Dead famous (21 page)

‘Porn star’ was not a label it was possible to shake off, particularly not the type of porn star that he had been, a fuck and suck man. Oh, certainly, a little bit of Polanski or Ken Russell early in one’s career was fine. Without doubt one could bare one’s youthful arse for a name director with impunity; it was actually considered rather classy. Even an early dabble in soft core classics was survivable, particularly if you were a girl. A daringly graphic Lady Chatterley rarely did any harm, nor did a corsets-off Fanny Hill. But not Fuck Orgy Eleven. Not The Banging Man. Not…Pussy Picnic. David wondered where Kelly was sitting. It was difficult to tell inside the hot, rank darkness. It crossed his mind that if he could reach her, he could strangle her where she sat and nobody would notice. That would shut the bitch up. But Kelly did not need shutting up, not immediately, anyway, because as time ticked on in the darkness of the sweatbox she made no further mention of David’s secret. She had been having a laugh, teasing him. He certainly deserved a bit of winding-up. Kelly’s inside knowledge did not have remotely the significance for her that it had for him. She had no idea of the emotional turmoil and hatred that she was causing, and soon the conversation moved on. Now a series of fumbling, stumbling drinking games developed. Much booze was drunk and even more was spilt as the plastic bottles were passed about in the darkness. The alcohol hissed and steamed as it dripped between the hot wooden floorboards and onto the heating units beneath. It turned the sweatbox into a kind of sauna, using wine and spirits to create the steam instead of water. David began to relax a little, but only a little. He believed that Kelly had been warning him, warning him to be nice to her and not to nominate her. Showing him that she held his future in her hands and that she could deploy her weapon whenever she chose. Well, if that was the case, David thought, she was playing a dangerous game. He was a proud man. He could not and would not put up with being blackmailed, particularly by a know- nothing nonentity like Kelly. But he would have to bide his time. The drinking continued. There were songs and jokes, nice ones and dirty ones, some too dirty even for Geraldine to be able to broadcast. And the atmosphere was slowing down. Slowing down and heating up. The heat, the booze and the housemates’ utter disorientation in the darkness were beginning to take their toll. People were getting lazier and bolder, their defences were evaporating like the alcohol that was dripping onto the heaters.

‘OK, then, let’s see how well we really know each other, eh?’ Said Jazz in a hoarse, slurred voice.

‘We’re all mixed up and totally out of it, right? So everybody feel about with their left hand and when they touch someone, they have to identify them, right? But just by feel — no talking till you know.’ A mighty, boozy cheer greeted this suggestion, although, drunk as she was, Dervla was not too sure about it. However, everybody else seemed to be greeting the idea with such enthusiasm that she felt bound to go along with it. She did not want to end up on everybody’s nomination list for being a killjoy and a prude.

‘OK,’ said Jazz.

‘Everybody knows where I am ‘cos I’ve been talking and I would like to be identified by my donga, not my voice, on account of the fact that I’m hung like a Derby winner, so I’m just going to slide around a bit, mix us all up good, right? Then let the feeling begin. Here I go, these are the last words I will say…’ There were drunken cheers, whoops and groans as the others felt Jazz’s smooth, taut, sweating body moving about inside the tight, slippery little group of cramped and naked forms. The observers in the monitoring bunker could scarcely contain their excitement. The translucent plastic walls of the sweatbox bulged and heaved. Even in the eerie blue light of the night cameras there were clearly discernible body parts constantly emerging and then disappearing in the shapes in the plastic. Elbows, heads, buttocks — sexy, exciting buttocks. There seemed to be a real possibility of an orgy developing.

‘We should have made the plastic completely transparent,’ Geraldine drooled.

‘The sad cunts would have stood for it too, except Saint fucking Dervla, of course.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Fogarty replied.

‘Firstly, we couldn’t have broadcast it if we’d done that. Secondly, it would have been all steamed up anyway, and thirdly, it wouldn’t have been half as exciting even if we could see, because it’s the anonymity that’s so intoxicating. We don’t know who’s who and nor do they.’

‘When I want your opinion. Bob, I’ll ask for it.’ Inside the box the darkness was as intense as the excitement. Dervla felt Jazz slide across her. She felt his taut skin and beautiful rock-hard muscles against her own bare flesh.

‘My God,’ she thought.

‘He doesn’t know it’s me he’s sliding over.’ Jazz was pretending to be a snake, hissing and writhing. She could feel his muscular stomach in her lap as he giggled and wriggled across her and then…Then she felt his penis dragging across her thighs,big and heavy, obviously already semi-hard. She could not resist it. Through the darkness she placed her hand in its path, palm upwards, deliberately letting him glide into it. Then very gently she squeezed. It felt wonderful in that coal- black anonymity to be doing something so outrageous. She could feel herself sweating all the more as Jazz stopped his wriggling and slithering for a moment and allowed the object of her attentions to grow bigger and harder in her hand. In that moment, for Dervla, Jazz was no longer the beery-leery jackthe- lad fly-boy king of clubbing cool that she knew and was beginning to rather like, he was a Greek or a Roman God, a living, breathing version of all those wonderful works of art she saw on her summer holidays in Europe. He was a fantastical nighttime love muse. Then she heard his voice and of course it was only Jazz.

‘Is that you, Kelly, you naughty, naughty slapper, you?’

‘What?’ Said Kelly’s voice from the vicinity of Jazz’s feet.

‘Ah,’ said Jazz.

‘So not Kelly, then.’ Dervla gave a tiny gasp and let go, shocked at her audacity! She had been gripping Jazz’s penis! That was terrible! Absolutely terrible. She would have to face him at breakfast in the morning! Her, the chief objector to crudity. The Lady High and Mighty. The good girl of the group. What if he knew it was her? He did know. Her tiny gasp had given her away. Even amongst the general grunting and giggling. Jazz had caught its tone.

‘Who, then, I wonder,’ he said, and then he sang a line of ‘When Irish eyes are smiling.’ Dervla felt herself go crimson in the darkness. What if he told Peeping Tom? What if he went into the confession box and told the nation that she had grabbed his penis in the darkness and squeezed it until it was hard? Then her thoughts were interrupted, because Gazzer made them all roar with laughter.

‘Fuck me, I’m glad Woggle ain’t in here!’ Everybody shrieked. It was such a terrible, terrible, madly hilarious thought, to be stuck in a crowded sweatbox with Woggle. To have to feel him, smell him. Dervla laughed too, and suddenly she didn’t care about having touched Jazz. In fact she was proud of it. She hoped he did tell. She knew the other inmates thought her a prude, and it was certain that the public thought so too. It wouldn’t do her chances of winning any harm at all to add a bit of generous, good- humoured ladette behaviour to the mix. Jazz thought that she was beautiful, he had made that clear often enough, and she was beautiful. Why shouldn’t she touch his dick? He had loved it, it had made him hard. And the truth was she had loved it too, it had felt terrific. Having that big, strong, veiny piece of male flesh in her small soft hand had turned her on like a tap. As the waves of laughter that had greeted Gazzer’s observation began to recede, Dervla topped them.

‘Hey, Jazz,’ she called out jubilantly into the darkness.

‘I just felt your willy!’

‘Any time, fine lady, any time!’ Jazz shouted back and again they all roared. In the camera corridor the one operator on duty recoiled as if he had been electrocuted. Larry Carlisle had been covering the entrance to the sweatbox viewed across the living room and through the open door of the boys’ bedroom, which had been left slightly ajar. Now, as he twitched involuntarily, the lens of his camera swung wildly upwards covering, for a moment, nothing more interesting than the ceiling. Fortunately for Carlisle nobody in the monitoring bunker was watching his camera feed at that moment because a much better picture of the shadowy box was being supplied by the remote hot-heads in the bedroom itself. Quickly Carlisle regained control of his camera and returned its focus to the proper place. But he still had to struggle to stop his hand from shaking on the controls. Carlisle could scarcely contain his bitter anger. His girl, the gorgeous but prudish girl behind the mirror, the girl who was so careful to never show him anything, had just gripped the black one’s cock! It was outrageous, it was disgusting. It was a betrayal of the purity of the relationship that they had established together. They shrieked, they laughed, they whooped. Nobody could quite believe that Dervla had been the first to get so specifically raunchy. It emboldened them all, seeming to give the whole game genuine class. The cleverer, more manipulative people in the box realized that Dervla’s sudden sexiness was a pretty clever trick in terms of the public’s perception of her. There was nothing that kept up audience interest better than surprises, particularly sexual ones, and Dervla’s grabbing of Jazz had certainly been that. Moon, David, Hamish and Garry all realized that Dervla had raised the stakes and they would have to lift their game accordingly. Moon decided then and there that she would later confess to Peeping Tom that she had had intercourse inside the box and had no idea with whom it had been. She resolved to admit to this whether it had happened or not, but actually she thought it probably would happen, because now the touching and feeling began with a vengeance.

‘So are we going to play this identification game or what?’ Shouted Jazz.

‘Yes!’ Came the reply.

‘OK, then, go for it!’ Jazz shouted.

‘Everybody move around and nobody talk, OK? And when you’ve had a really good squirm, cop a feel and guess who you’ve got.’ Suddenly it was all shrieks and giggles and boozy lust as they slipped about together. Hamish was almost beside himself with excitement. This was the reason he had come into the house. Like Moon, he wanted to have sex, and then he wanted everyone to know about it. With Kelly, preferably, but frankly any female partner would do. He felt a hand stroking his back, gently teasing his sweaty spine, gently running all the way down to the cleft of his buttocks. ‘Was this the one? Should he turn about and try to make love to whoever was touching him? He heard a whisper in his ear.

‘Sally?’ It was David’s voice.

‘You’ve been in this house too long, mate,’ Hamish whispered back.

‘Fuck!’ David barked, snatching his hand away as if Hamish was a red-hot stove.

‘Shhh!’ Whispered Jazz from nearby. David was annoyed. His mistake made him feel vulnerable. He wondered if Kelly had heard. All his doubts flooded back once more. Was she laughing at him in the darkness? Was she thinking to herself that Boris Pecker would not have minded at all who he found himself feeling up? Would she tell? Would she suddenly blurt it out and tell? David wanted to leave the sweatbox there and then, he wanted to run. But perhaps that in itself might provoke Kelly.

‘Funny how he couldn’t take a bit of sex,’ she would say.

‘I would have thought it would have been right up his street.’

‘Up his arse, more like,’ Gazzer would say after Kelly had explained, and then David would be a laughing stock, a national joke. David decided he had better stay put. He reached for one of Geraldine’s artfully placed plastic bottles of warm, strong booze and drank deep. Hamish was not going to make the mistake that David had made. It was a woman’s thigh he was holding, for sure. So soft and smooth and not too firm. Kelly? He thought. Possibly, but just as easily Dervla or even Moon. Not Sally, he was delighted to conclude, and probably not small enough for Dervla, but you couldn’t be sure. Whoever it belonged to it was fun to touch and squeeze. Hamish was feeling much better about himself now. Kelly’s kind gesture earlier in the game had truly put his mind at rest, and now he felt safe and powerful and ready for anything. He let his hand slip around from the outside to the inside of the thigh that he was holding. The flesh was hot and slightly clammy, it seemed almost to tug gently at his fingertips as he slid them across it. Whoever’s thigh it was, and he was sure now it wasn’t Dervla’s, she seemed quite happy to be touched. Her opposite leg was moving, her other inner thigh gently brushing against the back of Hamish’s hand. Hamish’s lips brushed against a soft shoulder. He kissed it. There were hands on Hamish now. Someone was stroking his buttocks, but he ignored it. The girl he was holding was the one he wanted. Kelly was now very drunk. As drunk as she had been the week before, when she had passed out. She had had to get drunk in order to get into the sweatbox, and she knew that if she didn’t get into the sweatbox she would lose the game. Now that she was inside and this hand was touching her she no longer really felt a part of her body, it was as if she was hovering above it and some other Kelly was being touched and caressed. It was not an unpleasant feeling, just slightly detached and uninvolved. This was how Kelly always felt about sex, possibly because she was always drunk when she did it. She liked sex, she was pretty sure of that, but somehow she always ended up wishing that she liked it more. Secretly she was sure that the missing ingredient was love, and she knew that she would have to wait for that. You couldn’t plan it. The hand was being more daring now, working its way up to the very top of her thigh. Kelly didn’t think she minded, although she knew that she would probably stop him quite soon, whoever he was. On the other hand, why not let him play? This was what you did, wasn’t it? If you were a top bird, a mad-for-it, gagging- for-it personality like she was? You didn’t bottle out. That wasn’t what it was about at all, was it? You went for it, you lived it large. One thing you weren’t was a killjoy. Now the hand was brushing at Kelly’s most intimate self. Now she would stop him, move the hand away. But she didn’t. She had become distracted. Something in her memory was stirring. Hamish moved his hand and touched the little metal ring hidden within the folds of Kelly’s private flesh. And now he knew who it was he was touching. He was thrilled: this was who he had hoped it would be: Kelly, the one he fancied most, the one who had named him as her choice if sex were on the agenda. Well, sex was on the agenda. This was his chance. He found her ear and whispered into it and as he whispered he gave the little ring the gentlest of flicks with his finger.