I laid the advert on my knees and looked around at my fellow guinea pigs. Piggie we all were one way and another. Right little hogs. I’d never been a beauty, not like my sister. I had the brains. She had the cute stuff – long legs, button nose and pert breasts.
Of the girls in this room, there wasn’t a button nose among us. Plain. A rotten word to describe a poor defenceless female. Plain I was though, and I knew it. Cruelly, this waiting room had a whacking great mirror in it. It wasn’t one of those discreet ‘just-checking-my-lipstick’ mirrors. It was flipping huge. More of a look-at-your-ugly-mug mirror. I’d never had need of the lipstick mirrors because I’d never worn the stuff. Just like I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a hairdresser. I realised a long time ago that painting and preening my sad features was time wasted. What I was born with I was stuck with. Acceptance was my mantra, not camouflage. Until now, that is.
I looked at the advert again. ‘Women Wanted for Clinical Trial.’ The payment was good and the letter I’d received inviting me to this first session was intriguing. Are you attractive to men? It asked. I scratched an inky black cross in the ‘no’ box there. Do you have difficulty finding a partner? Yes sirree, you betcha. A couple of sad fumblings at university parties summed up my adventures with men. As soon as they saw me outside in the light, any half good-looking ones suddenly found urgent reasons to get home. And they must have lost the telephone number I pressed desperately in their palms because none of them phoned. Only twice had I ever been taken back to a fellow student’s bedroom. One was so drunk I practically had to carry him. The resulting coupling (yes, there was one) was like life. Nasty, brutish and short.
‘Can you all please come in now?’ The nurse in the white coat swished open the door to a small lecture theatre and twenty unlovely women took their seats. I won’t bore you with the science because pheromones aren’t my thing. But basically the drug we would be testing, if we decided to go ahead, worked on the principle of butterfly lust. Sorry, have I lost you? Well, they lost me at one point but I did grasp from the cartoon diagrams that butterflies exude some sort of scent which drives the opposite sex to distraction. Yes thanks. I was twenty-nine and I’d like some of that. Correction. Lots of it.
The next stage was each of us entering a cubicle with a doc who questioned us on everything from how many sexual partners we’d had to our diet and lifestyle. Mine checked out as Miss Lonely. Work, more work and nights at home with a packet of Doritos. The doctor then checked through the blood and other samples we had provided weeks ago. At the end, he gave a triumphant smile and told me I was just the sort of saddo they were looking for. It was then he handed me the magic bottle. Blue pills. I was to take one a day, before breakfast, and record on the datasheet my experiences. Then I must report back to this office at the date he marked on the front. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought he gave me a wink as he wished me luck and assured me I’d notice an upturn in my ‘activities’.
It was well after breakfast, but I had nothing to lose. I’ve never been a conformist, so I broke the rules and shoved in one of those little blue beauties straight away. As I went to bed at the end of the day I felt extraordinarily rested, more relaxed than I had for some time. The next morning, curious to see whether anything had changed, I went into town and had my second pill washed down with a cup of cappuccino sitting on a squishy leather sofa in the high street coffee shop. I sat by the window and watched men passing. Wouldn’t it be heaven to have any one I wanted? Like a skinny woman in a patisserie I became choosy. If this experiment worked, I wouldn’t have to take any old specimen sporting a limp dick and a weak chat line. I’d be the one choosing.
As I watched geeks, ghouls and I-love-myself-in-these-jeans specimens of the male gender mooching past, I crossed them scornfully off my mental list. Then I clocked, standing with a clipboard, one of those guys who try to get you interested in giving to charity. I sat up. Here was a dream come true. All those guys are out of work actors or models, that’s what makes them happy to approach strangers and chat them up just to extract cash. It also happens to put them tops on the gorgeous guy scale.
Here was a top-drawer testosterone dispenser in seriously stylish packaging. A head above the other men on the street, his face was squarish, framed with understated sideburns and peppered with stubble. Streaky blonde hair, dishevelled and not unclean, made him look as if he had just got up from a night’s torrid lovemaking. In repose, he looked slightly snooty as if he was above all this. But when he made his choice of victim and zeroed in on (I noted) a pretty girl, his blue grey eyes lit up and the dimple on his chin dispersed in a widening smile. It may have been something to do with taking that pill, but as I absently spooned bitter cappuccino foam into my mouth I began to feel disgustingly horny.
I knew it was ridiculous to think it would work that quickly, but paracetamols did, why not this? I wished I could have checked my pasty face in a handbag mirror but I didn’t possess one. Still, this was more a recce than a fully armoured assault with combat gear. Downing my coffee, and gathering my handbag, I paid, hearing the comforting rattle of those little blue pills. Once outside on the street, I wondered where those pheromones would appear. Would I breathe them out or would they exude from my skin like scented oil?
I watched my prey as he combed his fingers through a mop of hair, nonchalantly collapsing it back onto his forehead while he listened to the girl and scribbled on his clipboard. I imagined his hands cupping the back of my head, and a feeling shot through my stomach like I was going down in a fast lift. Then, horrors, he looked up and our pupils locked. Instead of turning away embarrassed as I would have done in the past when I thought I had no chance, I found myself staring back. Then, most unlike the old me, my brazen lips edged upwards into a smile. Mr Cool responded with a raised eyebrow. My heart tap danced. Then, after pausing longingly, he turned and reluctantly went back to his interviewee.
I let out the breath I had been holding. This was power. I had experienced it at work. But never, ever with men. I turned and drifted thoughtfully off through the shoppers. Remember that old song about walking down this street before but the pavement always staying beneath your feet until… Well this was my moment of revelation. I was suddenly jet propelled with new hope. Observing in a way I had never done before, I looked at men and women as they floated past. The attractive ones had a sex-filled swagger. It came in their walk, the way they held their heads up, the way they tossed their hair. They believed in themselves. They had it in spadefuls and I couldn’t even muster a teaspoonful.
Then I caught my reflection in a shop window. That word plain came back, slapping me across my insignificant face. My outlined faded into the background. Black trousers, brown jumper, safe duffle coat. I was the colour of the street, grey, unchallenging. I turned to look at the clothes on the mannequins. Bright, in-your-face reds, upstart black and white checks, cinched in waists, hip-hugging lycra. The sort of clothes I wouldn’t even try on. They could never have my name on, could they?
I went in. It was a shop I knew was too expensive. The sort of shop where they serve you, where clothes aren’t jam-packed on the rails like a jumble sale but where they hang in stately splendour, to be admired and savoured. I told the salesgirl I wanted to try on every one of the items on the mannequins. Eagerly she rushed off then stood outside the changing room ready to hand me more as I slipped in and out of the luxurious materials. Pure new wool, soft leather, textured silk. I wasn’t fat, never had been. In fact I’d forgotten what my body looked like. I spent my time, day or night, in a self-imposed uniform of loose fitting shift-dresses with round necked jumpers designed to disguise, not enhance.
As I completed one outfit exactly as it had been in the window I gingerly stepped out wanting to see the effect in a large mirror. With my new pheromones working overtime, the mirror had become friend, not foe. ‘Wow,’ said my salesgirl. ‘I’d never have believed you were the same woman.’ I gave her a sideways look. ‘No, honestly, I’m not just saying that. You’ve got a fantastic figure. You just need, if you don’t mind…’ she advanced towards my hips, I felt her hands over my waist and then smoothing the cashmere jumper over my stomach. Then she paused at my waist, tightening the leather belt, instantly granting me an hourglass shape. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, somewhat like being frisked at an airport, only more sensuous. ‘Mmm,’ she swooned, ‘that’s wonderful perfume you’re wearing.’ Nil points my friend. I wasn’t wearing any. Never have. I looked at her tight arse and small breasts. What was happening to me, for heaven’s sake? I was fancying girls! ‘There, that’s better. If you’ve got a tiny waist and a full bust, why hide it?’ She stepped back and looked at me admiringly, with a longing in her wide mouse eyes. These pheromones were gold dust. I wasn’t just becoming attractive to the male sex but to everyone. A perfectly hetero sales girl was developing a crush on me.
‘You look gorgeous,’ she sighed. Was it true? There were certainly curves there, curves I’d given up on. ‘If you don’t mind my saying though, you ought to get yourself a decent bra. Support is vital.’
I was persuaded. I bought two of the complete outfits, one of which I chose to wear immediately, and also some madly expensive underwear, a designer perfume and a pair of kid leather boots costing a month’s wages. Sod it. A months’ wages had bought me a million-dollar thrill. As I sashayed out with my bags, the girl pressed her card on me. I watched her lip-glossed mouth as she said, ‘I do personal shopping sessions. Feel free to phone me any time.’ She held my arm a fraction longer than was decent. I smiled and left. I was the one doing the choosing now. Maybe I’d phone her. Maybe not.
But now, like a room that’s newly painted makes the curtains look shabby, I was aware of my nothing hairdo and porridge-coloured winter face. I looked over the road and there was one of London’s premier hairdressers. They didn’t have an instant appointment, but could do me in an hour. Just enough time for me to wander into the nearest department store and submit to one of those make-up girls.
Half an hour of being gently caressed, painted with brushes and moulded with expensive cosmetics made me feel like a princess. The sensation of the make-up girl’s lithe body pressed warmly against me, her breath drifting across my skin, sent my head reeling. At fever pitch I prayed to God the pills were going to work in the way I hoped. If not my pussy would surely self-destruct with frustration.
As I looked at my made-up self in the mirror, I felt as if I were wearing a magic mask. My ordinary features were transformed into a vibrant terrain of shadows and light. Turning my face to the warm lights, I discovered I had cheekbones. Could those really be my luscious claret red lips and eyelashes to die for? As she admired her work, making adjustments here and there, the girl said, ‘I love doing faces like yours. If you don’t mind my saying, scrubbed clean your face looks quite ordinary. But it’s very symmetrical, like lots of models. So it’s easy to transform. Your skin hasn’t got a blemish. It’s the perfect sort of face for going to town on. These smouldery, smoky colours really suit you. I love them. Don’t you?’ I could have kissed her, partly with gratitude and partly because she was extraordinarily cute. I bought every potion, lotion, powder, gloss and sparkly, sprinkly pot of witchery and sorcery she had on offer. ‘Come back again,’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ll do you for free any time.’
The hairdresser pouted and lifted up a skein of listless hair. He looked as if he was fingering a rodent that had expired messily on the front step of the salon.
‘Well, we have our work cut out here, haven’t we?’ He yanked a comb through my offensive hair and let it sag. ‘Who cut this for you last time? Or have you never had it cut? It’s very long.’
‘Me,’ I confessed.
‘No surprise there then.’ I gave him a look which I hoped said, ‘okay, smartarse, I’m paying through the nose for this, just do your job’.
‘Still,’ he mused, redeeming himself, ‘the raw material’s good. You’re lucky your hair’s thick and because it’s had no colouring it’s in good order. Pierre,’ he clicked his fingers, ‘shampoo my lady now.’ I lay back and let the shampoo boy massage my scalp. I could really feel those pheromones kicking in with a vengeance as he worked on me. Deep down inside my sex, the rhythmic massaging made me swell, feeling the ebb and flow of my senses dipping into my depths. He pushed his fingers into the indents at the back of my skull and I felt my meridians clearing, the blood surging through my body. As he wrapped the towel around my head he almost had to help me to the stylist’s chair, I felt so relaxed.
Like a sculptor practising his art, the hairdresser crimped his way, snipping a sprig here, teasing a curl there. Once he’d cut he started with the hairdryer, running his fingers through now bouncy, flouncy, frankly fantastic hair. All superciliousness had evaporated as he walked behind me revealing his handiwork to me with a hand-mirror. I had obviously proved to be his most remarkable transition. Like a lion with a mane of curls I hardly recognised myself. Handing over the plastic, I’d have happily paid double for this feeling and tipped him an obscene amount just to prove who was boss.
Bags swinging, looking and feeling like a Hollywood starlet, I made my way back to the scene of my earlier conquest. Tousle-haired Romeo was still there, and I stood on the pavement admiring his simply staggering beauty. I wanted him more than anything I had ever wanted. And for once in my life I believed I really could have a guy like that. As he talked to his current victim, I saw his eyes zero in on me, and do the most perfect double take. He drank me up like a man in the Mojave Desert cracking open a freezing can of beer. He finished and dismissed the person he was with. I stood and watched, challenge in my every fibre, as he placed one leg in front of the other to ease his way over to me. He got the clipboard out. ‘Ma’am, could you spare a few minutes to answer some questions.’
‘Certainly,’ I pouted crimson lips at him.
His voice entered my ears and shot straight to the top of my legs. What the hell he was saying I couldn’t register. None of it mattered until the last bit where he snapped shut his clipboard and said. ‘Look, I’ve finished for the day and what I really wanted to ask is whether you’ll come for a drink with me.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘On one condition?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Champagne’s my favourite drink. Could you run to that?’
‘As a poor charity worker, I’ll have to take up robbing banks. But for you, it’d be worth it.’
Looks, brains and a sense of humour. The man was a triple whammy.
We drank a bottle together, starting off in a dimly lit bar and finishing it on the carpet of his bachelor flat. Fully clothed, he said, ‘would you like to come to bed now?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
He lifted me as if I was a single white rose, cradling me in his arms and enfolding me onto the leather armchair in his bedroom. I watched from my ringside seat, heart pounding as he walked with the pace of a tiger. He paused by scented candles standing in the fireplace and lit every one. The candlelight was kind. Where I once would have been creased with embarrassment, with this man, in this half light, I held my body straight and proud as he knelt before me and ran practised fingers over my tingling skin. I breathed in jasmine scent emanating from the candles and held my arms up. I allowed him to ease off my top, and heard his hungry gasp as my breasts in their new lilac bra bounced into his face. He kissed every inch of skin between my neck and my thighs, pausing to breathe deep where those sassy old pheromones were gathering in my warmest places. Have you ever had a man who so desired you, that he breathed the natural scent in the pit of your arm as if it were a newly gathered bunch of white lilies? No? Well try it sometime. Forget every aphrodisiac known to man. That level of devotion to the art of sex sends a girl weak-kneed begging for completion.
I lay back on the coolness of Egyptian cotton sheets and felt his warm hard eager body cover my own as I shook with desire. I felt the roughness of his jeans against the nakedness of my skin. I could almost feel the pheromones collecting on my sweating body as I looked wide-eyed while he brazenly peeled off his clothes. Then he presented me with the finest gift any woman in a high state of arousal can have – the glowing torso of a man fired with passion. He lay back on the bed and straddled me over his stubbled chin. He unhooked my bra and kneaded my breasts as I rested my sex over his half-open mouth. Gently I sank on to his waiting lips, landing my pussy onto the warmth of his tongue. As I gripped the leather bed head, my head swam while he sucked and blew, his fingers digging into my thighs. Never before had I wanted to come so urgently.
But, like the expert he was, he didn’t let me. Instead, he pushed me down over him positioning my thighs either side of his. I teased myself with his moist erection, my mane of shampoo-fresh hair falling onto his face. He placed me expertly, teasing my opening with one glorious erect cock. I sensed him watching me, studying my face as I chose exactly which moment was right, bucked up and then down, pinioning myself on his superb hardness. I sank into him as he grasped my hips and lifted me up and down, causing his breath to issue ragged and urgent.
When he put his thumb in his mouth and sucked leaving it slippery and warm, and pressed it against the top of my clitoris I thought I might faint. My eyes closed, I leant back at the knees, swimming in the feeling of his gentle rubbing, filled with his erection. He could tell I was climbing the mountain, upwards and upwards until with a sensational burst of release, I shuddered to a climax, gripping his ankles for support. As I lay my head, sated and exhausted, on his chest I heard him murmur, ‘you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’ It wasn’t true, I knew it wasn’t true, but for that one ticking second I found myself believing and held him so tight I thought he’d cry out, when all he did was smile and hold me tighter.
It was with feet heavy with trepidation that I headed back to the clinic to hear the results of the trial. Oh, I had a tale to tell them. A tale of making love every single day since I had been popping those little blue pills. A tale that would fill them with joy for the efficacy of their preparation but which filled me with blinding horror. Because when the trial was over, the supply would stop. It would have to. What about the other ugly girls’ successes or failures? If their development hadn’t been so spectacular as mine, maybe the wonder drug, the drug that had transformed my life would never be manufactured, would never come on sale, would fade into obscurity. And I would fade with it. My enthusiastic lover, the lover of my sleeping and waking dreams would sense a change. He would go off me. He would look at me through creased eyes and wonder what on earth he had seen in such a lumpy, dumpy specimen. My life would return to its greyness and I would live alone and unloved.
I eased myself in my tight black pencil skirt into the chair opposite the doctor, crossed my stockinged legs and told him of my great adventure. I waited, listening under the strip lights to his breathing as he wrote my results down. ‘So,’ I asked with a catch in my throat. ‘Was the trial a success?’
‘Totally and utterly.’ The doctor sat back closing his notebook. ‘You and the others were a resounding success.’
I trembled, hope escalating, ‘has the drug finished its trials, will it be on sale soon? Where can I buy it?’
The doctor steepled his hands and looked me over, shaking his head gently from side to side. ‘There is no drug,’ he stated.
‘Well, no, I don’t have any now. I finished them all off yesterday. I just wanted to know when and where I can get some more.’
‘There is no drug. There never was a drug.’
‘What are you talking about? Then what have I been taking?’
‘Just a sugar coated pill. A placebo.’
‘That can’t be,’ I stuttered, painted finger nails holding the empty box up at him as if he were an idiot. I ran a shaking hand through my soft wild curls. ‘I’ve been transformed. You gave me pills and I was transformed.’
‘Yes, I gave you pills. Little blue tablets of confidence. You transformed yourself. You believed and so it came to pass. You are beautiful because you believe yourself to be beautiful.’
‘And the trial?’
‘A psychological trial into the mysteries of the human mind. You weren’t the only one. All the women responded in a similar fashion. You all had it in you all along. You just needed those little blue smarties to make it happen.’
I shook his hand and walked down the street, back to my gorgeous lover, the little pill box, moving silent and empty and unnecessary, in my handbag.