The Mammoth Book of the Best New Erotica Page 34

  I smiled. “I find it hard to remember stuff.”

  “I know. When we broke up you said you’d never think of me again.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You did.”

  “Well, it wasn’t true. So, are you going to tell me what your job is?”

  “Phone sex.”

  “Huh?”

  “I knew you’d like that. Can I tell you about my audition?”

  “For the job?”

  “Yeah. Well, I’d been working for TicketMaster for a while and it just wasn’t working out. The rest of the people in the office didn’t like me because every now and again I’d have an audition for an advert and they’d all get really upset because I had a life outside work. So, anyway, there was one woman there who I became work friends with, and one day she told me she was leaving. She’d got a job working for a sex line and it was five times as much money for nowhere near as much work. I was a bit sceptical, but she told me that, although there were a few dodgy men at the company, the main people in charge were all women, and by that time the little pound signs were dancing in front of my eyes and I’d agreed to go in for an interview.”

  The waitress reappeared at my elbow with the wine and the squid salad I’d ordered for a starter. I asked her what had happened to Tracey’s food and she said she’d thought it would be better to bring it at the same time as my main course. Tracey nodded and said that was fine. I still felt guilty about ordering so much food when she was having hardly anything and tried to make up for it by overfilling her glass with wine.

  Tracey continued. “So I went in for my interview and found myself in this windowless room with two women and one man. Although the man did most of the talking, it was obvious from the outset that the women were in charge. Anyway, my audition consisted of three exercises. The first two exercises were pieces I had to read from a script. This is quite a long anecdote, but the punchline’s in the middle instead of the end so get ready to laugh. The script I was reading from was supposed to be as if I was talking from the perspective of a woman who had been led into sexual ruin. I had to go through this catalogue of things that my boyfriend had made me do and the twist at the end was that I had to tell the caller that I was now completely cock crazy and even just knowing there was a man on the other end listening to my past exploits got me off. The script was kind of torturous and confused and I was trying to understand it as well as read it so I kept stumbling over my words, and I got to this bit where I said my boyfriend introduced me to swimming and just as I was thinking that was odd and waiting for some subaqua exploits, the man stood up and shouted at me, ‘It’s swinging, not swimming. My boyfriend introduced me to swinging.’ ”

  It wasn’t that great a line – she knew that – but the delivery was so perfectly Tracey that it made me laugh, identify with her and feel horny all at the same time. I knew one day lots of men would share this feeling, and it was this knowledge that made me certain that, in spite of Tracey’s considerable fragility, she would one day achieve success as an actress.

  She went on. “The second script was less interesting. Standard sexy housewife, naughty knickers stuff. But then the final exercise was an improvisation. It’d been a while since I’d been to a proper audition and you know how much I like that sort of thing anyway so I got all overexcited and started acting as if I was auditioning for a movie instead of a job on a sex line. You would have liked the scenario though. It was a bit close to home and I could tell they’d come up with this idea for an audition piece deliberately to make me feel uncomfortable so I decided to take it to a real extreme. I was supposed to be an actress who’d come for an audition for a part in a film and then when I’d arrived I’d found out it was actually a porno instead of a normal movie.”

  I popped a large piece of squid into my mouth and started chewing. Tracey brushed a strand of stray hair out of her face and carefully lifted her overfilled wine glass to her lips. As she did so, I noticed her lipstick was completely the wrong shade for her, making it look as if she’d been sucking gob-stoppers all day long.

  “The weird thing about this last exercise was that they wanted me to do it over the phone. I suppose it wasn’t that weird, given that I was meant to be proving I could do a sex-line job, but the way they handled it was odd. First off the women came across and hooked me up to a headset, then the guy went off into another room on his own.

  “Like I said, from the moment I was told what the exercise was I felt really irritated and wanted to embarrass them, so I tried to make what I was saying as disturbing as possible, telling him that I was only taking this job to support my baby, and that I came from a really religious background, and had wanted to be an actress my whole life, grown up on the kids from Fame, stuff like that . . .”

  “How did he respond?”

  “Well, that was it, after I’d been talking a couple of minutes or so he stopped asking me questions and just kept saying, ‘Go on, go on’, and I could hear the clink of his belt and, y’know, I knew what he was doing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What could I do? I kept talking, but I tried to make it sound as unsexy as possible, just praying he would stop. But he kept going and I kept going until he came.”

  “Ugh.”

  “I know. And the worst thing was he didn’t even try to hide it. I think I probably could’ve handled the situation if he was just some pervert doing this job as a sneaky way of getting his rocks off, but he came back into the main room with his fly undone, shirt tail still sticking out, and the two women looked at him and made another mark on their clipboards as if this was just another test I’d passed.”

  “Tracey,” I said gently.

  “Yes?”

  “How long have you had this job?”

  “Only a couple of months. It’s all right once you get used to it. And I make it fun, playing little games with myself like working out which words will make them . . .” She looked at me. “Oh dear. When I imagined telling you about this I thought it would make me sound glamourous and sexy.”

  Not wanting her to worry, I smiled at Tracey and let my fork drop back on my plate.

  We stayed in the restaurant until eleven. By that time we were both a little drunk and I was reluctant for the evening to end. I felt more aroused than I had in months and didn’t want to go back to the sexless friendship waiting for me at home. So I persuaded Tracey to walk down to a nearby pub for one final drink. The front of the pub was crowded so we went through to the back bar, which was empty except for an old man and a fruit machine. I bought us both Stellas and sat opposite Tracey. Her legs were crossed at the ankles and I found myself staring at the line where the hem of her dress pulled tightly around her toned thighs. She was telling me about a friend’s play but I had long stopped listening to her words. Taking a large gulp from my drink, I swooped in on her, sliding my hand up under her skirt. My fingers stopped as they reached the soft crotch of her knickers. My lips stopped as I realized they were pressing against a resistant mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “I don’t want to do this.”

  When I was sixteen I went on a school-organized trip to Keele University. The trip was designed to introduce potential students to college life and, given the excesses of this weekend away, I think the organizers managed an accurate distillation of most people’s three-year experience. I was the only one my school expected to make it to university, so I went alone, although by the end of the coach journey up I had befriended a sizeable number of sixth-formers sent by other schools in the city. As my school was ridiculously suburban, a haven of bubble perms and teenage pregnancies, I had always been an outsider, so much so that the first-years started a rumour that I slept in a coffin. I didn’t go into school that much, spending most of my time in my bedroom listening to the Pixies and those first three Ride EPs. This was considered so outré in my neighbourhood that I was amazed to find that my tastes were shared not only by the sixth-formers I’d befriended on t
he bus, but also the students who organized the last night’s disco.

  Those two days at Keele were, to that point, the best of my life. But as I returned to my isolation, I saw no likelihood of them ever being repeated. My parents were both intensely antisocial people, ashamed of their marriage and quick to discourage me from forming friendships with others. But my newfound comrades were reluctant to let me disappear back to my previous existence, bombarding me with calls until I agreed to come with them to a Primal Scream concert. I went with them and, over the next few weeks, found myself with my first ever social circle.

  And after friendship came the inevitable romantic infatuation. Among my new gang was a beautiful redhead with goth tendencies and a tart sense of humour. The rest of my friends were dubious about some of her more extreme tastes, and I was the only one willing to accompany her to a Cranes concert at a local polytechnic. The show was terrible but the night was transcendental, and in the taxi home I tried to kiss her. She stiffened, pushed me away, and said she wasn’t interested. As far as I could remember, I’d never told Tracey about this, but it was definitely a formative moment, making me overcautious in the opening stages of any subsequent relationship. If I got any sense that the woman I wanted didn’t want me, I immediately backed off, even if their reluctance was only part of an elaborate flirtation. In some ways, I’d never really got over that first rejection, and now the same thing was happening to me again, I felt a fresh desperation. But that doesn’t explain what I said next.

  “Tracey?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll give you five hundred pounds to fuck me.”

  During the taxi ride home, I wondered whether I regretted making my offer. There was no question that Tracey had been horrified, turning me down immediately and remaining upset until we said goodbye, but when I thought back to my sessions with my therapist, I realized the fact that Tracey would never want to see me again was probably a positive thing. My therapist had never accepted my excuse that I couldn’t start another relationship because I was giving house-space to Marianne, trying to make me believe it was really because I held out hope that Tracey and I would get back together. Now that definitely wouldn’t happen, I was free to get on with my new life.

  Marianne was waiting for me when I got home, sitting in front of our television drinking a mug of mulled wine and watching a film featuring Veronica Lake. She moved her legs down so I could sit next to her. As usual, her eyes were rimmed with red and she’d dressed with the bare minimum of effort. I squeezed her hand and she flashed me a brief smile.

  The following morning I went out with three female friends of mine. Hazel, Ivy and Elizabeth were all young, recently married mothers. I had met them through Marianne. Initially, they had been her friends, calling me up for news about how she was coping. But as she hadn’t seen them in two years and they had stopped asking about her, I now considered them my friends, meeting with them once a week for a few hours of coffee and chat in a café in St John’s Wood.

  Every now and again, we were joined by the unofficial fifth member of our party. Her name was Anita and she was by far the most glamourous member of our quintet. Marianne would’ve been furious if she’d known Anita occasionally accompanied us, as Anita had supplied Marianne’s boyfriend Donald with the drugs she believed had precipitated his premature heart attack. Anita had been having a low-key affair with Donald for several years, and Marianne blamed herself for being so understanding about his infidelity, knowing that if she’d been more possessive she might’ve saved his life. Donald was one of many men Anita had spent years seeing on the side, although she usually went for men of more considerable means. Between affairs, she was always short of money, lost without someone to pay for her.

  Hazel, Ivy and Elizabeth were all fascinated by the fact that I had been single for so long. Ivy was the only one who flirted with me, although I knew this didn’t count for anything, as she was as certain in her marriage as the others. But they couldn’t understand why I didn’t make a move on Anita. Every time the subject came up, I used the same excuse, “Marianne would kill me.”

  “But how would she know?” This was Elizabeth, the most persistent of my three friends.

  “She’d know. She’d smell it on me.”

  “I don’t see why you’re worried about that,” said Ivy, sucking her lip. “You’ve let Marianne live with you rent-free for two years. She’s in no position to tell you who you can sleep with.”

  “There’s too many demons.”

  “Between you and Anita?” Elizabeth asked. “Why? You hardly knew Donald. Besides, you two have an incredible chemistry. I bet the sex would be amazing.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I get the impression that Anita can keep people at a distance even when she’s fucking them. I hate having sex with someone who’s got their barriers up.”

  “You only say that because you’ve heard how she talks about her businessmen blokes. It’d be different for you. You’d be able to break her down.” The other two chuckled darkly at this, encouraging Ivy to add, “If I had your body I could do it.”

  I sipped my coffee and took a bite from my Russian cake, feeling unsettled. I still wasn’t really over last night and felt less comfortable bantering than I usually did. I knew myself well enough to know what I really needed was sexual reassurance and although, in a strange sort of way, that was what my friends were trying to offer me, thinking about Anita made me uneasy.

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  That evening, I went to a party with my bank manager. She was one of the normal girls who’d made my life so difficult at school. We’d become friends by chance when I went into my hometown bank to open a third account. She’d been impressed by the amount of money I’d been depositing and asked me out on a date. We’d quickly discovered that there were the same differences between us now that there’d been at school, and we’d gone home separately. This had been a big blow to me as she’d been one of the most unobtainable girls in my school and, having spent a large part of my adolescence masturbating with her in my head, I was keen to see whether the real deal rivalled the fantasy.

  After our unsuccessful date, we had concentrated on forming a workable business relationship. I needed more from my bank manager than most people, and was on the phone to her several times a week. And once long enough had elapsed for us not to be embarrassed in each other’s company, we started going out together as friends. I became her walker, accompanying Vicki to social events once or twice a month. These events were not grand affairs, consisting mainly of nights in the pub or dinner parties organized by her friends. Tonight’s party was in Jamie’s Bar in Charlotte Street. One of Vicki’s friends had just returned from two years in Australia and a gathering had been organized to welcome him back.

  Vicki didn’t seem that excited about the party, and unusually for her, wasn’t even worried about changing for the evening, meeting me straight from work. Seeing her in a conservative suit reminded me of how great she used to look in her school uniform, and I wondered again about my impotent reaction to the women in my life. It was odd: I was excellent with strangers, no matter how attractive, able to go into a club or bar, find someone single, and persuade them to take me home with them. But as soon as it came to anyone with whom I had the slightest emotional connection, I became a complete drip. Feeling depressed, I drank too much and found myself telling Vicki what had happened with Tracey. I made a joke out of it, saying that it was probably not a good idea for me to tell my bank manager I’d been offering ex-girlfriends extravagant amounts of money for them to sleep with me.

  She downed her glass, winked at me, and said, “I could do with some money.”

  We went to her place. In the taxi we bartered about the price: Vicki saying she wanted twice the amount I’d offered my ex-girlfriend; me saying for that much money I expected something special.

  I wasn’t that surprised by the way she reacted. Vicki had spent the
whole of her adult life working with money, and no doubt saw this as a neat way of mocking its black magic. The idea of being paid for sex clearly appealed to her, as did taking a human transaction so lightly. I paid the driver and we went into her house.

  “So,” she asked, “how do you want me?”

  I thought back to all those adolescent afternoons. My fantasy had always been that while I was masturbating about Vicki she was somewhere masturbating about me. I told her this, thinking that was maybe how we’d start.

  She chuckled. “You know, I never did. Not about you. I must’ve done it about almost every boy in the class, but never about you.”

  I couldn’t reply. She noticed my sadness and said hurriedly, “I would’ve done, though, you know, if I’d known you were doing it about me.”

  “You must’ve known.”

  “Why?”

  “Every boy in the year used to masturbate about you. We used to compare experiences.”

  She looked at me. “Really? I honestly had no idea. Can I tell you about a fantasy of mine?”

  “Of course.”

  “I used to fantasize about groups of boys in the class masturbating over me. You know, with all that AIDS talk in assemblies sperm was seen as such an evil substance. But it didn’t seem that way to me. I wanted to be totally coated in it.”

  She must’ve noticed my horrified expression, as she immediately eased back from our sexual conversation and asked me instead if I wanted a coffee. I nodded and she went out into the kitchen to make me one. I took advantage of the spare moment to assess my surroundings. Houses always look strange when there’s only one person living in them, but Vicki had done a good job of making her place look comfortable. Before Marianne moved in with me, there had always been something defiant about my decoration, as if I was trying to create a home that would be the envy of anyone who visited it. But nothing I could buy from a shop could add the warmth created by another person’s belongings.