Dancing Bare
by Rigby Taylor
Chapter 8
Farce
While typing this in the pleasant shade of trees beside the fishpond, I was distracted by a shaft of sunlight in which a dense column of tiny midges spiralled above the water.
Tens of thousands of them swirling in luminous eddies; tiny particles of light soaring up and down, in and out, round and round apparently at random but never colliding in their fantastic dance. The purpose of this extraordinary aerial ballet, is the raison d'être of all life, from the tiniest protozoon to the largest mammal. Reproduction. They will mate on the wing, sink to earth, lay eggs, and die; their brief lives thus rendered as significant as the lives of all other organisms in the incomprehensibly complex system we call Life. For humans, as for midges and every other form of Life, their sole 'purpose' is to reproduce.
Control sex and you control the world; as religious leaders have long understood. By proclaiming sex and nudity to be sinful, popes and imams have their congregations by the short and curlies – riddled with guilt, unable to function without bouts of confession and punishment for even thinking about sex – let alone doing it!
After WWII, Organised Religions lost their stranglehold on the minds of many Europeans and they began to think freely. In the 1960s, religious observance fell to unprecedented lows as people sloughed off the mantle of guilt and embraced natural instincts.
In recent years, however, the 'Religions of the Book' have been clawing back lost ground – some by marketing themselves as more democratic, freer thinking, sympathetic to difference; others by reinforcing the calls for death to all who fail to observe the commands of their prophets as declared in their Book.
The success of their campaigns can be measured by the amount of porn on the Internet. Natural urges that are repressed have a way of bursting forth in violent expressions of revolt. The resulting overwhelming preponderance of pornography on the Internet has encouraged people to imagine they live in a sexually liberated society, whereas the truth is the opposite. Porn is the result of repression of healthy, open discussion, and sexual activity, which is why sexual violence and loveless sexually explicit entertainment are seen as the products of diseased minds, by societies where sex and nudity are considered as normal and healthy as eating, sleeping, working and playing.
That column of midges reminded me of London in the '60s. A myriad of swarming humans, fluttering in the bright new light of liberation with one thing on their minds – sex.
The crowd at The Six Bells pub was riotous. Sam reckoned they'd been waiting all afternoon to see the naked chicks and were well and truly lubricated. Instead of a blue carpet, someone had just shoved a few tables aside to create a zigzag alley. Without clear separation from the audience we'd be open to abuse. I didn't like it, nor did the girls. Pock said not to be so pathetic, but it wasn't his arse on show. There weren't any spotlights; not even a live band – just the thumping house muzak.
Blonde traipsed out to drunken cheers. She coped as she had before – they didn't dare muck with her. Brown's cute charm had little effect and the catcalls were crude. I received a barrage of "Queer! Homo!" so gave them the finger – not a smart move. I only just made it back; terrified of what would happen when the harem trousers came off! In the middle of Blonde's second sortie there was a crash at the front and a gang of yobbos burst into the pub wielding what looked like cricket bats. At the same moment, a group of young men on the far side of the pub raced for their nearest exit.
"Everyone out!" called the Boss, as police whistles shrilled, giving the weapon-wielding youths plenty of time to follow the fleeing young men. Red seized the jewellery. Pock grabbed our bags and tossed them into the boot of the car. We squeezed into the back seat with him and Sam; the boss scrambled into the front; Red put his foot down and our tyres squealed.
After a couple of blocks, he stopped to check we had all the jewellery. When everything was accounted for, Sam got out and I said I'd do the same, as there wasn't going to be a show that night, and I wanted to get back to the pub to see Melvyn. I didn't tell them that, of course. The Boss apologised for leaving his chequebook back at the house. I'd have to go with him if I wanted to be paid.
Somewhere between the Cromwell Road and Kensington High Street, we parked in a tree-lined avenue flanked by large houses fronted with Doric columns, porticos, and wide steps leading to impressive front doors. Our entrance, however, was the service stairs to the side, down which we scampered, arriving in a large, warm, modern kitchen smelling of toast and coffee. I was ravenous.
Red busied himself at the sink bench, Pock handed me my bag of clothes, then he and the girls disappeared. I dumped my bag on a shelf and followed the boss into a small office. He took out his chequebook, wrote in it, tore out a cheque and placed it in front of me… it was for only half the sum offered in the contract.
"You only gave one performance," he said to my look of surprise.
"It wasn't my fault…"
"Next time, read the fine print," he stated bluntly. He then wrote another cheque for three times that amount and showed it to me. "Here's the deal," he said. "You can leave now with the smaller cheque, or you can wait half an hour until a South African woman arrives expecting to find a handsome young man to pleasure her for an hour. If you do that small thing, this second cheque is yours. If, however, you don't please her and don't last the hour, you get nothing."
He assured me she was a wealthy woman, very pleasant, divorced, and ready to part with chunks of her alimony in a fruitless effort to regain her youth and enjoy pleasures too long denied.
When I suggested I might not be able to raise it for an older woman, he said that was not a problem; I could use a specially made condom of thick rubber. She was doubtless vain and silly, but not stupid enough to imagine a young man would fancy her. She just wanted to feel and see young male flesh while being screwed, and was prepared to pay for the pleasure.
While I considered the idea, he explained that the house was a high-class brothel and he was in the process of expanding into the relatively new market of providing men for newly liberated women. The trouble was, the clients were all wealthy old bags seeking sex, and it was next to impossible to find presentable males to service them.
Teenage boys preferred selling themselves to men because it was quicker, paid better, and there were no emotional problems. Older guys in their twenties, like me, if they were still selling their bodies were usually burnt out, raddled with drugs, diseased and not too attractive – that's why he'd decided to keep me. I'd proved I was prepared to work, wasn't a prude, was clean-cut, fit, intelligent, classy. I'd be ideal for the job and would retire a millionaire by the time I was Thirty.
I had memorised La Fontaine's fable of the 'Fox and the Crow', and taken to heart the lesson the fox gave the crow after tricking him out of his cheese: 'Every flatterer lives at the expense of he who listens to him,' but the sight of the cheque elbowed common sense aside.
I took the bait. We shook hands on the deal and joined Red and Pock in the dining area for toast and coffee. Everyone had suddenly become jolly and agreeable. After a necessary shower in an adjoining bathroom, I donned a very short kimono, then Pock instructed me in the art of using a 'dildo' condom.
The remaining minutes were spent chatting about nothing in particular. I was a man among men. Red reckoned the fracas at the pub had nothing to do with us – it was just queer bashing. The pub had become popular with homos, so bullyboys occasionally raided the place for a bit of fun. I got the impression he was sorry not to have been with them.
The phone rang; the boss answered, looked at me, winked, said, "He'll be right up," and replaced the receiver.
"Go for it," Pock said warmly, patting me on the shoulder as I took the cold stone back stairs up to room 17.
Swathes of beige tulle, lace and tassels adorned windows, bed and walls, and my godmother rose from an elaborate escritoire to greet me. Tightly corseted in tailored grey suit, frills of a creamy silk blouse at the throat, gigantic yellow diamonds like car headlights on each middle finger, hair a helmet of permed, blue-rinsed curls.
It wasn't godmother of course, but this woman had been cut from the same pattern as the lady whose fox fur had gazed so balefully at the world thirteen years before. She smiled coyly, told me I was a young god, untied the belt on my kimono, ran wrinkled, liver-spotted paws over my chest and shoulders, then slipped the flimsy garment off.
With scarcely a grunt she sank to her knees, removed her false teeth, concealing them skilfully in her left hand, then took my manhood into her mouth while I ran nervous fingers through blue hair as coarse as a terrier's. Undeterred by an unsuccessful attempt to bring life to my flaccid organ, she surreptitiously replaced her dentures, asked me to hoist her to her feet, and cooed, "You're nervous, darling. There's no need to be… I don't bite." Then smiled demurely and invited me to undress her.
It was like unpacking an eiderdown. When the wrapping is removed it fluffs out until it's three times the size. Doughy white shoulders and arms bulged; swollen bosoms freed from their black lace brassiere sagged alarmingly, triggering stretch marks as fragile skin strained under the weight. Removal of the corset revealed an apron of flab that rolled over the tiny lace panties from which drooped dimpled buttocks and thighs. How, I wondered, could the cute little cream-horn legs of chubby infants mutate into such vast, quivering columns of pale, sickly, shapeless flesh, criss-crossed with a network of blue veins?
She perched coyly on the edge of the bed fluttering mascara-smudged eyelids at my anxious assurance that I was crazy about mature women. Which was literally true. I was nauseous as well. She lay back. I stroked her thigh and, eyes gleaming with lust and desire, said I'd been so excited to get to her I'd forgotten to piss, could she wait for just a minute while I dashed out for a slash?
She giggled girlishly at the crudity and told me to be quick….
The boss, Pock, and Red were playing cards. No one looked up.
'Get going, Graham," the boss said with a sigh of resignation.
Pock stood, glared and snarled, "I knew you were a fucking queer bastard. Fucking useless homo! This is the third time this week I've had to screw an old trout! Fuck you, Rigby!"
He threw off his clothes and raced up the stairs while I dressed in silence and the other two continued playing cards.
I slunk out the door and up the stairs, understanding why dogs ram their tail between their legs. A most uncomfortable sensation of tingling vulnerability and failure tickled my ring as I trudged down the road in search of an underground station.
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