The Sex Was Great But... (7 page)

“Imagine the response if it works out.”

“What? And we turn a street bum into a wannabe? Nancy, you're naive. Leo's a scrounger—no doubt with less education than my gardener.”

“I thought you said he lives in a share-house and has a job.”

“Well, begging is a type of job, isn't it?”

“He's a good swimmer,” she purred, right at the second when the shadow of Leo fell over us.

“Is that what you think of me, then?” he asked.

Nancy and I cringed with embarrassment as we looked up. Leo was standing with a towel around his waist and another around his head. With his facial piercing glinting in the sunlight, he resembled a sun king.

“I'll get my gear and be on my way, then,” he said, before turning his back on our apologies and walking off down the slope toward the pool chalet.

Nancy nudged me hard in the ribs and insisted I
had
to invite him to stay now, to make up for being so mean and hurtful to him. “Otherwise you're proving that ten thousand women know what they're talking about,” she threatened.

“Don't be ridiculous. He can't stay
here!
You were the one asking me to frisk him for weapons and drugs earlier!”

“There's that futon in the poolhouse; he can sleep on that so he won't be in your way.” As if all was settled she
headed off down the slope to the chalet, where presumably Leo was getting ready to leave.

They were there for about ten minutes, and I don't know what she said, but he was wearing Ted's Versace trunks when he came out of the chalet. Nancy and he were smiling as they made their way back up the slope, and I don't know why but I felt weirdly jealous.

Leo told me that he was willing to stay for a few weeks, and when I smiled up at him and said that was great, he ruffled my hair. No one has ever ruffled my hair before, and it made me feel like a kid—like I had freckles on my nose. We were still looking at each other, smiling goofily, when Nancy spoke again.

“So that's all settled,” she purred smugly. “Leo can sleep in the poolhouse and we'll get him some new clothes.”

 

Later on in the kitchen, while he was getting dressed in some other clothes Ted had left behind, I told Nancy that I still thought the idea was mad.

“So let's have a wager,” she suggested, holding up her empty bottle of Evian to signify she wanted another. “I'll bet you your Ford Explorer that Leo has his own bus stop advertisement in a month's time.”

“And if he doesn't?” I asked, going to the refrigerator. “What do I win?”

“The satisfaction of being right?”

“Seriously, what did you say to him out there to make him stay?” I asked, grabbing two tiny Evians from the fridge.

“I told him you fancied him, of course,” she replied crisply, rubbing some moisturizer into her hands. Then she winked and I dropped one of the bottles on the floor.

“You told him
what?
” I cried out, watching the bottle bounce across the room and the water splash across the floor. I was thinking this must be what it felt like to see your life rush before your eyes.

I knew she was probably only teasing, but I was overwhelmed by a wave of embarrassment that seemed to come from way back in my past. Back in the sports changing rooms at school, when we'd tease one another about who we loved. “Holly's in love with Mr. Wainright!” My Wainright was a trainee teacher. My first crush on a teacher. I thought I'd kept my feelings for him to myself. And I totally cringed out when my crush was rumbled.

I picked up the bottle and a cold stream of water spread across my T-shirt. “You are joking, aren't you?”

“What?” she asked—all faux innocence.

“About
me
fancying Leo!”

“Well…don't you?”

“Fancy Leo?” I squealed. “Are you crazy? You think I fancy Leo!”

She shrugged her shoulders, as if it was no biggie. “Well,
I
do, I know that much.”

“What's all this?” Leo asked, walking into the kitchen and looking from Nancy to me.

I hugged them to my chest, wondering how much he'd heard. “Oh, nothing, just…erm…girl stuff.”

“Your top's wet,” he said, pointing at my chest.
And your nipples are hugely erect and horny.
(Well, actually he didn't say that, but I could hear him thinking it.) And for the briefest second it occurred to me that the idea of Leo thinking about my nipples turned me on.

W
hen we were teenagers back in Islington, sharing a fag outside the toilets during the inevitable date postmortem, there were two things that mattered: 1) Did you get off with her? 2) Where'd you do it?

Two questions which summed up our sexual prowess—at least as far as the imaginations of my sweaty teenage friends were concerned. If the answer to the first question was a no, then you didn't get asked the second question, and your date was officially rated as shite and you were classified a total loser.

Therefore the second question was more key. It was crap
to have to answer no to the first question and have your mates flick their cigarettes at you—or even worse, decide you weren't worth wasting a butt on and walking away in disgust. My answer was always, “What do you reckon?” which all the other guys took to mean yes. Technically it wasn't a lie, more their misunderstanding.

It didn't feel like a lie either. As long as I'd had an erection at some point during the actual date I felt that I'd “had it off,” because I inevitably fantasized later on about doing it with whoever it was. So even if we didn't have it off in the fully penetrative sense of the term, as far as I was concerned the key thing on a date was to have the erection. If I got an erection I could answer yes to question number one with a clear conscience and move onto question two. And, let's face it: at fifteen, I
always
got an erection.

The second question was Where'd you do it? In clear conscience I can reply to the question of where I did it with Holly. In the shower outside her poolhouse while she hosed me down. Unfortunately, Joseph was hosing me down with her, but I try not to think about that part. In any fantasy scenario I might decide to have about the event later on, Joseph definitely won't be featuring.

The other reason the second question was so key was because it was this reply that won you the real kudos. As a teenager in Islington finding different places to have sex was a tough call.

We were all looking for new and exotic places to get off with our dates—places that would win us real respect. Bus shelters, alleys, schoolyards, local cafés—those sorts of places didn't cut it. Besides, the bus drivers went off their heads if you tried it on their buses, and the shop owners were no
better, so mostly we were left with pretty scabby venues for our gropings.

Once I did it in the girls' toilets at the White Horse, which impressed my mates for a while, before Lee Hubbard did it in the headmasters office with his girl—on the desk! Respect. Where you did it spoke of your ingenuity as a sexual adult. Later, of course, we got onto questions like: 3) How did you do it? (As in what position.) and 4) How many times. Obviously we all bullshitted like crazy over that one. Once was never enough.

It took a while for my erection over Holly to subside, so I dived into the pool and tried to swim it off. By the time I came out Holly had someone with her, someone older altogether more put together than Holly. I don't mean put together as in a better body, I mean more assembled. This girl looked like she'd been constructed on the factory floor.

As I approached the two girls I was thinking that my days of having erections over celebrities in the Hollywood Hills was about to come to an end. This girl was probably Holly's minder. She looked like the sort who could kick-box her way out of any situation. Or maybe she was a chauffeur, come to drive me back to my real life as a sofa-surfing nobody.

They didn't hear me approaching, but I could hear them talking about me and what I heard wasn't too nice. They stopped when they realized I was there, and the “assembled one” turned to me and meowed. Well, she said something but I don't know what. Her words just sounded like a long feline yawn.

I was focusing on Holly, and she looked gutted. I'd seen
that look on girls before, and I recognized it as a look that could be milked. As a kid, whenever I walked in on my mum and auntie Lucy talking about me, my strategy was to let my eyes fill up with tears and run out of the room.

Auntie Lucy would then say something to my mum along the lines of, “Now you've done it, Jean!” and my mum or auntie Lucy would come out after me and say sorry and promise me whatever toy or activity it was that I'd been banging on about most recently.

As a strategy, I accept that it's probably not that principled, but it was better than dwelling on the nasty stuff they'd been saying about me. I used this seize-the-day approach on Holly and the assembled one. I let my eyes fill up with tears, so they could see how much they'd hurt my feelings, before striding off down the slope toward the poolhouse. My only regret were the ridiculous swimming trunks I was wearing. I looked totally gay.

The assembled one came after me. Not quite
who
I wanted, but it all worked out okay because I got
what
I wanted.

After telling me what a great body I had, and how great she thought I'd been to Holly, she asked me if I'd consider staying on in the poolhouse and allow them to repay me for my help earlier that day. She explained about wanting to do a makeover, and I pretended that it would be a big sacrifice but one I might be willing to make for the greater good.

She begged.

I sulked.

She begged some more, and in the end we struck a deal. Nancy said Holly would be really pleased. “Who knows
what might happen?” she purred. I mean she really purred—like Cat Woman, or something. But so what? Goodbye sofa-sharing at Hollymount Apartments; hello Hollywood Hills poolhouse and a futon all to myself!

It wasn't all good news, though, because somewhere in the negotiations it was decided that I would be the next victim on the new season of
MakeMeOver.
It's this tossers' show that brings these actresses you thought were dead back to life. I'm pretty sure I've watched it once, with Kev and Snore, but if I haven't I've seen things like it. Apparently the network is sick of the format, which is where I come in. Nancy said having me on the show would spice things up. Which made me feel a bit like a vindaloo.

“You'd be doing us a big favor,” Nancy purred again, as if she was offering oral sex.

Because I was getting sick of her running her eyes over my body, and because I wanted to get back to Holly, I said, “Yeah, sure, whatever you think. Cool.”

I got the feeling I was seriously going to regret that yes. Only not immediately, because when I walked into the kitchen later Holly smiled at me, and it was a smile that promised much, much more than a haircut and a new pair of jeans.

She'd stuck a T-shirt on over the top of her bikini and she must have spilled water down her front. Seeing that she was the sort of girl who could slop stuff over herself like a normal person made her even more adorable to me.

When they spoke about my makeover later, though, the fear kicked in. I got the impression that when they said makeover they really
didn't
mean a new pair of jeans and a haircut. That's the thing about Americans; they don't
know the meaning of half-hearted. Everything is All or Nothing.

When Holly and Nancy talked about my makeover they used words like—“major orthodontic reconstruction…spinal alignment…speech adjustments.”

This was all starting to sound like it was going to hurt.

“Guys like me—average guys from Islington in their twenties—don't live as kept men in poolhouses in the Hollywood Hills—let alone allow themselves to get turned into designer-clad tossers,” I told them grandly.

“You're going to love it,” they trilled.

But I knew I wasn't. After my swim they flicked through magazines to show me what they planned for me, and I was none too impressed with the looks and styles they pointed out.

“See—that could be you!” Holly held up a picture of two guys standing by a Porsche. Guys with spivvy haircuts, credit card attitudes and tassel-shoe tastes. The type of guys I wanted to smack in the mouth, not emulate.

“Only if you remove my frontal lobe,” I warned her.

After that they took me to this spa on Sunset Boulevard, and I was steamed, scrubbed and massaged to within an inch of my life. I didn't mind that so much, but I definitely preferred the tequila shots that followed.

It was Nancy's idea to play a game of Truth or Dare. I always took the dare. They always took the truth. Which sort of says all there is to say about the sex war. Girls always want truth and guys always want risk.

Plus, Truth or Dare games are always about sex. Everyone knows that. Tequila shots are always about sex, too.

So shot by shot the girls undressed their secrets for me.

It was late afternoon and we were sitting in Holly's cathedral-sized living room with windows down one whole side. Tinseltown looked like a fabled mystical land below, with its palm trees and taller buildings peeking out from the carpet of low-lying smog. It was the most exotic setting I'd ever been in, and there I was, stretched out on a white sofa in some guy called Ted's clothes while two beautiful women dared me to take out each of my three body piercings one by one: upper ear, eyebrow, nipple.

Even if there wasn't any actual shagging, it was all very erotic. I thought it was going especially well when I asked Holly to give me a hand with my nipple ring. For a moment I was afraid that I'd reached the peak of life's pleasures. I suddenly feared that everything in my life would seem crap and sad in comparison to what was happening in that room on that couch that evening.

I suppose I should have given a thought to what Kev was up to, or how my mum was doing, or world hunger—but I didn't. My life at that moment was unrecognizable from my life that morning, and there was a suspicious part of me that worried that if I actually thought about Real Life this Perfect Fantasy Life would disappear.

The conversations between Nancy and Holly were clever and fast as they darted from topic to topic and reference to reference. I felt like a total idiot a lot of the time. I remember hearing some British actor on television once, going on about how Hollywood was full of airheads and conversation was a lost art there compared to London. I don't know what kind of conversations he thought we were having on our council estate in Islington!

I slugged back another shot of tequila and listened to
Holly detail all the positions she'd ever made love in. Girls can be amazingly honest about their relationships with guys. After five slammers, I knew why Holly had dated all of her previous boyfriends—who, as far as I can tell, all treated her like shit. Especially Ted.

“He was good for me,” she explained, when I quizzed her about it. “Everyone said we looked amazing together.”

Oh, well, that's okay, then.
“Didn't you say he sold stories about you to some magazine?”

She rolled her eyes at my ignorance, but I reckon most guys would have a problem working with her reasoning.

The only troubling aspect of the evening was the way Nancy kept touching me—brushing her leg against me, that sort of thing. At one point she grabbed my jaw and asked Holly if she didn't think I had kissable lips. The proximity of her lips to mine at the time made the compliment vaguely threatening, but because of who and where I was I didn't think I could say anything. I was still sizing Nancy Catkin up.

As the evening moved into dusk, and the lights of the buildings began to twinkle, the city looked like someone had spread a spray of fairy dust across the hills. I started to get hungry, but I didn't want to be the one to end it all. I was still thinking that if I pinched myself I might wake up on the sofa beside Snore.

Holly looked really hot. She'd gone out and come back with pashminas for her and Nancy, and when she wrapped one around her shoulders she looked adorable. It wasn't cold outside, but the air-conditioning was on so high so it felt Arctic. Scrunched up on the big white sofa she looked like a child who might fall down between the cushions and
disappear forever. I was thinking how vulnerable she looked and how much I wanted to protect her when Nancy's cell phone vibrated.

“It's Larry,” she mouthed, checking the readout.

“I don't want to talk to him.” Holly put a cushion over her face.

Nancy's brow creased as she concentrated on listening. Every so often she made a short response, and I could see Holly listening in despite herself as she peeked out from under the cushion. Clueless as I was to the workings of their world, even I could tell that whatever this Larry geezer was saying wasn't good.

“I knew she'd gone to the
Enquirer
about how Holly manipulated her with her eating disorders as a child, but this takes stabbing in the back to new levels. She's not human.”

I was beyond confused.

“Are you sure?” Nancy kept repeating—interspersed with, “Oh shoot!” and, “Oh, no!” Finally she said, “Larry, if this happens we're finished.”

Holly couldn't take it any longer. “What?” she asked, making a grab for the phone.

“Just a minute Larry.” She turned to Holly. “He's been trying to get hold of you all day! It's Catherine—your mother.”

I saw a look of terror rush across Holly's face before she asked what had happened.

I was thinking of what I would do, as my mind threw up possibilities of what might have happened to her mother. Maybe she'd been killed in an air crash? Or maybe it was cancer? I envisioned myself rushing across to Holly and enveloping her in my arms.

I'll go with her to the hospital, I thought.

I'll talk to the doctors on her behalf.

I'll fetch her coffee from the hospital coffee machine.

I'll hold her while she comes to grips with the horrific news of the loss of her mother.

I'll comfort her at the graveside.

I know it's sick, but I was actually starting to look forward to hearing that her mother had been in some horrific accident.

But I figured I was out of luck when Nancy hissed, “She's gone national!” The way she said “gone national” made it sound like Holly's mum had “gone berserk” as opposed to “gone into cardiac arrest.”