Poppin' Cherries

Ten women. Ten first times. Ten men who have done this a great many times before.

What none of these women share is the experience, because the men are not interchangeable. One is greedy and makes no apology for it. One is so patient it comes close to cruelty. One stays courteous the whole way through. One turns out to be running a method he has used every season for twenty years, and she finds that out before she goes below deck with him anyway.

CHECKOUT AT ELEVEN. Thirty years old, never told a soul, and a man with no intention of being careful about it, because the room has to be empty by eleven.

THE OUTAGE. Three days without power, one warm room, and the neighbour whose hands are filthy and completely certain.

THE LIST. She writes down fourteen things she wants to try, and he reads it through his glasses, folds it, and starts at number seven.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS. She has handled four thousand erotic prints and done none of it, and the man who owns them wants her to describe one out loud.

STRIKE. Six weeks running a theatre for a leading man who never learned her name, and one hour left in which the whole building is hers.

THE COURSE OF TREATMENT. Two years of clinic appointments and a drawer of graduated sizes, and a man who agrees to be competent instead of kind.

THE HIRE. She decides her virginity is a logistics problem, books four hours to solve it, and is annoyed to discover he is good company.

SPORTS MASSAGE. His hands have been on her twice a week for two years, and she ends the professional relationship by email at 7:14 in the morning.

TWO YEARS OUT. She left the community at thirty-one and has spent two years learning ordinary things, and she would like this to be one of them.

THE CHARTER. Six days at sea with a skipper so gentle that it takes her until day four to work out it is technique.

Every woman here chooses. Not one is talked into it, tricked into it, or rescued from it. What she gets afterwards depends entirely on which man she picked.

54,000 words. Ten complete stories, explicit throughout.

All characters are adults aged twenty-one and over.