‘Oh yeah, I remember. Oh, that was her, was it? Ohhh,’ Paddy mused. ‘Oh yeah, she’s a bit of all right, she is. You should’ve steamed in there, God’.’
And there had been me thinking I couldn’t feel any worse about myself. Just goes to show, you should never underestimate the power of your mates to make you feel even shitter about yourself than you thought. What a day I was having.
‘We had a chat but…’ I said, ‘… well, she weren’t exactly crazy about our chosen profession, shall we just say. Got the old “exploiting women” bit chucked in my face.’
‘Ohh,’ Paddy nodded, understanding. ‘I’ve had that before. You can never win those arguments so it’s not even worth bothering. Just agree and walk away. I mean, boo-fucking-hoo, so what? If she don’t like it, why don’t she just go and live in fucking Russia,’ he said, wringing mock tears from his eyes. ‘What was it you said she did, Matt? A solicitor? They’re the biggest fucking exploiters of the lot, so that just goes to show what she knows. No, she was probably just spoiling for a fight and you took the bait. In future, when some bird accuses you of exploiting women just tell her to shut up and get her tits out.’
‘That’ll go down well.’
‘It’s not meant to go down well. It’s meant to get her to either shut up or get her tits out,’ he replied.
‘I don’t get it, how can she be a feminist and a shag monster?” I asked.
‘Feminists like sex too,’ Paddy said. ‘Probably more than most, if you know what I mean, as long as they’re the ones calling the shots. Probably.’
‘I don’t think we do exploit birds,’ Matt ventured. ‘All our models always look great, few old howlers but no one can help that, not even them. They’re always tarted up and made to look nice and shot just right so that they look on top of their game. Any bird would love to look like the sorts we publish. I reckon we do all right by them. Personally, I can’t see how anyone can say what we do is exploitative in the slightest.’
*
‘Naked tennis,’ Stuart suggested.
Wimbledon was on the way and it was about this time of the year that every bongo mag in the country turned its thoughts towards getting an unconvincing Anna Kournikova porn-a-like to do herself with her racquet (under the obligatory unchanging headline ‘New Balls Please’).
‘Didn’t we have that last year with Tanya?’ I asked.
‘Ah yeah, but that was in the studio. I’m talking about going down to an actual tennis court and doing an on-location two-girl shoot. It’ll be a laugh. Get a few opening shots of them playing tennis first of all, then do all the usual close-up stuff with them sucking each other’s tits through the nets and whacking each other’s arses with their bats. What do you think?’
‘Well I don’t know art, but I know what I like.’
‘Good because you’re organising it. Get a couple of girls for Thursday, make sure they’re stunners, not the usual old pigs you keep booking, and find us a tennis court we can use.’
‘A tennis court?’
‘Yeah, and it’s got to be outdoors. I’ll get the photographer. You find us the girls and a location. Right, let’s get cracking.’
The girls were easy. Out of sheer laziness I just booked Tanya again. She was our regular girl after all, popular with the readers and always up for the work. I’d got to know her quite well from various shoots and from chatting to her on the phone and she’d become my archetype porn model. Stunningly attractive, fit as a ballerina, supple, flexible, with flawless skin and long slender dancer’s legs, and about as interesting as a glass of water. I don’t mean that in a cruel way, she was a lovely girl and all and I liked her a lot, but it’s just that she had only one topic of conversation – herself. In all the time I’d known her I don’t think she’d ever asked me even one question (other than how much and when do I get the cheque?) yet she’d regaled me for hours on end about clubbing in the swankiest nightspots of Soho or Ibiza, dancing on music videos, flying out to the Middle-East with eleven other girls to entertain (suck off and get bummed by) some Saudi billionaires and generally behaving outrageous, whacky and mad.
Okay, sure she had an interesting life but telling me about it for six hours without pausing for breath and showing not even the slightest interest in mine only rubbed my nose in it.
Still, she was a sight for sore knobs and I didn’t half fancy her (with the sound turned down). She once told me that she’d do anything for money, absolutely anything, no inhibitions. I think she was just trying to impress me by being outrageous, whacky and mad, but if ever I win the lottery I’m going to make her eat her words... as well as the contents of my conkers.
The other girl I booked was Cindy, a stunning bubbly blonde with a thick West Country accent that always got me thinking about Dairylea and farmers’ daughters. She was sweet as a button and incredibly cute and I had several dozen jpegs of her on my computer with her face covered in something that wasn’t Dairylea.
Both girls were consummate pros and both were up for shooting outdoors in public if I could just find a court.
This proved to be the stumbling block. I tried a number of lawn tennis clubs but all of them balked at the thought of pornographers soiling their sacred turf. So I set my sights a little lower and tried a few athletics clubs, only to meet with similar objections. I tried colleges, local authorities and even a few hotels, anyone who might let us shoot on their court, all to no avail. No one wanted anything to do with us.
I found this decidedly odd. If I had a tennis court and someone wanted to use it for a porn shoot, I couldn’t see that I’d have a problem with it. Just as long as I could sit there quietly and watch, and maybe say hello to the girls at some point in a creepy weirdo way, then what was the problem?
No joy though. It got to Wednesday night and I still hadn’t found anywhere. If I couldn’t find somewhere before the next morning then the whole thing would have to be cancelled and I’d get the blame. This wasn’t something I’d be allowed to forget so it was time to take desperate measures.
*
‘Okay, you’ve got somewhere?’ Stuart asked. ‘Thank fuck for that. Where is it?’
‘It’s down in Tooting, on the Common. They’re a long way from the road and it’s a school day so there shouldn’t be too many people about, but we might have to, you know, whip them off, snap snap snap, put them back on and be a bit careful.’
‘You can see them from the Common?’ Stuart asked.
‘Yeah, well there’s a wire fence all around but yeah. Sorry, but it’s the best I could get, I couldn’t get anywhere else. What do you reckon?’
Stuart thought about it for a moment. We were sat around Howard’s studio while the girls went through make-up. Both had their hair up in curlers and fags dangling between their rich scarlet lips. Each wore a little white tennis outfit, bobby socks and pumps, but neither sported knickers. They really looked the business and were in playful high spirits. Tanya kept on flashing me her privates while Cindy repeatedly reached around and grabbed the front of my jeans every time I walked by to see if I had a hard-on.
‘If the girls are happy to go for it, then we’ll do it, but you’ve got to take full responsibility, Godfrey. We keep the name of the mag out of it, don’t mention it to anyone in case we get sued, and if anyone asks, you’re in charge. All right?’
I said it was, but what else was I going to do?
‘Okay then, let’s load up the car and get moving.’
*
The drive down to Tooting was unbearable. I’d sat in-between the girls in the back, thinking it would be a nice place to spend a half hour car journey but they’d teased me so much that I was almost reduced to tears with frustration by the time we got to the Common. I’ve heard it said that girls can smell desperation. Well, I must’ve reeked of the stuff because they didn’t let up for a minute, flashing me their bits, asking me to touch their knockers, trying to undo my jeans and get at my old fella, everything. Seriously, I’m in the back and Tanya’s holding my arms while Cindy’s unbuttoning my flies and shoving her hand inside and all I can do is try and fight them off before they have my pants around my knees.