Sugardaddy

I haven’t seen a sugar mouse in years.

         Perhaps because I was last here as a child, or because I’ve spent so long living off salads, wholegrains: good nutritious foods, I yearn for the frivolous emptiness of pure glucose; the pure vacuous teeth-rotting, dinner-ruining joy of the sugar mouse. I stare like a deprived child at the neat rows of pink, yellow and lime green, lined up on the seafront stall and feel in my pocket for British coins. I want to pig out and then throw up glorious pink and blue vomit against the too-clean hotel toilet all night.

         “How much are the animals?” I ask, hoping she’ll think they’re presents for my children – lots of children.

         “Oh. An American.” She says it without that touch of irritation I’d gotten used to. She speaks in a soft soprano: sweet, but thick and feminine.

“No,” I say, resisting the temptation to try and impress her with horrible Welsh. Instead I crack a bad joke: “I coulda been a Welshman.”

She smiles, and I’m encouraged.

“I was born near here – cruelly whisked off to the States by my parents when I was a boy.”

“How terrible for you.”

         I’m sure there’s not a hint of sarcasm hidden in the rise and fall of her accent. I look up from the sweets, thinking I ought to meet her eyes, sure that a woman who brings me this slice of the past so enticingly, who speaks so enchantingly, can be nothing other than breathtakingly beautiful.
         She isn’t the beauty I’m used to. She isn’t cheerleader pretty like Zelda was as a girl, not like the fashionably dressed girls I’ve seen around town, or, god forbid, the girls from pay-per-view porn I spent so much time with in Cardiff hotels. Her face is pale and plump, almost perfectly round, with an abnormally wide mouth slicing her face like a bleeding cut. Her eyes, as round as her face, a hot, vivid green, and with the longest eyelashes I ever saw. The whole arrangement has an air of exaggerated innocence, all framed in a huge cloud of curly black hair.
         She seems unreal, doll-like, but somehow, with the sweets in front of her, staring back at me with eyebrows raised, she could hardly seem more natural. My father might have called her a “real woman” with a brief hint of sleaze that makes me suddenly protective of her against the imagined insult. She knows I’m staring, but doesn’t flinch.. 

         “So you’ve come to re-capture your youth.” She says it flat, not a question.

“My family lived in Aberystwyth for centuries. I’m hoping to trace their origins. Find out about how they lived, what life was like back then, here.  The National Library might be useful, I thought. – have you ever been?”
         Her mouth stretches even wider, almost completely cutting her face in two. I’m not making any sense. I feel like a teenager. I look down at her hands, plump and pink, with short round nails. She takes hold of one of the mice by the tail - a light green one – wraps it carefully in a paper napkin and hands it to me.

         “Complimentary,” she says, “to help fuel the research.”

“Thank you,” then, with a hint of daring “Diolch.”

“Diolch,” she replies, and as I turn my back “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

          Back in my room, I put my mouse on top of the TV and sit staring at it for most of the evening. I wish I’d bought another, paid for it, so I could have eaten one and looked at the other all night, thinking of childhood, and sugar, and girls.


Next day I move in almost immediately after breakfast, feeling younger already, coins warm and sweat covered in my curled palm.
         I survey the sweets, lined up like a pastel army, unsure how many to ask for. I want them all, the whole stall: mice, pigs, fish, cats, and stallholder. I could eat the whole lot in one delicious secret binge, all washed down with too much milkshake. I wonder how much is polite to ask, without buying her out completely, without looking like a lunatic. I count out five pound coins into my left hand and push them toward her. Her eyes meet mine again; she knows I can’t break away and it amuses her. I amuse her.

         “I’d like to…” I can barely gesture to the mice. I never felt this tongue-tied with Zelda. Not when I loved her, not even when I asked her to marry me. British reserve is ugly on a naturalised American – the thought lends me a moment of insane courage.

         “I’d like to ask you out to dinner.”

         She nodded, like she’s used to this kind of behaviour. She presses her hand on mine, closes my fingers around the coins and pushes them gently back toward me.

         It’s alright,” she says, dead serious, “I don’t charge.”




I allow her to choose the restaurant. I knew virtually nothing about the modern town anyway, and I had my suspicions she would appreciate fine food and wine. There’s an anachronistic quality to her that suggests culinary perfectionism.
So I’m surprised by the very ordinary looking hotel restaurant she leads me to after meeting briefly in the cosy seafront pub. With a less intriguing date I might have felt let down by the faded orange décor and generic student waiters hovering with white bread and salted butter. I was expecting something different, a special, well-kept Welsh secret of a restaurant with a log fire, and a host who would entertain us with obscure local history.
         But it’s the woman that matters to me. She glows super-real. Like a clear figure superimposed on a dreary background, gloriously conspicuous as a Matisse apple.
Angharad. I roll her name around my mind, wrapping it around my conscious.  I’m afraid to say it out loud, embarrassed by my Boston accent against its delicate roll. I’m sure by now most of my countrymen would have reduced her disrespectfully to Ann, Annie – taking away the glorious, gluttonous sway of letters that covers her like a fine icing.
         She speaks little when we first meet up, smiles a lot, as if my attempts to make conversation are a strange American quirk. Her own ease with silence slowly relaxes me, and before long we sit just exploring each others faces. I take her hand in mine and rub the pad of my thumb over her thick flesh, enjoying the springy dent. She’s all softness; I can’t believe she has bones at all.
         I ask her about the stall – a hobby, she says, something to bring in a little extra. I ask what she does for a living; she tosses her hair and turns her eyes away, breaking the wide stare for the first time.

         “I’m an artist sometimes. And I bake. I clean a little. Whatever comes along, whatever I need, like most people here. We’re not so big on the high-flyer jobs.” She laughs, and I wonder if she’s hiding a secret. It seems like just the kind of place someone might come to escape a bad past. Isn’t that what I’m doing? I look for worried lines beating across her forehead, a yearning, whatever it is people get when they’ve lived through troubled times: what appeared in Zelda, and I sometimes feel in myself. I find nothing, she could have the soul of a newborn for all her face betrays.  I feel like she could read mine instantly if she chose.

         “My family were here centuries ago,” she volunteers “I never wanted to leave.” She smoothes down her floral skirt against her plump legs, flushed in the heat of the coal fire. I try to imagine her in a sharp business suit, a pointy collared shirt, a pair of Levis, and none of it works. I can conjure the clothes, but if I try to add her face it changes: her hair straightens out; her cheeks suck in and grow golden until I’m left with some half-familiar famous actress instead.
I wonder if she intends to reveal so little of herself, whether I really reveal any more. She still doesn’t know I’m still technically married, that I’m officially a madman, or at least a broken one. Somehow it doesn’t seem important right now.  I tell her instead about my childhood, how I remember sugar mice from the corner shop after school; ice-cream on the beach; riding my bike uphill, proudly into to countryside, beyond the boundaries of where my mother said I could go; lemonade at my grandmother’s cottage.  It delights her as much as it does me. I grow even fonder of those half-dead memories as I watch them make her eyes dance and her dimples grow. I want nothing more than to give them to her, whole and delicious, to devour.


         She looks at the menu with a bored expression, probably mirrored in my own, at the fairly standard selection of steaks, roasts, wine-based sauces. So I’m surprised when she beckons to the waiter so quickly.

         “Are you new here?” she asks him.

         “Yes madam. I started last week.”

         “Oh. OK. I’d like to see the dessert menu please.”

         The young waiter raises his eyebrows a little, but says nothing. He brings us two extensive sweet menus, far more inspired. Clearly this is the speciality: old-fashioned delights: apple pie and crepe suzettes, six types of ice-cream, sorbet, strange experiments in cherry and chocolate served up with cream. At least there’s something to look forward to at the end.

         “I’m ready to order,” she says loudly, raising her hand.

         The waiter comes back from his hovering near the kitchen doors.

         “I’d like the meringue nests to start.”

         “You’d like them to start madam?”

         “To start”

         “Not for dessert?”

“No.”

She is looking at me, not at the waiter. Her voice is serious, authorative, but I’m sure there’s a hint of mischief playing at her dimples. I feel a little sorry for the waiter as he attempts not to reveal that he thinks her uncultured, greedy, or just insane. We will undoubtedly hear a clatter of giggles break through the soft jazz soundtrack when he returns to the kitchen.

“OK,” and then on an afterthought:  “Certainly Madam. And for your main course?”

“The Crepes Suzette.”

He bites his lip. “Certainly. And – um – would you like to order a – um – a third course?”

“The chocolate and orange mousse. But no hazelnuts.”

He finishes writing and looks at me with something that resembles vague desperation – a plea for sanity.

“And for Sir?”

I look back at her. The candlelight flickers over her soft features and she reminds me suddenly of marshmallows. Her crispy hair even looks like burnt edges toasting in the tiny fire. She is wearing a little make-up, the fine powder glows on her cheeks like the sugar dust on her stall. I want to reach across and taste it, the sugar puckering my tongue. I worry I’d bite, that the soft rounded cheek would give in easily to my teeth and I’d swallow down a thick, bloodless chunk of pure flesh, warm and slightly melted by the flame. I think I see her tongue flicker over her lips, but I have no idea whether she’s thinking of me, or of meringues. I hand the menu back to the waiter without even looking at it.

“I’ll have the same,” I say “And a bottle of sweet white.”

“And some orange liquor,” she adds.

The waiter walks stiffly back the swing doors. I feel her bare foot liberated from its beaded sandal, gently pushing up the cuff of my pants, her toes tracing around the top rim of my sock. I fight against the tensing of my body, trying to think of something to say, when she rises abruptly out of her chair, takes hold of the collar of my shirt and plants a kiss on my mouth– or rather; she flicks her tongue quickly across my closed lips. I open my mouth involuntarily, expecting a full on kiss, but she moves away. It’s like I didn’t seem excited enough about desserts, and she decided to lick my lips for me.

“Oh relax!” she says “You’ll put me of the meal.”


I watch her eat meringue nests and am close to forgetting about my own. She near enough ignores the extra cutlery, considerately brought by the bemused waiter, and breaks off pieces of meringue with her fingers, a blunt flaking snap, and puts them neatly in her mouth. She licks the melting fudge flavour ice-cream off her fingers, just quick enough to prevent it dribbling down her arms. Her lips glisten, flecked with little white dots. I feel too embarrassed by her confidence to pick up the fork as I’d intended: she’ll think me a coward, and the waiters, watching quietly, will pity and laugh at me, assume I’m ashamed of her. But I’m proud. Proud that this woman who selects her sweets with such love and care has also selected me. I am more than merely incidental, a default table d’hote choice like on so many banal dates. I am selected without regard for price or convention, I am too crucial, too tempting. I grab at my meringue and sink my fingers into the soft-hard quilt, squeakily resistant, the cold ice-cream shocking my knuckles. I press it to my face like an infant, most of it covering my chin and running down, ruining my shirt. It is exquisite of course, cold saccharine lump sliding down my throat – but nothing against Angharad, who looks at me, my face clearly clown-like, covered in sticky goo, and laughs a huge loud laugh that comes right from her stomach, echoing around the restaurant. I could grab her right now, make love on the table with the waiters and other customers all looking on, covered in melted ice-cream and bits of meringue.

We eat as many Crepes as the chef will allow – Angharad gets close to the flames, breathing in the hot sugar, and I worry her hair will catch fire for real. She breaks bits off the cooling pancakes and pushes them into my mouth. I suck the mingled juices off her messy fingers until the chef turns away and the maitre d’ starts to look mildly angry. I down glasses of wine, shots of the strong liquor in between bites, and I’m too drunk to care if they do throw us out.
After the main course, she knocks a vase over as she raises her glass, and the water runs over the table towards me ruining what’s left of my shirt and depositing a single rose into my lap. She bellows with laughter again as I brandish it between my teeth; and claps delightedly when I wipe the petals across the remnants on my plate and eat some of them, feeling them almost dissolve on my tongue before gulping the remnants down, not caring if they are poisonous and make me ill by morning. I’m sure I’m already more in love now than I was with Zelda on our wedding day. I want nothing more than to laugh, drink and eat until I die of it.
After the mousse we leave a large tip and fall out of the restaurants back door. I’m brave enough and drunk enough to put an arm around her waist. I squeeze tight, pressing into the generous flesh and imagining it pinking under the pressure. She turns instantly and kisses me, properly this time. Her hands are sticky on my cheeks and mine drag toffee sauce through her hair. Her mouth is captivatingly cold and has the taste of a thousand different desserts. Her saliva is a thick syrup, and I feel like I could bite into her tongue and it would be something like Turkish Delight – sickly yet delicate. When I pull away there’s an ugly light vomit rolling around at the bottom of my throat. My head is heavy with it, and I feel like there’s caramel glaze on my eyeballs. But I don’t want to leave her. Not ever.

         “May I walk you home?” I slur and give an unintentionally girlish giggle.

         She sounds completely sober when she says “How about I walk you to my home?”
I nod, helplessly. I know I’m going to ruin everything. I know I love her and I’m about to make an idiot of myself. I should go home, sleep it off, and call her tomorrow. But I can’t I need to taste her, again, again. I need to check she doesn’t melt, or crumble away. And as she takes me by the hand and leads me through these dark streets, Boston, Zelda, the office, all feel like another world entirely.
Her apartment is just off the prom, in the basement of an old house. I stumble down the steps, dreading the pain of the bumps that will hit me in the morning, and follow her in.
The smell strikes me first. It reminds me a little of the French coffee shops back home, hot chocolate and pastry. It’s tiny and packed with colour as her seaside stall: yellow, pink and blue, with a ceiling that swirled thick with technicolour paint, which makes me dizzier every time I look at it. The floor is shiny with glass tiles that look like boiled sweets, glistening in the barley sugar light. Slim, twisted wooden pillars separate us, in the combined lounge-bedroom from a kitchen with an assortment of huge pans and mixing bowls.
“Like Hansel and Gretel,” I tell her, before I rock backwards and land against the bottom edge of her bed. I look down at myself and see I’m covered in the residue of dinner. My shirt has come untucked and there’s a stain near the top of my pants. I’m glad I can’t see my face. The room swills about like I’m sat in a tank of milkshake. The vomit rising through me feels thick and multicoloured as the ceiling. There’s a rush of sweet wine at the sides of my head, and her face, more beautiful than ever seems to be growing, like a woman cobra-head moving in on me, blocking the light. I’m having trouble remembering what to do next, it’s a long time since I did this, and my limbs aren’t really under control. Though my body just wants to vomit and sleep, I want more than ever to pull her to me unbutton her blouse and sink into her warm and welcome softness, bite and squeeze until my thumbs leave prints in her hips, lick every last bit of caramel sweat from her.
But I’m going to puke. I probably stink. I’m hiccoughing uncontrollably and she probably can’t understand what I’m saying. I look like a bum and I don’t know how I even got this far.

“I feel sick,” I confess, pathetically, and collapse backward.

“It’s alright.” I hear her voice. “Sink into it. You’ll be fine. Don’t fight it.”

She crawls onto the bed, her skirts are hitched up, her thick thighs either side of mine, crushing me. Even if I could take my mind off my syrup filled torso, I’m too drunk to even consider responding. I pray she won’t demand it of me, that she’ll let me sleep, then apologise and disappear the next morning.
She leans towards me, the tops of her breasts fight against her silk blouse, which has come undone at the top. I can see the outlines of her nipples, hard and round, and realise she’s not wearing underwear. My life once again starts to feel like a long series of disappointments and disasters. I open my mouth to apologise, before she lays her hands on my cheeks again. They’re cold now, but soft, silky even. A light chill runs through my face and I feel a little better.

“Close your eyes,” she says “relax.”
I do as she says. I close my eyes and sink into the sickly pink-tinged darkness. I feel the silk of her palms and draw mentally away, fall back down my own oesophagus, slide gently through a mix of melted ice-cream, caramel and liqueur, with sugar mice staring at me from all angles, floating in the thick liquid. I let it take me over, stop caring about the embarrassment and just lie there, filled up with sweetness beyond sickness. I hear myself sigh, faintly, and a feeling of gentle coolness runs up my body, as if the cold skin of her palms is growing to encase me, forming a thin layer and seeping relief into my pores. As it reaches the top of my head, I open my eyes.
She is kneeling beside me and she’s naked. She’s perfect, white and pink, with oval red pressure points behind her knees. Her belly is smooth and round; her breasts swing a little as she shuffles on the bed. I want to touch her, nothing else, just press my hands against her skin and find more of that cold, soft sensation I’m sure is coming from her.
As I raise my hand, she takes hold of it, and brings it to her mouth. Her lips close firmly around my middle finger; they feel so firm, so full I think they might burst against the bone. She begins to suck, and her saliva comforts me further, the subtle movement of her lips is enchanting as they press down. When I feel the crack it doesn’t hurt – it’s a pleasant heaviness, like a snug wedding ring or shoe, and I’m not afraid. I’m not even alarmed when I see the translucent red trickle run down her chin.
She removes my hand, with missing finger tip from her mouth and sets it gently over my bare chest as she sucks on my severed finger like a boiled sweet; a look of concentration and approval on her face that reminds me of the restaurant again. It’s as if she is tasting a fine, expensive wine and I’m flattered to be valued so highly by such a distinguished connoisseuse.
I  take a look at the place where my finger used to be. It’s not really bleeding, not like I expected. There’s a ring of glowing red liquid around a pure white circle of bone. Curious I lift it to my mouth and lick the stump. The blood is hot and thick, but instead of the usual irony tang, it tastes like the jelly from a doughnut – a quality doughnut.  The bone reminds me of nothing so much as a fine, handmade sugar mouse. It’s good, better even than the sweets of my childhood memories.

I understand.

I offer my hand back to her and she licks softly at the palm. Shivers run through me, quivering against the anaesthetic chill that grips me. She sucks on my thumb and I feel the outer casing dissolve away, shrinking. I imagine my whole self growing smaller and smaller as she feeds on me, and wonder how long it will take for that last little sliver – maybe my heart – to finally dissolve to nothing.
She draws her tongue with a lingering dexterity across the skin between my hair and the back of my ear, pausing to fully appreciate the flavour before taking a bite from my ear lobe, allowing me to hear the soft sound of satisfaction as she swallows it like a sweet and tiny oyster. I feel the blood seep evenly, slowly from the wound.
It could take years, I think, if she only sucks and licks and doesn’t bite too much. She is moving ever downwards, so slowly, savouring each mouthful of me, the final tease I am too weak now to resist or to resent. Her tongue, her hands, her mouth roll over me, and I am honoured that I will spend the rest of my life watching her; watching myself disappear into her.