Sisi and Sonia – New Press Release

http://www.free-press-release.com/news-sisi-sonia-the-sexually-charged-thriller-from-nic-penrake-available-in-paperback-online-1266439431.html

facebook

Share

The Day of The Triffids

With everyone getting hot and bothered about global warming, the BBC have pumped a large wedge of UK pounds and Canada dollars into a fairly grand sfx remake of The Day of The Triffids. And the opening is promising enough. A woman runs through jungle undergrowth, bleeding and desperate for help. The triffids have got her – or are about to, we feel.

Minutes later a voice over explains that this woman was the narrator’s mother and one of the first victims of the triffids. We’re then introduced to Dr. Bill Mason (Dougray Scott) as the action hero scientist with a unique understanding of triffids. Just as he tells us through voice over of his concern that these plants may be evolving a little too quickly – they’re carniverous, to start with, though no one’s been too bothered about that because triffids have been keeping the planet going by producing an environmentally friendly oil that’s replaced the stuff we currently pump into our cars – a loony save-the-plants activist gets in to one of the greenhouses and tries to free the triffids. Mason rushes in to apprehend the man, but is attacked by a triffid in the process. He’s rushed to hospital and his damaged eye is operated on. While bandaged, the earth is subjected to a solar storm that fills the sky with burning bright light. When the fireworks are over, everyone who looked out the window when this was going on is now blind. That seems to be just about everyone. And for me, this is where the credibility starts to falter.

In one hospital only Mason is left with good sight. What about those people taking a crap when the sun put on its light show? Down in the morgue? Cleaners in the basement? As for London, there would be thousands of commuters who were underground or in windowless rooms at the time of the solar storm (it only last a few minutes after all), but apparently there are only 30 or 40.

Then we’re supposed to believe that a man can save himself from incineration when a jet crashes into the West End simply by wrapping himself in inflatable vests. This turns out to be our villain of the piece – Torrance, (Eddie Izzard). He climbs from the wreckage looking like one of those cartoon figures just blown to charcoal by a canon. Anyway, having broken into a tailor’s and spruced himself up a bit, he wanders down to Downing Street where he contemplates taking over Britain. Why? Well, he was dreamign about it while on the plane, presumably. Just a little incredible that no one but a blind secretary would be there to greet him. This is Dr. Who kiddie stuff for writing, surprising given the writer, Patrick Hardbinson, has written for Law & Order. We’re still not sure about Torrence just yet, because although he’s fond of looting and loading up with guns, he hasn’t killed anyone and he seems oddly predisposed to be kind to the frail and not obviously sexy, blind secretary.

Meanwhile the loony save-the-plants activist has escaped a blinding because he hid his face in his hoody during the sun’s ‘firework show’. Never mind he was locked up, he’s able to escape quite easily now. He’s the only one in the whole building with a hoodie, you see. And where does he go? To set free the triffids, of course. This in spite of the fact that he now knows they are deadly andmight guess he’s about to become their first human meal. But we had to have a plot device that would see the triffids set loose, didn’t we. But why is it only now these plants can walk about? If they were so dangerous, what was keeping them in check in the greenhouse? Details details…

The female caring interest is given to Joely Richardson, a well known radio DJ, called Jo Playton, who survives the blinding while all her colleagues, er, don’t. Anyway, she runs into Mason, of course, and the two become friends. Mason gets in a car and tells her he’s going to find his father, but drives straight into the city – where his father isn’t. Odd. Anyway, before long they run into Torrence, who in just a few hours appears to have amassed a large section of the seeing to topple a more benign emergency government run, incredibly by a man with Crocker, a yank – or is that a Canadian? – accent. And for no sensible reason we can think of Torrence wants to send Mason and the yank off to Camp Triffids to be eaten alive. Presumably Mason might steal the limelight from him if he can kill the thousands of triffids roaming the M25. We leave the first episode just as Mason and Crocker are about to be consumed by a triffid or six, knowing that somehow he’ll escape.

The biggest problem for me with this show was the murky subplot of baddie Torrence versus forces for good. His decision to send Mason to certain death, when Mason happens to be the only known expert on triffids with a pair of eyes seems a tad absurd. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to kill Mason after he’s got rid of the triffids?

I found this subplot distracted from the main action of heroes versus the plants. 48 Days Later was so effective for limiting itself to sane versus insane. With such a large creaky subplot, the triffids are not much better than extras for the most part. They chortle away like rice kripies in milk, ooze the usual goo, but never throw us any surprises. In spite of all the advances in sfx, I found the Triffids in the 1951 classic and the 1981 mini series more menacing.

The BBC also continue to make the mistake of whacking up the music in the mix for their action dramas. Even over dialogue that needs little or no music, there’s a non-stop throb of strings to message us that danger is imminent. It only serves to underline the melodrama. It’s called trying too hard and it makes us look like amateurs compared to 24 and Flashforward productions.

Casting was off too. Eddie Izzard just isn’t a baddie. He’s the wrong shape, he has a swagger and urbanity that only seem to parody the role he’s been straightjacketed into. And Joely Richardson is a little too whiny to be a DJ action heroine. She’s much better suited to the role of caring, embrittled neurotic in a show like Nip Tuc; she’s the straight, compassionate one who educates and tempers Troy’s wit and nihilism. She’s so obviously meant to be our eco-conscience and doesn’t convince as a real person. Dougray Scott was a much better choice, rugged enough to be the hero, brooding enough to be the scientist. It’s a shame we don’t spend more time with him and his plants.

Tonight we have part 2. I shan’t be watching; I’ll be watching Flashforward on Fiver. A much more intriguing show written by writers who think carefully about character motivation and tread clear of cliche.

Hi, I’m Luna, I’m a Sex Addict – extract

In this chapter Luna accompanies Bertrand and Mari to an ‘adult party’ in London, W6.

______
10
______

I’d asked Bertrand if I needed a costume, but he said, No, not for this one. The plan was to meet Bertrand and Mari at The Troubadour, a 50s café on Old Brompton Road, at 6PM. It felt strange going there. I used to go a lot when I first moved back to London. It always struck me as very much a student’s hideaway, with its ceilings and walls strewn with the instrumental heirlooms of a bygone bohemia, its blend of café and restaurant, club, music venue and breakfast bar, quietly resisting the modern humdrum of high street branding. It was the kind of place you could imagine Jim Hendrix hanging out in, (he was once a regular), wearing his crazy colourful scarves and hats, smoking dope, and – just as easily – my own mother sipping tea and eating scones with cream. The interior was pretty much as I’d remembered it – dark tones of wood and the windows were few. Tables were laid out in nooks and crannies, and walls and winged wooden benches obscured faces. Stepping inside, I saw a hand go up and then Bertrand waving to me. Seated diagonally opposite Bertrand, was a slim little girl in her early twenties with extraordinary Eurasian eyes, heavily made up. Her skin was pale and creamy, her lips full and almost shockingly sexual, yet natural and sensitive. She was wearing a designer black cardigan, a creamy white blouse and a discreet silver necklace and looked like a little star waiting to be discovered. She seemed to wait to be introduced in a miserable suspense like someone accustomed to being overlooked.
Bertrand stood to welcome me with kisses on the cheek. He acted as though he was alone and I began to glance at the girl worried that I might have to introduce myself if Bertrand didn’t remember his manners.
“What can I get you to drink?” Bertrand was saying.
“Hi,” I said, glancing back at the girl seated diagonally opposite him.
“Ah, Mari – Luna, Luna, Mari!” Bertrand announced, his face wreathed in smiles. I got it: now he was two attractive women – all to himself – and he’s très content.
We shook hands. Hers was cool, soft and smooth, but not limp, almost caressing as it slipped into mine. I sat in the space they seemed to have reserved for me, next to Mari. I smiled bravely, as if by way of acknowledging that we were about to embark on a new adventure together. For one thing, I found the notion that we were shortly to leave this civilized bit of old post war England for an ‘adult party’ quite surreal. I began to wonder whether we weren’t going after all, Bertrand had been winding me up. I didn’t dare say anything in case he burst out laughing and buried me in embarrassment for having been so easily taken in by him.
Bertrand struck up conversation with me as if Mari was not really there. He wanted all my news, anything and everything I had to say seemed to charm him. It was as if he were hitting on me. I began playing with my hair and fidgeting with my earlobes. Mari had the patience of a saint, it seemed.
I’d hardly ordered my Green tea when Bertrand said he needed to step outside for a cigarette. He didn’t invite either of us to join him – it was simply understood I would stay with Mari.
There was a moment’s silence before either of us spoke. Coy, very feline, she waited, as if coiled in on herself, for me to initiate conversation. I would have preferred to stroke her. Her petiteness and beauty were totally at odds with my memory of Bertrand fucking me. But perhaps he was different with her, infinitely gentle, even doting with her. Maybe his expert brutality with me was his way of off-loading energy he had felt he must contain when with he was with her. I had been expecting someone a bit wild, grasping even, but she was the very opposite of that. So why was she joining him at a swingers party? It could only mean one thing: they had a sort of oedipal or a faux-incestuous thing together.
“So, you’re from France… Paris?” I opened.
She nodded, smiling, as if the idea of being anywhere else in France would have made her ridiculously irrelevant.
“But you’re half Japanese.”
She smiled and said, “My mum. And you?”
“Germany. But my father was originally from Iraq.”
She looked at length into my eyes and said, not at all coy:
“You have beautiful eyes.”
“Thanks. You too.”
I was surprised we’d got that out of the way so early on, but it was liberating, I have to say.
“That’s amazing make-up you have on,” I said, unable to help myself. “Is that for the, um, where we’re going, or do you always make up like that?”
“Always,” she said with Parisian assuredness. She said she couldn’t go anywhere until she’d put on her eye make-up. It defined her.
I sipped my tea, thinking about what she’d said. A girl who needs a kind of mask is a sort of voyeur, n’est-ce pas?
I asked her what she did. She said she was studying nutrition. Then she said she worked part time as a pharmacist’s assistant so she could pay the rent. The job was boring. Long hours on her feet. She said ever since she started her nutrition course, she’d become very critical of the pharmacy industry. She wanted to help people become more aware of what they put in their bodies and understand that the route to health was more about cutting out certain foods than packing it with supplements. She’d already cured herself of IBS. She said Bertrand had it, but rarely listened to her advice. “And so he suffers,” she said. “It’s stupid, no? But he’s so stubborn,” she said, with the slightest shrug of her shoulders. She wasn’t perfect, either, she admitted – she still smoked occasionally – but by thirty she wanted to be nicotine free. Once qualified she wanted to join a clinic; after that: set up her own business. She had a clear and achievable plan, it seemed. Far from the person I was in my mid twenties.
“Have you been to one of these things before?” I asked, suddenly keen to get her impression of what we were about to do before Bertrand returned.
“Adult party? Yes.” She smiled as if tickled by the memory of the last one. As if strangers having sex was neither tacky nor horny, but rather, a mildly interesting quirk of life. And again I wondered if I was really going to walk into a place where people were gang banging. “It’s your first time?” she asked.
I felt my face drain of blood as I said, Yes, it was.
“You like it?” I asked, my voice suddenly a bit tight.
She pursed her lips as if to squeeze out a suitably tangy reply, but she answered disingenuously: “I went once. It was OK. It’s more Bertrand’s thing. I don’t mind. Maybe it’s better to go this sort of thing than to suspect he’s having an affair I don’t know about.” Her accent was nearly as strong as his and reminded me they were a couple. She smiled fondly at me, as if to draw out a confession. “It’s OK, I know about you and Bertrand, by the way. He told me. It was for your art. You’re a painter. I thought this idea of yours very interesting actually.” As she cracked into an unlikely smile, her cadence seemed to hang in the air, inviting me to confirm that my interest in her man was entirely professional. Before I could think of a suitable reply she said, “It sounds like the kind of thing the Turner Prize judges would be interested in,” and she smiled again, as if we might both be tickled by her humour.
I could only scoff at the idea.
“Tate Modern?” she suggested.
“Neither. More like – if I’m lucky – private business clients who like the edgier stuff on their walls.”
I started to talk to her about the market. She listened attentively – like a PA preparing to write up what I’d said. Bertrand’s return cut me off. He smiled at us both as if he’d been outside plotting something naughty that would amuse us.
“Let me try,” he began and whipped out a pack of cards. So this was it. Mari tapped me fondly on the arm and said he was terrible, he never used to be like this and now he was, like, addicted to it. I grew conscious of nearby tables falling quiet and gawking at Bertrand as he went into a new trick. He was a natural performer, maintaining a seductive focus on my eyes, occasionally glancing at his hands, working the deck of cards with such silken precision his actions began to arouse me… My chosen card reappeared yet again like some guilty piece of evidence that would expose all of my lies. Now that the ice had been properly broken and we were all laughing together, I no longer wanted to go to this adult party – I preferred this kids party stuff with a pack of cards.
“So,” I began, resolved to assume a worldly air, “what does this, um, event involve?” I was smirking like an adolescent.
Bertrand looked from me to Mari and back again.
“Maybe it’s better you wait and see.”

We set off on foot, Bertrand leading the way. Twenty minutes later we arrive at a house along a well-to-do street in W6. You can hear music coming from inside through the extension out back and I notice neon light through one of the windows. Bertrand presses the bell. A young Asian guy, in chinos and short sleeves, opens the door – small eyes, naive smile – and welcomes us inside, as if to a holiday camp. As we step into a dark hallway, lit by a small table lamp and fairy lights that crawl up a rear spiral staircase that runs above our heads, I’m hit by the smell of human sweat. My instincts tell me to reverse the hell out of there, but already the door is closing and Bertrand is talking to the greeter.
An Indian man of about thirty-five, wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist, gawks at us without expression. Like a homeless person.
Bertrand and Mari have been once before – one visit and you’re automatically a member – but I’m new, so I’m asked to fill out a membership form. Bertrand offers to take my coats and valuables which he’s going to hand in at the bar/cloakroom in the kitchen, together with the alcohol we’ve brought with us (we were told it was ‘bring your own’). I begin scribbling in my name and email etc. Do I want to be texted about future events? I tick No. I sign illegibly and hand the clipboard and form back to the kid. As I’m a lone female, there’s no charge to pay. The kid’s I’m-on-monitor-duty kind of helpfulness is strangely welcome – till now, I’ve always associated the sex industry with a certain grim hard-nosed commercialism.
“OK,” he resumes, chirpy cheerful, “to the left of the front door you have the kitchen and bar, and to the right you have the downstairs living room. There’s also an upstairs lounge and two bedrooms. If you have any questions or needed any help, just ask.”
I see his boss, an older man, same get-up, perma-tan, wily eyes, watching over us. I avoid his eyes, not wanting to see him crack his crocodile grin.
I join Bertrand and Mari at the bar. A big black guy in a black T-shirt and two silver chains around his neck raises a polite eyebrow and somehow manages to convey a token friendliness not normally associated with his persona. I can’t help thinking he feels emasculated working behind the bar instead of on the door somewhere. Bertrand hands us each a bit of plastic with a number and wrist band for our valuables. Just like at the swimming pool or the hospital. As the big man hands us each a white towel, I could swear he’s trying hard to suppress an urge to smirk.
We enter the low-ceilinged living room walled with mirrors like in a yoga room – three guys to our left, sitting on a sofa, like fat monkeys on a wall, fresh out of nuts, their eyes grazing on the slow-motion action taking place on the three beds: one white guy on top of a black girl, two dark guys on top of two fairer skinned girls. Very interracial here. The guys move like slow piston engines in and out of their current selection and no sound can be heard above the perfectly-adjusted-for-comfortable-conversation volume of 50 Cent – it’s as if they were each in their own private bubbles. Would I be able to get into one? I can’t imagine it. Not without plenty of wine anyway.
Our wardrobe – very obviously from IKEA – is at the end of the room by the matching blind. There are no changing rooms, clearly you’re just expected to strip off and hang up your clothes and put on your towel. Dive straight in. Mari’s blouse shines a bleach white in the purple neon light fixed to the wall above the nearest bed. None of us speaks. Mar’s figure is willowy, her breasts small but beautiful and firm – I can tell without even touching them – a little firmer than mine, I note with envy. I’m surprised to see a woman who takes such care of her facial appearance pays so little attention to her bikini line – her bush needs a trim, at the very least. Tying her towel she casts me a nervous, inquiring smile to check I’m OK. Bertrand stuffs a handful of condoms into his towel, back of his waist, and offers us one each. Out of politeness I take one, but already I have decided, This isn’t for me. As the beds are all taken and there’s no space left on the sofa, we get a glass of wine from the bar – Bertrand insists on the French wine we brought, not the Italian plonk that’s already open – and head up the spiral staircase.
The small lounge is ringed with sofas. A 50 inch HD TV is hooked up to one of the walls. Sky Sports, volume mute. If you don’t like football, there’s a smaller flatscreen playing porn. A large print of Greek lovers on one of the other walls. A vase of flowers on a square table in the corner. Everything tidy and neutral, not unlike a private hospital. Except for the 50 Cent. And the pornography, which, as I look at it now, with its endless close-ups of penises and vagina sand anuses, strikes me as closer to the medical genre than pornography. Bertrand sits down and looks up at the HD screen – seemingly content to watch football all night. Mari sits next to him and I sit on the end. Three more monkeys.
Two couples drift by and wave hello on their way downstairs. Mari and I mouth something in return. I haven’t yet seen a man I find attractive. A man of about sixty with tufts of frizzy white hair round a bald pate puffs up the stairs. Patrician Romans come to mind, except he’s nibbling Fishfingers from a common cereal bowl he’s carrying, not grapes from a ceramic platter picturing the gods in action. More men come, mostly middle-aged with beer guts that resemble seven month pregnancies, the rest are mostly over-bulked muscle men… up and down the stairs they come and go, like dogs on the prowl, sniffing the sweaty air for female scent. There’s a fan on, I notice, but it just isn’t coping.
I turn to Bertrand, “I’m sorry, I don’t really get it.”
“Luna, give it time. Don’t judge just yet. Give it time.”
I drink my wine, giving it time.
The room begins to fill up with people – mostly men. Men like vultures. At what point do they know when you’ve ‘died’ and can be fucked?
A tubby man of about forty engages me in conversation. He’s very polite. He’s clearly educated. He hasn’t been to one of these things for a long time, he says, as though regretting a hobby that’s been laid to waste.
“Your first time?”
“Yeah.”
“Enjoying it?”
“Um…” He quickly reads my apprehension and breaks into an empathetic chuckle, like a decent prefect at prep school, “… it’s interesting,” I concede, “but… I don’t know…”
He shrugs and says, “Well, people are friendly here. No one knows you, no one cares what you do, so, you know, just get stuck in and enjoy it.” I detect gentle admonishment in his voice: I’m being boringly self-conscious, presumably. Boys and their scrums, I think to myself. “And if you’re here as a couple,” he motions, without actually pointing at either Mari or Bertrand, “you don’t even have to mix in if you don’t want to.” That seems like good advice. Somehow I have to contrive a reason to pull Bertrand away from his Sky Sports and into one of the upstairs bedrooms, without offending Mari – to a room where the air ventilation appears to be working.
Mari and I chat easily, as if we were old friends. Our naked arms touching. We talk about nutrition, the Atkins diet, monosaccharides and polysaccharides. Apparently we all eat too many polysaccharides. What’re they? Grains. So you mean bread? No, all grains, including rice. And starch. So potatoes? Yes, potatoes. The gut can’t take all this crap. That’s why more and more people are getting IBS, celiac disease, colitis and other inflammatory diseases of the bowel…. I see a goal has been scored. The couple opposite seem to be fucking to the rhythm of the cheering crowd… When these complex carbohydrates aren’t broken down, they pass into the colon where they ferment, Mari tells me, and there they mutate, they produce toxins… A black man perches on the arm of the adjacent armchair and, grinning, hangs over his knees to catch what we’re talking about. Mari pays him no attention. This is a passion of hers, not to be pawed with. The thing you have to remember, she says, is you should have many more sugars in your gut than poly sugars, because only the mono sugar are easy to absorb. I can see the black man is about to chip in at this point and grab Mari’s hand to take her off downstairs. Into the colon of this place, maybe, but at least there’s alcohol there.
We top up our glasses and pop into the living room in the hope something in the wax work museum of fucking machines may have changed. The bed just inside the room is now occupied by two men and a woman. Her mouth is sucking cock, her arse is being serviced by the other man, as if he were slowly working in screws to a shelving bracket. I move passed them only to nearly collide with a couple having sex on the end of the sofa. People brush passed us on their way to other frivolities. I step back and nearly collide with a silver pole running from floor to ceiling. It’s a dancing pole. Perhaps I should have one in my apartment. In between lengthy sessions with my brush. It might loosen me up. Or the model. As I hang there a moment, Mari quietly by my side, I’m reminded of a play I went to see in a warehouse in Wapping where, as an audience, we were permitted to mingle with the mute actors, occupy their stage, their world, become complicit in their drama. And yet their dramas were far more intriguing than anything I am witnessing here. The man upstairs said, No one knows you’re here, as if that were entirely liberating, but perhaps that’s the problem for me: the sheer anonymity of the scene I find overwhelming.
I take Mari’s hand again and make as swift an exit as I possibly can. I take her along the upstairs corridor in search of refuge. The first room is occupied and there’s a man watching the couple. The second man looks slightly agitated and keeps touching the girl’s breast trying to insinuate himself in their bubble. In the next room a couple have just finished. He hangs by the door a moment. It seems you have to queue, or you’ll never get a bed. They take their time and seem to leave rather reluctantly, but without a word or gesture. It’s our stage now. What will we do?
As I get comfortable on the bed, Bertrand appears and we pat the bed, as if to a dog and he pads over and sits with us, plonking his beer on the bedside table. I feel easier now, as if we’ve reached a safe island and Bertrand will turn away any invading males.
I’m about to start criticising and complaining, when he touches me and kisses me, effectively shutting me up. Then I feel another pair of hands on me – and turn to see they belong to Mari. I encourage her. I tug open Bertrand’s white towel and knead his cock and when it’s hard I glance at Mari inviting her to go first. Her eyes tell me, ‘After you’. So I suck him. It’s just theatre, a role. I start to feel vaguely aroused, but in the corner of my eye I see the Roman standing there eating crisps now from his cereal bowl. I stop and roll over to touch Mari, her breasts, I caress her legs, her inner thighs, my back to the door now. Bertrand leans over my shoulder and says he’s going to the bar, what would we like? He has to ask again because I don’t hear him the first time, my eyes poring over Mari’s, captivated by their beauty and ineffable sadness.
“Yes, OK, wine,” I reply.
We feel a weight lift off the bed.
A moment later, a weight arrives on the bed, a different weight. I glance to my right to see a man sitting there, like a hippo that’s just moved in to take the other male’s territory. We ignore him. He stays.
“Can I tell you something?” Mari says, inching closer to me.
“Sure.”
“I like you.”
“Me too.”
“You know, I wasn’t sure, but, yes, I like you!” When she laughs it’s like a glorious, evanescent little firework. Suddenly it’s so clear to me that my likeability is an issue that had to be resolved quickly for her, given that she and I have shared the same man.
I unpeel my towel and show her my breasts. And when she’s had a good look, I unpeel her towel and compliment her on hers. I feel a ridiculous urge to kiss her, like in that moment just before you jump off a cliff into the sea below.
Mari is about to say something when Bertrand arrives with drinks.
The hippo moves away.
“Voilà,” Bertrand says handing us each a glass of white wine. We toast. Bertrand kisses Mari, then me. Then prompts Mari to kiss me. Thus bidden, we kiss. Her lips are warmer and fuller than Bertrand’s. Her scent is unmistakably female and for the first time that evening I feel a stirring of desire.
Two well-built men in their thirties enter the room and boldly drift toward us. I retie my towel and lie down. Bertrand regards them with slanty eyes, but they appear undeterred. One of the men is swarthy and balding, the other is younger, square-jawed and smug. Mari flutters her pretty eyelids and I smile politely. A third man joins us, like an opportunist jackal, young and long limbed, pale with impassive hazel eyes. He’s not bad looking. It’s his first time, too, he tells me. He finds it all a bit bizarre and doesn’t want me to feel we have to do anything. I make space for him on the bed and suggest that he might like to stretch out and relax. Meanwhile the smug one runs his hands up Mari’s legs as they talk about skin and beauty products. I perch on my elbows as the jackal stretches out beside me, precariously aligned with the edge of the bed. Bertrand has been watching me and now gently unpins my bath towel as if making an offering to my visitor. When the jackal, whose name I never want to know, asks if he might touch me, I say, That’s fine. As he rests a hand over my belly, I feel a weight lift off the bed and turn to see Bertrand exit the room. If I’m going to do it, I might as well get on with it, so I push the man’s hand to my crotch and he works his fingers on my clitoris – as he’s supposed to. The balding guy is going down on Mari and the smug man is watching, while stroking his penis, waiting for a moment when he can join in or take over. Mari has closed her eyes. I turn on my back and, taking Mari’s hand in mine, offer my arse to the jackal. I don’t want to see what’s going on. I finger myself to help me forget. Get stuck in. I can’t possibly take an interest in the man, the only point to this is to explore one’s own bestiality.
When I next open my eyes, I find the smug man rubbing his semi erect penis in front of me.
“Will you suck me?” he asks with the slightest note of pleading to his voice.
I simply turn my head the other way.
The man who was sucking Mari is now fucking Mari. He never seems to tire of the same rhythm. Zombies come to mind.
My interlinking fingers squeeze Mari’s as if I were afraid she’d turned into a zombie too.
The jackal’s cock is too small and too thin and I realise I’m never going to be able to come so I fuck him harder to make him finish quicker. Maybe that’s not done here, but I’m getting bored. He stops suddenly, and I believe he’s done. He withdraws. He whispers Thank you in my ear. I keep my eyes closed. I hear him asking me if I’m OK, but I ignore him. His weight leaves the bed. I feel almost sleepy… but I suspect I would be turfed off the bed, like a down-and-out off her park bench, if I were to nod off: these beds are not for sleeping on.
Suddenly I’m aware of a man’s legs sliding around mine and I panic, and turn over, ready to push or kick the intruder away – but it’s Bertrand. Mari has gone. He smiles, like a man who’s humour has been flushed with buzzing little hormones just a few minutes ago. He has a sex toy in one hand, sheathed by a condom, a tube of lubricant in the other. He urges me to rest on my front. I hear the buzzing of the vibrator and then feel it pushing its way inside of me. My blood collects around the pulsating head like bees to a buzzing hive. He works the toy back and forth, stoking me till I burn with excitement. As he lies across my back, his smell fills my nostrils, those indescribable pheromones of his that makes me want him so, intoxicating and all-possessing, the antidote to all those other smells downstairs. I hear myself groan, deeply, into the sheets, the mattress, as he goes deeper with the toy. The pleasure in my throat resonates like a chorus and I hear myself laugh against my will. His lubricated finger worms into my arse and moments later I feel his cock push into me and the pain feels good. I am never more alive than when I’m being split open through both orifices of pleasure. It seems only this way, this fullness, is enough drive the anger from my body, casting it into the sun. My orgasm bites deep into my belly, the rush comes so violently it seems to want to separate my bones from my sockets, ligaments from bone, tendon from muscle.
When it’s over, we lie in each other’s arms panting fiercely, inhaling each other’s smell as if it were oxygen – and I laugh out loud, even as I see four men and a woman gathered around, gawking at us with a mix of reactions, from applause to envy to censure. I remember now where I am and I feel suddenly vulnerable as if I’d spoken up when all should have remained quiet.

“So what is it about you and threesomes?” I ask Bertrand an hour later after we’ve retired to the upstairs living room. “Is it a macho thing? A conquest thing?”
He pulls that typically French face that means yes and no. “For me, it’s the theatre of it – the jealousy, the rivalry. It’s like this creative space you have as an actor.”
“Maybe this is what I don’t like so much – I’m not a big fan of the theatre. I find it phony.”
“No, it’s just a bigger expression of normality.”
“That’s almost a definition of phony, though, isn’t it? And anyway, where is the expression here? I haven’t seen any.”
Bertrand shrugs. “Yes, I agree, it’s not really so interesting here. I think because everyone’s a tourist really. In France, when me and Mari would go, we would often see zhe same couples, zhe same singles. And they were more educated than most of the people here, I think. Here you have a lot of wide boys. I’m sorry,” he concludes with a shrug. “You have to try, though, don’t you?”
“I tell you something,” Mari says, recently back from the kitchen and a long conversation with a diabetic IT consultant apparently interested in her tips on nutrition, “he’s not so easy about a threesome with some other guy. Which is a bit unfair, don’t you think?”
Bertrand shrugs. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t like so much touching anozher guy’s bollocks, you know. It’s not my cup of tea.”
I laugh at his choice of expression.
“You’re not enjoying it?” he asks me.
“Put it this way, I wouldn’t come again.”
Bertrand shrugs as if it mattered pas du tout.
“In France it was better,” Mari concludes.
“Naturellement,” I reply.
She seems to think I’m taking the piss for a moment, but then suddenly lets out a giggle. Utterly infectious. As is she.

fb live stream

FB.init(“2bf98adfa7dcbb59439d8bba28b905e0″);

Generous Entrepreneurs Online on Facebook

Generous Entrepreneurs Online

FB.init(“2bf98adfa7dcbb59439d8bba28b905e0″);

Generous Entrepreneurs Online on Facebook

Nic on fb

Nicholas Penrake

Create Your Badge

Sisi and Sonia fb fan box

FB.init(“0e7806b3cea4f4b818af6703d01db432″);

Sisi & Sonia on Facebook

Hi, I’m Luna, I’m a Sex Addict

The two opening chapters of my new novel – working title, Hi, I’m Luna, I’m a I’m a Sex Addict – an artist’s extreme measures to use her sexuality to revamp her career bring her into contact with love, death and the chance of a new and wonderful beginning.

Sisi and Sonia

Sisi and Sonia, written by Nic Penrake, published by YouWriteOn, available on Barnes & Noble, amazon and other reputable online bookstores.

“…very well written intelligent literary thriller.”
– Former Head of Marketing, Waterstone’s

“Very well written with an admirable captivation of characters. Both tragic and entertaining and gives a real insight into the mind of a man in love.” Helen Croydon, journalist, regular features writer in UK broadsheets.

Read an extract on this blog.

More five star reviews of this novel on amazon. Frequently copies sold at well below listings price.

Barnes and Noble, amazon.co.uk and amazon.com:

http://bit.ly/mPWYG

http://bit.ly/1atuHA

http://bit.ly/XAVXP