Inflatable Hugh

by Terry Ravenscroft

  ****

  CHAPTER NINE

  After his initial tryst with the inflatable rubber woman Elton Arbuckle had sex a further six times that week, only four of them with Bouncy Beyonce.

  After giving it a great deal of thought, and although he didn’t like the idea, he came to the decision that the only way he was going to able to compare sex with an inflatable rubber woman and sex with a real woman was to avail himself of the services of a prostitute. He accepted that the prostitute would probably make him wear a condom, but figured that as both the inflatable rubber woman and the condom were made of rubber the comparison would provide a more accurate comparison than having sex with a woman who didn’t make him wear a condom. Subsequently he drew the £50 grant available for this purpose from the university bursar. An avuncular type, the bursar also advised him on the best place to pick up a prostitute (a service he happily supplied to the university’s students, whether they were from the Department of Sex and Inflatable Rubber Woman Studies or any of the other forty departments).

  “Let’s get the unpleasant business over with first shall we?” the prostitute said to Arbuckle, as soon as they’d entered the bedroom.

  “Oh I don’t think it will be unpleasant,” said Arbuckle with a smile. “Not for me at least. Although I appreciate it might get to be a bit unpleasant for you sometimes, having to do it all day,” he added, considerately.

  The prostitute looked him up and down, unsure whether he was joking or not. She must have decided he wasn’t as she held out her hand for the money. Arbuckle, not expecting this, but never having had sex with a prostitute and uncertain of its protocols and traditions, shook it.

  The prostitute eyed him for a moment. He was definitely from another planet, the only question was which one. She freed her hand and held it out again. “The money,” she said, in a no-nonsense voice, in case Arbuckle was thinking of shaking it again.

  “Ah. Of course. You see I was thinking you paid after,” he explained.

  “I’m a prostitute not a restaurant.”

  “Yes,” said Arbuckle, colouring up a little. He took the fifty pounds out of his wallet. “How much is it?”

  “Is it just straight sex or do you want any extras?”

  “Extras?” The only extras Arbuckle had ever heard of were those that were added to cricket scores and he couldn’t imagine she was talking about leg byes or wides.

  “Like I could sit on your face.”

  Arbuckle thought it highly unlikely that such a service was offered at Lord’s. Even if it was he couldn’t see why anyone would require it. “Why would I want you to do that?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “A lot of men do.”

  Arbuckle tried hard but couldn’t come up with a single reason why a man would want a woman to sit on his face, and several reasons why he wouldn’t, the main one being that she might fart. “I think I’ll pass on that,” he said. “If you don’t mind,” he added politely.

  “I don’t mind at all love, whatever turns you on. It’s thirty pounds or forty pounds bareback.” She saw Arbuckle’s puzzled look. “And I don’t mean doing it while we’re riding a horse, I mean without a condom.”

  “Ah.” Arbuckle brightened at this bonus. “Yes, without a condom please.”

  She looked him up and own, a little unsure. “You are clean are you?”

  The Sex part of the Sex and Inflatable Rubber Woman Studies degree course had informed Arbuckle that ‘clean’ in this context meant free from sexually transmitted diseases. So he didn’t embarrass himself by saying that yes, he was clean, he’d had a shower that morning. However he did embarrass himself when he’d handed over the forty pounds and she’d started removing her clothes and asked him how he wanted her.

  “Well I was thinking of on the bed. If that’s possible?”

  She shook her head slowly. “Are you real or what?”

  “Or on the floor if you prefer. I’m really not fussed either way.”

  “I meant which way? Which way do you want me?”

  Arbuckle thought about it for a moment. In truth he didn’t really have a preference. “Well with your head at the headboard end I suppose,” he said finally. Then, thinking he might be missing something, “Unless it’s better the other way up. I mean I wouldn’t want to miss out on anything.”

  The prostitute regarded him again, still not at all sure whether he was joking. She didn’t like jokers; the verbal jokes she could stand but jokers could get up to some funny things once the sex had started, a girl had to be careful; she’d once had a circus clown who halfway through had stuck a toy trumpet up her bottom and started squeezing her breasts in a vain attempt to make a noise like the horn on his collapsing car. She decided to take a chance on him. “I meant on my back or on my belly.”

  “Oh. Sorry. You see it’s the first time I’ve ever.....you know....”

  “I’d never have guessed.”

  “Thank you.” He came to a decision. “Well then, on your back, please.”

  They had sex. Arbuckle judged that it was very similar, and certainly no better, than having sex with an inflatable rubber woman, although if he’d had to award points out of ten he would have given six to the prostitute and eight to the inflatable rubber woman on the grounds that the inflatable rubber woman had been slightly less passive and hadn’t kept yawning.

  Jolene, the student Arbuckle had sex with the following night, didn’t yawn while they were having it, but only because she never stopped talking.

  When he first arrived at Cleek Arbuckle quickly learned that the best place to pick up girls was in the bar of the Students Union. He had tried his luck there from time to time, but while he had witnessed the slinking off to have sex of many newly paired students he had never managed to slink off to have sex with one himself, and had long since given up hopes of ever doing so. These days he just used the bar for the occasional relaxing pint of beer after his daily studies. So it was completely unexpected when after getting his pint of Theakston’s Old Peculier from the bar, and settling with it at a corner table, that Jolene walked up to him and asked him if he’d like a fuck. Arbuckle said he’d like a fuck very much indeed and five minutes later they were having one in her room. Arbuckle would have liked to know why, from amongst the other twenty or so male students in the bar at the time, she had selected him, so that if it was because of the irresistible manner in which he had been lounging nonchalantly at the table he could work on developing it in the hope of tempting other girls into coming up to him and asking him if he’d like a fuck. However he hadn’t asked her in case she changed her mind. Nor, for the same reason, did he ask her why she activated the kitchen timer on the bedside cabinet before inviting him to join her on the bed.

  Soon afterwards, when he entered her, she immediately said: “Ask me how it is for me.”

  “How is it for you?” Arbuckle dutifully replied.

  “How do you think it is for me?”

  “I’ve no idea. I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “I see. Why do you think you’ve never thought about it?”

  “Is it a bit like poking your finger up your bottom?”

  “Have you ever poked your finger up your bottom?”

  “Once or twice. When I was younger.”

  “Why do you think you did that?”

  “I don’t know. To see what it felt like.”

  “Do you think it might be because you wondered what it might be like for a homosexual to have a penis up his bottom?”

  “It might have been.”

  “Could it be that you wanted to know what it felt like for a girl to have a penis up her vagina?”

  “It might have been that too.”

  “Did you tell your mother you’d been putting your finger up your bottom?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Maybe you wanted her to know you’d been putting your finger up your bottom because you wanted to know what it felt like for a girl to have a penis up her vagina. In the hope she m
ight offer to let you put your penis up her vagina to find out.”

  Arbuckle looked at her sharply. “Are you suggesting I wanted to have sex with my mother?”

  “Do you want to have sex with your mother?”

  “Of course I don’t want....”

  A bell rang out. “Time’s up,” interrupted Jolene. She disengaged herself from Arbuckle and switched off the timer. She turned to him and smiled. “Same time next week?”

  It wasn’t until a few days later, when Arbuckle had asked around and discovered that Jolene was a psychiatry student, that he realised she’d been practising her psychoanalysing technique on him, and had done the same thing with at least half the male students on the campus. He had smiled ruefully and thought that if he’d known at the time he would have gone along with the deception and given her the ten pounds he had left over from his visit to the prostitute as her consultation fee.

  Both the sex with the prostitute and the sex with Jolene were far less satisfying than the four sessions of sex he subsequently had with Bouncy Beyonce. For one thing you didn’t have to pay Beyonce every time you wanted to have sex with her; for another she didn’t practise psychiatry on you and accuse you of wanting to have sex with your mother, two enormous bonus points in Arbuckle’s books. Plus the fact that sex with Bouncy Beyonce had got progressively more satisfying as the week unfolded.

  By pricking her with a pin and allowing an amount of air to escape he had reduced her to what he imagined to be more like her correct proportions. It now felt like he was astride a real woman. If he closed his eyes it was just like being with a real woman. Even if he kept his eyes open it was no worse than looking at Jolene or the prostitute (Bouncy Beyonce certainly looked more interested than either of them), although if he could have had his time over again he would have chosen somewhere other than her nose to prick the hole as the Blu-Tack he’d had to put over it to stop her deflating any further looked like a particularly big bogie, and put him off a bit.

  Like Slaithwaite’s mate he found several other advantages an inflatable rubber woman had over a real woman; they never had a headache, as he had heard that women, especially wives, are prone to get around bedtime; you didn’t have buy her flowers, or remember her birthday, or take her to the pictures when you’d rather stay in and read a book or something; nor all the other things he’d heard of that men have to put up with in order to have their way with their wives and girlfriends once in a while.

  All things considered Arbuckle felt that having an inflatable rubber woman as a bed partner was a far better proposition than relying on her human sister. In fact he couldn’t see why he would need to bother a real woman ever again.

  ****

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Are you married, Mr Seal?”

  “Oh yes. Yes indeed.”

  “Happily married?”

  Seal looked sharply at the insurance investigator seated opposite him in the dustsheet-covered remains of one of the Seals’ easy chairs. “I don’t really see what that’s got to do with it, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “Relax, Mr Seal,” said Reamer. “I’m an ex-copper myself. Detective Sergeant. Thirty years.”

  Seal might have guessed. Many ex-policemen on being pensioned off from the police force took on insurance investigation jobs. However if Reamer’s admission was designed to put Seal at his ease it had quite the opposite effect; being an ex-policeman himself he knew what devious bastards they could be.

  In fact Seal was far from happily married. The best he could have claimed for his marriage was that it was tolerable. But he wasn’t going to admit that to an insurance investigator, even if it was any of his business, which it wasn’t. Even so he had to be careful. It was probably on this man’s say-so whether or not his claim would be met in full, although personally he would be hard pressed to come up with a reason why it shouldn’t be.

  “Very happily married,” he said, in reply to Reamer’s probing. “Why do you ask?”

  “We will get to that in the fullness of time.” As he said this the man from the Rest Assured Insurance Society smiled portentously. Seal didn’t like the smile at all, it reminded him of the smile the appalling SS Jew hunter adopted in ‘Inglourious Basterds’ when he was questioning a suspect.

  The insurance claim that had prompted Reamer’s visit had been lodged by Seal two weeks previously. Seal had been living at his current address, a semi-detached in Littleover, for just a couple of months, having had to vacate his police house on retirement from the force. When the Seals had moved in there had been an electric fire in the living room hearth. Although appreciating the instant heat and convenience of an electric fire Mrs Seal had asked her husband to disconnect it as she preferred the cosy warmth of a coal fire. Seal had quite happily gone along with her request, the benefits of a nice coal fire being one of the few things on which he and his wife were in accord. In particular he liked to gaze into it on a long winter evening and pick out the faces it accidentally sculpted from its embers. In his previous home he had once picked out two of the Beatles on the same night, although it’s true to say that his wife had only recognised John Lennon, she herself being of the opinion that the ember he claimed resembled Ringo Starr looked more like, appropriately enough, Thomas the Tank Engine.

  A fire had been laid and lighted and in next to no time had been roaring up the chimney. He and Mrs Seal had pulled up armchairs at each side of the fire to bathe in its warm cosiness, and possibly see another Beatle, or maybe the Fat Controller. Ten minutes later the room was no less warm, but certainly a lot less cosy, when an enormous explosion caused the chimney breast to cave in, instantly transforming the living room into something reminiscent of downtown Beirut.

  “You are a member of Vigilantes Against Sex Toys, I believe?” Reamer’s question was delivered more as an accusation than an inquiry. It prompted Seal to look guiltily at the door. Reamer was onto it in an instant. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all,” said Seal, trying not to look flustered.

  “That isn’t the reaction of someone with nothing to hide, Mr Seal. It is the reaction of someone who doesn’t want the only other person likely to be in his abode, namely his ‘happily married’ wife, to know his business.”

  Seal shook his head vigorously. Both as a denial of Reamer’s accusation and because he was at a loss to make any sense of the way the interview was going, which wasn’t at all the way he’d imagined it would.

  The estimate for the cost of repairs to the damage to the chimney breast and the burned furnishings from the resultant fire was in excess of thirty thousand pounds. This being the case he hadn’t expected the insurance man to merely come along and rubber stamp the claim. But by the same token neither had he expected the third degree and insinuations about the state of his marriage. “Why should I have something to hide?” he said, now making this point.

  “Everyone’s got something to hide, Mr Seal,” said Reamer. He tapped the side of his nose with an index finger. “What I’m interested in is why you hid it. Your motivation.” He spread his upturned hands. “Well actually I know why you hid it. What I want to know is why you even had it to hide in the first place, if, as you claim, you are a happily married man?”

  Seal was now completely at a loss. “Hide what? What am I supposed to have hidden?”

  “You tell me.”

  Seal shook his head in wonderment. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Reamer. Really.”

  Reamer smiled his Jew hunter smile again. “No, of course you don’t.” He sat back and produced a silver cigarette case. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  Seal did but he wasn’t going to stop him. “No. Feel free.”

  Reamer opened the cigarette case. He looked at it ruefully for a second or so, shrugged, and indicated it to Seal. “My retirement present. I think they’re hoping I’ll smoke myself to death so they don’t have to pay my pension.” He smiled. “Just joking.” He offered the cigarette case to Seal.
“Would you like one?”

  “I don’t.”

  “I know.”

  Seal almost asked Reamer that if he knew he didn’t smoke then why had he asked. But then thought better of it, suspecting it was just another of the investigator’s mind games, a ploy to help break him down; although why he should want to break him down he hadn’t the faintest idea.

  Taking all the time in the world about it Reamer selected a cigarette, tapped it a few times on the case, lighted it with the cigarette case’s matching lighter, drew deeply on it, exhaled the smoke high in the air, sat back even further in the chair, made himself comfortable, and regarded Seal, smiling that smile of his all the while. Seal had never felt so uncomfortable in his life. Finally Reamer spoke.

  “Why are you a member of VAST?”

  “VAST? What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well if you’re anything like the miscreant who recently set fire to the Body Shop, quite a bit.”

  “I’m not. That was nothing to do with me.”

  “So you would have us believe.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Maybe.” Reamer drew deeply on the cigarette again before continuing. “But you are, I take it, against the use of sex toys?”

  “Yes. Yes of course I am,” said Seal, but without any great conviction.

  In fact Seal had no strong feelings about sex toys one way or the other, although if pushed he would have come out against them rather than for. He had never used a sex toy in his life, or even contemplated using one. Even if he had he doubted very much that his wife would be a willing partner if using one required her co-operation. He did however have very strong feelings about belonging, being part of. To this end he belonged to the local male voice choir, the amateur dramatic society, the bridge club, the darts team at The Grim Jogger, and he was a member of The Flatfoot Four, the team composed of policemen and ex-policemen who took part in the weekly pub quiz held there. One night after a quiet post-quiz chat and a pint with the quizmaster Father Flannery, the cleric had mentioned that he was a member of VAST. Seal had expressed interest and it had taken little persuasion from Flannery to get him to join the organisation. It got him out of the house, didn’t cost him anything, and gave him yet another thing to belong to.