Being a Girl

by Chloë Thurlow

  ‘Six.’

  I rolled over with open arms. I was in control. David kissed my lips, he slipped his tongue into the hollow of my collar bones, salt cellars, as Nanny used to say. He milked my breasts, running his tongue around the tips, biting and sucking, and down he drifted to the shiny shell of my naked pussy, shorn of fur for his film, for him, a lustrous jewel of tender flesh that opened like a cream meringue and coated his tongue in my buttery essence. We had learned in science at school that we are 99% fluids. It always seemed silly, but now it made sense. I was a reservoir, a honey pot, an oil well, a bottomless ocean of sticky liquids and it didn’t seem to matter how much leaked from me, there was always more. I held David’s ears. I drew his tongue up inside me and another little ripple of climaxes like waves pressed my lids tight over my eyes and I slept in his arms like a baby.

  We sat in Starbucks drinking espressos. Stephanie had an almond croissant in front of her and was about to take a bite when David told her he thought there was a scene missing from the screenplay.

  ‘Which one?’ she said and we smiled.

  David’s neck began to colour, he was so nervous, and I took over.

  ‘In the story the two girls are lovers,’ I said and she put the croissant down to listen. ‘Amanda, the young one, me, she hates men and wants to show the other Amanda, you, that Ricky is a bastard, that all men are bastards . . .’

  ‘They usually are, darling! Present company excepted,’ Stephanie said and patted the back of David’s hand.

  I smiled across the table. I thought she was really great. ‘When Amanda sleeps with Ricky, to prove her point, she’s not thinking about Ricky . . .’

  ‘She’s thinking about me, darling.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  We sat in silence. Stephanie looked closely at David. She looked closely back at me. Then she pushed the croissant across the table. ‘One does suffer for one’s art,’ she said in a theatrical tone and we all raised our espresso cups to celebrate.

  David decided to shoot the lesbian scene without rehearsals and decided to shoot it first in case Stephanie changed her mind. It’s obvious to me now that I know a bit more about filmmaking, but it hadn’t occurred to me at the time, that you don’t make a film chronologically, but shoot all the sequences and then put them together like a puzzle in the editing suite.

  ‘The editor is God,’ David whispered, and that made me wonder where Hermann Mann, the man from the Film Council, fitted in the pantheon.

  The scene was going to be a flashback dropped in at that moment when Young Amanda says to Ricky: ‘The only thing we have is relationships. That’s what matters to me. If I had a boyfriend and he cheated on me, I’d pay him back. I mean really pay him back.’ Then Ricky replies glibly: ‘Hell hath no fury.’ And Amanda says: ‘You bet.’

  The exchange warns the audience that Ricky is on the brink of the abyss and that Young Amanda is not an innocent lured by Ricky’s apparent glamour, but a spy in the house of seduction. It was powerful stuff and I had practised my lines in front of the mirror so many times Binky had threatened, well, visualise rain falling on a tin roof and you can imagine!

  The build-up before shooting a film is called pre-production and although it seems to take forever, after all the costume fittings and location checks, the run-throughs and read-throughs, after that last restless night sliding through David’s navy-blue sheets like two fish in the ocean, the day arrived, my début, and I was frightened out of my life. My tummy was knotted like a cat’s cradle. Nervous sweat prickled my underarms. I could taste something awful like cold pizza at the back of my throat. I thought I was going to be sick. Break a leg, said David, and I thought that sounded like a jolly good alternative.

  Cars and taxis were criss-crossing the city with the cast and crew. A van with the camera kit appeared at the house loaned to us for the shoot and the electricians set about chipping the furniture as they unloaded metal stands, big lights with metal flaps, and spools of cables that wriggled like eels across the floorboards.

  An old girlfriend of David’s who looked as if she had swallowed a live toad before leaving home that morning had been drafted in to do the catering and she eyed me resentfully as she whipped up plates of eggs and bacon with thick slices of white bread Nanny would have called doorsteps. Like an army, a movie crew marches on its stomach, I was told by Murray McVite, an older man like a sergeant major with creamy white hair in a ponytail. Murray was the assistant director and his job was to shout at everyone.

  I sipped black coffee, butterflies in clogs dancing in my stomach, and was grateful for Stephanie’s hand holding mine under the table. I don’t know who was the more anxious, more apprehensive, Steph with her reputation on the line, or me, with nothing to lose. We pecked on the lips and I went off to get ready first as it was going to take more time.

  In the shower I freshened up my pussy with the lady razor, patted myself dry and climbed into a big white bathrobe. If I was tense, Adam Green, the gay boy in make-up, was a nervous wreck. His bottom lip was trembling, his hands were trembling, and he had the job of painting the snake on my leg. He gritted his chattering teeth.

  ‘You’re so brave,’ he said.

  ‘So are you,’ I replied, and he smiled weakly like a brave man about to be tortured.

  He had done loads of drawings and had practised on a prosthetic leg that stood on the table like a bizarre work of art by the Chapman Brothers. I removed the bathrobe and stood before Adam like a blank canvas, like the Duchess of Alba before Goya, I thought, and recalled for some reason a terribly risqué poem Sister Nuria had told us in the Art class.

  The Duchess of Alba once said to Goya

  Remember I am your employer

  So he’s painted her clothed to please her

  And he painted her nude to annoy her

  I’m not sure why, but remembering this silly poem brought a smile to my lips and the knots in my tummy began to untangle. I had begun to appreciate the weird pleasures of being naked, the little monkeys were perky and my tummy had grown as flat as an ice rink, so flat it was hollow when I lay flat and David simply adored resting his head there while he thought about his script. Adam looked away as he took my hand and I stepped up on to a plastic box. He sat on a stool, spread his pots of acrylic around him and took a big breath as he looked up at me like a child looking up at a parent.

  ‘Here goes,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  ‘I’m not frightened, Milly, I’m terrified.’

  I laughed and that seemed to calm him. We were making a movie. We were in this together. Adam first used a green felt-tip pen and his hand grew steady the moment he began to draw the outline of the snake. We were in the bathroom, a minimalist place of black tiles and shiny chrome which Adam had contrived to make into his boudoir with the boxes of make-up, the photos of reptiles blu-tacked to the mirror, a pink Teddy with I Love New York on his tummy and little ornaments that revealed his fondness for silk and satin, feathers and fur. Radio 1 was playing a Kylie Minogue song.

  Adam worked quickly, sliding the point of the pen over my flesh in bold movements. Once the outline was completed, he dipped the tip of the brush in the paint and began with the tail, the place where I always seemed to end up when I used to play Snakes and Ladders with Binky who, as the baby, was expected to cheat and was forgiven the moment she did so. Adam worked more slowly now, like he was painting the ceiling of a chapel, the brush gliding over the soft flesh at the back of my knee. I started wriggling.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said sharply.

  ‘It tickles,’ I said.

  ‘Just imagine it’s David’s tongue.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There are no secrets on film sets, Sweets.’

  ‘Sweets! That comes from the script, you plagiarist!’ I looked down at Adam over my shoulder and he was grinning from ear to ear.

  His nerves had gone. He worked faster, teasing the brush from the space at the back of my knee in a sweep across my
thigh, the body of the snake coiling up to just below my hip bone before plunging down to my pubic bone, the V of my pubis forming the head of the creature and it’s quite amazing because the Creator in His wisdom has designed the snake’s head to be exactly the same shape as the pubic mount.

  Adam switched from green to blue, making a pattern. He added streaks of silver and I watched in the three-way mirror as the beast came to life. I could feel it slithering motionlessly about my thigh, really creepy, but oddly sensual. Adam with great decorum painted two maroon eyes just above the lips of my pussy. He went to stand back, but then leaned forward again and ran the tip of his finger between the open flaps on my vulva.

  When he removed his finger it was glossy and wet.

  ‘Milly, you’re oozing,’ he said.

  I was mortified but like his finger Adam’s blue eyes were glistening with intimations of forbidden fruits and unknown pleasures. It was terribly Biblical. I should have been named Eve.

  ‘I’m just trying to tempt you.’

  ‘Jezebel,’ he said. He pulled a tissue from a pink box covered in tulips and delicately ran it between the lips of my pussy. He took a second tissue and stuffed it inside me. ‘You girls,’ he mumbled. ‘Now, don’t move.’

  He sprayed the snake with a sealant stored in a scent atomiser and then took loads of shots with his digital camera. Adam would have to re-paint the snake every day for the four-day shoot. ‘If it’s not perfect, the continuity girl’ll kill me,’ he said, and slit his throat with his finger.

  I removed the sodden tissue from my pussy, stepped down from the box and pressed my breasts into his chest as I kissed him.

  He shook himself free. ‘Milly, you’re incorrigible,’ he said. ‘Girls are getting so, so predatory.’

  ‘Not before time,’ I replied, and he took up his hair brush in a threatening gesture.

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘Oh, no, are you going to spank me?’ I said playfully, turning and bending my bottom to him. My cute bum must have been so tempting he couldn’t resist bringing the back of the brush down on my extended cheeks.

  ‘Now sit down and behave, or you really will get a smack.’

  ‘Promises promises,’ I said and sat grinning, my bottom all warm, and Adam was shaking his head as he worked on my face and hair.

  I adored the attention and thought given the right circumstances I was sure Adam Green would succumb to my feminine wiles. He tutted away as he worked and had just about finished when Stephanie arrived eating an apple.

  ‘Is he behaving himself?’ she asked.

  Adam looked at the apple, looked at me, and pushed his fists against his sides.

  ‘Is this a plot?’ he demanded.

  Stephanie looked nonplussed and I burst out laughing. ‘Adam was just talking about Adam and Eve,’ I said reassuringly, and left them to it.

  I walked on set wearing the bathrobe and I was shocked to see so many people. David was speaking in whispers to Dudley, the cameraman, who in turn spoke with shrugging gestures to Pete, the gaffer, the man in charge of the lights. Dudley had an assistant known as the focus puller, an Oriental girl named May Fuk, which I thought highly suspicious, and I had no idea what she did but she was walking about with a long tape measure and scribbling figures on a pad. Pete also had an assistant, also named Pete, and they were continually fiddling with the lights.

  ‘Stop fiddling with those bleedin’ lights,’ shouted Murray McVite.

  ‘I haven’t even started fiddling yet,’ said Pete.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the other Pete.

  ‘Bleedin’ sparks,’ said Murray and lit a cheroot.

  Daniel, the soundman, who I had met during the castings, was sitting at a machine that reminded me of the deck of the Tardis, headphones clamped to his big red ears, his long fingers turning dials, raising levers. His assistant was named Owen, the boom op, and what he did was stand motionless like a tree to one side of the action, away from the eye of the camera, holding a long pole with a mike on the end. The mike was covered in grey fur and looked like a cat clinging to the end of a fishing rod. Owen was wearing a sleeveless shirt and had the biggest muscles I had ever seen.

  Well, the second biggest. There was a man named Dirk who was called the grip, I’ve no idea why, and he was about as big as a house. He was laying tracks like a railway line. The camera was bolted to a dolly and settled on the tracks so that it could move without jerking towards and away from a large black leather sofa that gleamed in the pool of lights set up by the two Petes. The dolly was very elaborate with a seat for the cameraman and a sort of jib that raised the camera so that the lens could get an aerial view of the action. David had told me that crane shots were very important and showed that the director knew what he was doing.

  There was a continuity girl named Amy, a stills photographer named Alex and a gaggle of runners with names like Max and Garth and Jake. Everyone was smoking and shouting, but when Stephanie stepped on set accompanied by Adam and Maja, the banter ceased, the cables stopped wriggling and the crew acknowledged that they were in the presence of a star by stubbing out their cigarettes and setting about the last-minute preparations. Stephanie had beads of moisture on her top lip which Adam mopped away before redrawing her lips with a brush. ‘You look fabulous,’ he whispered, and she smiled and dropped her bathrobe into Maja’s waiting arms.

  Everyone switched from being quiet to being totally silent as Stephanie stood before us stark naked, arms slightly apart, her bush thick and curly and it occurred to me that when David had suggested I shave off my silky fleece it had been for his fun, not for his film. That’s what happens when men learn how to spank girls. They learn how to take liberties.

  Stephanie pulled at the belt securing my robe and Maja slid the garment from my shoulders. The crew had already had a good look at Stephanie Jones and now as all eyes fell on me a wave of colour ran over my neck and cheeks. It’s quite strange being naked in front of so many people. I had imagined it often enough, but it was a curious pleasure to finally experience it.

  ‘Where do you want us, darling?’ said Stephanie in her plummy voice and I noticed David’s Adam’s apple wobble as he swallowed.

  He wanted us on the sofa, petting and touching, kissing and caressing, doing what comes naturally. It’s not something you can describe in a script, and although David only wanted twenty seconds of film, we wriggled about under the hot lights for sufficient time to give the editor plenty of material to cut and the crew a full-on lesbian show with the queen of family television in the starring role.

  I’m not sure how it happens, or why it happens, but with the camera eye watching all other eyes disappear. Your nerves disappear. Your inhibitions disappear. The sofa was a black planet spinning in the white universe of the tiers of lights. I had acted before in a million school plays, but acting for the camera is different, inanimate but intimate, you feel real, your feelings are real, authentic. I felt love, desire, an aching tenderness. I was wet, my back was wet on the leather sofa, my armpits were wet, my pussy was open like a wet exotic flower, warmed by the lights. My body I realised was a magnetic force, a personality in its own right. People wanted to touch me, kiss me, pet me, suck me. A sheen of dew coated my thighs. I was a lake of desire and pleasure. I had never been so wet before, never felt such stimulation before, and I was suddenly terrified that I would always need an audience to reach true satisfaction, the ultimate orgasm.

  Stephanie kissed my breasts, she kissed my lips, and I opened myself like the gates of paradise as she abandoned my wet mouth to sew kisses like rain spots over my neck, my collar bones, the dimpled cavern of my throat. She traced a trail of saliva down between my breasts, my diaphragm, vibrating like the skin of a drum. She spread my thighs and began to climb the snake from behind my knee, across my hip bone and down, down to the open cleft of my clean-shaven pussy. Her long tongue like the probing tongue of a snake explored the honey-strewn lips of my vulva and as her tongue slipped inside me I was aware of the grey boom low
ering above my head to capture my sighs, the juicy ripples of Stephanie’s steady motions between my thighs, the soft slap of our damp flesh under the hot lights.

  When David whispered ‘And Cut,’ his voice seemed to come from a great distance and it took me a few moments to remember we were on a film set, that we were making a movie, this was art, not sex. Adam wrapped Stephanie in her robe. Maja did the same for me. And we walked slowly, proudly, chins high like Oscar nominees across the trip wires of the wriggling black cables and upstairs to the costume department.

  Stephanie was aglow, eyes like fireflies, her lips gripped in the way of people trying not to smile. She was Christopher Columbus on the deck of his galleon staring out at America; what would become America. Maja and Adam seemed to realise that we wanted to be left on our own and when they closed the door, Stephanie put her arms around my waist.

  ‘Hope you didn’t mind, you know . . .’ she began.

  ‘It was lovely,’ I replied.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said, and paused. ‘I didn’t know it was so . . . so nice. I’ve never, you know, never experimented.’

  ‘Then you should,’ I told her. ‘I certainly am. I want to do everything.’

  David had been really rather clever starting with the lesbian scene. It settled everyone’s nerves and, apart from being an hour or two over schedule each day, the shoot ran like clockwork. We did the long seduction scene at a bar in Soho owned by a friend of Hermann Mann. He had told David that the rushes had made him ‘truly excited’.

  The editor had played around with the lesbian scene and the twenty seconds he’d cut from the twenty minutes was all rather pretty and innocent, a girlie kiss, a pan over my swollen lips, a shot of the little monkeys, then a close-up of me looking like the cat that got the cream as Stephanie slides from frame to lap up the liquids gurgling between my thighs. One sip and you are addicted.

  Cheats had taken a serpentine course from the original concept and now contained more of the indefinable oo la la Jean-Luc Cartier had said it needed. It had grown complex, more nouvelle vague, David explained, although being a first-time director, he remained angst-ridden as we sat below the neon strips in his kitchen shaping the dénouement to keep the sexual tension as taut as a bow string.