The Sex Was Great But... by Tyne O’Connell

cafés—those sorts of places didn’t cut it. Besides, the bus drivers went off their heads if you tried it on their buses, and the shop owners were nobetter, so mostly we were left with pretty scabby venues for our gropings.
    Once I did it in the girls’ toilets at the White Horse, which impressed my mates for a while, before Lee Hubbard did it in the headmasters office with his girl—on the desk! Respect. Where you did it spoke of your ingenuity as a sexual adult. Later, of course, we got onto questions like: 3) How did you do it? (As in what position.) and 4) How many times. Obviously we all bullshitted like crazy over that one. Once was never enough.
    It took a while for my erection over Holly to subside, so I dived into the pool and tried to swim it off. By the time I came out Holly had someone with her, someone older altogether more put together than Holly. I don’t mean put together as in a better body, I mean more assembled. This girl looked like she’d been constructed on the factory floor.
    As I approached the two girls I was thinking that my days of having erections over celebrities in the Hollywood Hills was about to come to an end. This girl was probably Holly’s minder. She looked like the sort who could kick-box her way out of any situation. Or maybe she was a chauffeur, come to drive me back to my real life as a sofa-surfing nobody.
    They didn’t hear me approaching, but I could hear them talking about me and what I heard wasn’t too nice. They stopped when they realized I was there, and the “assembled one” turned to me and meowed. Well, she said something but I don’t know what. Her words just sounded like a long feline yawn.
    I was focusing on Holly, and she looked gutted. I’d seenthat look on girls before, and I recognized it as a look that could be milked. As a kid, whenever I walked in on my mum and auntie Lucy talking about me, my strategy was to let my eyes fill up with tears and run out of the room.
    Auntie Lucy would then say something to my mum along the lines of, “Now you’ve done it, Jean!” and my mum or auntie Lucy would come out after me and say sorry and promise me whatever toy or activity it was that I’d been banging on about most recently.
    As a strategy, I accept that it’s probably not that principled, but it was better than dwelling on the nasty stuff they’d been saying about me. I used this seize-the-day approach on Holly and the assembled one. I let my eyes fill up with tears, so they could see how much they’d hurt my feelings, before striding off down the slope toward the poolhouse. My only regret were the ridiculous swimming trunks I was wearing. I looked totally gay.
    The assembled one came after me. Not quite who I wanted, but it all worked out okay because I got what I wanted.
    After telling me what a great body I had, and how great she thought I’d been to Holly, she asked me if I’d consider staying on in the poolhouse and allow them to repay me for my help earlier that day. She explained about wanting to do a makeover, and I pretended that it would be a big sacrifice but one I might be willing to make for the greater good.
    She begged.
    I sulked.
    She begged some more, and in the end we struck a deal. Nancy said Holly would be really pleased. “Who knowswhat might happen?” she purred. I mean she really purred—like Cat Woman, or something. But so what? Goodbye sofa-sharing at Hollymount Apartments; hello Hollywood Hills poolhouse and a futon all to myself!
    It wasn’t all good news, though, because somewhere in the negotiations it was decided that I would be the next victim on the new season of MakeMeOver. It’s this tossers’ show that brings these actresses you thought were dead back to life. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched it once, with Kev and Snore, but if I haven’t I’ve seen things like it. Apparently the network is sick of the format,