‘Not the kind of shops I have in mind.’
Charlotte was pretty sure that their little trio had raised a few eyebrows in the hotel restaurant, especially the way each man would pause to squeeze her hand or stroke her cheek. Her feet were locked at the ankle, her left in Collins’s right, her right in Bryant’s left, and, at one point, Bryant’s fingers found their way under the snowy tablecloth to investigate the wet, sticky interior of her knickers.
‘I see you didn’t just review her performance,’ he said ruefully to Collins, withdrawing his hand and wiping his fingers on the pristine linen napkin. ‘You road-tested her as well.’
‘Wouldn’t you have done?’ asked Collins, holding up a hand for the bill.
‘Well, yes. Of course I would.’
They shopped in the backstreets and alleyways of Soho. They bought clothes of barely-there silk and shiny vinyl, buckled leather and stretchy lace. Accessories of metal and maribou, silicone and whalebone, were scooped up in armfuls. Charlotte modelled and demonstrated all of them, in cramped back rooms behind coloured door strips, for her bosses’ pleasure. All of the purchases came in so handy for the office, in their many and various ways. But that’s an entirely new story.
O
BVIOUSLY THERE IS SOMETHING
wrong with me.
Women are meant to like wafty costume romances with bedroom curtains blowing symbolically in the wind. They are meant to like chocolate box fairy stories of the Richard Curtis variety. They are meant to want something left to the imagination.
That’s what Aunty Mavis always said. ‘Oh, I like to have something left to the imagination.’ But she didn’t have one, so I’ve always thought she meant ‘Ugh, that filthy sex, get it away from me.’
Well, there’s nothing wrong with my imagination. But I want to
see
. I want to see the lips licking and the thighs spreading, the stiff cock and the glistening sleeve and the way they come together. I want to see the look on her face while she’s humped fore and aft with her mouth wrapped around a third hopeful erection. I want to see the mechanics and the bare bones of it. I even want to see the ridiculous overacting, hear the heavy huffing and ersatz begging and share the plastic ecstasy of it all.
But there’s more to it than even that. Shameful enough as my porn-viewing habit is, I want to go further. I want to be the girl in the picture.
You see, I like to watch a skinflick, but I always have this unease of conscience. Is the girl cracked up to the eyeballs? Was she abducted from an outpost of the former USSR? Is she trying to escape a myriad of childhood demons by becoming a faceless fuckdoll? I don’t know. But I feel I should know. I feel I should disapprove of myself for potentially green-lighting exploitation and international sex slavery. How will I know for sure that nobody is being exploited in a film? It seems there is only one sure-fire answer. Take the lead role. Make sure the only holes being filled are mine.
Easier said than done, though, especially when you are a well-respected district nurse.
Or so I thought, at least, and yet today I sit here in a back-alley branch of Starbucks, talking with an elegantly wasted man in eyeliner about fucking on film.
‘So, to get down to the nitty gritty,’ he says, fidgeting with a pencil, ‘what do you want in this picture?’
The pencil could be his twin; so long and thin he is, with a burgundy stripe blazer that only reinforces the effect. Is he hard lead or soft graphite, I wonder. 2B or not 2B? But I really have to stop avoiding the question, because it is THE question, the answer to which will take me far inside my deep-down fantasies – only now I’ve been asked it, I really don’t know what to say. Isn’t life always like that? Aren’t we always stuck for words in Starbucks with a famous indie porn director?
‘Well?’ His eyes, red-rimmed as if he has been up all night, widen. ‘Carmella? What’s in the script? Anal? Sixty nine? Dildos? Strap-on? Bondage?’
‘Stop! Stop!’ I beg in a fierce whisper, my hot chocolate going down the wrong way. ‘Sheesh! This is Starbucks, not bloody … Spearmint Rhino.’
‘If you want me to direct this film, you need to tell me what you want in it,’ he says, toning the impatience down. ‘I have the experience … but this is about what you want, isn’t it? That’s what the people at the bureau told me when they commissioned me.’
‘How much are they paying you for this?’ I ask.
‘What’s that got to do with it? Anyway, it’s you that’s paying, isn’t it? So you need to start telling me what you want.’ He takes a sip of his Americano and grins suddenly, his slightly sulky face ghoulish with glee. ‘Quite a set-up they’ve got there, isn’t it? Kind of like
Jim’ll Fix It
for sex fiends.’
I laugh, despite a slight prickle at being called a sex fiend. Perhaps he has a point, after all. And surely, as an up-and-coming director of filthy films, he can’t exactly distance himself from the description.
‘It doesn’t come cheap,’ I tell him. ‘You’re right. I really need to get over my scruples and give you a list. It’s just that this is so … weird.’
I look around. The cognitive dissonance between our conversation and our surroundings frightens me. At the neighbouring table, two smart women with enormous handbags compare manicures.
‘Just tell me what sexy stuff you want in it and we’ll work a storyline around that, yeah?’
He is unbending a little now. When we met, he had seemed so uncomfortable, almost angry at finding himself in this position. I had thought about quitting then and there but … he was pretty in a slightly exotic way, with the cheekbones and the mildly slanting eyes and he didn’t use too much of that chaotic wax in his hair like most of the young media boys did, though I guessed he was about thirty, so maybe past all that. So, yes. Pretty. So I stayed.
I take a deep breath. I am going to outline my fantasies to a very attractive, but completely uninterested-in-me-as-a-person-slash-sexual-partner man. Why couldn’t we have done this by email?
‘Well, I think I’d like … you know, some straight sex. Umm, not fussy about positions.’
‘One man or two?’ he interrupts. ‘Two is popular.’
‘We aren’t selling this, are we?’ I blurt, alarmed.
‘Oh, no. True. I forgot. OK. So one man then?’
‘I think … yes. One man. Unless I think of a reason for having two. And maybe … a girl?’
‘A girl!’
‘But I’d have to know she was, you know, not being exploited.’
He laughs. ‘How about my girlfriend? She isn’t being exploited, I promise.’
‘Really? Your girlfriend?’
‘Yeah. She’s more the typical porn star look than you, though. You might not want that.’
‘She doesn’t look like a real girl, you mean? More like a blow-up doll?’
‘She’s 100% real,’ he huffs, a little offended. ‘I don’t do those plastic porn shows. I mean, she’s a bit more … let’s say … amply provided for. In the T&A department.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I consider this for a moment. ‘Can we hold the girl thing. I’m not sure I want to be the second prize in my own private sex tape. I want all the attention on me.’
‘OK, so we’ve established that much. I know plenty of skinny girls, by the way …’
‘Forget about the girl.’
‘Right. You’re the boss,’ he says, with an edge of feline pique.
‘Let’s get this list down,’ I murmur, glancing sidelong at the modish women and their Mulberry bags, hoping they haven’t heard any of this. ‘OK. Straight sex, any position. Something involving a vibrator. Umm, oral. Both kinds.’ I’m trying my hardest not to use any rude words; it’s quite a challenge. ‘And, you know, I think I’m not averse to a bit of, um, back door …’
‘Really? Anal? Excellent. One of my favourites.’ He smiles, reminding me of the devil. The Mulberry women look utterly scandalised and move away to a more distant table, whispering to each other. When they look back, I hold their eyes. Then I turn to Dimitri and raise my voice above its terrified quaver.
‘Yeah. Anal. I’m up for that.’
Our next meeting takes place in the more congenial atmosphere of an ill-lit bar in Soho, near his office. I wonder why we don’t actually use his office, but he shrugs and says it’s too annoying and too busy and he would never be off the phone before finding a suitably inaccessible booth in which to continue our dealings.
‘So we can do it in this order,’ he says, taking out his notes from before. ‘Oh, do you want kissing? It’s not compulsory.’
‘Er, yeah, I think kissing would be fine.’
‘So kissing, then he undresses you, masturbates you … with a vibrator? Yeah. Then sixty nine, then straight fucking, then you give him a blowjob to get him hard again, then anal.’ He dashes down his notes and gives me a querying look, as if he has just asked me to confirm the accuracy of some accounts. ‘Of course, there’ll be breaks between most of it,’ he says, noting that I can do nothing but blink. ‘We’ll try and get it all done in a day though.’
‘What about the setting and all that?’ I ask.
‘It can’t be too elaborate. Budgets are always tight, though I have a little more to play with than usual. What do you want? I’ll tell you if it’s feasible.’
‘I don’t want cheesy cliché. No plumbers. No horrible wallpaper.’
‘Yeah, but I can’t do country estates either.’
‘That’s fine. I’m not into costume drama. The man can look and dress like a person you’d see in the street. Though good-looking would be nice …’
‘Good-looking, eh?’ He smirks and makes a note. ‘We need to do a casting. Next week?’
‘OK. This time next week. We cast my … opposite.’
‘Your opposite.’ The smirk deepens. If his cheekbones got any higher they’d be flying. His fingers are long and knobbly, always busy, always fidgeting with that damned pencil.
‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ I ask, out of left field, not sure why I care. ‘Your girlfriend.’
‘What, that she’s a porn actress?’ He looks up at me, his eyes hooded, trying to assess whether to take offence or not. ‘No more than it bothers her that I make the films. It’s how we met. We can’t exactly …’
‘Is it serious between you?’
‘Not … deadly serious.’
‘She fucks other men for the camera. Do you ever …?’
‘Fuck other women? Yeah. I started out in this business as a performer. In college. Paid the rent.’
‘You’re not the usual type. You aren’t beefcake. Or blondy Nordic-looking.’
‘Right. I don’t have a moustache either. Have you seen any non-mainstream, post-80s porn, Carmella?’
‘Not so much,’ I confess.
‘It’s not like that any more. I got the gig because I’ve got a big cock. And I’m sexy. Or so I was told.’
He is. He is sexy. Not obvious-sexy, but sinuous, graceful, elegant, sardonic, jaded. It’s the way he moves, and the tired eyes, and the look of a lightning rod he has. A lightning rod or a whip handle – better images than a pencil, after all.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he asks, betraying an interest in my motives that has been entirely absent up to now.
‘Because … I’m bored with watching it. I want to do it. My way.’
‘Your way will be my way,’ he reminds me. ‘I’m the director. Are you kinky?’
‘Well … isn’t this a bit … kinky?’ I am floundering. I wish he would lose this sudden forceful interest in me. I’m not sure I can handle it.
‘You know. Any shameful little secrets? Do you fancy it in leather? Do you want to walk a man like a dog? Do you like a good whipping? I can do all that. Cater for it, I mean.’
‘I might want to walk before I can run,’ I say with a nervous laugh.
‘Ah, fair enough.’ He sits back, dispirited, the pencil twirling madly between his long, slim, sexy … oh, stop it! … fingers. ‘I’ve been wanting to get into the kinky market,’ he confesses. ‘Jazz won’t go for it.’
‘Jazz. Your girlfriend?’
‘Yeah. Jazzy Jewel. That’s her pornstar name. She won’t let me tie her up.’ He sighs. ‘You think, when you date a porn actress, that she’ll at least be broadminded.’
I laugh. I can’t help it. He looks so forlorn.
‘Maybe … we should just see where the wind takes us,’ I tell him.
The casting session takes place in an odd little corrugated shed that might once have been a hall attached to one of the less popular churches.
Dimitri meets me outside the tube station, slouched so perfectly against the wall with a cigarette and a sharp suit that he could have come straight from the cover of a Jam album. God, he is fine. I wish I could stop thinking it. He is the director of my porn film. He is the means to my end. He is … a commodity. Just like those exploited porn people I worry myself over. I must objectify him, or I won’t be able to do this.
Inside the hall, five men sit on iron-framed chairs, chatting awkwardly with cups of tea. Two of them are topless, towels slung over their shoulders, as if they have come fresh from the shower.
‘OK!’ says Dimitri, taking charge of the scene with ease and a click of the fingers. ‘I have some lines of script for you to read through, and Carmella here is going to act out a scene with each of you.’
I stare at Dimitri. ‘What scene?’ I ask sharply. He emailed his first draft to me earlier in the week, and it is pure filth. I keep my clothes on for roughly two minutes. Luckily, those two minutes are the ones we will be going through.
I pretend to be standing cleaning a window in a skimpy, revealing outfit, while each of the five men acts the role of passer-by, stopping, staring, then responding to the blatant invitation of my (imaginary) breasts and stocking tops with a predatory stare and a knock at my door.
‘Special delivery. Did somebody order a good, hard fuck?’ is the line the men must attempt. Only three of them seem able to read. Of those three, one is far, far too pumped-up for my taste. One has hideously bad breath. The other … I don’t know. I just don’t … I just can’t see myself with him. He is quite handsome, well-built, tall, I like his clothes, I like his tan, I just … don’t find him very sexy.
‘I’m sorry.’ I turn to Dimitri. ‘I didn’t realise I was this fussy, but …’
‘What? None of them?’
‘Sexy is an elusive quality,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t find that many men have it.’
‘So … what? Put out another call? Give up? Do you want your money back?’
‘No. But … I was wondering …’
I really can’t say this. I shouldn’t even think it. It’s madness. Sheer folly.
‘Go on.’ He leans against the radiator, tapping his teeth with the pencil, his eyes narrowed at me.
‘You’ve heard of actor-directors, right?’
I almost have to look away for fear of how he will react. He removes the pencil just half an inch from his mouth and stares, a big mooncalf stare. Then the sides of his eyes crinkle and he shouts out a laugh.
‘Seriously?’
‘I kind of picture you … every time I look at the script,’ I admit shiftily. ‘But if you don’t want to … don’t worry. Do another casting. I’m sure that’s best, actually, yeah, just make a few phone calls and …’
He puts a hand on my shoulder, steady and firm. ‘It’s OK,’ he says gently, his eyes amused below raised brows. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘You’re … sure?’
‘Uh huh. I’ve got a friend who can stand in behind the camera. I know how things look on film too, so it’s likely to need a bit less in the way of editing. So shall we meet at my, uh, studio, same time next week?’
‘Yeah. Same time next week. Your studio.’
* * *
I drive to the studio, which is an unremarkable bungalow set back from the main road, surrounded on all sides by a ten-foot hedge.