'It's illegal to harass people calling all the time.'
'Sorry, sorry. It was…It was…'
'You don't know what to say, do you?'
'It was, you know…'
'There, you see.'
'She's a real bitch, Soph.'
'Why did you fuck her then?'
'She came round and, you know…'
'No, I don't.'
'Well, you know, it was just a fuck. I didn't mean anything.'
He paused and I thought about what he'd just said.
'Really?'
'It's true. Listen, Soph, what you up to?'
I was swinging my bags, flying on one wing.
'I'm going home,' I replied.
'Can I come…'
'Yes. I'm in Camden Market. I'll be home in an hour.'
'That's great,' he said
I cut the call, put my phone away and swung the bags as I hurried towards the Tube. As soon as I got home, I tried on all my new things, the to-die-for sexy undies, the boots and kilt, the condom-tight jacket. I did my makeup, pinned my hair up in a French pleat and studied my reflection in the mirror. Wow, sex on a stick, I said to myself, and swung the door open the moment he knocked.
He stared at me in shock and awe.
'Bloody hell!'
Jake was wearing dirty yellow espadrilles, jeans and a tee-shirt with a naked girl riding a bicycle. In my boots, I was a bit taller then him, and felt even taller.
'What have you done, Soph? You look amazing.'
I took him by the hand and led him straight through to my bedroom.
'Sophie, I…'
'Shush. You mustn't speak.'
We kissed. I adored Jake's boy smell. The clothes I was wearing made me feel sexy, dominant, powerful, and the feeling sent an electric jolt through my limbs. The moistness between my legs turned liquid and leaked from me, wetting my thighs. I pulled off his shirt and lowered the zip on his jeans. He slipped out of his boxers and I pushed him down on the bed.
There was a look of wonder about his features and the pink head of his cock stared up at me, big and restless. I held my finger to my lips and he remained silent as I removed my red leather jacket, dropped my damp panties and straddled him. I slithered up his torso and lowered by pussy over his face. His tongue pushed into my vagina and lapped impatiently at my clitoris. I kept his head locked between my thighs, his face hidden by the tartan kilt, and it was like sex with a stranger met passing in the dark. As he paused for breath, I rocked on, demanding more.
My breath came in gasps. My heart was pounding. I nursed my breasts in my palms and squeezed my nipples through the sheer fabric of my bra. Waves of pure feeling were throbbing through me, through my arms and legs, from my toes to the tips of my fingers. He had taken a grip on my sides to hold me steady. I jerked up and down, faster and faster, drawing his tongue deeper and deeper. Air was trapped in my throat. I heard a sound, rumbling and distant, and realized it was coming from me. I moved up and down, from side to side. Then the wave that had been growing broke on the shore. I screamed as I exploded in a great roaring orgasm that took my breath away. Thick creamy juices flooded from me and I kept his head exactly where it was, squeezed in the vice of my legs as the last ripples gently ebbed.
I slithered down his damp body and slipped his cock in my mouth. He sighed as it glided into my throat. I closed my eyes. I sucked long and hard, then he exploded across the roof of my mouth, his come warm and frothy like cappuccino. It spilled from my lips, trickled over my chin and down my breasts. I savored the taste, it was bitter sweet like aniseed and almonds.
I rolled over and lay there contented. Jake tried to snuggle up beside me and I fended him off.
'Goodbye. You can go now,' I said.
'What, but, Soph…'
'It was just a fuck, Jake. It didn't mean anything.'
It was hell waiting a whole week and the following Saturday I again arranged to meet Kate and Karen at the Coach and Horses.
'You're a glutton for punishment.'
'They'll never let you in.'
'Never.'
I arrived at 10.30. They were sitting in the corner like discarded glove puppets bent over empty glasses of rum and coke. I ordered three more glasses and took them to the table like a waitress with a tray balanced in one hand.
'Rum and coke,' I announced.
'Oh my God.'
'Sophie Price.'
'You look…'
'You look…'
'Amazing?' I suggested.
Kate and Karen both nodded, their little mouths half open. They didn't want to say yes, and admit it, but my get up met with their silent approval. I had squeezed my way into the red jacket with plenty of cleavage on show, the micro-kilt just, and only just, covered my knickers and, as I strode along the street in my oo la la sexy boots, the tops of my stockings above the suspenders alternatively showed and didn't show like blinking lights.
As for makeup, I hadn't done anything special except buy a dark shade of wine red lipstick to match the main squares of the kilt, and thought the disconnect between my transgressive costume and secretary hairstyle made a more intriguing contrast. It was as if I were standing like the screamer in the Munch painting on the middle of the bridge between the two hemispheres in my brain undecided which way to go.
Of course, the looks I'd got on the 14 bus and walking down Shaftesbury Avenue towards Soho had been a nerve-wracking experience. But those boots with the leather straps and three extra inches give a girl confidence and it was that, or rather the lack of it, that had no doubt denied my entrance to Pink. Confidence for a girl is everything.
I sat and sipped my drink. Kate and Karen stared at me across the table.
'I never thought you'd do it, Sophie,' Kate said.
'Do what?'
'You know, go for it.'
'Neither did I,' I replied, and we all giggled, girls again back at sixth form college.
'Dressed like that you'll definitely get into the first level,' Karen said reflectively.
'The first level?' I repeated.
Kate leaned forward as if to impart a secret. 'There are five levels; the deeper you go the more, you know, the more…'
'The more what?'
'The more wicked,' said Karen.
We sat in silence for a moment. 'What level are you on?' I then asked.
'Level one, but I don't care about that,' Kate replied. 'We're just, you know, we're just…'
'Feeling our way,' Karen said for her.
We finished our drinks and rose from the table at 11.00. From Romilly Street, we wandered down Old Compton Street, the center of Soho, its throbbing heart. I had always been fascinated watching the parade, everyone in fancy dress as if it were carnival, and it struck me that for the first time, I was no longer watching, I was part of the show. The old people seeing the sights and going to the theater were tut, tut tutting as they saw my gratuitous attire, breasts all perky like an advertisement for youth, long legs striding into the future they were striding away from.
We turned up Dean Street. In a few minutes we were in the line behind a red velvet rope below the neon sign scribbling the word Pink across the night. The red and black bouncers assessed me with what I thought was approval and I could hardly believe it when the one in black slapped my bum as I was bending over to pay at the tiny counter below the arched window.
'Ouch,' I said.
'You love it.'
'No I don't.'
'You will.'
The red one slapped her palm and before I could say anything else I was being shuffled in by Kate and Karen.
Pink.
I'd made it. Made what, I wasn't sure, but now I was going to find out.
The club was like a subway with green-tiled walls and an arched roof. Tables lit by candles stood at one end in nests of red armchairs, the flickering lights like orange sails reflected in a huge mirror that made the space appear twice as large. The central body of the tunnel was dark, the music loud, a pounding mix o
f KD Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Tribe 8, the punk dykes Karen and Kate followed, copied, mimicked and adored.
There were no men, no secretaries, and it was weird watching this rebel army of women in fetish clothes with multi-colored hair dancing together, holding arms, stroking each other, kissing, their shadows stretching over the sloping roof. Kate and Karen started dancing when their favorite Tribe 8 song burst from the speakers, shaking in such a way that the chains hanging from their jeans rattled. The sudden appearance of crisscrossing spotlights bleached the blood from their faces and made it appear that we were in that depiction of hell in The Last Judgment by Hieronymus Bosch, a print of which I had bought at the Tate Modern and was now on my bedroom wall.
I became aware that a woman in a black A-line dress was staring at me. What came as a surprise in this surprising place was that she looked normal – chic, but without any attempt to appear exotic.
'Hello, I haven't seen you before.'
'What?'
The music was so loud I couldn't hear her.
She smiled. She had green eyes, small, even white teeth in a pixie face and full lips painted a delicious shade of pink. With her black dress, she wore black heels and a beret. She leaned forward and cupped my ear.
'Come,' she said.
I followed her through the bobbing crowd of dancers into a passageway behind the bar and arrived at a door, which she rapped with her knuckles. A face hidden by an exotic bird mask peered out, then the door opened to let us in.
'Do you have a mobile phone?' the bird girl asked me and I nodded.
'Yes…'
'Turn it off and leave it here,' she said, pointing to a shelf divided into lots of small boxes.
We were in another tunnel, smaller, more intimate. The walls were saffron-colored and lined with black and white photographs of elegant, scantily-clad women with expressions of disdain and ennui. There was music, but it was softer, Mozart or Bach, something baroque and mellow, and I realized that there was so much I didn't know, so much I had to learn, so much time had been wasted in bars watching soccer and rugby on big screen televisions with Jake and his mates.
I was going to be studying art history at uni, but was conscious that knowing who painted what and when was only a small part of the picture. There was the why and where, the social significance, the coming of wars and the passing of monarchs and despots. I had spent my entire life like a little mouse on a treadmill running in circles, going nowhere, and stepping into that saffron-room felt as if I was finally setting out on a journey, destination: unknown.
There was a small wooden dance floor where a few couples smooched, and around the perimeter were alcoves with bench seats. On each table stood a pyramid of wax topped off by a candle and I imagined hundreds of candles must have been spent to build those surreal sculptures.
We moved towards one of the alcoves and I stopped to look at the photographs more closely.
'Helmut Newton,' the woman said.
I looked back at the women in the room and was aware why these particular photographs were hung about the walls. The scenes framed in black and white and the living tableau of dancing couples showed women who knew exactly who they were and, with this confidence, bared their flesh and sexuality as symbols of their inner selves with pride, indifference, even arrogance.
We dropped into the down cushions spread across the bench in the alcove. My companion removed her beret. She was completely bald, her head smooth and shiny, perfectly symmetrical, and so stunning I couldn't take my eyes off her.
'My name is Lacy,' she said. 'I haven't seen you here before.'
'Sophie.'
She moved closer. 'Would you like to stroke my head?' she asked and it was weird, because that's exactly what I wanted to do.
'Yes, yes, please,' I answered, and she smiled.
As she leaned towards me, I could see my reflection in her eyes. She lowered the zip on the red leather jacket and, the astonishing thing was, it seemed perfectly normal and came as no surprise as she cupped my breasts in her hands. I stroked her head like I was stroking a cat. Her skin was like satin and sent little shocks over my palm, up my arm and into my brain. She undid the hook at the front of my bra and began suckling my breast like a baby.
It was strange how this encounter had happened, and happened so quickly, but then, it wasn't strange at all. It was natural…joyful, sensual, electric, thrilling. I am not a lesbian. I had never had any attraction to girls; I had never 'experimented,' as they say. Sex with Jake was fun, if always a bit rushed, as if it were the chase not the thrill of the kill that piqued his interest. I had always sensed that there was more to sex, lots more, that it was multi-faceted, like the mirror ball suspended from the ceiling, and I knew intuitively that Lacy's green eyes had peered into more than a few of those shiny chips of glass.
I continued stroking her bare head. Lacy switched her attention to my other breast, sucking away like a greedy baby while her fingers squeezed and massaged the nipple she had just abandoned. When she was satisfied, she turned her head up towards me and we kissed. I would like to find a different word to describe that kiss but there isn't one. It wasn't just a kiss, it was a journey across the invisible bridge. Her lips absorbed my lips and my lips absorbed her lips. They were one. Her tongue visited every nerve ending on the inner surface of my cheeks and my tongue did the same inside her mouth, those two tongues coming together and parting again like ballet dancers in a long extravagant dance.
My legs were wide open. I was sopping. Spasms gripped my tummy and it was a relief when her small delicate hand made its way through the web of suspenders and knickers below my skirt and her fingers slid inside me. I threw back my head, gasping for air, and immediately I started to come, the liquids pumping out of me as if they had been held behind a dam and the dam had broken.
The sigh that ran through me was like a wave of aftershocks following a tsunami.
'You don't shave,' she said.
'No.'
'That's nice,' she continued and the way she said it I wasn't sure if she meant that's nice, in that she likes it, or that's nice, as in that's weird.
She sat up, sucked my juice from her fingers, one at a time, and reached for her beret. Wedged in the leather rim inside there was a card, which she removed and gave to me.
'It is a pass. Come next week. Come straight here,' she said, and she left me with my breasts exposed, my thighs sticky, my knickers stained and my mind spinning like the glass ball on the ceiling.
Waiting for the following Saturday was like being a kid waiting for Christmas. Kate and Karen were continually on at me to tell them what happened at level two. But the short time I had been with Lacy was like a dream and I knew if I told them I'd wake up – or worse, go back to sleep again.
'Why are you keeping it such a big secret?' Kate insisted.
'I'm not. Honestly. It's just like level one, only smaller.'
'Smaller, yeah. And?'
'There are photographs on the walls and the women look like the photographs. You know, and some of them don't have anything on.'
'They're naked?'
'Yeah, but, they're not showing off or anything. It's just sort of natural.'
'What did you do?'
'Nothing. Just hung about. You wait, you'll find out.'
They looked at each other, then looked back at me with surly expressions. I knew how they felt. They had discovered Pink, not me, and now I was leading the way on that journey to what they'd been told was Shangri-la, the magic and mystery of level five.
Saturday came. I glided into Pink carrying the pass. I made my way straight to the passage behind the bar and knocked on the door. It opened immediately. A girl in a feather dress and a peacock mask studied me with flat black eyes before letting me in.
Lacy was waiting in the same alcove and stood to meet me. She was wearing a silver latex body suit, high heels and a silver mask with a pointed nose that gave her an inquisitive appearance. Her lips were coated in sparkly silver lipstick and her
head was shiny below the lights. As she made her way towards me, her body was cut and sliced in a thousand reflections.
'Hello, Sophie.'
'Hello.'
'What have you been doing this week?'
I shrugged. 'Nothing. Just working.'
'People who work lack imagination, don't you think?'
I nodded. 'Absolutely.'
Her expression remained hidden, indiscernible. She turned from facing me and we watched the dancers. Most of the women were in masks and it struck me that you don't wear a mask to hide yourself, but reveal a different part of yourself, that in this basement below the streets of London, women were free to pursue every desire and fantasy without prying eyes watching, judging, comparing. That here, the straps and bindings and masquerade weren't a sign of bondage, but liberty.
I smiled.
'You are happy?'
'Yes.'
'Are you always happy?'
'No.'
She smiled and placed her arm, around my waist.
Two women wandered by in matching red rubber cat suits, their faces covered except for small slits for their eyes. There was a woman encircled in black leather straps strung with hooks and rings; her eyes were hidden by blinkers, her feet were in shoes like hooves and, as she moved off, the tail that bobbed behind her seemed to be growing ingeniously from her bottom. Another woman followed holding a set of reins, her body marked with silvery scars like lines of ectoplasm. Her head was engulfed in a mask with curling horns and her mouth was covered with a leather strap that would prevent her from speaking. Few words were spoken by anyone and, though there were drinks, no one was drinking very much. They seemed to enjoy just being there, just being.
Again I had left my phone at the door. Without it, I felt like a balloon released from the hand of a child suspended in time and space. No one knew where I was. No one knew me. No one knew anything about me. The laptop, mobile, FaceBook and Twitter are the walls of a force field where I was continually connected, monitored, forever watched and watching.
And all the while we are being watched by everyone else, we become the same as everyone else, clones programmed to imagine when we download music from iTunes and choose clothes from Gap that we are being an individual, that these are our choices, not the fashion. We are born free with a trillion blank brain cells that are hammered and shaped until we grow into consumers designed to obey a marketing agenda that isn't more pervasive that we imagine, but more pervasive that we can imagine.
Sophie’s Secret: Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Pleasure Page 2