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

which is where I come in. Nancy said having me on the show would spice things up. Which made me feel a bit like a vindaloo.
    â€œYou’d be doing us a big favor,” Nancy purred again, as if she was offering oral sex.
    Because I was getting sick of her running her eyes over my body, and because I wanted to get back to Holly, I said, “Yeah, sure, whatever you think. Cool.”
    I got the feeling I was seriously going to regret that yes. Only not immediately, because when I walked into the kitchen later Holly smiled at me, and it was a smile that promised much, much more than a haircut and a new pair of jeans.
    She’d stuck a T-shirt on over the top of her bikini and she must have spilled water down her front. Seeing that she was the sort of girl who could slop stuff over herself like a normal person made her even more adorable to me.
    When they spoke about my makeover later, though, the fear kicked in. I got the impression that when they said makeover they really didn’t mean a new pair of jeans and a haircut. That’s the thing about Americans; they don’tknow the meaning of half-hearted. Everything is All or Nothing.
    When Holly and Nancy talked about my makeover they used words like—“major orthodontic reconstruction…spinal alignment…speech adjustments.”
    This was all starting to sound like it was going to hurt.
    â€œGuys like me—average guys from Islington in their twenties—don’t live as kept men in poolhouses in the Hollywood Hills—let alone allow themselves to get turned into designer-clad tossers,” I told them grandly.
    â€œYou’re going to love it,” they trilled.
    But I knew I wasn’t. After my swim they flicked through magazines to show me what they planned for me, and I was none too impressed with the looks and styles they pointed out.
    â€œSee—that could be you!” Holly held up a picture of two guys standing by a Porsche. Guys with spivvy haircuts, credit card attitudes and tassel-shoe tastes. The type of guys I wanted to smack in the mouth, not emulate.
    â€œOnly if you remove my frontal lobe,” I warned her.
    After that they took me to this spa on Sunset Boulevard, and I was steamed, scrubbed and massaged to within an inch of my life. I didn’t mind that so much, but I definitely preferred the tequila shots that followed.
    It was Nancy’s idea to play a game of Truth or Dare. I always took the dare. They always took the truth. Which sort of says all there is to say about the sex war. Girls always want truth and guys always want risk.
    Plus, Truth or Dare games are always about sex. Everyone knows that. Tequila shots are always about sex, too.
    So shot by shot the girls undressed their secrets for me.
    It was late afternoon and we were sitting in Holly’s cathedral-sized living room with windows down one whole side. Tinseltown looked like a fabled mystical land below, with its palm trees and taller buildings peeking out from the carpet of low-lying smog. It was the most exotic setting I’d ever been in, and there I was, stretched out on a white sofa in some guy called Ted’s clothes while two beautiful women dared me to take out each of my three body piercings one by one: upper ear, eyebrow, nipple.
    Even if there wasn’t any actual shagging, it was all very erotic. I thought it was going especially well when I asked Holly to give me a hand with my nipple ring. For a moment I was afraid that I’d reached the peak of life’s pleasures. I suddenly feared that everything in my life would seem crap and sad in comparison to what was happening in that room on that couch that evening.
    I suppose I should have given a thought to what Kev was up to, or how my mum was doing, or world hunger—but I didn’t. My life at that moment was unrecognizable from my life that morning, and there was a suspicious part of me that worried that if I actually thought about Real Life this