The next picture was of Amber, fully naked. She had a nice shaved vagina and pretty tits, but the picture didn’t really do it for me. I’ve always been pretty fussy about pornography. It only takes one detail (long, curled fingernails, ugly coloured varnish) and the picture is no longer exciting. But, and this is why I hate the tit-sites that shut off too soon, I find I am almost always aroused by a picture of a woman spreading her labium, no matter what the rest of her looks like. And when I clicked on Amber again I was amazed to find that was her next pose, lying back with her legs raised.
This was the last of Amber’s pictures, so I clicked the icon that took me back to the main menu for Butt Hutt #3. I scrutinised the photos of Candi and Helen much more carefully, trying to guess which one might be wearing pink socks. But as both pictures were cropped at the calf line, it was hard to tell. Especially as it was a commonplace of almost all pornography that every woman pictured looked like she’d raided a dressing-up box, the desire to make sure every item of clothing was sexy overshadowing any concern about how the outfit looked as a whole. I decided to go with the woman I found most attractive, and clicked on Candi, a brunette with a mischievous smile and a plaid skirt. I found her sexier than Helen because she was sitting at a computer, nibbling at a pen and pulling at the shoulder of her white jumper.
I clicked on her first photograph and the next page showed her without that jumper, pleasantly plump breasts held back by a black bra. I clicked again and the bra was gone. Her hairstyle had also altered, spoiling the straightforward strip tease effect. Another mouse-tap and she’d brought her feet up onto the chair. No socks. I tapped through the other pictures anyway, aroused by the final shots of Candi sticking her green pen into her vagina and anus. Printing off copies of the last two pics, I went back to the initial menu and clicked on Helen.
She looked much more attractive in the second picture, partly because she’d rolled up her grey Butt Hutts T-shirt to reveal the bottom halves of her tanned breasts, but also because the focus was much clearer. There’s nothing more disturbing than the strange visual effects that can occur when a picture has been inexpertly scanned on cheap equipment, especially the ovoid blotches that appear on the swells of arms and thighs, making the women look like they have liquid crystal skin.
Two more clicks and the T-shirt was off and she was kneeling on a bed with a metal frame, pushing her hand down the front of her panties. And there they were: the elusive socks. I unzipped my fly and took out my cock, too excited to print out the pages. I held my breath as I tapped again, hoping the photographer had realised the erotic potential of the socks and allowed her to keep them on as she divested the rest of her clothes. Another screen-shiver and there she was, entirely naked apart from the socks. But would she spread? I clicked again and there it was, the picture that did it. Helen, the socks, open legs, dildo pushed into her hole.
* * *
The following morning I e-mailed Isobel, thanking her for the tip. I didn’t expect her to get back to me for a day or so, but her response came by mid-morning, asking for my phone number. I gave her the main switchboard, sensing it’d be a bad idea to mention my direct line. Twenty minutes later, she called and asked if I’d like to go on a date that evening. Surprised things were moving so swiftly, I asked after Stephen.
“Oh,” she said, “don’t worry about that. We’ve come to an arrangement.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Well, there’s this girl he wants to fuck.”
We agreed to meet at the Trocadero, then go for dinner and a movie, or a movie and then dinner, depending on programme times and whether we could find a film we both wanted to see. I hung up, and walked across the office to tell my friends about my good fortune.
We ate at McDonald’s, skipped the movie, and headed to her house to fuck. I took her in the living room, from behind with her black dress hitched up. After it was over, I asked her if her friend had fixed her computer. She shook her head.
“Actually, that was something I wanted to ask you. Would you mind if I came round and used your computer while you’re at work? I’ll understand if you say no.”
I looked at her. She smiled sweetly, Something told me she wouldn’t understand if I said no, and I even began to worry that she’d fucked me just to gain access to my computer. But that was absurd. Unless this was some kind of complex sting, and I was about to be framed as the head of a paedophile ring.
“OK,” I told her, handing over my spare key.
She said she’d come round in the morning. She’d invited me to stay over at her place, but I had to prepare my house for her arrival. I already had enough of an idea of what kind of person Isobel was to realise that to try to hide anything would be futile. No, if there was anything in my house I didn’t want her to see, I either had to throw it away or take it to work with me.
The clearing operation took less time than I’d imagined, and I decided to log on to Butt Hutts again. Part of me wanted to explore the rest of the site, but once it had loaded, I was overwhelmed by the urge to visit Helen again. But when I checked Butt Hutt #3, she no longer seemed to be there. I knew I had the right number because I could see Candi and Amber, but in place of Helen was a black girl named Kelly. Trying to keep calm, I reminded myself that most webmasters are obsessive tinkerers and that he’d probably just shuffled the pictures. I checked huts one, two and four, and was about to do five when the computer crashed. Pissed off and tired, I abandoned my PC and went to bed.
I left for work before Isobel arrived, then sent her an e-mail mid-afternoon, asking her to find out what had happened to Helen. She didn’t respond, and I left work early, fully expecting to come home and find my flat cleaned out. But she was still at my desk, a cup of coffee placed on my Playboy mouse-mat. I walked up behind her and squeezed her shoulders. She had accessed the Butt Hutt site, and was making notes in a small reporter’s pad.
“Did you find her?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “you’re right, she’s gone. It’s very unusual behaviour for Adrian.”
“Who’s Adrian?”
“Adrian runs this site.”
“You know him?”
“No, I just did a domain-search. I always do that with the sites I like. It’s like trying to find out who directed your favourite film. You’d be amazed how many of these sites are designed by the same person.”
“So, what do you know about him?”
“Well, lots, but that’s involved some pretty complex hacking. The domain-search only gives you the most basic information about the designer, but with the right software you can use that to do much more complicated background digging.”
“Tell me, then. Who is he?”
“He’s a grad student at Princeton University.”
She clicked back to the title page and keyed in a membership identification password.
“You belong to this site?”
She nodded.
“But aren’t you worried about credit-card fraud?”
“Oh, I’m part of the problem, I’m afraid. I got the password from one of those cheat-sites that break into other people’s accounts.”
She moved the cursor up to the WEBCAMS bubble and clicked again. The graphic of the five wooden huts reappeared and she selected hut three. There was a short pause while various enables loaded, and then the screen was filled with a recording of a living room. I could see a tall lamp, a long sofa and a black girl (presumably Kelly) sitting watching TV. Her hand was under her skirt and she appeared to be masturbating.
“It’s quite a weird one, this site.”
“Weird in what way?”
“Well, usually, part of the appeal of these sites is that you can tell the girl what to do. You send your e-mail with your request, wave at me, flash your boobs, whatever, and she does it . . . but Adrian’s gone to lots of trouble to make sure there’s no way you can interact with his women.”
She took a swig from her coffee cup and we both leaned in to look at the computer
screen. We watched Kelly orgasm, and then I stroked my fingers down Isobel’s back.
Isobel bought the tickets over the Internet. She used a real credit-card number. Mine. It was three months since I’d first met Isobel, and although we’d never officially become boyfriend and girlfriend, and Stephen was very much still in the picture, I’d fucked her almost every afternoon since she first started using my computer.
The trip was her idea, a combination of mutual dare and birthday treat. Although I’d started out reluctant, Isobel had persuaded me by pointing out that my challenge was much easier than hers. After all, I had a choice of fifteen girls, and one of them was bound to agree to a night alone with me. And I already knew what each of them looked like, right down to the most intimate details. For all she knew, her quarry could turn out to be a complete freak.
And from the information we had so far it seemed likely that this was the case. Over the last two months, Isobel and I had befriended two lonely Princeton postgrads through regular visits to an intercampus chat room. Neither of the postgrads was friends with Adrian, but both knew him, and said that he was a visible character around campus. Although Isobel and I were being very careful not to mention the Butt Hutt site in these sessions, we’d probed enough to discover that the straighter students thought Adrian was a drug dealer. The main reasons why they believed this was because he looked a bit like James Spader in Less Than Zero (albeit with a weird English accent) and was extremely popular with the more outgoing female undergraduates.
Isobel thought he sounded wonderful.
Isobel and I had decided we would be much more successful if we worked separately. Although my PC pal (Eric) was driving to Newark to collect me, Isobel’s connection (Wendy) had told her to take the shuttle-bus. In order not to be spotted together, Isobel took the slow queue through Immigration.
I spotted Eric immediately. He was wearing a black vest, blue jeans and what looked suspiciously like slippers. In his hands was a cardboard sign with Terry written on it, the “e” turned into a smiley face.
“Eric?”
“Terry? Good to see ya.” He clapped me on the back. “That all you brought?”
“Yeah,” I told him, thinking he looked much older than twenty-eight, and wondering whether he’d lied to me about his age, “travelling light.”
“No problem. I have some old shirts if you get stuck for clothes.”
About a year before I had spent three weeks working in New York. That had been just long enough to get a general sense of Americans, although I had a suspicion that graduate students would turn out to be quite different to the people I’d been working with.
“This isn’t that great a drive, Terry,” he told me, “but it’s best to do it quick. We can get something to eat once we get to Princeton.”
“OK.”
We walked to his car. It was a great car, a huge monster-mobile that had no doubt served someone’s family well before Eric picked it up. I sat in the passenger seat, wondering why we’d never been allowed those weird self-fastening seat-belts in England. Eric looked at me.
“Did you bring the tapes?”
I nodded, unzipped my bag and handed him a yellow Tower Records carrier. He took out the tapes, looked through them, growled his approval and pushed Generation Terrorists into the car-stereo.
Eric was right. It wasn’t much of a drive, and even the excitement of being in America didn’t make the passing scenery any more interesting. Reaching Princeton was a real relief, and when Eric asked me if I was hungry, I nodded enthusiastically.
“Is there anything you’d especially like? We have pretty much everything here.”
“I don’t mind.”
“OK,” he said, “let’s take a walk. Stop me if you see somewhere.”
We ate in a place called “Tiger Noodles”. I had Sesame Chicken, a meal that seems a staple of Chinese cuisine in America, but is rarely found in English Chinese restaurants. I’d developed a taste for this main course when I’d been working in New York, and eating it now took me back to that turbulent time.
“More rice, Terry?” Eric asked me as the waiter refilled our water jug.
“Mmm. Thanks.”
“I gotta say, Terry, it’s so good to have you here.”
“Thanks, Eric. It’s kind of you to put me up.”
“Forget about it. I don’t have that big a place, but it’s a damn sight better than a butt hut.”
I looked at him, amazed. “A what?”
“Butt hut. The Butler Apartments, if you want to get prissy about it. A bunch of prefabricated buildings on the edge of campus. I was stuck in one of those for my first two years here.”
“Can you show me the huts?”
“Of course. Why?”
“No reason. I’m just interested in how they house students here.”
“Well, Terry, if that’s what gets you going. But, listen, a girl from my department is having a party tonight in her butt hut. Why don’t we wait till then?”
“OK,” I said, “that sounds great.”
“Cool. I wasn’t planning to go, but it’ll be a good opportunity for you to meet some of the other students. And that guy you asked me about will probably be there.”
“Adrian?”
“Yeah. He’s at pretty much every party in Princeton.”
“Great.”
“You done there?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, then, let me show you my place.”
Eric’s room was revolting. I’m not an especially fastidious man, but this went far beyond any depths of students squalour I’d previously witnessed. The main reason why I found this mess so distasteful was that this was clearly the apartment of a relatively wealthy individual. All kinds of gizmos and gadgets were scattered around the apartment, including a complex laser system that sent cross-cutting red beams at just above ankle-level.
He spent the afternoon telling me about his studies. They seemed abnormally fascinating to him, which surprised me; as our chat-room exchanges had indicated that he devoted all his time to devouring popular culture. Discovering that he was much more interested in mediaeval music made me wonder when he found time to sleep.
I persuaded him to go out for food again before we went to the party, although it was obvious he would’ve clearly preferred to finish up the leftovers in his fridge, I knew from experience that while most Americans (especially those who want to be your friend) initially seem easier to push around, they also tend to turn on you more suddenly than English people, the switch from complete compliance to unwavering resistance often surprisingly violent. Usually I’d be more careful to avoid a future confrontation, but as I didn’t intend to stick with Eric for long I was prepared to take advantage of his goodwill.
We ate in The Annexe, a pleasant bar-restaurant that served good veal. At the table next to ours was a group of Eric’s fellow students. Although they didn’t seem to like him that much, they were curious about his new English friend and invited us to join them for a drink in the D-Bar.
“You want to, Terry?” he asked.
“Sure,” I replied, “it’s still early, after all.”
The D-Bar was like every other college bar I’d ever been in, no doubt the same the whole world over. A depressing day-after-the-party atmosphere, puddles of flat beer on every surface. An insufficient cash register, pool table with two broken pockets. A few stray souls surrounding a table with too many empty bottles. We stayed long enough to hear the last Wilco album and the first Liz Phair, leaving just as they were putting the Wilco back on again.
I hadn’t thought about Isobel that much since arriving in Princeton, but as we began walking down towards the butt huts, I wondered whether she’d also found out about the party. Given her formidable investigative skills, it seemed fairly likely, but maybe her contact was too much of a social outcast to have been told.
“Do we need to bring drinks?”
“You haven’t told him then,” one of the girls said, giggling.
/> Eric looked at her. I looked at Eric.
“What?”
“The woman who’s organised this party always does a huge bowl of this fatal blue cocktail. Everyone has to give five bucks when they go in.”
“She’ll probably let you off,” Eric told me, “ ’cause you’re a guest.”
The two women in our group were far too plain to be Butt Hutt babes. They were also dressed in Princeton sportswear, something absent from Adrian’s Internet site. I tried to image both the girls naked, just to be certain, but the thought was too repellent to consider for long.
It was a pleasant evening, and everyone we passed seemed to be walking down to the huts. The huts looked quite different from the graphic representation on the title page of the site, and made me think that the photograph was probably a deliberate red herring. It seemed strange that Adrian would use this phrase as the name of his site at all, given that it was such a well-known euphemism on the Princeton campus. Surely this was the sort of thing that could get him kicked out of college if the authorities found out.
There was loud industrial music coming from the party hut, although I wasn’t sufficiently schooled in the genre to know if it was Ministry or Nine Inch Nails or some smaller band. The woman I’d been seeing in New York had liked this sort of music, and while I had no problem with it and it certainly made for a lively party soundtrack, I found its popularity hard to fathom.
By now, I was fairly certain that most of the other students thought Eric was a geek. If I was to have any success seducing a butt hut babe (assuming there were any at the party) I’d have to separate myself from him early on. From the attention I’d been drawing at the D-Bar, it seemed that being English was something of a secret weapon, and I’d already begun to exaggerate my accent.
A tall, skinny guy in a blue shirt was walking next to a bald man up ahead of us. The bald man had a Sesame Street voice and was getting extremely agitated. The skinny guy recognised Eric and raised his arm.
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