Asking For Trouble (32 page)

‘I think I prefer you in dresses,’ says Tony, moving too close once again.

He smells of soap and it makes my skin crawl because I imagine that he’s washed before coming out and that it’s for my benefit. It scares me too, because the thought of Tony wanting to impress me is terrifying.

I drain my beer and set down the bottle. ‘Well, Tony.’ I smile. ‘I’d love to stay and chat but duty calls. Afraid I need to get changed.’

‘Want a hand?’ he leers.

I put on a big, false smile. ‘Want a knee in your groin?’ I ask politely, and I walk away, Tony’s mad Tommy gun laughter scattering endlessly in my head.

The closer it gets to show-time, I become, strangely, less nervous and less scared.

The kitchen behind the bar, half-covered in sheets, mirrors propped here and there, serves as our dressing room. It’s not great, but it’s the best I can do.

Polly, one of the dancers, offers me a line of coke, but I refuse, telling her I want to play this one straight.

I’m wearing turquoise PVC hot pants with criss-cross lacing up the front. Above, I have a red, gauze-thin top – long-sleeved, high-necked – and beneath, peeping through, is a purple sequinned bikini top. I’ve got my black knee-length boots on and a glittery gold half-mask. Jane has done something weird with my hair, involving lots of back-combing, coiling, goo and pins, and the end result is two cones either side of my head, like devilish little horns.

Tony had better bloody well recognise me.

I smile to myself. I’ll make damn sure he does, the bastard.

Leo, his black body glistening with sweat and oil, bounds into the kitchen and grabs the nearest bottle of water. Outside, the volume of the music goes up a notch – time for people to mill around, buy drinks, talk about how shocked they are, maybe leave.

‘Wowee,’ beams Leo, dragging his arm across his lips. ‘You look cute as hell, Beth.’

‘No, she doesn’t,’ argues Polly, laughing. ‘She looks gorgeous. Beth is not cute. Beth is hot sex personified, aren’t you, honey?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Got that, Leo?’

‘In one, chief.’ he grins, giving me a playful salute. ‘So are we gonna run through this routine one more time?’

‘Yeah, why not,’ I reply, doing a little shimmy.

‘Oh, I love this gig,’ enthuses Leo. ‘It’s so fucking weird, man. I love it, love it, love it.’

The stage doesn’t have curtains or wings. It’s just a low wooden platform that gets packed away at the end of the night.

Our start-up music is Grace Jones and, as the slow, sultry beats of ‘Nightclubbing’ begin, the three of us – me, Leo and Mikey – slink and sway theatrically through the audience.

It’s tricky because the room is so crowded, but people shuffle to make space. I linger wherever I can, moving sinuously as I run my hands along the contours of my body.

My heart’s pounding with the fever of performance and my two black partners, supple and athletic, make a display of trying to paw me. Leo’s in sparkly gold shorts; Mikey’s in military gear – peaked cap, army trousers, braces over his bare chest and mock epaulettes on his shoulders.

I ham it up, wafting the ends of my purple feather boa at them, blowing vampish kisses as they fail to touch me, because tonight I am the Queen of Sleaze. That’s how I was introduced. That’s who I am.

When we reach the stage, we continue in a similar vein: me as the self-absorbed prick-tease, full of mock sensuality; the men as my admirers, lunging to touch, sometimes stroking down my legs then spiralling away.

As I sway, caress myself and pout, I survey the room before me through the eye-holes of my mask. Jenny’s furry red lovehearts, flecked with moving spots of colour, hang from the ceiling. They look good. The glare of lights makes the furthest reaches of my audience a faceless, amorphous blob. But closer to the stage, where the little tables are clustered, I can clearly make out people – most of them smiling at our burlesque display. Good.

Ilya’s group have, of course, some of the best seats in the house. Their table, laden with beer glasses and shorts glasses, is just off-centre, slightly to my right. Tony, his
keen eyes fastened on me, leans to say something in Ilya’s ear. Ilya, watching me intently, smiles and nods.

I wonder if Ilya recognises the purple boa from the time he blindfolded me, buggered me and turned me into a video star for his friends’ consumption. I hope he does, because that’s why I’m wearing it.

Our opening track ends, just as my eager men move in either side of me. They lower themselves up and down, trailing their hands over my body, rubbing their crotches against my thighs. I throw my head back, making an exaggerated show of abandoning myself to lust.

The music segues, almost neatly, into another Grace Jones number – ‘Use Me’ – and we flip into action as the tempo steps up.

Mikey grasps my wrists, lifting my arms high, and I feign confusion, my head turning left and right, as he takes a backward stride and steadies himself. My body arcs back a little, supported on his, and I’m held that way, on show for my spectators, as Leo kneels and traces his hands up my legs to my groin. From below, he rubs the crotch of my glossy hot pants and, as rehearsed, I press my hips forward, making it seem like I’m so greedy for it.

My pussy twangs with arousal. That didn’t happen in rehearsal, but then rehearsals were briskly efficient, sometimes frustrating, sometimes funny. They weren’t horny.

But now Leo is being more indulgent, caressing me firmly so I feel all the strength of his massaging fingers. And now I’m on stage in a darkened, colour-dancing room. The lights are on me, the music’s pulsing and everyone’s watching. That thrills me more than anything.

While Grace is chanting about how good it feels getting used, Leo leaps up, deftly finds the tiny cut in the neck of my gauze top and tears – one, two, three. The filmy garment rips down the middle, exposing my midriff and glitzy purple bikini. I feel a rush of exhilaration.

Then, acting delighted, Leo starts to write on my bare flesh in lipstick, darting from side to side, spinning away and back, so the audience can see the word as it forms, letter after letter: S – L – U – T.

I can’t see Ilya’s face because I have to keep my head tipped back, but I wish I could. Will he get this reference? Will he remember the time he wrote the same thing on my back? When he and Pete humiliated me for hours? Once again, I hope so, because that’s what my performance is: it’s a jumbled montage of stuff we’ve done together.

I’m not sure why yet. I don’t know if I want to show him how good it was, how bad it was. I don’t know if I’m wrapping things up or asking for more. I don’t know if I’m trying to say, ‘Look, you swine, I’m doing all this for you,’ or, ‘Hey, it’s a public arena and only we know what these little things refer to and isn’t that great?’

I’m just doing it because I needed some kind of structure, a theme to build my performance around, and this popped into my head and I thought, why not? It’s as good as any.

When I make my fake getaway from Leo and Mikey, I cast my shredded top to the floor and stand proud before my audience, my pelvis rolling as I bend my knees, snaking my body, flaunting the ‘slut’ label on my midriff.

I let my hands drift sinuously. I trace an hourglass up and down my curves, rub flat-palm rotations over the swell of my hips, cup my sequin-clad breasts and squeeze them together.

The mask is good: it blocks a lot of my peripheral vision and I see things in a frame of black.

Ilya is trying to suppress a broad grin: I think he’s got the allusion. Tony looks self-satisfied and greedily intense, no doubt thinking that this is all for him and that I’m putting on a great show, but that deep down I’m
dying with shame and embarrassment. Well I’m not. I’m OK. Getting better all the time.

My two stage partners are at my feet, doing sort of undulating press-ups while gazing at me adoringly and lapping at thin air. They’re perfectly synchronised; they’ve done this before. I’m a bit more freeform, trying my best to time things the way we’d planned.

With striptease drama, I start unlacing the criss-cross cords of my hot pants, eyelet by eyelet.

If this were one of my sleazy fantasies, my boorish male spectators would probably be gearing up to pull me down into the bear pit of their greedy lust. But it’s not fantasy; and my spectators, while you wouldn’t quite call them civilised, are not boorish, greedy men – Ilya’s table excepted, of course. They’re behaving pretty well, though, and they’d better stay that way.

Playful whistles and drunken shouts of encouragement compete with the music. I adore it. I feel like I’m pulling an audience into my power, and the buzz that gives me is strong and erotic.

When my hot pants are unlaced, I slide a hand into the front flaps, nudging my arm up and down. I roll my head back and pant as if I’m close to ecstasy. I slip my fingers into my purple G-string knickers, past my newly hairless mound, to caress my vulva. No one can see that I’m really doing this, but I am, and I’m so wet. I feel gloriously wicked.

Turning my back to the room, I remove my hot pants, bending straight-legged from the waist as I shimmy them down. That way, everyone gets a view of my arse jutting up and my buttocks swelling tautly. The hot pants aren’t easy to remove with my boots on, but Leo and Mikey shield the messiness while helping me.

And anyway, so what if the performance isn’t perfect and slick? I don’t care. Rough edges are good. And people are cheering and hollering. It must be OK.

The music changes into some good old seventies disco
– no lyrical significance; I just like it. While my hands and the boys’ are at my feet, Mikey covertly passes me my prop – a plastic banana. Leo looks up at me, gives me a cheeky little wink and waggles his tongue salaciously. I grin and waggle mine back.

People laugh and whoop as I turn to face them, rubbing the tip of my plastic banana from my groin to my neck.

My audience, I know, take this pretty much on an ironic level, which is fine. It’s not exactly pastiche-free. But I look around and see swollen groins and I ask myself: Can you have an ironic hard-on? I think not.

I lick and fellate my plastic banana as Leo and Mikey roll around, feigning torment and desire – except Leo’s not feigning the desire bit. His cock is a bulge in his spangly shorts and he doesn’t give a damn. He rubs himself, his hips surging up and down, his six-pack abs shimmering.

Does Ilya get the banana reference, I wonder? Does he remember when I played the whore and he made me fuck myself with stupid fruit?

I’m about to glance over but I catch sight of Martin, propping up the bar, grinning inanely.

It’s obvious that he’s seen beyond my mask, and it’s also obvious that it doesn’t matter one scrap. His smile is big and generous, warm and familiar, and so full of easy love.

I feel a rush of awkwardness and guilt, but it sinks away when I read the forgiveness in his face. And, best of all, everything about him – his stance, his expression, his eyes – is free from lust and pain and anger. He looks like the Martin I knew before we started our stupid affair: Martin, my closest friend. And he’s grinning simply because he’s happy for me.

It’s catching, and suddenly I feel lighter, happier, more free.

I wish I had a pole to writhe around. I wish I had showgirl tassels on my tits.

Hardly concentrating, I see that Mikey’s on all fours for the next bit and I plant my boot on to his broad ebony back. Edging aside sequins and skimpy gusset, I ease the plastic banana into my sweet shaven slit and begin sliding it in and out. It feels so good, moving in my wetness; but the best feeling of all is that, yeah, I’m doing this for Ilya, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I can add an extra layer to it and do it for me.

In a way, it was always for me. I wanted to appease Ilya’s bully-boys not for his sake but for mine, because I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving town. But I don’t like the baggage Ilya comes with and now this is for me because I’m enjoying it. Pure and simple.

I withdraw my banana, which is glistening with juices, and clasp it in both hands. I feel buoyed up with naughty delight as I point it at Ilya’s table, brandishing it like a gun, and slowly, slinkily, I step down from the stage.

Tony thinks it’s funny. He thinks he’s part of an in-joke, but pretty soon I’m going to wipe that smile off his face. This part of the show was always planned, but the reasoning behind has suddenly changed. Now, I’m more concerned about seeing Ilya’s reaction than I am about trying to spite Tony.

I make my way to the table, my bikini sequins sparkling, and make a charade of drifting caresses over the heads and shoulders of the men sitting there. Ilya, looking worried and mistrustful, watches me closely.

When I reach Tony, I linger, and he shifts his chair side-on to the table. I stand wide-legged before him, stirring my hips and lowering myself into half-squats.

Tony leers and gloats, lapping up his status as the man who’s forced me to perform. His eyes are bright with eagerness and intrigue. He thinks I’m about to give him the star treatment, and I am – in my own special way.

Holding my banana gunlike, I wave it close to his thin
lips and then close to mine. I lap at the tip, tasting my musk, then offer him the same. He grins and his lizardy tongue flicks out. I allow him to taste me just enough, then I take the thing to my mouth and lick along its length.

Bit by bit, I offer Tony more. It’s like there’s just me and him there, playing a silly little banana game. Tony responds by trying to outdo my teasing, attempting to take more of the banana than I seem prepared to give.

Eventually, his mouth closes over half of it. His lust-sharp eyes are locked on mine, and he looks an utter fool.

Then, making it seem as if it’s just a flourish gone wrong, I sweep a near-full pint of beer from the table.

The glass falls into Tony’s lap, the liquid spills, and he jumps up in shock, spitting the plastic banana from his mouth.

People at a nearby table squeal and laugh.

My eyes dart to Ilya. Anger flares up in his face, not because he’s wet – he isn’t – but because he’s furious with me. I’ve seen that anger before, the way it streaks through him and wrecks his composure.