Read by Susannah Holland
"Paul!" boomed Stuart as he neared them. "And this must be the lovely Maria! Great to meet you! I'm Stuart, Stuart with a U, like the Kings of Scotland."
He grinned hard at them. Maria shook his hand, smiled and nodded.
"Don't you look super! Like a dirty little boardroom babe! And you, Paul, Concorde … very witty. Shame they decommissioned the old things – the toilets were very roomy, and always surgically clean. So glad you could make it! Do avail yourselves of the refreshments, won't you?"
He threw out a hand to encompass the whole party; the vast buffet table, the bar stacked four deep with ready-poured glasses of champagne, the waiters and waitresses circulating among the crowd, heaped trays raised aloft like Olympic torches.
"The staff are all already bought and paid for, by the way, if you fancy it. Silver service, if you know what I mean. No look-but-don't-touch here! Well, I'm sure I'll see you later. Have a great time!"
He winked cheerily and glided away to greet some other new arrivals.
Nobody quite knew when Stuart's Sexy Parties had started. Stuart himself had been living in Godalming ever since any of Maria and Paul's friends could remember, but as they were all commuter-belt exiles themselves, this simply meant that he'd been resident for more than ten years. It was also not quite clear what Stuart did for a living, or indeed how any job could support Stuart's enormous house, orgiastic gatherings, and exquisite, expensive wife Zoë.
All anyone was sure of was that whatever Stuart did, he, like everyone else, did it in London. In fact, Stuart frequently claimed that the purpose of his Sexy Parties was" to bring a little bit of London into the suburbs", which was all well and good, except that before Maria and Paul had moved to their detached house in Godalming, they'd had a two-bed in Clapham, and before that they'd lived in a flat in Camden, and never before had they encountered anything like this.
Paul had met Stuart at the Fitness First gym (which in itself was odd because there was a fully-equipped exercise room in Stuart's basement) and they'd got along very well. Paul had mentioned Stuart the next night at a dinner party given by their friends Ben and Mike, and Ben had filled them in on the nature of Stuart's parties.
"We used to go all the time," said Mike, "but since Hannah came along we can't really." Hannah gurgled her agreement via the baby monitor in the corner.
"They were great fun, though," added Ben. "You don't have to do anything if you don't want to, of course – but trust me, you'll want to. Even if you don't fancy any of the guests, the serving staff are always red hot."
"Hmm," said Mike.
"Well, they are."
"Word of warning though," said Mike, raising his sorbet spoon. "If you're halfway good-looking Stuart will come on to you sooner or later. Sort of a droit du seigneur thing. And it's considered very bad manners to refuse."
"So Maria will have to watch out," said Ben, "But Paul won't have anything to worry about."
And they all laughed.
The first party Maria and Paul went to was the "Mile High" one. She hadn't been all that interested in the sexual aspect of things, but thought it might be useful for networking. Nevertheless, she somehow ended up in one of the bathrooms with a systems designer from Basingstoke, who was surprisingly good at cunnilingus.
The second party's theme had been – rather unimaginatively, although perhaps it was ironic – "Vicars and Tarts". Maria's liberated attitude did not extend to fornicating with a man of the cloth, even if it was only fancy dress, and so she'd sat it out in the kitchen with some of the other, more squeamish guests. Paul, on the other hand, was visibly thrilled by the whole thing, and very swiftly disappeared into the gym with a dominatrix in red leather. He didn't come out for three hours, and when he finally rejoined Maria, he had an enormous grin on his face, despite the fact that he looked like he'd been in a particularly vicious fight.
Every month the two of them would squeeze in a few hours on Saturday night to drop by Stuart's place, and by the time they had attended the "Last Days of Rome", "Socialist Worker" and "Hammer Horror" parties, Maria and Paul had got quite into the swing of things. So when the next invitation came through, they were crestfallen to find that this party had the disappointingly general theme of "Boys and Girls".
"Do you think he means schoolgirls?" asked Paul, hopefully.
Maria frowned. "I don't know what he means. It's a bit vague, isn't it?"
Paul decided eventually that it must mean schoolboys and schoolgirls, and went down to Peacocks to buy shorts and a blazer. Maria refused point blank to wear school uniform, and compromised by digging out an old velveteen dress from the Eighties to customise. Even Paul was impressed when she came downstairs in patent-leather buckled shoes, with ribbons in her hair and around her waist, wearing what looked like a child's party dress. To complete the outfit, she'd found some thick white ribbed tights, curled her hair into ringlets, and bound down her breasts.
"Christ," said Paul, "It's more Whatever Happened to Baby Jane than Lolita, but I suppose it'll do."
Maria refrained from mentioning that he looked more like Billy Bunter than Harry Potter. He'd find out for himself soon enough.
"Come on," she said, "or we'll be late."
The party was already roaring when they got there; they could hear the strains of Teddy Bears' Picnic and the Teletubbies theme all the way down the drive. Inside, the tables were crowded with paper plates holding child-size portions of burgers and chips, fish fingers, and Spaghetti Hoops, with bowls of jelly and ice cream for dessert. The only drinks available were Tizer, Ribena, various Panda Pops and chocolate milk – all with vodka. The coke laid out for guests in the bathrooms had been decanted into yellow and orange Sherbet Fountain packets, with a liquorice straw for snorting. Paul thought it was all brilliant fun. Maria thought it was faintly obscene.
Everybody seemed to be having the time of their lives. There were various party games going on in the rooms they wandered through – Maria noticed Blind Man's Buff, Musical Chairs and an eye-opening version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. At last they reached the kitchen, where Stuart was holding court. Zoë, dressed in a child's pink Barbie tracksuit, had baked dozens of tiny sponges, and Stuart was in the process of cutting their tops off and filling them with cream icing to make butterfly cakes. He looked up, smiling, as Paul and Maria entered.
"Maria!" he cried delightedly. "You look perfect! Just like a grown-up Shirley Temple. Come and have a proper look at yourself!"
He leapt up from the table and Maria saw with a shudder that he was dressed in a navy-blue and white sailor suit, with a little cap, white socks and sturdy brown lace-up shoes. His knees were red and his legs thick with dark hair. He dragged her out into the hallway, where there was a large full-length mirror. Standing side by side, Maria realised that they looked unnervingly like a matched pair; almost as though she'd come to the party with Stuart instead of Paul. Stuart winked at her in the glass.
"Look good together, don't we?"
Maria nodded dumbly. This is it, she thought. Mike said he did it to everyone sooner or later. And now it's my turn.
Upstairs, in the bedroom, Maria was not sure whether to laugh or cry. She hadn't realised that Stuart and Zoë had any children, but this was clearly the room of a five or six-year-old boy. Two toyboxes were neatly stacked against the wall, spilling over with Lego and Action Men. The curtains were Spiderman, the wallpaper was Bob the Builder, and there was a small white cabin bed with a Thomas the Tank Engine duvet. I suppose we'll have to do it on the floor, thought Maria, eyeing the flimsy-looking bed.
"Thanks for coming over to play," said Stuart.
"Oh," said Maria awkwardly, "thank you for asking."
He looked around the room critically. "I don't have any dolls but I've got Scalextrix and Playmobil. And I've got Nintendo but there's only one controller. What do you want to play?"
Maria was baffled and rather afraid. She stood there silently, trying to work out what equipment or acts these were euphemisms for. Playmobil sounded less daunting than Sextrix or whatever it was.
"Playmobil?" she said tentatively.
Half an hour later Stuart was bored of the little plastic people, although Maria was beginning to enjoy playing with them more and more. He made a face and swept their little village scene into the toybox.
"Let's do something else," said Stuart. "Why don't I show you my pants and you can show me yours?"
So much for foreplay, thought Maria, and tried to stand up, but her leg had gone to sleep. Stuart caught her as she crumpled, and she felt his hot breath prickling the hairs on the back of her neck; but he didn't take her in his arms. Instead, he dropped his blue sailor-shorts to reveal a pair of brand-new white y-fronts. He didn't seem to be very excited, and neither was Maria, but she obediently lifted her party dress and showed him her knickers. Out of habit, she was wearing a g-string under her tights, and this seemed to fascinate Stuart. He made her turn around.
"Where's the back of your pants?" he asked wonderingly.
"It's a thong," Maria told him. Surely to God he'd seen one before?
"Thing me a thong," said Stuart, and giggled. Maria winced. Why couldn't they just have sex and get it over with?
"Doesn't it go up your bum?" he asked curiously.
"Yes," said Maria, through gritted teeth.
"Eurgh, weird!" said Stuart. "Girls are weird."
"Boys are weirder," said Maria, with feeling.
"Take them off then," said Stuart, "and I'll take off mine."
They stood opposite one another, naked from the waist down. Stuart examined Maria's crotch with the dispassionate interest of a doctor. Maria tried to avoid looking at Stuart's, but was obscurely offended that he clearly wasn't yet ready for action.
"You've got less hair than me," said Stuart.
Sod this, thought Maria, and moved towards him with grim purpose. He did not stir, but when she took his limp warm cock in her hand, he yelped as though he'd been scalded, and leapt away.
"What are you doing?" he said, pulling up his underpants and cowering in the toy corner.
"I thought," said Maria, "you wanted to have sex."
Stuart frowned.
"Sex is what Mummies and Daddies do," he said. "We're boys and girls. Anyway, I don't want to play Mummies and Daddies. I want to play Action Man."
So Maria and Stuart played Action Man until they were bored, and then Maria read Spiderman comics while Stuart played Super Mario on his Nintendo. Then Stuart said it was probably past their bedtimes, and he let Maria take the cabin bed because she was a girl, and he got out his Superman sleeping-bag, and his Action Man All-Weather Tent. Neither of them could work out how to put the tent up, though, so he just slept in his sleeping bag in the end. He didn't have a night-light, but Maria didn't mind, so that was OK. And then they talked for a bit and told each other jokes, and Stuart told ghost stories until Maria decided that actually she'd prefer to have the bedroom door open a crack, so there was a little bit of light.
And then they fell asleep.
In the morning, Maria woke up first, feeling very refreshed and not even slightly hung over. Stuart was still asleep, his knuckles in his mouth, so she shook his shoulder until he woke up. He looked up at her sleepily.
"I'm going home now, Stuart," said Maria.
He blinked. "All right." Suddenly his eyes widened and he put out his hand and took hers. "Maria … you won't tell anyone about … you know … last night, will you? Can you keep it a secret?"
"I will." said Maria.
"Cross your heart and hope to die?" asked Stuart anxiously.
"I promise."
He smiled contentedly. "That's OK then." He yawned. "Thank you for coming. Bye bye." He snuggled himself deeper into the sleeping bag and shut his eyes.
"Thank you for having me," said Maria softly, and bent down and kissed his forehead. Then she turned off the light and left the bedroom, being careful not to make any noise as she closed the door.
--
Sexy Party by Suzy Amos was read by Susannah Holland at the Liars' League Boys & Girls event on April 10 2007.
Suzy Amos is a youngish writer who is delighted to have been a part of Liars’ League’s inaugural event. She’s been writing stories for about five years but – uniquely – is not working on a novel. She is based in the Midlands but grew up in Hampshire, where she never once got invited to a sexy party.
Susannah Holland trained at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She played Mariane in Tartuffe at The Bristol Old Vic, and Grace in A Day in The Death of Joe Egg. Most recently she was Irina in The Three Sisters at The Theatre Museum.
Comments