Acquired Tastes

by Simone Mondesir

  Alicia helped herself to another biscuit and munched as she read.

  “Chocolate is one of Nature's most neglected aphrodisiacs,” the entry began. “The Aztec Indians prized its qualities and used it in many forms, but the European Conquistadors rigorously suppressed the Aztec civilisation, particularly its religious and sexual manifestations. By the time chocolate reached Europe, it was a soothing drink and a balm for those with a sweet tooth, although Casanova, the Marquis de Sade and Louis XV's mistress, Madame du Barry, are all said to have used it as an aphrodisiac with great success.

  “But, while it has long been a tradition in the West for men to bring their sweethearts a gift of chocolate, few understand the real meaning behind this action.

  “Unfortunately, because of chocolate's link with obesity, and the contemporary obsession with slimness, most women equate the eating of chocolate with guilt, rather than pleasure. As many women still equate enjoying sex with guilt, chocolate suffers a two-fold burden. On a more scientific note, chocolate contains phenylethylamine, a chemical the body produces when it falls in love and which, according to at least one authority, is a mood altering substance that can induce the feeling of post-coital bliss, while its amino acid is known to slow the breakdown of one of our 'happy' hormones, beta-endorphin.

  “But whether based on scientific evidence or not, advertisers have been quick to exploit the subconscious link between chocolate and sex, hence the phallic shape of some chocolate bars and advertising campaigns, which concentrate on the entry of the bar between a woman's moistened lips.

  “Chocolate manufacturers should perhaps take note of a notorious nineteenth-century French courtesan who is said to have made casts of all her lovers' erect penises, which she used as moulds to make dildos of the finest chocolate.”

  Alicia's eyes were wide with astonishment. She turned back to 'A' and began to read. By the time she had finished, it was nearly daylight and her limbs were stiff.

  She leaned back against the pillows and picked at the stray crumbs which were all that remained of the packet of biscuits.

  Jeremy was curled up in a foetal position beside her. His pyjama jacket had ridden up, exposing the smooth childlike curve of his lower back. In the pale light, he looked completely defenceless. Alicia reached across and gently pulled his jacket down. Her hand brushed his skin, and Jeremy emitted a small mew of pleasure.

  Alicia shivered deliriously and reached out to touch Jeremy again but drew her hand back. Vanessa had to come first.

  Ignoring her sleepless night, she wrapped her dressing-gown around herself and went back into the sitting room, where she found a writing pad and pen.

  Sitting cross-legged in front of the coffee table, she sucked the end of the pen, frowning with the effort of trying to imagine a fantasy that would guarantee a response from Vanessa. After a few minutes, she began to write in round, babyish handwriting that was quite unlike her usual elegant script.

  When she had finished, she read it through with a satisfied smile. What was it the book had said under 'R'?

  Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

  Eighteen

  Vanessa closed her eyes and tensed her muscles, waiting for the pain. For one agonizing moment it felt like a strip of flesh was being torn from her leg.

  A voice chided from somewhere down near her calves.

  'We haven't seen you for quite a while, have we? I can always tell. We've been letting those naughty little follicles have it all their own way, haven't we?'

  We, thought Vanessa gritting her teeth, have been doing nothing of the sort, but she had absolutely no intention of engaging in an inane conversation with some silly girl while she was lying on a table with her legs spread wide apart. But at least this particular girl hadn't asked her if she was going away on holiday this year. Vanessa flinched as more hot wax was applied to her leg.

  'That's not too hot, is it?' asked the girl, and applied more without waiting for an answer. 'Now, one more little tug and then we'll start on that naughty bikini line.'

  Vanessa clenched her muscles again.

  'Is Madam going away on holiday this year?'

  Vanessa relaxed her muscles at just the wrong moment.

  Her leg was still smarting half an hour later, as the now tight-lipped beautician massaged creamy lotions into her face and neck. Under the soothing motion of the girl's hands, Vanessa began to calm down.

  The bikini wax had helped too. As the hairs were being ripped out of her skin by their roots, Vanessa had imagined doing the same to Fergus - all over.

  Her desire to inflict pain on Fergus had been growing day by day. He was still refusing to sign over the rights to his research to Right Pryce Productions, and without them, she didn't have a television series.

  But it wasn't just that. Fergus had somehow managed to take root in her flat and in her life, and in doing so, he had created havoc. The only thing he seemed capable of achieving by himself was an erection.

  It was like living with some overgrown, precociously hirsute baby, vociferously demanding an almost continuous supply of food, drink and sex. Her instinct was to stay away from the flat as much as possible, but she hardly dared leave it for fear of what new disaster she would find when she returned.

  Her once-gleaming, seemingly indestructible chrome and granite kitchen had been reduced to a charred ruin by Fergus's attempts at frying chips, while her white upholstery and carpets were pockmarked with the evidence of his unsavoury eating habits. It seemed to Vanessa that Fergus was congenitally incapable of eating or drinking without spilling something which was invariably dark and sticky.

  What made it even worse was that her highly-strung but efficient Filipino cleaning lady had resigned, claiming that Fergus had attempted to molest her while she was cleaning the cooker. Fergus had vigorously denied the charge. According to him, it was a linguistic misunderstanding over a rubber glove. Good cleaning women were hard to find, and Vanessa had been forced to go to the woman's house and, surrounded by her many voluble relatives, not only apologise, but offer her two hundred and fifty pounds compensation and the option of returning to work for Vanessa at one pound fifty an hour extra, if she agreed not to report Fergus to the police. Being forced to beg forgiveness off a cleaning woman had been a deeply humiliating experience, and one which Vanessa would not forget nor forgive.

  But the humiliation was nothing to her fear that someone she knew might find out that Fergus was living with her. She had forbidden him to answer the telephone and refused all invitations to go out. She certainly couldn't take Fergus with her, but neither could she leave him alone at night. Apart from running up a bill for several hundred pounds' worth of whisky at the local off-licence, he had been physically ejected from three local pubs and banned from another.

  Vanessa had the infuriating suspicion that it was all an act, and that Fergus was trying to see how far he could push her, but she couldn't be sure. It had been rather like playing a cat and mouse game at first and she had enjoyed it, naturally assuming that she was the hunter. But now she was beginning to wonder whether she was the mouse.

  She shuddered involuntarily. She had even found herself having involuntary sexual fantasies about Fergus. As far as she was concerned, fantasies were for old maids and the sexually frustrated, and neither description could possibly be applied to her. Yet no matter how much she told herself that Fergus was physically repulsive, her body responded to his in a way it had responded to no other man's, and she hated him for it.

  As the gooey remains of her face mask were wiped off, Vanessa amused herself by imagining ways of getting Fergus to sign the contract, all of them painful.

  'Would Madam like her eyebrows tidied up?' the girl asked rather uncertainly, a pair of tweezers in her hand.

  Vanessa glanced at her watch. It was nearly midday.

  'No, Madam would not. Have you finished?'

  The girl had.

  Half an hour later, Vanessa was toiling up the three flights of stairs to the Right Pryce
offices. She was so close to success she could almost taste it, and she had no intention of letting anyone, least of all Fergus, stand in her way. The moment he signed that contract, he would be out of her flat and out of her life.

  She paused outside the office door to catch her breath and compose her face in a confident smile, but it was wasted on Heather, who sat plugged into her personal stereo, typing slowly with one finger.

  Vanessa put her bag down on Heather's desk.

  Heather continued to nod in time to the music.

  Vanessa leaned forward and yanked one of her earphones out.

  'Coffee, black and very strong, and type these notes for me - now,' she ordered, banging a file down on the desk.

  Without looking up, Heather dropped Vanessa's typing into her filing tray. 'Mr Pryce's work has priority.'

  Vanessa glowered at her, but was ignored. 'Is Vijay in?' she snapped.

  Heather replaced her earphone and pointed wordlessly at the boardroom door.

  Vijay had his head in his hands when Vanessa walked in the door. The boardroom table was piled high with letters and many more had spilled on to the floor.

  'Replies?' asked Vanessa, rustling as she walked over a carpet of paper.

  Vijay looked up, blinking through his round granny glasses. When he saw it was Vanessa - the cause of his misery - the look on his thin face turned from one of despair to intense dislike. His voice was accusing.

  'I'm trying to divide them into categories, if that's the right word.'

  He looked down at the list he had written.

  'Sado-masochism and bondage; sex in exotic places; sex with strangers; with more than one partner; with someone famous and/or a character from a soap opera; with inanimate objects including household and other electrical appliances; wearing uniforms; wearing leather, rubber or other fetishistic materials; sex with animals, oh, and we mustn't forget sex with aliens,' he intoned like the case for the prosecution. 'Then there are a whole load which defy specification completely, and most are too disgusting for words.' He indicated a pile of videos in the corner of the room. 'And I haven't even started on the home videos yet.'

  Vanessa's eyes lit up at the four-foot high mound of videos. 'I'll take responsibility for viewing them. I have a feeling they could provide one of the high points of the programme. Look what they've done for Jeremy Beadle.'

  She picked up a letter and began reading. 'Now I know why donkeys need sanctuaries,' she laughed. 'Are they all like this?'

  'The animal section is one of the largest,' Vijay replied, scowling. 'I've broken it down into horses and donkeys, dogs and household pets, farm animals, and gorillas and other wild animals.'

  'Sounds like Fergus's research is right on cue,' said Vanessa. She indicated another pile of letters in the animal section. 'What's this one?'

  'Miscellaneous animals.'

  'This one I've got to see.' She hunted through the pile.

  Heather came in with two mugs of coffee. She banged one sloppily down beside Vanessa, and placed the other carefully down in front of Vijay, together with a conspiratorial smile and a chocolate digestive.

  Vijay gave her a grateful look in return. They seemed to be getting on really well and had fallen into the habit of spending their lunch hours together. If the weather was fine they sat, surrounded by pecking pigeons, in Soho Square enjoying their sandwiches, and if it was not, they perched on a stool in their favourite Italian sandwich bar drinking cafe latte.

  Although Heather was only nineteen, she had a sophistication Vijay envied. She'd had lots of jobs, most of them in the music industry, lived in a flat with five other girls, and went clubbing nearly every night. Vijay had been thinking about asking her out, but had made the mistake of mentioning it to his younger sister, Arundhati. He swore her to secrecy but she had run straight to their mother. To his horror, his mother had turned up at the office two days ago on the pretext that she was shopping in Oxford Street. Since it was “only round the corner”, she thought she would drop by with some of his favourite Indian sweets, just in case he was feeling peckish. He thought he would die of shame. Twenty-five years old and his mother still brought him sweets! He had bundled her, protesting, out of the office, but not before she had taken a good look at Heather.

  When he got home that night his mother was waiting for him. She had declared that if he insisted on going out with a girl who not only shaved her hair at the sides, but who painted her finger nails black, she would immolate herself - as she should have done when his father died, because Vijay had proved such a terrible, uncaring son.

  However Heather had thought his mother really cool, walking round in a lime green and gold sari and showing her midriff at her age, so perhaps he still stood a chance.

  The friendly looks between Vijay and Heather had not been lost on Vanessa. She held up one of the letters from the miscellaneous animals pile.

  'Does anyone know how snakes breathe?' she asked. 'Because if they can't hold their breath for very long, there could be a lot of dead ones around.'

  She looked pointedly at Vijay. 'You should know the answer to that one, Vijay. Don't you have a lot of snakes in your part of the world?'

  Vijay flushed an angry red. 'I don't have to listen to that sort of thing.'

  'Are you by any chance offering to resign?' asked Vanessa swiftly, 'because if you are, I'm sure we'll be more than happy to accommodate you.'

  Vijay opened his mouth to reply, but Heather put a restraining hand on his shoulder. 'Don't rise to her bait, Vijay. At the rate we're going, we're all going to be out of a job soon, so why not hang around for the redundancy pay.' She looked at Vanessa. 'And for your information, Vijay was born in Tooting Bec.'

  With a toss of her shaven blonde head, Heather marched out of the room, pushing past Hugo, who had just opened the door.

  'We are on our high horse today, aren't we?' Hugo drawled, raising an eyebrow at Heather's back.

  'That expression takes on a whole new meaning if you read some of these letters,' said Vanessa meaningfully.

  Hugo pushed a pile of Vijay's carefully sorted letters off the table and put his mobile phone and electronic organiser down. He waved a languid hand. 'Are all these letters in answer to the advert?'

  Vanessa nodded. Hugo picked one up and began to read.

  'I don't believe it. This man's got to be pulling our leg,' he exclaimed after a few moments. 'Nobody would want to do it with a goose. We used to keep them as watchdogs. They're worse than Rottweilers. They can take an arm off with those bloody great beaks of theirs.'

  'Some people like big peckers,' Vanessa murmured, and they both started to laugh.

  'I hope we have good cause for all this merriment,' said Philip walking in.

  'Hugo and I were just discussing changing the name of the show to Old MacDonald had a Farm,' laughed Vanessa, 'had being the operative word. '

  Philip looked from one to the other, a smile on his face, hoping to be let in on the joke. Hugo handed him the letter.

  Philip read it and paled. 'Are they all like this?' he gasped.

  'A lot of them,' said Vanessa dabbing her eyes. 'I think we'll have to have an RSPCA inspector in the studio.'

  This set her and Hugo laughing again.

  Philip scurried round the table picking up letters from different piles, and scanning them with increasing desperation.

  'Oh, my God,' he groaned and sat down, 'this is awful. I'm finished.'

  'Oh, come on PP. It isn't awful, it's wonderful. We have enough material here to make a dozen series,' said Vanessa.

  'A dozen porno movies, you mean,' Vijay interjected sourly.

  'Vijay's right. We can't show people doing those things on television,' Philip waved a despairing hand at the letters. 'I'm beginning to think I may have made an error of judgement about this whole business. I've already been summoned to a meeting of the Committee for Media Morality. If any of this has reached their ears, I'm in deep trouble.'

  Ever since the invitation to meet the new
head of the CMM had arrived the day before, Philip had been alternating between blind panic and hot flushes at the thought of coming face to face with Sir Norman Fluck again.

  The note claimed that it was merely 'an informal exchange of views and meet the new chairman' occasion, but Philip knew a summons when he read one.

  'Trust me, Philip,' Vanessa said soothingly, 'there's plenty of material here that we can use without causing riots in the streets.' She fished around among the letters. 'For instance, here's a variant on the old scantily clad girl leaping out of a cake theme. This is from a woman who actually wants to be a cream cake. She wants to be covered in double cream, decorated with fruit and then carried on a silver platter into a room full of men dressed in evening clothes, who then lick her clean. I'm sure Hugo can film that very tastefully, can't you Hugo?' Vanessa's mouth twitched.

  Philip looked like a man in a catatonic trance.

  'Or how about this? Another woman has written in to say she likes to make love on the back seat of a Morris Minor, because that's where she lost her virginity so she has the back seat of her car in her bedroom. We could have a whole section of a programme asking people which car they first made love in called “Fantasy Cars”.'

  'I can see a lot of potential in cars,' Hugo added enthusiastically. 'They are a potent sexual symbol. Think of all the television adverts: men controlling sleek, throbbing cars as they power their way along narrow, winding mountain roads, or women abandoning men but keeping the car.'

  Philip looked like a man who had been thrown a lifeline. 'I think you may have something there,' he said, the colour beginning to return to his face. 'I'm sure there is some sort of psychological analysis that could be made. Perhaps Dr Archibald could enlighten us. He is fully on board with us now, isn't he, Vanessa?' he asked anxiously. 'The subject matter we are dealing with has enough potential for legal action without someone suing us for infringement of their copyright.'

  'Don't worry about a thing, Philip darling,' lied Vanessa. 'You know you can trust me.'