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 jack-the-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.