Sin Delicious

by Willow Sears

  Knowing that Vinny is somewhat OCD and carefully lays out his next day’s attire the evening before, which he stares at in the morning in some kind of mild panic before dressing in exactly the right order, but very hurriedly because the upsetting of his laid-out line causes him distress, she seeks to sabotage this from time to time. Once, whilst Vinny was down in the bar getting obnoxiously hammered, she gained entry to his room and took the underpants. She then had reception send up an iron to her room and she used it to melt a slice of processed cheese – one of those designed to go in hamburgers – to the inside front of said briefs, so that it was unseen and would only be discovered to great horror once the underwear was speedily donned. Vinny thought it was Russell’s doing and a fight almost broke out the following morning. Sindee didn’t own up. Another time she substituted one sock – always last on in Vinny’s world and thus last in line – for a stuffed fox she had stolen from a glass case in the hotel lobby. Vinny almost had a nervous breakdown. It’s the fact that she does such things without owning up to them that I like best. She is a silent assassin.

  She once, completely out of the blue, pulled down the front of her leggings whilst sat next to me on the tour bus, revealing that her usual sparse V of pubic hair had been reduced to a thin strip. “Guess how much this cost?” she said before providing the punch-line with expert timing: “A Brazilian dollars.” You have to love humour like that.

  I wonder if Cas sees any of these sides to her or if it’s just her sexiness and the way she loves to show herself off. I ponder the display she and Cucumber Girl gave last night. Indeed, it did seem at times like a performance rather than a tender moment between two people. Is it more fun this way, all wanton and seemingly choreographed, or does it feel contrived and ultimately meaningless? What expectations does someone as sexually confident as Sindee have of me? I too, like Cucumber Girl, can do the box splits, but I have only ever done them during exercise or in combat situations. I’ve never thought I could utilise this skill during sex. I seem to have confidence everywhere except in the bedroom.

  I was once small and a bit of a mute, stuck being brought up by my bumpkin cousins for a fair chunk of my young life. I was different and difficult. I was teased and I disliked most people. One day my least favourite older cousin pinned me down, his knees on my arms and his fat arse on my chest. He kept flicking my cheeks and nose. I remember the rage and humiliation and the rise of claustrophobic panic. He afterwards claimed he had made me pee myself, which wasn’t exactly true, but still he told everyone about it. In the end I exploded, smacking him in his face just in time for his mother to see. I was the one who got punished and he got off scot-free. I resolved then to never let fucks like him get the better of me again – hence the taekwondo, which I began once I was allowed back to my proper home. I used to picture my every opponent as that fat jerk cousin of mine, which is why I quickly became so deadly.

  Sleeping with Elowen was easy because I was always this buzzing love-struck jelly around her, too overawed to question any part of our relationship. Everything she did was fabulous and perfect. If she was the bondage freak that she looked like then I would be one now, but she wasn’t. She was a kisser and a caresser, a gentle bringer of pleasure. Externally it might not have looked like she was in control but I followed her lead in everything. As headstrong as I was I wanted it to be this way. After years of isolating myself and fighting all my own constant battles I wanted someone to protect and mould me. She thought after my troubled times that I deserved to be treated tenderly, so she did, always. If it brings you joy you never think there can be anything more. The rudest thing we did was to use her toy, taking turns to press it buzzing to each other. Would she have been different, I wonder, if she had realised that it was not so much the gentle passion she showed me that blew my mind, but the bliss of being in her safe hands and under her control, to do with as she pleased?

  What must it be like to be spanked? I want to wake Sindee and ask her but it’s hardly the time and place. Is there bliss in the pain itself or just from the ceding of control? Is the sizzling burn scintillating from the very first, or do you have to go through agony before it breaks over you? The thought of being held down like my nasty cousin did to me can instil some trepidation, but tellingly not so much when Sindee pins me of a morning. It is therefore less the act itself and more the person committing it. I would never take any shit from anyone but what would it be to implicitly obey someone you loved and trusted, whatever rudeness and humiliation this brought? Can one feel culpable at all, however dirty or wrong the deed, if one has been made to do it?

  Hearts begin to beat faster when the chock-chock of the helicopter is heard again and it alights as before on the lawn. Sadly, it is only Bag Man, as always the only one of us dressed smartly, like some kind of Bond villain’s bodyguard, come no doubt to carry more possessions away with him. We are by now doing the hotel lounge proud and lounging all over it, sipping drinks. As Bag Man comes back through us, laden with leather holdalls, he bluntly informs Sindee that she is charged with the return of Cucumber Girl to band headquarters. My minxy friend looks at me and smiles spread across our faces. A ticket away from boredom has been bestowed. Of course, the girl could have just gone with Bag Man, so clearly this is a way of extricating our singer from the others, for reasons I feel I must be there to record!

  Sauntering down half a minute behind Bag Man is the fruit-engulfing porn princess herself, wearing a pair of glittery red hot pants so small and tight that the majority of her bottom doesn’t fit within them. At least half the material used in the making of this garment is seemingly up her crack. It looks ruder than she did when naked last night. Above is a vest top bearing the words ‘Fuck Bitch’, cut away to display her belly-button piercing with a hanging silver and jewel chain. She has decided to team this scant outfit with, of all things, a pair of metallic-look gumboots. It’s almost enough to strike dead on the spot a renowned fashion guru like myself. She sees me staring at the boots.

  “We go to festival, no?”

  I nod and shrug because she is right. What else would she need? She is one of us for the time being so she needs no more than she stands up in. Entrance to festivals comes with a free pass to the VIP area. There are always people around like Bag Man to produce essentials such as ciggies, drink, drugs – even new underwear. It’s like being royalty, and she only had to sell a piece of her soul to get here. Sindee is beaming and all excited, giving the world in general a little joyful clap. The guys to a man looked bummed that we are to desert them. Russell is muttering curses at us, implying that we are off to trade our bodies for favours – as if he has the right to call anyone a slut. I shouldn’t let him get away with it but picking a fight now is just a waste of the time I could be spending elsewhere. Poor Ben says something about promises made by his bandmate to practise those songs he’d recently written. Sindee merely blows him a kiss and waggles her fingers in a mocking goodbye wave.

  “Mowdy!” she exclaims – that recently coined tour-slang contraction of ‘I’m out of here!’ to be said in a contrived American accent and gleefully used when your peers have to stay behind where the boredom is. I feel powerful. I’m with two sexually overt beauties and I have a huge Maori man to carry my things. We are in a gorgeous hotel and about to be whisked somewhere even more sumptuous. As the three of us line out past the guys, Russell gives Cucumber Girl a sly smack on the backside. My reaction is instinctive, perhaps buoyed by the still-simmering annoyance of his earlier offensive mutterings. I’m also annoyed with him for putting his dick into my dream and making me enjoy it, which is confusing. I slap him around the head. It gives a good sound but isn’t that hard – just enough to see a portion of his hair flap upwards. I see the flash of anger in his eyes but he is seated, in no position to get up quickly, and my hand has now gone to a fist, ready to follow up with a more serious assault if he wants to make something of it.

  “The fuck?” he cries. “She’s got her ass out – what do you expect a red-b
looded stud like me to do?”

  He is smiling in Vinny’s direction now, feeling proud and macho, despite my recent strike.

  “Do you really think she wants to be groped by an old, goat-faced simpleton like you?”

  The smile turns to a sneer now. I can see he has all sorts of jumbled-up, incredulous thoughts going through his mind, all jostling for the chance to stick me in my place and put him in the right.

  “If she doesn’t want men grabbing her,” he says through gritted teeth, “then maybe she should put herself away.”

  I lean in closer to him, replacing my fight-face with a thin smile, because I’ve already had enough of this pointless verbal jousting.

  “That’s exactly the kind of dumb shit statement I’d expect from someone with a cock and balls,” I tell him. “Has it ever occurred to you that she might not be dressed like that to attract any man, goat-faced or otherwise? Is it not possible that she is dressed like this purely to attract other women? Maybe she doesn’t in fact want any man’s hands or eyes anywhere near her?”

  He doesn’t have an instant comeback so I press at Cucumber girl’s back to impel her away. We have a helicopter to catch!

  “What the fuck is the world coming to?” Russell says loudly, seeking to get the last word in. “They’re all a bunch of fucking dykes!”

  Tell it to the hand, Sprout Boy. Mowdy!

  Chapter Eight

  Beautiful Shadows

  Wow, helicopters are magnifique! I don’t think you can look more awesome or sexy stepping out of anything, especially when one of your entourage has half her spangly shorts up her backside. We have been whipped to our destination in no more time than it took to say “Ooo – look at all those tiny Frenchmen!” We buzzed over gay Paree, spotting the sights. We could have alighted atop any one of the fabulous constructions – excluding perhaps the Eiffel Tower – and stepped out with champagne glasses in hand to do all sorts of wonderful things. There was no waiting in airports staring at the perfume and getting wired on coffee for three hours solid. There was no passport control. We travelled a hundred miles or two and only walked about fifty feet of it. Talk about chic. Sure, it’s noisy and the massive headset you have to put on devastates your hair and gives you a shadow like a giant insect. And yes, it can make you feel queasy and sometimes convince you that the whole craft is about to drop out of the sky, but just remember the cool bits. I don’t care how much this thing costs Thunderhed to zip about frivolously like a private taxi, it’s worth every penny. I just wish I had been there to take a picture of myself landing on the helipad amidst the grounds of the grand chateau.

  We have a butler, or a footman or something, to welcome us and show us to the house. He offers to carry some of the things but Bag Man refuses, clutching holdalls to him like the most precious cargo, even though they are probably full of gowns, toilet roll and other assorted crap stolen from the last hotel. The place is beyond stunning. The façade is a huge expanse, the pale stone bright in the early afternoon sun. There are a couple of those romantic rounded towers with their grey conical roofs at either side and the grand entrance is up a wide stone staircase.

  “They need a frigging escalator installed,” remarks a wheezing Sindee, three steps up.

  Even in the hallway each square metre must be worth a million euro. Marble, bronze, gilt, shining suits of armour, painted forebears with pointed beards and massive be-feathered hats – you name it. Royalty might well have walked here and to think that a couple of hours ago Sheen strode through in his fur coat and underpants. The atmosphere of grandeur hits you instantly. Everything says ‘priceless’ – and they’ve rented it out to a bunch of party animals like Thunderhed. I’m reminded of a story the All Stars bassist once told me, about how The Who’s management paid a hotel in advance for the inevitable damage that would be caused during Keith Moon’s birthday celebrations. I don’t think that’s quite going to cut it here.

  Sindee looks less impressed with the decor and more worried about how far she is going to have to teeter on her platforms through the series of corridors and splendid rooms to get to our destination. Methinks she is impatient to see Cas. Lord knows what kind of excuse he used to get us here without arousing his wife’s suspicions. Our footman friend pauses at a set of tall double doors, grasping the ornate handles and giving us a curt bow at the same time, then throws them open with a little “Voila.” Inside is culture of a different kind, in the form of Thunderhed and their crew.

  The ceiling is so high you can barely see its ornate plasterwork. There is one huge, long window set above, and the room needs it because most of the walls are either wood-panelled or lined with dark shelves and the various colours of many thousand dust jackets. The room was a galleried library but is now a recording studio. I would have thought they would need a huge mixing desk like those you once used to see in music videos, but apparently you can do it all on a laptop these days. That seems like cheating to me. The room is still crammed with hardware. Wires snake hither and thither. Mic stands abound. Amps are stacked everywhere, monitors top any surface, and instruments are propped on chrome stands or against the very large, low, L-shaped tan-leather couch that could house ten or more rock bottoms. Currently there are six upon it, including Cas Casanove’s. He is head down, strumming at an acoustic guitar, a ciggie in his mouth. His wife is over on a separate antique chair away to the side, rocking back and forth as she listens through some headphones with her eyes closed. It is the furthest apart I have seen this couple.

  Cas looks up and spots us, his eyes instantly going to my friend and visibly brightening. He quickly sticks his cigarette in an ashtray and puts his guitar aside, the happy smile spreading wider upon his face whether he can stop it or not. He approaches. Cucumber Girl and I are seemingly invisible. He takes a quick glance over and sees that his wife is still head-bowed and unaware of our arrival. He grabs his chance and takes Sindee by the hand and kisses her lightly upon it.

  “Welcome to our beautiful chateau,” he says, softly. I like the use of the word ‘our’ but then it strikes me that if he can last the pace of a couple more world tours he might very well be able to afford such an abode. Imagine owning all this just from singing every now and again. Sindee has a matching wide grin to his. He doesn’t dare hold her for too long and finally drags his eyes off hers to bid us other lowly companions welcome. I can smell that warming scent of his. I wonder if Sindee detects it too, if this is part of what makes seeing him so spellbinding.

  It’s one of those moments, when two people are so pleased to see each other that all they can do is smile. It is odd to see a man like him so disarmed. Then Cucumber Girl gets grabbed from behind by the newly-arrived Sheen. Mercifully someone has made him put on jeans and a T-shirt. The commotion alerts Mrs Honey Casanove and she breaks out into a smile of her own and now I am the one getting all the attention.

  “Well, howdy,” she says on her approach, presumably to us all but only looking at me. I think for a second I am going to get my hand kissed too. She doesn’t throw any angry glares Sindee’s way at all. She links her arm in mine to lead me over to the sofa, presumably happy that her husband can be left in the safety of that little group and obviously not aware that Sheen has already broken it up, smooching the Dutch porn star as if he’s loved her all his life and grabbing a handful of her partially exposed rear. We sit. Absorbed in leather sofa is perhaps a good place for my backside to be this close to spank-happy Honey, who puts me next to her. Cas resumes his old seat and Sindee carefully plants herself opposite, very deliberately not at his side. Sheen leaps over the back of the couch to sprawl the other side of me and drags Cucumber Girl over too.

  “This chateau is the fucken bomb, man,” he says my way. “It’s got tons of muskets ‘n’ shit.”

  Yep, that’s what makes it so special. The footman/butler asks us newcomers if we would care for any lunch.

  “Sure,” says Sindee. “I’ll have a Jack Daniels and Coke.”

  Cucumber Girl is too busy s
troking Sheen’s thigh to answer.

  “I’ll have a croque monsieur, monsieur,” I say, just for the witticism.

  When it comes, Honey thinks my ham and cheese toastie to be the most exotic snack she has clapped eyes upon. She even steals a bite of one corner and looks at me as if is the most daring thing ever done. I’m not sure if this is because she has stolen it or because she normally never lets any solids other than man-sausage pass her lips. I just smile back politely and wonder how much more she can nestle into me. Her arm is still linked in mine as if we are best buddies and yet very little has passed between us conversationally over the weeks. We’re not really on a wavelength in that sense. I have the growing sense of being stuck in a web – and this spider might well have kinky designs upon me.

  This aside we all share a uniquely enjoyable afternoon. Bright sunlight streams in, capturing the rising smoke from ciggies and joints. There is amiable chatting and joking, no dagger-eyes thrown anywhere. Musicians being musicians, they can’t help but grab instruments. As soon as anything more tuneful than strumming is played, others are immediately compelled to join in. They jam, creating and developing on the spot, or play covers, songs I wouldn’t expect them to know, let alone like. Their lead guitarist, whose head is essentially all hair and a pair of dark glasses, is at a keyboard set in piano mode. The bassist joins Cas on the couch with another acoustic. Sheen pats out rhythms on the couch leather or uses his silver rings to clink against his bourbon glass. From nowhere, magic is produced. They play gently – there is no heavy rocking here. It is melodic and tuneful. Cas sounds mellow, singing with eyes closed, with hoarse feeling (now there’s a hobby for you).