Read by Alex Woodhall
‘Truth or dare!’ Rachel shouts when the partied-out conversation dies down for a few embarrassing seconds. We’re all staring glassy-eyed, wondering how in hell’s name this group of half-a-dozen ironically half-cut hipsters has rocked up in my lounge at four in the morning.
‘Shit no,’ I say. ‘Last time I woke up two days later not knowing how the hell I got this on my arm.’ I point to the tattoo on my bicep – Rachel’s idea of a cosmic angel.
‘It’s cool,’ Anja says. She comes close, traces the swirling inky lines with her finger like a maze – and I start to warm to her, thinking she’s not such a parasitic pain in the arse. She’s a mate of Rachel’s – hung out here a couple of times before. She’s a photographer but I wouldn’t need to tell you that if you saw how she’s constantly whipping out her digital SLR. She’s snapped all kinds of abstract banalities tonight: Rachel’s ear lobe, sweat marks on my running top, a distressed brick. Fucking weird. She turns up with this guy, Nick – bushy beard, thick-rimmed specs – the whole uniform, posy git. I thought they were together but, with artists, who knows?
So Rachel grabs the almost-dead wine bottle from the table, drains the last of the Pinot and starts spinning it. We’re all sat in a circle on the artfully-mismatched furniture she’s ‘salvaged’ for me – chintzy sofas, a church pew and even an old dentist’s chair. No-one’s heart is in the game – a few faux embarrassing truths, a clichéd dare – a girl with black lipstick whose name I don’t know gives a bottle of craft beer a blow job that’s so half-heartedly mechanical it’s like she’s saying to the three guys there: ‘I’m too wrecked to even think about it’.
The bottle points at Anja – truth.
‘I got my first from art school for shooting nudes.’ Anja fixes me with a stare. ‘Male nudes.’ She takes out her iPhone, as if we were interested in proof, and shows some black-and-white images of ripped torsos. Nick takes an even greater interest than Rachel. Maybe he and Anja aren’t an item.
Everybody goes ‘cool’ or ‘wicked’ but I’m thinking ‘Is that a such big deal for a photographer?’
Anja spins the bottle and its neck points right at me. ‘Dare,’ Rachel says.
‘Sure,’ I say, warily inspecting the personal hygiene of the other two guys, anticipating the kind of lame metrosexual man-snog Rachel’s dared me with before.
‘Pose for Anja,’ Rachel says.
‘Piss off!’ is my instinctive reaction. Then: ‘What? Now? Here?’
‘Why not? She’s brought her camera. And it would be cool to have a photo of you like that on my iPhone – proof that you’re probably the only web developer in East London with a six-pack.’ Rachel runs her hand over my stomach in the way that promises a morning of hard-core action in bed once her hangers-on are out of the door. I slightly warm to the idea. I do look after myself and though I work out, I’m not always going to be able to wriggle into a pair of skinny jeans. ‘And it is my thirtieth coming up,’ she says, echoing my thoughts.
‘Well, if Anja’s up for doing it?’ I say, half-hoping Anja will decline.
‘I’d be delighted,’ she says, smiling. ‘But I’m not taking pseudo-porno selfies. I need to add some artistic integrity – a theme for me to work with – and somewhere private to shoot.’
Somewhere private? I’m starting to wonder about this but I’m not going to back down from the dare – just pinning my hopes on Rachel being, I guess, possessive but it’s not happening.
‘Use the kitchen,’ Rachel says. ‘He spends more time there than in front of his Mac.’
‘Cool,’ says Anja.
‘Done,’ I say, with brittle bravado and spin the bottle again. It points to Rachel. Dare.
‘Group dare,’ she says – that’s her individual twist on the rules and shows even she’s bored of the bloody stupid game. She slams a fistful of some kind of pills by the bottle. Everyone except Anja and me grabs one or more and leaps up as Rachel cranks the drum’n’bass, screaming something about dancing till dawn in Nick’s ear and I realise how friendly she’s been with him all night. .
‘So where’s the kitchen?’ Anja asks, fingers clasping round her lens.
*
The kitchen-diner’s tucked around a corner from the lounge. Rachel’s right – I hang out here more than I realise. This is my territory and the lounge hers – its stripped pine-floors now being pounded by spaced-out feet.
‘So you cook?’ Anja asks, tailing me.
Before I get a chance to answer she closes the door behind her and I’m wondering why Rachel's not followed us here too – is it some trust thing? I mean, Anja’s a cute girl but she’s no Rachel.
‘Can’t stand that fucking noise either,’ Anja adds. She surveys the shining stainless steel, looks at the pans and utensils hanging from the ceiling, and I properly notice her eyes for the first time – wide, blue, long-lashed. She’s a slight figure, dressed down in black with close-cropped hair. A girl with a tongue stud’s not normally my kind. Maybe it’s the booze or the situation but I’m starting to find her more attractive than I should.
‘You sure you want to do this?’ I ask.
‘And let you escape your dare? Rachel would kill me.’ She’s obviously given the theme some thought and goes on. ‘I’m thinking we do contrasts – human body, food, sensuality, right? A knife’s steel blade against skin, the soft texture of steak pressed into a hard, bony rib, shimmering oil spread on tight, tense muscle. You got anything in here to help with that?’
She speaks with an intensity that has me obediently raiding the kitchen drawers. While she’s busy fixing her camera’s settings, I search the cupboards, lay out the knives from my block and raid the fridge for fresh ingredients. She seems pleased when I pull out this kick-ass beef rib I’d hustled for Sunday from the farmers’ market. My heart’s pounding now. The situation’s starting to arouse me – I know that’s not a good thing – but my discomfiture makes it worse. I’m not sure if I can do this and I’m hoping and not hoping Rachel’s going to stop dancing and join us.
‘You can take your clothes off, if you dare,’ Anja says.
I enthusiastically slip off my sneakers, discard my socks and unfasten my shirt, slowing as I reach the bottom buttons. I undo my belt and step warily out of my jeans. Then I fold and unfold my trousers several times before I finally place them over a dining chair. Anja stands there watching me in my Calvin Kleins, looking me up and down with what I take to be the eye of a professional photographer. She purses her lips, smiles, nods as she seems to consider her plans for the shoot. And most of all, she waits. I’m feeling sized up like an object, uncomfortable, wondering how I’m shaping up against all those first class nudes she photographed for her degree. But at the same time, feeling like an impersonal commodity, the meat for the shoot, is making me embarrassingly horny.
‘I was wondering,’ I say. ‘Can I do this wearing my pants?’ I run behind the island hob to open the fridge, pull out a string of farmers’ market sausages and twirl them round my neck – a kind of comedy gambit that offers me an oblique way out. ‘Let’s make it light-hearted.’
‘I don’t do light-hearted,’ Anja says. ‘And I hate sausages.’
‘So sausages are out?’ I ask standing behind the hob.
‘I’ve never had a daring sausage.’
‘Can you give me five or ten minutes just to sort of relax into the idea of it?’ I ask, taking another tack.
She waits, camera in hand.
I lower my voice. ‘Anja, I’ve got a bloody huge hard-on.’
‘You mentioned the elephant in the room?’ she says, laughing. ‘I thought we might be able to, you know, pretend it wasn’t there. I’m a professional – I’ve worked with many nude guys – though models don’t usually present themselves in your state. But I’ve got no problem with it. No problem at all.’
I hear the dull beat of Rachel's hypnotic dance music pulsing in the background and realise there’s no way out. ‘OK. Let’s do it.’
I slip my hands either side of the waistband and ease the trunks down my legs. I inhale slowly and deeply and stare down as the pants hit the floor. Then I step right in front of her.
Anja doesn’t look away. Maybe takes a deep breath herself but she stares for what feels like half the rest of my life – and I feel exposed, revealed, awkward but then somehow liberated when she eventually smiles. And then Anja places her camera down and pulls off her T-shirt, then her jeans.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I ask, now hoping to hell that Rachel doesn’t walk in. But then Rachel dared me, right?
‘It’s the way I work,’ she says, slipping out of her underwear with none of my agonising of self-consciousness. ‘I insist on sharing the vulnerability of the situation with my subjects – and you see that trust in the photographs.’
‘But this way you’re also going to see this in the photos,’ I say, pointing below my waist. ‘Is this professional?’
‘I’ll work around it,’ she says. ‘Trust me.’
And I stare hard at her naked body – her pierced nipples, her tattoos and her natural, unshaved pubes. I get exactly what she means – and now I’m totally in this girl’s hands. She takes dozens of photos, directs me in poses. I feel sparks when she leads me by the arm. She comes close and I catch the aroma of her hair, the heaviness of her breathing and I’m wondering if she’s aroused too. But I remind myself we’ve stayed – just about – on the professional side of the line. This is all about a late-night dare I didn’t back down from – but I’m starting to want her.
She kneels beside me, camera gazing upwards and her head’s a professional six inches away from my waist and I’m setting myself a dare of my own now. A move of my hips and an encouraging palm placed to the back of her head and I might be changing my opinions on girls with tongue studs forever. And I think, even if I’m right about Anja, what if Rachel walks through the door, if we cross that line ... how she’d yell it was the end for us. But then I remember how she’d yelled the same at me last week and how she’d been so eager to dance with Nick and the revelation starts to hit me that this dare might be one huge set-up.
I look into Anja’s eyes and I see her stare back at me and moisten her parted lips as if waiting for a cue and think I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
‘Anja, don’t make me wait any longer,’ I say to myself.
I close my eyes. I wait and I wait and the throbbing music fades away. Then I hear the shutter rattle on the SLR.
(c) Mike Clarke, 2014
Mike Clarke recently completed a Creative Writing MA and is currently putting the final touches to his first novel. His ‘day job’ currently involves working in the margins of the criminal justice system – a source of unparalleled inspiration for a crime writer – a shame, then, that he isn’t one!
Alex Woodhall has worked in comedy for the last 14 years, on stage, TV and radio. He DJs extensively around the country in clubs, festivals, zombie chase game 2.8 Hours Later, and is half of The Coffin Dodgers Disco. Interests include ballroom dancing, Native American art and pornography.
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