When Pierce dropped me home with ‘do or die’ promises to take me to the charity ball (I was going to make him swear on his mother’s grave but then I realised that there wasn’t much point really), we drove right past my house. That’s because there was a stretch, chauffeur-driven, customised, chocolate-and-red-leather-upholstered limo with smoked windows pulled up in the driveway. It looked a lot like the sort of car you’d go to a funeral in.
‘Tash?’ I called out urgently, pushing past the screen door. Tash, who was in her bedroom shovelling layers of black eyeliner on to her lids, bobbed her head around the door. Even though she was beaming, her eyes were faintly troubled and didn’t hold mine with their usual impertinent gaze. ‘Waddabout this?’ She thrust her latest culinary creation in my direction – an asparagus and strawberry cake. It looked like something regurgitated by a Rottweiler. ‘Well, whaddaya think? I invented it for you,’ she insisted, ignoring the tell-tale strawberry stains around her mouth.
All I could think was that she’d dyed her hair blonde. ‘I dunno,’ I ventured. ‘To tell you the truth, I kinda liked apple and licorice crumble better.’
‘Yeah,’ she laughed nervously. I laughed nervously. ‘Asparagus and strawberries. I wonder what colour piss we’ll have?’ And then we fell on to each other in a big bear hug. We disguised the tension of our last words in the supermarket, by laughing excessively at things that were only vaguely funny and squeezing each other’s hands and arms a little too vigorously.
‘Where’ve ya bin?’ she said, squeezing my shoulder a little too vigorously. ‘I’ve bin worried sick …’
I told her about Pierce taking me to meet his parents and how that must really mean something (I wouldn’t let anyone meet my old man. As far as I’m concerned, coagulation is the only proof that blood is thicker than water). And I told her that I was going with Pierce to a charity do.
‘Oh. Great,’ Tash said flatly. Her eyes said, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘What’s with the limo?’ I asked her.
‘ ’Member that polaroid ya took of me? Well, they phoned. I’m booked for a photo call. Today.’
‘Oh. Great,’ I said neutrally. My eyes said, ‘Don’t do it.’
‘Look,’ Tash elaborated, ‘the way I see it, Christ died for our sins, right? So we might as well make it, like, worth the poor schmuck’s while. Come with me!’ she urged, wielding her make-up spatula. I practically went blue with nausea at the very idea. ‘As my, ya know, bodyguard.’ But just as I was going to say that I’d rather be stuck in a holding pattern for ten hours, jettisoning fuel, seated next to a talkative insul-batt-salesman with body odour, I glanced up on top of Tash’s cupboard. Her Hope Chest had gone. Disappeared. Tash caught my glance in the mirror. But neither of us mentioned it. We kept it separate: those hard words we’d had wouldn’t flavour the rest of our friendship.
‘Okay,’ I said hurriedly. Tash was my best mate. At that moment I would have done anything to make things right between us. Except, perhaps, eat strawberries with asparagus.
To tell you the truth, I should have got out of the stretch limo and run like the billyo, the minute we got to the mansion and I heard a rock speak. No kidding. As we sat in the back seat, fiddling with all the gadgets and gizmos, a voice emerged from the large boulder at window level. ‘Have a nice day,’ the rock said. ‘Please state your name and business.’
Tash – after a few false starts – zapped down the electronic window. ‘Natasha Marilyn Kerlowski. I believe ya wanna see mah tits,’ she said shamelessly.
The gates abracadabra-ed open and the limo purred past the security cameras, through the groomed gardens, around the circular drive, before crunching to a halt outside the magazine’s headquarters. Tash and I looked up dumbfounded. We had pulled up outside a castle, complete with galleries and gilded turrets, truncated columns, towers and pleasure domes. It reminded me of that Fantasyland castle at Disneyland. And there were lots of Tinkerbells. A row of them, with luscious breasts, and lubricious thighs, formed a welcoming party.
‘Well, hi there, Miss Kerlowski,’ said a glamorously dressed woman with a voice to match. Miss Kerlowski. That about cracked me up.
‘Holy shit,’ Tash whispered to me, as we got out of the car. Women thrust bouquets into her hands. A porter whisked her bag out of the back seat and a butler proceeded to lead her off on a tour of the mansion, with me in tow.
Inside, the walls were chockers with paintings I’d only ever seen in school art books. Outside, peacocks strutted around palm-fringed ponds and stone nymphs cavorted in glistening fountains. Tethered across the lawns, Spider Monkeys cocked their quizzical little heads to one side and examined Tash and me – the latest acquisitions. The silent butler led us through aviaries of rare birds – toucans, parrots, pelicans, all displaying their exotic plumage.
‘Hello,’ a neon-bright parrot greeted us. ‘My name is Cindy and my hobbies are travelling and meeting people. Hello, my name is Cindy and my hobbies are travelling and meeting people. Hello, my name is …’ Tash jabbed me in the ribs as we choked back our chortles. Next, we were pressing our faces up against the glass of an indoor aquarium full of electric eels and irridescent fish that flashed past, small as fingernails.
As we re-emerged into the dazzling daylight, Tash whistled, ‘Jesus Chrrrist. This place is amazing.’
And it was, except I couldn’t help thinking that this entire magazine empire was built on sperm. I mean, the very foundations of the mansion were probably mortared with semen. It kind of killed the old glamour to tell you the truth.
We were then taken to meet the boss. The hard, modern furniture looked alien in the old, wood-panelled room. The bloke behind the desk introduced himself as Stefan, a wiry, muscular man, just starting to run to fat, his hair cropped to disguise an advancing bald spot. The wooden plaque on his desk read ‘Artistic Director’ which, in a magazine like this, was a euphemism for a guy who spent his days examining photographs of the female crotch.
‘Well, Natasha Marilyn Kerlowski.’ Despite the smile, Stefan said her name as though it were a disease. A South Efrican, his accent was like a vocal karate chop. I eyed him with chronic mistrust. ‘Hmmm,’ he said, staring intently at Tash’s eyes. ‘Yes.’
Tash, uncomfortable under his scrutiny, shoved one hip out to the side and placed her hand on it. ‘I thought ya wanted to see my tits?’ she said stridently.
The photographer, a He-man whose T-shirt bore the face of a cartoon character I couldn’t quite remember, snickered. Stefan shot him a scathing look and he fell silent immediately.
‘No. You see, it’s all in the eyes. Cut the head off a girl, and there’s nothing. Just a lump of meat. The eyes have to look sexy, intelligent. The polaroid you sent us was only from the neck down. You used a hellava photographer.’ Tash winked at me surreptitiously. ‘Now,’ Stefan slid up out of his chair and circled Tash in a predatory fashion. ‘The first photographic session will pinpoint what the problems are with the entire body.’
‘Problems?’ Tash said challengingly, turning her head over her shoulder to follow him.
‘Oh yes. The pubes may be too hairy, bottom too big, knees knocked, feet gnarled, tits not the same size …’
‘Whaddaya mean?’ Tash snapped defensively.
‘Quite often they don’t hang in the same position – one nipple may point forward and one may point to the side.’ He paused, too close to her, and stroked her arm. ‘I’m an expert on the female form. Does she have a hairy top lip? Can we bleach it? Does she have thick ankles, thick arms, thick thighs?’ Or a thick head, I thought, like you. ‘I can fix anything,’ he added, in a voice both aloof and malicious. ‘Age?’ he snapped, moving efficiently back to his desk.
‘Counting past lives?’ Tash said provocatively.
Stefan shot her a supercilious look. ‘Of course, I’m not forcing you to co-operate. Obviously, the money for this gig is not so important to you.’
‘Twenty-three,’ she acquiesced.
‘Well, then, we’re just in the nick of time. Over twenty-five and girls start to show signs of wear and tear. Drooping, cellulite.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘The whole catastrophe.’ Tash’s bravado momentarily evaporated. ‘Height?’
‘Five foot two,’ she responded meekly.
‘Eyes of blue, good. Five foot two, long-waisted, well-endowed girls are our favourite – aren’t they Carl?’ So much for ‘the eyes have it all’. We all turned to catch the photographer bloke ogling the contours of Tash’s figure. And he wasn’t just looking, he was consuming her. ‘They photograph the best,’ Stefan hurried on, drawing the attention back to himself. ‘Does your boyfriend know you’re doing this?’
‘I don’t believe in boyfriends.’
‘Does your mother know?’
‘My mother sucks shit.’
Stefan looked up suddenly, his eyes hard. ‘Have you done any hooking?’
‘No,’ she lied.
‘When are your monthlies? We must work around Uncle George’s visits.’
Tash executed her famous rolling of the eyes, just as I knew she would. ‘What am I? An idiot? A bimbo? Ya think the peroxide leaked through my skull and bleached my brains? Would I be here, bum-breath, if I had my periods?’
The score, I reckoned, was Tash – two, Stefan – one.
‘You are a natural blonde, aren’t you?’ Stefan interrogated. He was looking at her with a weird expression, both wistful and contemptuous.
‘Yeah, of course,’ Tash fibbed effortlessly, studying the nail varnish on the little finger of her left hand.
I watched as Stefan’s cold eyes slid, ever so slowly, down Tash’s neck, focusing, finally on her chest. He smirked with admiration. ‘With most girls we put them on the pill and tell them to come back in a month or so. It makes their titties bigger. Natasha, you ain’t most girls. They are a serious set of jugs.’
‘Major League Hooters,’ the photographer chorused.
‘We’ll do you tomorrow. This, you may have gathered,’ Stefan gestured towards the man in the immaculate, white T-shirt, ‘is Carl. If you don’t like him, you tell me and we’ll find you another photographer. But,’ he smirked as Carl readjusted his belt buckle, in a mock-self-conscious gesture that emphasised the Olympic-sized bulge in his left trouser leg, ‘most girls like our Carl.’
I don’t know about major hooters, but these two blokes were Major Bozos. As if reading my mind, Stefan suddenly slewed around to face me. ‘Who’s the sidekick?’ I copped a fetid blast of his breath, the stale, oniony smell barely masked by the peppermint he was sluicing obscenely round his chops. ‘We don’t allow our girlies to be accompanied.’
‘My lover,’ Tash lied with cheerful aggression. I gawped. The two men chuckled with only thinly disguised revulsion. I made a mental note to give her heaps later. HEAPS. Stefan flipped open a copy of his magazine, stopping at the centrefold. ‘These are the sort of shots we want.’ A woman lay spread-eagled across the page, displaying what the boys back home would so eloquently call her ‘meat curtains’. ‘Got any problems with that?’
Tash craned over the desk, then shook her head. Stefan smiled a fraudulent kind of smile and handed her a ‘Model Release’ form to sign. As Tash scrawled her name across the bottom of the page, old Onion-breath delivered his final spiel. ‘From here on, during your stay with us, you’ll be treated like a princess. But, bear in mind, we entertain lots of businessmen. And we like to make them feel happy. In other words,’ his voice became low and scornful, ‘if you get your ass grabbed, don’t complain, okay babe?’
‘But,’ I piped up, scandalised.
‘Feminism is bad for business,’ he silenced me. ‘As are dykes.’
Being in that holding pattern, jettisoning fuel for ten hours, seated next to the talkative insul-batt-salesman with B.O., was starting to look more and more attractive, let me tell you.
Tash was taken to the beauty salon for her make-over. She was scheduled to have her nails painted, hair tinted, face packed in imported mud with ‘special anti-inflammatory’ property, her pubes waxed and shaped … and that was just for starters. I decided to leave her and do some exploring.
In the middle of the lawn was a swimming pool. Lying around the edges, on deckchairs, was a host of beautiful, if slightly shop-soiled models. All topless. I looked at the ponderous symmetry of their silicone, regulation-sized breasts. Tash had told me that a centrefold spread can take up to two months to shoot. Practically one whole wing of the mansion was taken up with potential centre-folds recovering from plastic surgery to nose, toes, eyes, thighs, hips, lips, tits and bits. (I was so sick of meeting people who were having their faces lifted. Couldn’t they have their bodies lowered, you know. Just for a change?) Others were staying here with orders to exercise, or starve down to the required pretzel-thin proportions. They spent their nights as table decorations for visiting company directors at executive dinners, their days as garden ornaments, being ogled by sexually famished Midwest businessmen.
I sat on the edge of the pool, dangled my legs into the chlorinated cool, and watched the women. They lazed in the sun like bored pedigree cats. Men buzzed around the pool like insects, laughing lecherously and volunteering all too eagerly to rub on suntan oils and fetch sodas.
I sat there in the searing sun for hour after hour and not one man approached me. Not that I wanted them too, mind you – but I wanted to know that they wanted to, if you know what I mean. Rondah was right. I had the sex appeal of a toenail. Ingrown. It seemed as though everyone in the whole of America was busy bonking, except me.
When I finally squelched my way up to Tash’s room in the guest wing, I could hear her guffaw before I opened the door. I nearly didn’t recognise her. Her new blonde hair was curled and swept up off her face, which was painted in about six coats of high-gloss lacquer. She was trampolining, not on the bed, but on the floor. ‘Try it!’ She yanked me over the threshold. The spongy carpet yielded beneath my feet, then bounced back, propelling me into the air. It was like moon-walking. ‘It’s for floor-fuckin’, she squealed, airborne. ‘This place is the carpet-burn-capital-of-the-Western-world. And look,’ she shrieked, ‘there’s twenty-four-hour room service. And light dimmers at floor level! And,’ she bounced over to the bathroom and opened the cabinet, ‘everythin’ ya could ever need. Razors, vitamins, uppers, downers, dildos, condoms, whipped cream. Even Pepto Bismol, for the upset Bimbo tummy.’ We bounded about, doing Space Odyssey impressions, before splashing down in a mass of limbs on the ginormous bed. The ceiling was mirrored.
‘Hey, ya wanna watch the porn channel?’ Tash giggled, groping for the remote control.
‘Erggh. No. Why?’
‘I dunno. Don’t you ever just wanna check that you’re doin’ it right?’
Doing what right, I thought to myself, in despair. Addressing our reflection on the ceiling made us feel we’d lost all gravity. But actually, I was feeling very grave. About everything. ‘Tash, let’s go home. Let me get you some money. Pierce owes me squillions.’
‘What am I? A charity case? I’m doin’ a centrefold! We’re talkin’ serious coin.’
‘But Tash, the bottom line is …’
‘The bottom line,’ she interrupted, ‘is money. And it’s not just the bottom line. It’s the top, middle, bottom, in between, and every other goddamned line. Money doesn’t just talk in this town it SCREAMS. So don’t go into Prude Mode, okay?’
‘It’s not that! I’m trying to get down and get dirty, I really am. But there’s something wrong with me.’ A sob constricted my throat. ‘I mean, not even the one man I love in the whole world will go to bed with me.’
‘Huh?’
‘He’s gone celibate,’ I groaned.
‘But whaddabout Palm Springs?’
‘It wasn’t exactly a one-night stand – more your one-night sit. We just sat and talked about his parents for hours.’ Tash laughed loudly, quickly smothering her hilarity in the pillow. ‘It’s not funny,’ I said sharply.
Tash raised her head from the bedclothes and looked at my dejected reflection in the ceiling mirror. ‘Well, maybe he didn’t know you were like, comin’ on to him?’
Tash reckoned I was too reserved in the old sex department. She reckoned I needed to be more ‘up front’. That I should ‘wear my cunt on my sleeve’, as she put it.
‘Tash, I practically raped the guy, for God’s sake …’
‘Well what’s wrong then? Is the old sperm count down or what?’
‘I dunno. He just says he’s celibate.’
‘Kelp, milk, oysters, honey, raw nuts and wheat germ oil.’
‘What?’
‘Wheat germ oil is like, high in vitamin E, which increases the dude’s sperm count and the volume of seminal fluid. Kelp is like, packed with iodine which stimulates the endocrine glands which make men horny. As does the gonadotropic hormone in honey, and the glycogen in raw nuts. And oysters are like, major high in protein, not to mention calcium, iron and vitamin A – which can’t hurt, right?’
I looked at my friend in astonishment. Tash may have left school at fifteen, but she had a PhD in heterosexuality.
‘Why ya lookin’ so sceptical?’ Tash demanded.
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you, Tash, but it’s just so hard to think of a recipe that combines milk and oysters.’
‘Well, don’t worry about it now. If ya wanna get laid, wait till tonight,’ she laughed. ‘We’re gonna be treated like princesses.’
And we were. We were wined and dined and spoilt rotten. Drop-dead-gorgeous men asked us to dance and flirted compulsively. But all the time, our sleazy minders, Stefan and Carl, were watching us. While I could gorge myself to death, Tash wasn’t allowed to eat anything more substantial than a bit of wilted lettuce. At 10.30 were were marched back up to our rooms and tucked in.
‘Hey, ya wan us to say our fuckin’ prayers?’ Tash scoffed, as Stefan, with strict instructions for an early night, sealed the door shut.
At 10.45 Tash was dragging me down the corridor of the mansion. We stole into the private kitchen where she proceeded to raid the fridge. Renavigating our way back through the maze of stairs and walls and halls, we drank toasts straight from a bottle of champagne and scrawled graffiti.
‘F*** Censorship,’ Tash tattooed with nail polish on the first-floor landing.
‘Porn is the theory, rape is the practice,’ I authored in lipstick on old Onion-breath’s oak-panelled office door.
‘I think we’re a bad influence on ourselves,’ Tash decided, as we cracked open our second bottle of Bollinger. Which is quite possibly the reason we slept through the early morning wake-up call, and why, when Tash finally did appear in the photographic studio, an hour late, wearing, as ordered, only a tracksuit and no undies – so there’d be no elastic marks on her body – she looked like a chook’s breakfast.
‘No, of course I’m not angry,’ Carl said. He was carrying his camera like a weapon.
The gay make-up artist started fussing with Tash’s face. ‘Oh, my God. What lurvely skin. Bewdiful. Oh, and lervely hair. Whaddaya do for skin care? Great titties, too. Nicest lookin’ girl I’ve had in the hot seat for such a long time.’
Tash cocked her hip one way and tilted her head the other. ‘What’s this?’ she said, in a clear and challenging voice. ‘The old “massage the girl’s ego” bit?’ Carl and the make-up guy exchanged a wary glance. ‘I guess ya’re tryin’ to relax me, is that it?’ She then began to speak as though the men weren’t there. ‘Hey Kat, notice how they only use a gay make-up guy. That’s so I won’t feel threatened. I bet he’ll start talkin’ dirty soon, ya know, to put me in the mood.’ She flashed a knocking, mocking look at the makeup guy, who shrivelled into a guilty silence.
‘Cute,’ Carl said, a lethal glint in his eye, ‘real cute.’
About a year later, Tash was released from the makeup chair. After she’d changed into lacy underwear, Carl strapped her into highheeled, cream, cowgirl boots, out of which her legs rose like matchsticks. He arranged her limbs on the sofa, patted her scrawny shank, and started shooting.
‘I betcha there’s no film in the camera at this stage, am I right?’ Tash, indefatigable, sang out. ‘I betcha just shoot a few fake rolls first, ya know, till I get warmed up. Like toast, right?’
Carl wielded his camera with scarcely restrained violence.
‘Ya see, they hope you’ll get the hots for the photographer,’ she informed me, for his benefit, ‘and, hopefully, fuck him durin’ lunchbreak, so then you’ll be more relaxed. Ain’t that right, Carlie-Warlie?’
Carl stopped clicking for a moment and glanced at the make-up guy, who shrugged dismally.
‘Okay, babe,’ Carl said with contrived warmth. ‘I want to see one nipple.’ He switched into his pre-rehearsed preamble. ‘Imagine the camera is someone you’re trying to make very horny.’
Tash shot them a sceptical look. ‘Listen, fuck-face, the only thing makin’ me horny is the amount of cashola I’m gonna be paid for the centrefold.’
Carl’s face turned into a rigid mask of fury.
Painstakingly, they progressed from one nipple to two, and, finally, to full nudity. As Tash kicked off her teddy ensemble we all looked in amazement at the red splodge of pubic hair between her little legs.
‘A natural blonde, eh?’ Carl said, his voice slovenly.
‘Oh yeah,’ Tash said casually. ‘Forgot about that bit.’
Carl considered this for a moment, then kept shooting. ‘Oh well, it kind of goes with the nose-ring.’
Overwhelmed with hungover weariness, I curled up on a prop sofa behind a screen at the back of the studio, and sank, totally knackered, into a dreamless sleep.
I awoke to the sound of men’s voices.
‘Centrefold, my ass.’ Recognising Stefan’s South Efrican inflexions, I peeked around the side of the screen. He and Carl were pouring over the polaroids of Tash. ‘No way. I mean, fuck, she’s got tits like roadmaps.’ Tash was so pale that the flash had made the veins show through her translucent skin. According to the men, they looked like two bulbous blue-vein cheeses. The same breasts they’d both salivated over earlier, they now dissected coldly. ‘Christ, and whaddam I s’posed to do with the inverted nipple.’
‘I can tease that out with ice. She could still make the centrefold in my op –’
‘Hey. What the hell do ya think I’m talkin’ for? My health? Even if you do get it out, they’re dark nipples, too. She must’ve had a kid.’ Stefan went on, his voice subtly contemptuous. ‘Check for stretch marks.’
‘And dye that muff. We’ll give her a few days to tan up, then do a pictorial piece. I mean, okay, she’s lousy for the centrefold, but she has got such Guinness Book of Records hooters, I’ll use her for a secondary pictorial. Yeah, a fantasy pictorial. I dunno, with another babe maybe.’
‘Whaddabout that little chick she’s with?’
I tucked my head back behind the screen and stopped breathing.
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Stefan said. ‘She’s what we call in the trade, a “two bagger”. Put a paper bag over her head – and then another one, in case the first one breaks.’
I decided to go. I left Tash a note saying I’d be back, said goodbye to the talking rock, and went home to put my head in a paper bag.