which consists of drinking the self urine resulting from daily fast.’ And as I grimaced she added solemnly. ‘Cow urine is a key ingredient for many Hindu medicines.’