LEO
“I remember hearing some British actor on television once, going on about how Hollywood was full of airheads and conversation was a lost art there compared to London. I don’t know what kind of conversations he thought we were having on our council estate in Islington!”
When we were teenagers back in Islington, sharing a fag outside the toilets during the inevitable date postmortem, there were two things that mattered: 1) Did you get off with her? 2) Where’d you do it?
Two questions which summed up our sexual prowess—at least as far as the imaginations of my sweaty teenage friends were concerned. If the answer to the first question was a no, then you didn’t get asked the second question, and your date was officially rated as shite and you were classified a total loser.
Therefore the second question was more key. It was crap to have to answer no to the first question and have your mates flick their cigarettes at you—or even worse, decide you weren’t worth wasting a butt on and walking away in disgust. My answer was always, “What do you reckon?” which all the other guys took to mean yes. Technically it wasn’t a lie, more their misunderstanding.
It didn’t feel like a lie either. As long as I’d had an erection at some point during the actual date I felt that I’d “had it off,” because I inevitably fantasized later on about doing it with whoever it was. So even if we didn’t have it off in the fully penetrative sense of the term, as far as I was concerned the key thing on a date was to have the erection. If I got an erection I could answer yes to question number one with a clear conscience and move onto question two. And, let’s face it: at fifteen, I always got an erection.
The second question was Where’d you do it? In clear conscience I can reply to the question of where I did it with Holly. In the shower outside her poolhouse while she hosed me down. Unfortunately, Joseph was hosing me down with her, but I try not to think about that part. In any fantasy scenario I might decide to have about the event later on, Joseph definitely won’t be featuring.
The other reason the second question was so key was because it was this reply that won you the real kudos. As a teenager in Islington finding different places to have sex was a tough call.
We were all looking for new and exotic places to get off with our dates—places that would win us real respect. Bus shelters, alleys, schoolyards, local cafés—those sorts of places didn’t cut it. Besides, the bus drivers went off their heads if you tried it on their buses, and the shop owners were no better, so mostly we were left with pretty scabby venues for our gropings.
Once I did it in the girls’ toilets at the White Horse, which impressed my mates for a while, before Lee Hubbard did it in the headmasters office with his girl—on the desk! Respect. Where you did it spoke of your ingenuity as a sexual adult. Later, of course, we got onto questions like: 3) How did you do it? (As in what position.) and 4) How many times. Obviously we all bullshitted like crazy over that one. Once was never enough.
It took a while for my erection over Holly to subside, so I dived into the pool and tried to swim it off. By the time I came out Holly had someone with her, someone older altogether more put together than Holly. I don’t mean put together as in a better body, I mean more assembled. This girl looked like she’d been constructed on the factory floor.
As I approached the two girls I was thinking that my days of having erections over celebrities in the Hollywood Hills was about to come to an end. This girl was probably Holly’s minder. She looked like the sort who could kick-box her way out of any situation. Or maybe she was a chauffeur, come to drive me back to my real life as a sofa-surfing nobody.
They didn’t hear me approaching, but I could hear them talking about me and what I heard wasn’t too nice. They stopped when they realized I was there, and the “assembled one” turned to me and meowed. Well, she said something but I don’t know what. Her words just sounded like a long feline yawn.
I was focusing on Holly, and she looked gutted. I’d seen that look on girls before, and I recognized it as a look that could be milked. As a kid, whenever I walked in on my mum and auntie Lucy talking about me, my strategy was to let my eyes fill up with tears and run out of the room.
Auntie Lucy would then say something to my mum along the lines of, “Now you’ve done it, Jean!” and my mum or auntie Lucy would come out after me and say sorry and promise me whatever toy or activity it was that I’d been banging on about most recently.
As a strategy, I accept that it’s probably not that principled, but it was better than dwelling on the nasty stuff they’d been saying about me. I used this seize-the-day approach on Holly and the assembled one. I let my eyes fill up with tears, so they could see how much they’d hurt my feelings, before striding off down the slope toward the poolhouse. My only regret were the ridiculous swimming trunks I was wearing. I looked totally gay.
The assembled one came after me. Not quite who I wanted, but it all worked out okay because I got what I wanted.
After telling me what a great body I had, and how great she thought I’d been to Holly, she asked me if I’d consider staying on in the poolhouse and allow them to repay me for my help earlier that day. She explained about wanting to do a makeover, and I pretended that it would be a big sacrifice but one I might be willing to make for the greater good.
She begged.
I sulked.
She begged some more, and in the end we struck a deal. Nancy said Holly would be really pleased. “Who knows what might happen?” she purred. I mean she really purred—like Cat Woman, or something. But so what? Goodbye sofa-sharing at Hollymount Apartments; hello Hollywood Hills poolhouse and a futon all to myself!
It wasn’t all good news, though, because somewhere in the negotiations it was decided that I would be the next victim on the new season of MakeMeOver. It’s this tossers’ show that brings these actresses you thought were dead back to life. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched it once, with Kev and Snore, but if I haven’t I’ve seen things like it. Apparently the network is sick of the format, which is where I come in. Nancy said having me on the show would spice things up. Which made me feel a bit like a vindaloo.
“You’d be doing us a big favor,” Nancy purred again, as if she was offering oral sex.
Because I was getting sick of her running her eyes over my body, and because I wanted to get back to Holly, I said, “Yeah, sure, whatever you think. Cool.”
I got the feeling I was seriously going to regret that yes. Only not immediately, because when I walked into the kitchen later Holly smiled at me, and it was a smile that promised much, much more than a haircut and a new pair of jeans.
She’d stuck a T-shirt on over the top of her bikini and she must have spilled water down her front. Seeing that she was the sort of girl who could slop stuff over herself like a normal person made her even more adorable to me.
When they spoke about my makeover later, though, the fear kicked in. I got the impression that when they said makeover they really didn’t mean a new pair of jeans and a haircut. That’s the thing about Americans; they don’t know the meaning of half-hearted. Everything is All or Nothing.
When Holly and Nancy talked about my makeover they used words like—“major orthodontic reconstruction…spinal alignment…speech adjustments.”
This was all starting to sound like it was going to hurt.
“Guys like me—average guys from Islington in their twenties—don’t live as kept men in poolhouses in the Hollywood Hills—let alone allow themselves to get turned into designer-clad tossers,” I told them grandly.
“You’re going to love it,” they trilled.
But I knew I wasn’t. After my swim they flicked through magazines to show me what they planned for me, and I was none too impressed with the looks and styles they pointed out.
“See—that could be you!” Holly held up a picture of two guys standing by a Porsche. Guys with spivvy haircuts, credit card attitudes and tassel-shoe tastes. The type of guys I wanted to smack in the mouth, not emulate.
“Only if you remove my frontal lobe,” I warned her.
After that they took me to this spa on Sunset Boulevard, and I was steamed, scrubbed and massaged to within an inch of my life. I didn’t mind that so much, but I definitely preferred the tequila shots that followed.
It was Nancy’s idea to play a game of Truth or Dare. I always took the dare. They always took the truth. Which sort of says all there is to say about the sex war. Girls always want truth and guys always want risk.
Plus, Truth or Dare games are always about sex. Everyone knows that. Tequila shots are always about sex, too.
So shot by shot the girls undressed their secrets for me.
It was late afternoon and we were sitting in Holly’s cathedral-sized living room with windows down one whole side. Tinseltown looked like a fabled mystical land below, with its palm trees and taller buildings peeking out from the carpet of low-lying smog. It was the most exotic setting I’d ever been in, and there I was, stretched out on a white sofa in some guy called Ted’s clothes while two beautiful women dared me to take out each of my three body piercings one by one: upper ear, eyebrow, nipple.
Even if there wasn’t any actual shagging, it was all very erotic. I thought it was going especially well when I asked Holly to give me a hand with my nipple ring. For a moment I was afraid that I’d reached the peak of life’s pleasures. I suddenly feared that everything in my life would seem crap and sad in comparison to what was happening in that room on that couch that evening.
I suppose I should have given a thought to what Kev was up to, or how my mum was doing, or world hunger—but I didn’t. My life at that moment was unrecognizable from my life that morning, and there was a suspicious part of me that worried that if I actually thought about Real Life this Perfect Fantasy Life would disappear.
The conversations between Nancy and Holly were clever and fast as they darted from topic to topic and reference to reference. I felt like a total idiot a lot of the time. I remember hearing some British actor on television once, going on about how Hollywood was full of airheads and conversation was a lost art there compared to London. I don’t know what kind of conversations he thought we were having on our council estate in Islington!
I slugged back another shot of tequila and listened to Holly detail all the positions she’d ever made love in. Girls can be amazingly honest about their relationships with guys. After five slammers, I knew why Holly had dated all of her previous boyfriends—who, as far as I can tell, all treated her like shit. Especially Ted.
“He was good for me,” she explained, when I quizzed her about it. “Everyone said we looked amazing together.”
Oh, well, that’s okay, then. “Didn’t you say he sold stories about you to some magazine?”
She rolled her eyes at my ignorance, but I reckon most guys would have a problem working with her reasoning.
The only troubling aspect of the evening was the way Nancy kept touching me—brushing her leg against me, that sort of thing. At one point she grabbed my jaw and asked Holly if she didn’t think I had kissable lips. The proximity of her lips to mine at the time made the compliment vaguely threatening, but because of who and where I was I didn’t think I could say anything. I was still sizing Nancy Catkin up.
As the evening moved into dusk, and the lights of the buildings began to twinkle, the city looked like someone had spread a spray of fairy dust across the hills. I started to get hungry, but I didn’t want to be the one to end it all. I was still thinking that if I pinched myself I might wake up on the sofa beside Snore.
Holly looked really hot. She’d gone out and come back with pashminas for her and Nancy, and when she wrapped one around her shoulders she looked adorable. It wasn’t cold outside, but the air-conditioning was on so high so it felt Arctic. Scrunched up on the big white sofa she looked like a child who might fall down between the cushions and disappear forever. I was thinking how vulnerable she looked and how much I wanted to protect her when Nancy’s cell phone vibrated.
“It’s Larry,” she mouthed, checking the readout.
“I don’t want to talk to him.” Holly put a cushion over her face.
Nancy’s brow creased as she concentrated on listening. Every so often she made a short response, and I could see Holly listening in despite herself as she peeked out from under the cushion. Clueless as I was to the workings of their world, even I could tell that whatever this Larry geezer was saying wasn’t good.
“I knew she’d gone to the Enquirer about how Holly manipulated her with her eating disorders as a child, but this takes stabbing in the back to new levels. She’s not human.”
I was beyond confused.
“Are you sure?” Nancy kept repeating—interspersed with, “Oh shoot!” and, “Oh, no!” Finally she said, “Larry, if this happens we’re finished.”
Holly couldn’t take it any longer. “What?” she asked, making a grab for the phone.
“Just a minute Larry.” She turned to Holly. “He’s been trying to get hold of you all day! It’s Catherine—your mother.”
I saw a look of terror rush across Holly’s face before she asked what had happened.
I was thinking of what I would do, as my mind threw up possibilities of what might have happened to her mother. Maybe she’d been killed in an air crash? Or maybe it was cancer? I envisioned myself rushing across to Holly and enveloping her in my arms.
I’ll go with her to the hospital, I thought.
I’ll talk to the doctors on her behalf.
I’ll fetch her coffee from the hospital coffee machine.
I’ll hold her while she comes to grips with the horrific news of the loss of her mother.
I’ll comfort her at the graveside.
I know it’s sick, but I was actually starting to look forward to hearing that her mother had been in some horrific accident.
But I figured I was out of luck when Nancy hissed, “She’s gone national!” The way she said “gone national” made it sound like Holly’s mum had “gone berserk” as opposed to “gone into cardiac arrest.”
Holly gasped. “Oh, my God!” Her face went green and she slumped, but she didn’t look surprised.
“Larry, can I call you back?” Nancy asked as she sat by Holly and took her hand.
Holly looked pale. “It’s happening all over again,” she murmured trancelike, slumping farther down into the sofa.
She seemed to get smaller and smaller as Nancy explained the ins and outs of what her mother’s actions would mean for Holly, and outlined the damage control strategy that Larry was putting into place. I just sat opposite, watching Holly shrink.
My mum used to shrink when she was upset. Mind you, when she was pissed off she could tower over people like a super-sized human.
“Why does she do this to me? This is just like when she—”
Nancy cut her off. “Sorry, babe, but it gets worse. The interview is just a teaser for her show.”
Holly looked like she’d been struck. “What show?”
“ABC have offered your mother her own show. A kind of middle-aged-female-Jerry-Springer sort of thing. Her first show is going to be aired in direct competition with MakeMeOver next season. She’s going to confront the issue of Hollywood Princesses and how their careers impact on their families. I need a cigarette.”
“You’re kidding.”
Nancy stood up, wrapped her arms around herself and gazed out over the view. “’Fraid not. They’re billing it as ‘Catherine Klein takes on the spoiled youth of America.’”
I thought Holly was about to cry.
“But her name isn’t even Klein; it’s O’Reilly!” I pointed out stupidly, standing there like a walk-on in a soap opera.
My depressing train of thought was broken by Nancy twirling a lock of my hair in her fingers. “More than ever now we have to hope our Knight in Shining Armor can save us.”
Holly gave me a look, but I didn’t know what it meant—it was a look that flashed between a glare and a glance.
“Poor Holly,” Nancy sighed as Holly walked out of the room. A few seconds later she followed.
I waited alone, with the half-empty tequila bottle in the cold, dark room, and tried but failed to stay awake. The heroics of the day were taking their toll and I was getting an early hangover from the tequila. When neither of them had come back after an hour, I took myself out to the poolhouse.
Unfortunately I didn’t know where any of the outside lights were, so I tripped down the slope, guided only by the lights that lit up the pool. I felt around for switches inside the poolhouse, but no luck. In the end I settled for crawling my way to the futon, where I collapsed, totally whacked.
There were no blankets or pillows, but I was so tired that I fell asleep in my clothes. Actually, they were the clothes I’d appropriated from Holly’s ex-lover, Ted, and for some pathetic reason I didn’t understand this made me feel smug. I fell into a deep, contented sleep almost immediately.
I don’t know how much later it was when I was woken by the presence of someone else in the poolhouse. My body tensed as I peered into the darkness.
“Leo…are you awake?” Her voice was tiny, almost inaudible.
I said hi into the darkness as I struggled to remember where I was.
“I brought you some sheets and blankets.”
I sat up, adjusting my eyes to the unfamiliar surroundings. “Thanks. You didn’t have to.”
There was a glow coming through the wooden shutters from the lights in the pool—barely enough to make out a human outline where she stood at the foot of the futon. I waited for my eyes to adapt before saying anything else. At one point I thought I could hear her heart beating, but it turned out to be my own. I thought of asking her to turn the lights on, but she seemed so content just to sit there that I thought it best not to intrude. So I sat there with her, not knowing what to do or say and with no understanding of what was expected of me.
“Are you okay?” I asked eventually.
“Yes,” she whispered.
I wanted to ask why we were whispering, but there were so many things I didn’t understand about her world—like why her boyfriends left their clothes, why they sold secrets about her to the press, why when she had so much money other people told her what to do. Why her mother wanted to mess her about.
“Are you sure?” I whispered back. “You sound upset.”
“A bit.” She sat down at the other end of the futon and I got my first whiff of her smell—like lemons that have just been cut. I knew as I inhaled her that night that I would never get enough of that smell. It wasn’t just the perfume she was wearing. It was her.
“Sorry about…you know…whatever happened in there. That stuff about your mother,” I said lamely. I felt uncontrollably tired—the darkness and the silence seemed to engulf me. Also, my face was hurting again. I wanted to curl back up and fall asleep, but I sensed Holly wanted more than slumber from me, and I wanted to give more—whatever more was. “Has your mum…you know…has she done stuff like this before?”
Holly made a noise in her chest that might have been a groan, but could have been one of those bitter laughs I’d heard her use when we were discussing Ted. It was a laugh that kind of imploded and fell back in on itself.
I waited patiently for her to say something else. It was a while before I realized she was crying. She’s one of those quiet criers—hardly any noise at all, just occasional muffled little gulps for air.
When I cried as a kid, my mum never asked me what was wrong—never said dumb stuff like “Are you okay?” when it was clear I wasn’t.
It was a good strategy on her part, because I was never really sure why I was crying anyway—and even if I was sure I probably wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it. When you’re crying and someone asks you why, their concern just feels like another pressure. I don’t think telling people why you’re crying helps even when you get older, although maybe you get better at giving satisfactory answers.
My mum used to put her arms around me when I cried and ask me for a cuddle. Like she was the one who was upset. Like she was the one who needed to be held. Wiping away my tears, I’d give my mum a cuddle and she’d squeeze me hard, like she really needed me.
Cuddling my mum when I was sad made me feel like I was part of something bigger than whatever it was that had upset me—the marbles I’d lost, or the kid who’d walloped me in the playground and nicked my lunch, or the poor mark I’d got in spelling. Sometimes I’d even say, “It’s all right, Mum,” totally forgetting that she was cuddling me because I’d been the one bawling my eyes out.
So instead of asking Holly why she was crying, or saying something dumb, I asked her if she would hold me. She didn’t need a lot of coaxing. Her arms flew around my neck like I was some kind of life raft. I was almost afraid she was going to choke me. Only I didn’t want to move her, so I just did that shallow breathing thing I’d seen junkies doing in films.
I stroked her back while she sobbed into my neck, and even though my face was going blue for want of air I felt like the luckiest man alive. Only not as lucky as when she kissed me.
So that was where and how and why we first did it. Really did it. Illuminated by the blue lights of the swimming pool, we snogged, and then over the next few hours we explored one another’s bodies. It had to be the longest running foreplay in the history of the world. I didn’t get bored or agitated, like I normally do when I’m dying for penetration. It was dead romantic, I guess, apart from when she called me Ted. But I wasn’t going to dwell on that. Not yet.