Sin Delicious

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Gothic Angels

To think that I have a kick to the head to thank for my current position. I am primarily a designer of clothes by trade, although I do a bit of painting on the side – portraits and landscapes that is, not walls and ceilings. None of this should be too surprising when you consider that I studied Art and Design at college. At age fifteen I thought I was set to become a world-renowned taekwondo-ist. Not a taekwondo-er, note. I was at a level where competing abroad in the juniors was becoming a distinct possibility. I rather fancied the prospect, even if it did mean a life of wearing what amounted to a stiff pyjama suit, and having one’s hair always tied back tightly and unflatteringly, with perhaps a few stray strands plastered to your sweaty, ruddy, puffed-out cheeks. Still, there is something intrinsically adrenaline-pumping and even romantic about kicking people willy-nilly whilst having Korean barked at you.

Then one day, stupidly, my trainer came to the party minus his head protector, and with a rather too exuberant jumping reverse hook kick I managed to break my big toe upon his jaw, thus rendering myself inactive for weeks. My recovery might have been speedier if I hadn’t declared myself fit enough, if not for fighting then certainly for partying, and worn a particularly challenging shoe on a night out. Indeed, the footwear failed to rise to the challenge of getting me to the bottom of a flight of stairs in one piece, and I was back to square one. I hadn’t intentionally hung up my dobok but other things just got in the way.

During my incapacitation I looked to my art as a means to escape tedious hours normally spent fighting. I used to do a lot of pencil sketches, primarily of female forms. In truth it became something of an obsession. Having been caught doing this once or twice I contrived a hasty cover story, claiming it was for my clothing designs, explaining that you had to understand the female figure perfectly before you put one’s garments upon it. Quite why I needed such intricate p***y detail remained unexplained. So, anyway, I then took to overlaying coloured clothing designs over my pencil nudes almost as an excuse to keep drawing them. After a while the clothing bit started to take over and I decided it was clearly where my future lay. If it hadn’t been for my trainer’s selfish decision not to wear protective garments, I would still be wearing thick white pyjamas to this day and I’d probably be the proud owner of a shiny gold Olympic medal or two.

During my last year at college I was doing work experience for a small freelance design team in the city, and that is where fate visited the incomparable Elowen upon me. She was a little older than I, infinitely more awesome, and exquisitely feminine in a way that had me rapidly and permanently consigning any of those remaining tomboyish tendencies of mine straight to the rubbish bin. Her speciality was fetish-wear, particularly in rubber and latex. She had carved out a particular niche, being the go-to designer music video producers called on when they wanted their nubile singers or dancers to look beyond outstanding. Nothing she created was ever less than stunning. See her outfits and you saw her very spirit.

I wasn’t prepared for love. I had been kicked in the chest a fair few times but I had never known anything there like this impact. I felt like one of those Mexican cliff divers, leaping hundreds of feet down into the blue waters of Acapulco, except that I was plummeting into a sea of infatuation. Spectacular and breath-stopping it most certainly was, but no matter how expert the entry, it was always going to hurt – and by golly it did. She was a lithe goth firecracker, all jet-black hair and make-up and tattoos. My goodness – those tattoos! All down her arms; a stunning Japanese scene in red and black down her side to her hip; Audrey Hepburn above Beatrice Dalle on her right shoulder blade and Bardot as a young sleek brunette on her left. It was like her body was alive. The pièce de résistance was the tiny, ever-so intricate black scorpion on the top of her left cheek, just diagonally down from her eye. The memory alone of this still has my belly fluttering.

That diminutive arachnid remains the most dazzling, most effecting inch of artwork I have yet to see. Each look quadrupled my pulse within a second and it didn’t stop there. I can’t say what it did to me down below but phrases like ‘desperate tingling’ and ‘urgent saturation’ wouldn’t be overstatements. She was the only one ever to tie my tongue or pull the rug from beneath my feet. She opened my eyes to possibilities, and to myself. In essence she created me. She injected excitement and passion and daring into everything. From the time I first set eyes upon her, she was all I could see. I don’t think I can truthfully profess to being a lesbian but I can’t say I’ve ever ‘got’ a member of the male s*x the way I got her.

“Because of your looks no man will ever be able to be normal around you,” she once told me. “Most will think you out of their league and simply stay away. Others will be all macho and brash and nasty, thinking you there to conquer. Others may fawn and flatter, but they will doubtless be slurring due to alcohol by the time they pluck up the courage. Almost none of them will ever be able to see past your beauty. It wouldn’t even register to them if you were the greatest living artist – their instincts wouldn’t let them focus beyond your looks.”

Of course I clung to every word she said. She was the sexiest living creature and a genius of design to boot, so why wouldn’t I? I might have got away with it if she hadn’t fancied me right back. I reminded her of a young Marissa Tomei, or so she told me – an actress she seemed to have a particular crush upon. Indeed, my then girlfriend remains the only person I know to have openly confessed to getting off to the film My Cousin Vinny. I never could fully see the resemblance, as flattering as it was. I have more rump for sure. I certainly have the raven hair, since, as I have been reliably informed, I am ‘one quarter Mediterranean’, although no one has told me which quarter of me it is, nor indeed which part of the Med. I think it has something to do with a scandalous holiday taken by Grandma, before Grandpa was around.

There is a scene in that aforementioned movie in which Ms Tomei’s character appears wearing one hell of a catsuit, perhaps fashioned from stretch Lycra. It is original to say the least. The background of dark blue is overlaid in a large floral design in whites, pinks, oranges, all colours. It zips right to the throat but has a cut-away at the back, revealing a large oval of her flawless creamy-white skin. She teams it with a pair of high-heeled ankle boots in black. It is not your standard everyday attire, except for that character. Elowen counted it as the sexiest two minutes of any film she had seen.

As a treat to her, I recreated my own version and surprised her by modelling it on the catwalk during a small private showing for some industry people. In the crowd was one Sindee Liscious, at that time just starting out on the road to being noticed by those who mattered. She gushed almost literally over the outfit and ordered versions to wear on stage, and thus I became acquainted with my current employer. That outfit of mine might have been the direct cause of me being here today, but really it was always down to Elowen. She was simply one of a kind. I remember a posh model at a party once remarking upon her scorpion tattoo.

“It might look sexy now,” said the model, “but do you think it will look quite so good when you are sixty?”

“Sixty?” replied my incredulous lover, quick as a flash. “I’ve absolutely no intention of living beyond forty!”

She didn’t actually succeed in getting past 26, and I haven’t found it possible to get too close to anyone else since.

I kept up a business relationship of sorts with Sindee over those next impossible months. I think she was often looking out for me, trying to keep me busy and focussed when I was set adrift. The freelance design team took me on, to continue the work I had started, but I found it difficult to do it with the same heart and soul as before. Sindee, meanwhile, had got her big break and was about to be propelled into the spotlight. She commissioned me to do some outfits for the upcoming tour and I found the impetus to do it by resurrecting some of the designs Elowen and I had worked on together. Top of the tree was a catsuit in shiny red latex, the back with a cut-out in the shape of flames, the front having a built-in plastic appendage at the groin – Elowen’s idea – smooth and curving like an erection but with a tip not like a man’s but pointed, like a devil’s tail.

Sindee declared it the most fabulous garment ever seen and me a genius. She got all gooey over me. I was sat there besides her having modelled the devil suit and she had her hand around the groin appendage, stroking it up and down. She was grinning at me and saying how beautiful and talented I was and then she had her big idea. Remembering that I had taken a few snaps during one of our catwalk shows she declared me a photographer. She wanted one on tour with her, to be beside her at all times, since this was likely to be the most incredible, debauched adventure she would ever embark upon and she wanted pictorial evidence of her sexy shenanigans, since she thought she might be too drunk and too high to remember most of it. I was to be her Official Fucktographer, as she put it. If she was going to bed some of the biggest names in rock, she wanted something solid as a reminder.

“I want you to create a photo album of my s****l exploits, with a bit of writing thrown in to give some context,” she told me. “I want you to capture every cool guy and hot b***h I end up with in all their naked glory. I don’t want any kiss-and-tells crawling out the woodwork with faces or tales I can’t recall. It’s my story so I want to be the one doing all the telling. It will be a fabulous and indisputable account of how I played and partied and screwed my way around the continent, with you there to gather the evidence. It will be the most famous s*x journal ever. We’ll call it Rock Chicks and c**k Pics and when the tour is over we will publish it together and become millionaires off the royalties.”

She thought it a brilliant idea although I told her there might be some legal issues over the book being made available to the public. I think I pointed out that some famous guys might object to having a third party present to snap shots of their erection just prior to them putting it inside her, but then I’d never been on a rock tour before. I might have suggested that she would have better memories if she moderated the booze and drugs, but I wasn’t then aware that rock stars did everything to the max simply because they could. It was compulsory. She wasn’t listening to me anyway. She said she would siphon off some of the tour budget to pay me, although essentially my ‘wages’ were just payment of bed and board; a free trip around Europe and beyond, all inclusive. If I could prove to her that I had more pressing projects at home that I needed to take care of, then I could stay behind. If not, I had to go with her. I had to admit that I hadn’t.

“Pack your bags then, baby,” she said with a huge grin, “because you’re coming with me to heaven.”