Love: A Messy Business (12 page)

“Look, Colin…”  Those two words were enough to make Colin drop his head in disappointment, guessing that this was not going to be good news. “The honest answer is that I’m not really sure what I think.  It’s all happened very quickly, you know, and I need to get my head around it.  

“Don’t worry, I understand.  I bet I know exactly what you’re thinking – is he a normal chap that just likes something a bit weird, or is he just a bit weird?  That’s a question that I’ve asked myself, actually.”

“And what was your answer, can I ask?”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever got an answer.  One thing I do know, though.  And that is that there is really no such thing as normal.  Everyone has their little quirks and funniosities, it’s just that mine happens to be a bit sexual, that’s all.  But there are plenty of people that are into some pretty weird shit and they seem to get through life OK – you wouldn’t think there was anything different about them just by looking at them or even talking to them.  I mean, be honest – you would never have guessed what I was into if I hadn’t asked you to participate, would you?

“Never in a million years. I knew there was something going on, but I wasn’t even close to putting all the clues together.

“What clues were they?”

“Well, a few things really.  Grocery vans have been seen arriving here with lots of stuff, as have women who arrive in nice clothes, but leave a few hours later in different clothes and with wet hair.”

“Wow, someone’s really been spying on me, haven’t they?”  Can you tell me who?”

“No-one has been spying on you, it’s just that people talk about what they see and you do live on the main road.  There are often people going past in cars or on the bus, or by bike of course.”

“OK, then what else?”

“Well, you were seen coming out of the Spa with a box of custard tins…and then there is this application for keeping pigs and hens.  Of course, I get it now – you want the hens to provide you with a steady supply of eggs and you want the pigs to eat up all the food slop that’s left from your damn Mucky Bucket.”

“You’re right of course, but there’s another reason for the pigs.”

“Bacon?”

“Well, yes, bacon!  But something even more exciting than that – when you have pigs you need a pigsty.

“Well, obviously – so?”

“So – a pigsty is a perfect place to shoot some mudwrestling – I could make a fortune selling those videos.”

“Ugh! That’s disgusting, Colin, even by your standards.”  Colin grinned.

“I know, that’s why it would make a lot of money – where there’s muck there’s brass, you know. Anything else?”

“Well, the oddest clues were what I found when I tried to find one of your shirts last night, after the shower.   I couldn’t find where you kept them but I did stumble across a couple of rooms that were very odd indeed.

“Aha, doing a bit of snooping where you?  Don’t worry, I forgive you.  I can hardly do anything else after tricking you here tonight, can I?  So you found the tiled room then?”

“Yes, and the other room with the tarpaulin on the floor and some big thing in the middle that was all covered up.”

“Aha, my pride and joy.  I bet you couldn’t guess what it was, could you?  Would you like me to show you?”

“Why not?  But first, I have a problem that needs solving.”  Kate pointed to her current clothing which consisted entirely of a towel.  “I can’t go home like this and I obviously cannot go home in the clothes I was wearing.  Can I borrow another shirt?  And a pair of shorts, if you have them?  That will have to do – if I l leave here late enough then my mum and dad will be in bed and they won’t be asking awkward questions.”

“Actually, I have a better idea.  Come down the hallway and I’ll show you.”  Colin took her down a few feet to a door which she hadn’t noticed before.  Colin opened it and revealed a small cupboard full of clothes, some of them bright and shiny.  As Colin moved some of the clothes along the rack, Kate could clearly see that they were all women’s clothes.”

“So, you’re telling me that you enjoy wearing women’s clothing now, are you? Kate asked, teasingly.  “I think I might be able to handle a man who likes his mushy peas, but I draw the line at a transvestite.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!  What do you think I am, some kind of pervert?  Wait, don’t answer that! No, this is my costume wardrobe for my models to use when we are doing a shoot.”   Some shoots require regular clothing which the girls can bring themselves – a sexy secretary is a popular one, for example.  But sometimes, we need something a little more unusual, which you wouldn’t expect them to have in their wardrobe, so we supply the costume for them.  I was thinking you might like to select one to wear home tonight.”

Kate began to sift through what was available, looking for something that she could possibly wear.   There was a clown outfit, which was out of the question.  There was a French maid’s uniform with an obscenely short skirt that was also a non-starter.  There was also a rubber suit that Kate thought was damaged.

“Look, it’s got a hole in the crotch.”

“Err…That’s supposed to be there, Kate, it’s a crotchless suit.  It’s great fun watching the food come out of it.”

“Oh, right.  Of course. Well, I am definitely not wearing that home.”

“Pity!”  Kate raised her eyebrows, not just at Colin but the whole of the male gender.

There were only three items left – an old wedding dress, still looking remarkably white after all the punishment it must have suffered, a bright orange prison uniform and a cowgirl outfit.  Kate figured that the last one was the best bet, or the least worst option to be more precise.  All she needed was the denim skirt, even though it was way too short for her liking, white shirt and the boots (which were slightly too big but she could manage to wear for such a short time. The ten-gallon hat and the leather waistcoat were definitely dispensable accessories. 

“You don’t happen to have any knickers, do you? I’d rather not go home without any, especially with a skirt this length – I do have some standards you know.”

“There should be some thongs in that basket on the floor. I think all the regular ones are in the wash.”

“Oh right, good – that will have to do.  I’ll get changed in the bathroom and then you can show me your mystery item in that room…”

As Kate went to the bathroom to change, Colin pondered the impossibility of trying to understand how the female mind worked.  Just a few minutes ago, he had personally been filling up Kate’s knickers with beans and then helping her get very, very clean in the shower and yet now she felt the need to secrete herself in the bathroom while she got changed.  Ah well…he suspected he would never understand it, even if he lived to be a hundred and fifty.

Kate came out of the bathroom a couple of minutes later and feeling very self-conscious in that short skirt, which she suspected, rightly, left a good portion of her backside on show at the merest lift of the hem.

“OK then, show me what you’ve got!”

Colin grinned as though he was an excited schoolboy about to show off his new toy.

“Let’s see if you recognize this…” he said as he entered the room and started to remove the covering from the object.  Kate may have been inexperienced at this, but even she could tell what this was.

“Oh, it’s a gunge tank!”

“Yes, but not just any old gunge tank.  Oh no, this little beauty is the very one that appeared for years on Noel’s House Party.”

“Really?  How on earth did you get hold of it?”

“Saw it on eBay.  The BBC props department got rid of it shortly after the series ended and it’s been traded around the WAM community pretty much ever since.  The last owner was relocating to South America and there was no way he could afford to have it shipped over there – and now it’s mine.”  Colin stroked it affectionately, rather like Gollum did with his magic ring in the Hobbit.  He did, however, stop short of calling it “my precioussss.”

“So, it still works, does it?”

“Like a charm.  It’s got the biggest tank that any gunge tank has ever had – 150 litres of gunge, it can take.”

“And where do you get the gunge from?  Do you make it yourself?”

“Oh no, that would be far too complicated.  You can buy bags of special powder on the internet and all you have to do is add the water – it’s brilliant and not that expensive really.  Would you like to try it?” Kate looked horrified at that suggestion.

“Err…no thanks!  I think one gunging or sploshing or whatever the hell you call it is
more
than enough for one day.”

“Fair enough! Well, congratulations on popping your WAM cherry anyway.  The first of many, I hope?”

“You’re joking aren’t you?  I’m not doing that again – not on your life!”

“Not even for two thousand pounds?  It’s easy money.”

“Why do you ask?  Does Mr Fukui want another session?”

“I don’t know that for sure yet.  What I do know is that he was very happy with the session.  So much so, in fact that he has added an extra grand to the payment.”

“Wow, so that’s an extra 500 quid each then – brilliant.”  Kate was actually being cheeky.  She knew that she had agreed to do it for two grand, so she really was not entitled to anything extra.  But Colin had other ideas.

“Actually, Kate, I’ve been thinking that you really should have
all
the extra.  If it wasn’t for you, I’d have been in really deep shit and probably owing the guy five grand, not receiving it.  I’d like you to have it.”  Kate was really taken aback by this very generous gesture.

“Well, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, like that.  I’ll take it. Thank you very much!”

“Oh, the least I can do…now I just need to transfer the money from my PayPal account to my bank account and then I can write you a cheque or cash if you prefer.  It will only take a couple of days.”

“Err, cash, I think, please.  That way there’s no chance of the taxman getting his hands on a chunk of it, is there?”

“Whatever you want to do is up to you.  I can certainly get you the cash. So…seriously…is this something you would ever do again?  I cannot promise you three thousand quid a go, or anything remotely close to that.  But you’re a natural at this Kate, and you could make a decent side income doing this kind of thing.  Seems daft to me to leave good money on the table without a good reason.”

“Let me sleep on it, will you?  I have to admit I do like the idea of more money.  I’m just not sure it’s right for me, that’s all.  I do have a degree in Psychology, you know.  I didn’t spend years at University just so I could get covered in food for a living.”

“Or working in a bar with your chest bursting out of your top, either, I expect?” Colin teased gently.

“Hmm…touché on that one, I suppose.  I don’t know though, this seems a different thing altogether, doesn’t it?”  This was definitely what Kate was thinking but she could not think of a logical argument to back it up.  At the end of the day, it all came down to what you were prepared to do for money.  Was what she did at the pub really any different from what she had done in the white-tiled room?  And it would take her months at the pub to earn what she had earned tonight.

“Well, no rush – just think about it.  Now, I suppose I’d better get you home, hadn’t I?

“What time is it?” asked Kate.  Colin checked his watch.

“Just gone nine o’clock.”

“Hmm…Mum and Dad will still be up.  I’d rather wait a bit until they go to bed, if you don’t mind.  Another hour should be fine – they don’t stay up late at all these days.”

“No problem at all.  You can stay here as long as you like.  I wonder if you’d mind helping me to tidy up a bit. That’s one of the downsides of Wamming – the clean-up.”

“So you’ve covered me in a tonne of food and now you want me to do the clean-up?  That’s charming, that is!”

“I’m a very charming man!” replied Colin, quick as a flash.

He was certainly that, thought Kate as she returned to the white room, which looked a bit like a crime scene with all the stuff spattered on the walls, the white chair on its side and a huge pool of gunk on the floor.  She couldn’t think of too many men who could had done to her what Colin just had and lived to tell the tale.   It must be love, mustn’t it?  

CHAPTER TWELVE: A BIT OF RESEARCH

In the end, the clean-up took a lot longer than the hour that Kate was trying to spend, but she didn’t feel it was really fair to stop halfway through and get Colin to take her home.   She had to admit she was pretty impressed by how domesticated Colin was, with his bucket and mop and his array of cleaning materials. He even had a pair of yellow rubber gloves which Kate could not resist taking the mick out of.

“Ooh, I just can’t resist a man in yellow rubber gloves”, she cooed sarcastically.

“Oh sod off!” replied Colin along with a two-fingered rubber-gloved salute.  He was obviously picking up the ways of northerners quite quickly. “You’d do the same if you had to clean up as much as I do – those chemicals just rot your hands away after a while.”

“So, what are you going to do with all these slops then, in the absence of your herd of pigs, that is?

“Down the toilet, most of it – you just keep flushing it until it’s gone.”

“Hmm, that doesn’t sound like a great idea.  You’re going to knacker your drains, doing that.”

“I know,” Colin admitted with a shrug, “I’ll just have to risk it. I should get shares in Dynarod though – they’re going to make a fortune out of me one day.”

Kate could now understand why Colin had opted to tile that entire room.  It did make things much easier to clean, even though it made it look a bit like the Wonkavision TV room in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Gene Wilder version).

By the time they were done, it was approaching midnight.  Kate was exhausted and just about ready for bed.  She was tempted for a few seconds to ask whether she could stay the night but she decided that the request could very easily be misinterpreted by Colin and things could get a bit awkward.  Besides, her mum and dad got up really early in the morning and they would know that she had not been home that night and then appeared wearing an extremely risqué outfit – now that would be even
more
awkward.