The Sex Was Great But... (6 page)

C
hange is overrated. Personally, I like knowing where I stand with people from one day to the next. But change is part of the human makeup. My mum always says it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind, which is cool, but a lot of girls seem to think it's also their prerogative to change their entire personality.

Take Holly. Five minutes after handing me a bowl of cereal all the shared conspiracy of our exchanged smiles and pleasant banter on the car journey to her house in the hills was gone. Swept away and replaced by a weird psychoneurosis that brought back memories of Auntie Lucy's “change.” I'm not exaggerating. Pit bulls used to
cross to the other side of the road when they saw my auntie Lucy heading their way.

She claims a woman's mood swings are part of the complex mystery that makes the opposite sex attractive to men. Personally, I can't see what part mystery plays in the way Auntie Lucy carries on sometimes—like when she threw her television and fridge out of her council flat window after her last bloke did a runner.

I had imagined Auntie Lucy and Holly to be as different as chalk and cheese, so I was surprised and disappointed when I found out that Holly could also be mysterious.

We'd arrived at her Hollywood Hills mansion and met the gardener—smiles, Ventolin inhalers and handshakes all round.

I told her I couldn't speak Spanish, but that's only partly true. I mean, you don't spend as much time clubbing on Ibiza as I do and not pick up a bit. I wouldn't say I'm fluent or anything, but I know enough to hear her warning the gardener to keep an eye on me.

So, having established Joseph's role as her protector, we went into the house—all minimal and Zen-like, as you'd expect. And that's good. I don't like a girl who's into “stuff.” You know—all that ornaments and clutter shit.

I like a place where you can stretch out without knocking over an antique smoking pipe from Egypt that turns out to be worth more than your entire education—which admittedly, in my case, was provided free of charge by the State.

I was well impressed by Holly's decor. All clean lines and space. Tifanie's apartment would fit in one of the cupboards. Holly made me an ice pack and borrowed some
cereal for me from her gardener. She tried to palm me off with a wheat-grass shot, but after the gut rot I got from Kev's beer I stood firm and demanded Cap'n Crunch. After twenty minutes with the ice pack we agreed that my nose wasn't broken, just bruised. Very bruised. Along with the rest of my face.

She gave me some Tylenol and said she had to make a call. I was starting to think I could get used to this life as I munched my way through three bowls of cereal. When she didn't come back after a while I thought I'd check out her music collection and ended up in the dining room. You can tell a lot about a girl by the music she listens to.

When Holly came in from her call, the expression on her face was pure poison. “Would you like a shower?” she asked crisply.

“Maybe later,” I agreed, sniffing my pits noisily—my idea of a joke.

I didn't want to use her shower. It was too intimate. Intimate's good, but the wrong sort of intimate is bad. In my experience, using girls' bathrooms has never left girls with a warm feeling about me. I always do something wrong. Leave a sock on the shower rail, hair scum in the drain or the toothpaste lid off the tube.

“I think you should,” she persisted. The edge to her voice was so sharp you could shave on it.

I stayed casual. “Yeah, cheers. Maybe later, eh?”

“Only, I think I should tell you that you do, well…more or less…smell.”

“Me? Smell?” I gasped—as if shocked. Remembering Kev's philosophy of, Never explain.
Deny!
I sniffed my pits
again and shook my head. “I don't smell, do I?” I asked, all innocence.

I know it was crap of me, but she was cute when she cringed. It made me like her again, the idea that a rich, gorgeous girl like her could feel self-conscious around me. “Erm, well, yeah. Just a bit,” she admitted.

I laughed. “Chill, will you? I'm just winding you up. I stink and I know it. I was out all last night checking out this new club, and after that Kev dragged me to this late-night dive in Hollywood. Drank a skinful. Guess I was too knackered to have a shower when I got home.”

“Home? You have a home?”

She thinks I'm homeless.

“It's not a palace like this, or nothing. I share a lounge room with two others. Opposite where you were mugged, as it happens—the Hollymount Apartments?” By now I'd decided to relent on the shower thing. It was sweet of her to offer, really. I'd just have to remember to clean up after me and remember where things went.

“Well, we won't go into that. I was thinking that you might prefer to take a shower outside by the pool, to take the worst off.”

The worst off?
“Yeah…sure…whatever.”

I thought that was the end of it. The shower battle won, I hoped we could have a laugh and go back to where we were in the car. Me fancying her, and her giving me the impression that she didn't think I was a complete waste of space.

Instead she went into a feverish lecture on chairs and how I was defiling hers.

“Defiling?” No one had ever used the word “defiling”
about me before. If you'd asked me I would have said the term was like blasphemy—reserved for those religious fanatics who stand on street corners. Anyway, so Holly started banging on about her precious table and chairs. About them being “art.” See, what I hadn't realized is that they weren't chairs in the true sense of the word. They looked like chairs, and felt like chairs when you sat on them, but they were designed by Gunter Gurt, which makes a big difference, apparently.

If, like me, you've never heard of this Gunter bloke, he's a German guy who's about to be the next big thing in furniture design. Actually, he is really a sculptor more than a furniture-maker, and the “chairs” (use the word loosely) are actually works of creative genius. Are you impressed? Nor was I.

Faced with a barrage of lectures about German design, I figured the best defense was no defense at all. It was a tactic I used to great effect on Mum and Auntie Lucy as a kid, and later on with any girl who confused me with emotions and feelings. I kept eating my cereal, thinking she'd eventually chill and we could go back to how we were in the car.

But then she did this pursed thing with her mouth that my mum used to do when people tried to get her to knock a few quid off something at her stall—right before she said, “Now you're trying to fleece me!” When my mum gave that look, it was best for them to just put down whatever it was they were handling and move away from the market table as quickly as they could. I spooned the last of the cereal into my mouth, put the bowl down and stood up as if to leave.

Her tone was edgy. “I thought you'd eat it in the kitchen.” I was still chewing a wodge of cereal that was far more than my mouth could manage, so I nodded to show that I was taking her expectations on board. “Only it's a lot easier,” she persisted.

“Easier than what?” Like a lot of the shit that pours out of my mouth, I regretted the remark instantly. Not least of all because I was still chewing, and as I spoke small bits of potassium-enriched cardboard and dried fruit flew out of my mouth and landed all over Gunter's great work of genius.

That was when her eyes started popping out of their sockets, and she started taking in huge gulps of air and holding her hands against her chest like corpses do when they're in their coffins at wakes. I almost wet myself I was so scared. What if she died?

Images of me trying to explain to the cops how a bum like me was in the home of an up-till-then healthy celebrity when she keeled over and died flashed through my brain. This was bad news. No passport, no money and a dead celebrity on my hands—and my smashed-up face wouldn't look too great in the police mug shots either. These thoughts all took less than a nanosecond, of course, and I immediately took action.

The deep breaths might just mean she was hyperventilating, with the stress of everything, so I grabbed the nearest thing to a paper bag I could find, which as it happens was the inside of the cereal box. Technically it wasn't a paper bag, more a wax-paper sleeve, but now wasn't the time for technicalities. Her eyes were still bulging and her breathing was still sounding bad and the similarity to corpses in coffins was increasing every moment.

Apart from one time at a club in London, when this fat guy passed out in the toilets on E, I've never had to resuscitate anyone before. As it was, my attempt was unsuccessful—and that was with help from the club's in-house medics. So, with one thing and another, I had a lot to prove here.

Grabbing the carton of cereal and emptying the contents onto the floor, I wrenched the wax sleeve from the carton, shoved it over Holly's mouth, held her head firmly and told her to breathe into the bag very deeply.

What I wasn't expecting was a struggle.

The next thing I knew I was in a headlock and she had my balls twisted up inside her fist.

“What the fuck are you doing,” I squeaked.

“What am
I
doing? What the hell were
you
doing?”

“I was trying to get you to breathe into the bag,” I gasped. “I thought you were hyperventilating!”

“I was taking deep cleansing breaths.” She released her hold on my balls, but kept me in the lock.

“Are you going to let me go?” I asked, in as nonconfrontational a way as I could after a few minutes had elapsed.

“Are you going to try anything like that again?”

“Only if you start hyperventilating again.”

She let me go. “Conchita will be furious when she sees this mess!”

I looked around at the cereal strewn all over the dining room. “I wanted to help,” I tried to explain, cradling my testicles in my hand. “Shit, that hurt. Did you have to give me such a literal bollocking?”

“I thought you were trying to kill me! I thought you'd gone psycho.” She looked mortified by her behavior. “Oh, God, have I really hurt you?” she asked.

When I nodded she laughed. Because my balls hurt I confined myself to smiling broadly, but I still asked her what the fuck she was taking a deep cleansing breath for anyway?

“I do it whenever I get stressed. My producer has just warned me that you might try to kill me.”

“And you thought I'd choose this as my weapon?” I asked, holding up the crushed waxed sleeve still crunched up in my hand. I noticed that it was ripped; it must have torn when I'd pulled it out of the box, so basically it would have been useless anyway.

I was useless.

Holly was still laughing—and even though my balls ached something rotten, and I felt useless, and she probably thought I was insane, all I could think was—
She touched my balls! Holly Klein, the most beautiful woman I've ever met in my life, actually touched my balls.

I
am a complete bitch. The guy saved my bag with no ulterior motive and got his face mashed in the process. Now I'd virtually castrated him. As much as I tried to blame Nancy for making me paranoid, I had to accept the bulk of responsibility myself. Maybe the poll was right? Maybe I was all the things they said about me? Maybe I was worse?

Minutes later, while I was discussing with Joseph what needed doing in the garden, Leo came out of the poolhouse and stood under the shower totally naked. Yes, totally naked.

“Erm, um…Leo? Did the swimming trunks fit okay?” I called out to him as casually as I could.

He responded by calling out to ask whether I had an
anti-nudity policy in force. I refused to make eye contact with Joseph, but I just know he was smirking. I'd provided Leo with a pair of black Versace swim trunks that Ted had left behind after he'd told his story to the
Star.

“What about the trunks I gave you?” I yelled down.

“Too poncy. I'd be embarrassed,” he yelled up.

I balked at this. I had a naked street person—an uncircumcised naked street person, at that—in my garden, and
he
was embarrassed? Actually, I couldn't stop staring. I've never seen an uncircumcised penis before. It looks so much ruder than a circumcised one. I was only jolted back to reality when I heard Joseph muffling a chuckle into his hanky.

“If it's a problem…I'll put them on,” he offered, shrugging his shoulders as if this was somehow conceding to an unreasonable request.

I told him that nudity was definitely a problem. Joseph muttered something about watering the plants around the side and disappeared.

I could tell that once he got out of earshot he was going to howl with mirth, and later he was going to tell all his friends and family about this. By the six degrees of separation theory, the whole of Mexico would know all about my naked street guy by lunchtime!

Ricky Martin would be telling Madonna over dinner, and she'd be telling her friends in London, and tomorrow Jack, the head of network, would ring up from his holiday villa in Tuscany and say, What's this I hear about you having a street bum with an uncircumcised penis in your garden. Is this how you repay me?

Jack has always left me feeling that my existence is an unpaid debt I still owe him for. The only two people I talk
about in therapy—apart from the men I date—are Jack and my mother. Both of them make me fret and leave me with feelings of deep inadequacy. My mother trumps Jack in only one way—she actually goes on talk shows to expound my inadequacies to the nation. Jack at least reads from the Hollywood script written for me by the network press department when he talks about me to others.

When Leo came back out of the poolhouse wearing the trunks, he pulled a few he-man poses that made me giggle. He has a surprisingly good body, taut and molded in all the right places. But I tried not to think these sorts of thoughts. Leo was a man, but not in the available-for-fantasy sense of the word. He was a street person—well, a sofa-surfing beggar, albeit a good-hearted, reasonably attractive sofa-surfing beggar. This is what I reminded myself as he began mocking me by taking deep cleansing breaths.

I suppose I asked for that one.
I went indoors to change.

I opted for my strappy Gucci sandals, a Chanel bikini bra and a sarong I'd bought in Bali. I told myself I was dressing for me, but I knew I looked sexy in this outfit. Even Ted, who is, let's say, economical with his compliments, loves this outfit. “Pretentiously casual,” he used to call it, but it always gave him a hard-on.

Grabbing a pitcher of iced ginseng that Conchita had prepared earlier, I went back outside to check on Leo. He was still under the less than powerful shower by the pool. I waved.

“Shite shower,” he yelled. “I thought the Americans invented the power shower?”

I pressed my temples as his voice echoed all around the Hills. What had happened to British reserve?

Joseph must have had his hearing aid in, because he came charging around from the side where he'd been hosing. Excited about the possibility that there was more comedy on the way.

“It's all right Joseph. Leo's just taking a shower.”

Joseph shuffled around on the spot reluctant to miss the action. His hose gave me an idea and, taking it from him, I sent him round to the faucet to turn it on full.

The pressure was incredible, so much so that I had to straddle the thing, and even then I was struggling to control it by the time Joseph came back. It took the two of us to maneuver it down the slope. “Watch out,” I called to Leo when we were in range. “Here comes the pressure you wanted!”

Joseph and I took aim and fired, virtually knocking Leo off his feet with the force of our water cannon as we aimed the jet up and down his body. Every time he opened his mouth to say something water shot in and he'd start choking. I don't suppose it was that comfortable, but Joseph was having the time of his life. I thought he was going to have an asthma attack as tears of hilarity streamed down his face—the guy was having a hell of a day.

We were making so much noise we didn't hear Nancy arrive, and when we did finally become aware of her presence she'd already set up her tripod and was busily attaching a camera.

“I had to get this historic event on film,” she explained when I called out to her. “Aren't I brilliant, darh-ling? I swung by the camera hire shop on the way here.” She was using her fake British accent.

Leo was oblivious to anything apart from the need to
keep his eyes and mouth closed. His white body was pressed against the black-tiled surface of the shower, and was still being pounded by our water cannon.

“What has the clever cat dragged home this time?” Nancy drawled appreciatively when I abandoned my post and came over to give her a hug. “You didn't mention anything about this street person of yours being a god.”

Nancy, as ever, looked the embodiment of chic. Making me feel, as ever, like the princess of anti-chic. It's partly what she wears and partly the fact that she's six feet tall and weighs…like, erm…let me see…nothing. She was wearing her sleek beige Armani, and expensive I'm-not-wearing-any-makeup-whatsoever-makeup, and C.K. prescription glasses (because contacts are so over).

“He is magnificent,” she purred. Nancy is one of those few American women who manage to carry off the purr and the pout without sounding foolish.

Her use of “darling” and “sweetie” gives the impression that she's spent time in London on the
Absolutely Fabulous
set. A lot of people in the industry think she's pretentious, but that's only because they don't understand her.

The thing I love most about Nancy is her eagerness to try new stuff. Like she's trying philosophy—get this, she even
sees
a philosopher. His name is W—in terms of cool, having a letter rather than a name has enormous cache.

W makes house calls to her place in West Hollywood. It's all very mysterious, but a philosopher who makes house calls is perhaps the coolest accessory a girl can have at the moment in L.A.

“I take it all back, Holly. Clever you. What a discovery! Clap, clap, clap.”

“Well, it wasn't really like that!” I started to explain.

“Don't be modest. You said we needed a New Betty and you went straight out and found him. Well done, you.” She was holding the camera on her shoulder and aiming it at Leo, who was now taking his well-deserved swim.

“No, you've got it wrong. All wrong! Leo
can't
be the New Betty. He just can't.” My emphatic tone surprised even me.

Nancy looked concerned. “Why not? It's perfect. High-life meets lowlife. Uptown meets downtown.”

All I knew was that I had to talk her out of this. My face was burning and I felt like my stomach was full of bees. “Well, we don't
do
men, do we?”

To signify that this was the end of the matter, I turned my attention to the salad Nancy had brought with her from Urht Café, one of our favorite organic havens. Scooping up a leaf of coriander, I started munching. “Mmmm—yummy.”

“We haven't done men in the past, I know, but so what? All the more reason to start, right?”

Placing the camera back on its tripod, she sat down beside me in the shade of the umbrella, popped a pine kernel into her mouth and began to nibble. “Underneath the bad teeth there lies a body—and, oh, what a body.”

“His penis isn't even circumcised!”
I don't know why I said that.

She waved a hand dismissively. “Mere formality—we can sort that out too.”

I could feel a cluster headache coming on. Even under the umbrella the sun was too strong. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, even the flies.

Nancy took a leaf from the salad. “An adjustment here, an adjustment there.” She shrugged. “The raw material, you have to concede, is perfect.”

“Well you've changed your tune,” I said—had she forgotten the telling off she gave me earlier? The one that made me virtually attack Leo. “You were telling me he was a cannibal earlier.”

“I was just concerned for you. If you'd said you brought him home with you to rescue our ratings it would have been different.”

It was comforting to know that it was okay for me to bring home cannibals if it boosted our ratings. Not that I was surprised; Hollywood is the sort of place where your best friend will plunge a knife into your back and then call the police to tell them you're carrying a concealed weapon.

“Look, Nancy, I think you're mixed up about what my intentions for Leo were when I brought him back here. He saved my bag. I was only—”

She wasn't listening. “And as for those eyes—they're amazing.”

“Neon green,” I added, and the thought of his eyes made me feel dizzy. It was just so hot in the sun. “That thing's not on, is it?” I asked, referring to the camera. “You know I can't argue naturally when I'm on camera.”

“Just agree, then!” she teased, pouting prettily. “Admit it, we've found our next makeover. Your problems are over. Now you can give that magazine and its readers' poll the finger.”

An image of the pickup truck guy giving me the finger earlier that day flashed through my mind. “Seriously, I don't think it's a good idea for various reasons, Nancy. It's the cel
ebs who bring us our ratings. If we just get people off the street it will change the look of the show. People watch
MakeMeOver
to see stars, not street people. We'd be going into Jerry Springer territory if we use Leo.”

“We'll be going into
off the air
territory if we don't darh-ling. Ratings have dropped steadily this season and this poll won't help. You're losing your market share. We need to prove that you're still a player. We need a change if we're going to survive.”

“But he's a bum—you said so yourself!”

“You mean he's got the cutest tight ass?”

He did have a gorgeous ass.
“No, I do not,” I replied crisply.

“You're not focusing on how brilliant my idea is darh-ling. Can't you see? The noble savage reconstituted into—” She stopped, reaching for her word.

“Yes? Into what?”

“Well, just look at what New Betty did for the show. That was the only time we were ever mentioned in the
New Yorker.
”

Sometimes Nancy is impossible. Strike that. Nancy is
always
impossible, but some times she is more impossible than others.

She rolled her eyes in irritation (probably because I'd taken the last piece of coriander). “I'm telling you, this guy is our salvation. Change his life and that magazine will look ridiculous for declaring you out of touch with real people. If Leo's not real, who is?”

We both sat quietly for a bit, watching Leo lapping the pool in a strong over-arm. Nancy wasn't letting it drop. “Point one: that is a body. Point two: this is L.A., the city of himbos and bimbos and making their dreams come
true. Fact: with his body and his looks he could be anything he wants. We just have to clean him up and dress him up.”

“Nancy! He can't construct a sentence without uttering an obscenity. We can't put him on air.”

“The possibilities are endless for a guy with an accent in this town,” she marveled.

“Yes, but even models/actors/writers/whatevers require straight teeth,” I pointed out.

“I'll take him to my dentist.”

“Nancy, he's a down-and-outer, and worse than that he's a man, and we always agreed we would never do men on the show—not even celebrities. Men don't change—ever.”

“Come on, Holly, you don't believe that.”

I do. “I do,” I insisted. “How many men are there who've ever changed the way they look, let alone how they act or what they do? There is no male equivalent to Madonna—think about it.”

Nancy removed her glasses and looked me square in the eyes. “That's why this is such a brilliant idea. We'll make him change. If anyone can do it
we
can.
He'll
be the exception to the rule and
we'll
be the ones who did it. We'll have a media sensation on our hands if we pull it off. Think about it. Please, Holly!”

“No,” I repeated, although I knew she was right. The raw material
was
there. Leo was gorgeous, if a little on the rough side. If we did succeed in doing a makeover on Leo and changing his life we would have a sensation on our hands, but I still wasn't comfortable with the idea. “Besides, he'd never agree to do it,” I argued, slightly less sure of my ground here.

“Let's just ask him.”

“He'll say no. He's got his own life, his own commitments. He's got a share-house in a nice area, friends, a work colleague who depends on him, even.” I was grasping at straws and I knew it.