Vajazzled

VAJAZZLED

S.J. Hawley

Vajazzled

By S.J. Hawley

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 S.J. Hawley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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The characters in this novel are purely fictional. They are not intended to represent actual human beings. Any thought or conversation attributed to them is the invention of the author. They - and their actions - should be considered as purely imaginative creations.

To William Makepeace Thackeray and Jackie Collins, chroniclers of the independent female. And to the individual behind the Sun’s ‘News in Briefs’, a god-like genius whose feet I am unworthy to kiss.

In describing this Siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? – Vanity Fair, Thackeray

ONE Wannabe

One

Like a Virgin

She has been called a slut and a whore. A freak addicted to plastic surgery and self-mutilation. An attention-seeker, obsessed by fame. A gold-digger, a heartbreaker and, yes, the nation’s sweetheart. She is both a dumb bimbo and an astute business woman. A female role-model and a national disgrace. Britannia in stilettos and a peephole bra. A Madonna for the new millennium. Pole dancer, glamour model and Britain’s most envied WAG, Chastity is all this and more. From Page 3 to rehab to Woman of the Year, this is her story.

The office block overlooked a parade of shops on a shabby South London high street. Not a location she’d normally associate with glamour. A bit of a shithole, in fact. The kind of place she wouldn’t be caught after dark. Christ, though, this was the address on the business card. And Manda had been so reassuring.

Des’s worked with all the greats; Jordan, Jo Guest, Linda Lusardi. You couldn’t wish to be in safer hands your first time out, dear. A flash of chemically-whitened teeth as she essayed a grin, acrylic nails scissoring the air, then – It’s not often a novice gets a shot at Page 3 straight out the box. This could be the making of you, Becca. Just do what Des tells you. Trust in his judgment and you’ll be fine.

Well, maybe. The lift was working, which was something, but the nicotine-charred crone behind the desk, glaring at her from behind a Woman’s Weekly, was distinctly unfriendly. One o’clock, you say? Well, he hasn’t said anything to me about it. She closed her magazine and riffled the pages of a tattered scratch pad. Who’d you say, again?

Becca Stiles.

No one here by that name.

Try Chastity, then.

The crone gave a phlegm-laden cackle. Try it? At my age, dearie, you don’t have a choice. The cackle dissolved into a racking cough. She quelled it with the aid of a Players No. 10 smouldering in a beaten tin ashtray. Activated the intercom by her elbow. Des? It’s your one o’clock. Some young sort trying to advise me on my love life. Yeah. That’s her. I’ll send her in.

She passed through the inner doorway into the studio, the plain white walls decorated with pictures of naked women. A blank screen stood at one end of the room, faced by a tripod and camera. A plump, middle-aged figure in a generic blue polo shirt and jeans, battered trainers, was hunched over the equipment, adjusting a viewfinder.

All right, love? I’m Des. Manda told me all about you.

Not much of the serial-killer about him, anyway. Not much of the glamour photographer either, for that matter. She’d been expecting something lean and intense, a cat-like figure in distressed leathers and stubble, but Des Norton couldn’t have been further from what she’d imagined. With his rumpled clothing and pot belly, he looked more like an off-duty cab-driver than Britain’s leading glamour specialist.

Still, his manner was as matter-of-fact as his appearance, which was reassuring. And the collage of breasts and buttocks on the walls framed a number of famous faces, faces that’d gone on to marry – and profitably divorce – premier-league footballers and soap-actors, or star in reality TV shows. If they’d entrusted themselves to the paternal figure in front of her, then why shouldn’t she?

Hi, I’m Becca. Chastity, rather, if I’m going to be professional about this.

Chastity, eh? That’s some name to live up to in this game. Lotta blokes think they got a right to you when they see you in a glamour shot. Think you’re some kind of – well, I don’t want to put you off on your first shoot. He broke off as a girl with shocking pink hair and a pierced lip emerged from a side door. Nikki here’s gonna do your makeup. Then you can go pick your costume and we can get down to business, okay?

Nikki proved an expert with blusher and foundation. Hair gel. Not that you need a lot of work, with your complexion, she said, a Geordie lilt to her voice, as she unleashed pencils and pots and tubes from her Ziploc bag. A natural beauty, I got to say.

Becca relaxed beneath her expert touch. Thanks a lot. Studied the new woman appearing before her in the glass: an older, more sophisticated figure, polished, like one of the beauties in the photographs. This was her introduction to Chastity, celebrity and model, rather than Becca, the not-so ugly duckling that had walked into the studio a few minutes earlier. The swan that existed inside the gawky teenager, waiting for Nikki to help her emerge. What about Des? she asked, as Nikki finished outlining her eyes. Closed the makeup bag. He as good as they say he is?

Better. You’re in good hands your first time out. He’ll do you proud, Becca. No problems there. She opened the door to the dressing room. Wanna pick a costume, pet?

The wardrobe department was a walk-in cupboard beside the dressing room. A real Aladdin’s cave. Everything from dominatrix to nun to streetwalker. Head-nurse to stripper. An erotic version of Mr Benn. You went in as an ordinary girl off the street and re-emerged as some kind of fantasy figure, reborn into an adult world of romance and erotic adventure.

She opted for a black lace thong and matching bustier and a pair of black, ankle strap shoes. Tripped back into the studio.

I look all right, Des?

Beautiful. I think you’re going to be a natural at this, sweetheart, I really do.

You reckon?

Swear on my mother. You eat yet?

She shook her head. Nerves.

Christ, you young girls. I don’t want you passing out on me during the shoot. Here – he handed her a sandwich from a Tupperware box - Corned beef and mustard. Get that down you before we start.

God, no. I think I’d throw up.

You are okay with this, aren’t you, Becca?

Sure. Why shouldn’t she be? Here she was, nineteen year old Becca Stiles from suburban Essex, hoping to compete with the arsenal of legs and breasts and artfully-insolent pouts directed at her from the walls of the studio. These were the ones that had made it. Glamour incarnate. How dare she contend with this array of perfectly tanned, gym-sculpted bodies? That immaculately groomed, immaculately disarrayed hair?

It was time to choose. Either shit or get off the pot. Suck it up and surrender herself to the lens or take the lift back down to the high street, away from the fantasy factory and all that it offered. Back to the endlessly replicating suburbs of home. Back to daytime TV and takeaways and minimum-wage jobs. Existence as an onlooker. Life in the cheap seats rather than up on the screen. Everything her new career promised to deliver her from.

Some fucking choice.

First time nerves, is all it is. Don’t worry, Des, I’ll be fine.

Des shrugged. You got nothing to be nervous about. I’ll tell you that now. Binned the sandwich. You don’t want to eat nothing, fair enough. I’ll buy you a Big Mac afterwards, depending when we finish. You feel okay and we’ll get to work.

He posed her in front of the screen. Okay, sideways on, half-turn and look at the camera. Good, that’s what I want to see. Arch your back a little, though. Show off your boobs. And breathe in, flatten your belly. No, a little less – we don’t want to see your ribs, just your chest. Yes, that’s it, spot on. Aaaaand – hold it. He tripped the switch. And good. Okay, face-on now. Lower your head, but gaze upward, under your eyelashes. Yes, perfect. And pout. Like you’re blowing bubbles. Lick your lips, keep them glossy. And again - wonderful. You got it, Becca. Got what the camera’s asking for.

They ran through an array of backdrops – winter wonderland, jungle, waterfall – and she began to go with it, playing with a variety of poses and expressions. Flirting with the camera. A trance state where all she was aware of was the lens. It felt right and it felt natural and it felt good. This was her. What she was meant to do. Meant to be. Something she had a talent for and enjoyed.

Okay, time for a topless shot. This’ what we been working towards. What you’re here for. He changed the lens. You okay with that, darling?

She remembered the Planet on the breakfast table as a kid, the models on Page 3. The glamour and beauty of it all. The distance between their lives and her own. Wanting to step into the photograph. The fantasy. Live the dream the same way the models lived the dream as they stared enticingly out at her over the Silver Shred and Weetabix. The PG Tips. No problem, Des. Like you said, what I’m here for, innit?

Just think of me like your doctor, babe. It don’t mean nothing to me seeing you naked like this. I’m like a mechanic looking at a car-engine and figuring how it runs. You’re nothing more than that to me, okay?

Know how to make a girl feel attractive, don’t you, mate?

Des laughed. You don’t need a man to do that for you, sugar. You know what you got and you know what to do with it. No man can tell you that. He aimed the camera as she unhooked the bustier and skimmed it across the room. Like it, doll. Plenty of attitude. That really comes across. Now hold it aaand – beautiful, baby, and that’s it. No coverage needed. We got what we’re after. You’re finished for the day - Chastity.

So that was it, then. She’d done it – her first topless shoot. In a few days’ time, her body would be exposed to millions via the nation’s favourite red top. Office workers would crack jokes about her at the water-cooler. Squaddies pin her to the barrack-room wall. Women envy her. Young boys crouch over her in the privacy of their bedrooms and – well, she didn’t want to think about that kind of thing. It wasn’t all stardust, she knew that already.

Still, it was what she’d always wanted. She’d made the right decision in choosing to stay. Hadn’t she? After all, the sordid aspects were only a part of the trip. The worst part. The rest was magic – a new world of night-clubs and foreign photo-shoots, gossip columns and celebrity boyfriends. Not to mention money and what it bought. Cars, clothes, houses. Respect. The good things in life. Everything she’d hungered for as a kid.

Christ, she should be celebrating. Even if parts of her new world weren’t up to scratch, it couldn’t be any worse than the one she was leaving behind. The world of boredom and frustration she’d grown up in. The world of the audience rather than the players. The one she’d have been condemned to if she hadn’t seen her chance and grabbed it like a drowning woman clutching at a lifebelt. Could it now?

Two

Zero History

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it – Andy Warhol

Becca passed a teenager in skin-tight leggings and a washed-to-death No Direction T-shirt, the latter stretched over an expanse of stomach. The girl had two kids with her, the youngest in a buggy, the oldest dragged by the hand: the kind of kids that always had a dirty face and a glaze of snot on their top lip. The kind that were always crying. Body-swerving as she hurried for her train, Becca mouthed a term that carried the same charge of fear and loathing as Wog or Paki had to an older generation. Fucking chav.

Christ, though. Caught with a sprog straight out of school. It could have been her. No tower block and dole queue for Becca Stiles, though. No knock-off Kappa and market-stall Reebok. Hooky Hilfiger. Jeremy Kyle and a houseful of squalling brats for company. Jobseekers’ Allowance and a visit from the social worker. Christ, no. Not for her. She’d always known she was different from the rest of her ends, a star in the making, destiny’s child - if only she had the nerve to go for it. The guts and determination to follow the dream.

Not that her Essex upbringing was anything out of the ordinary. It was distinctly average, in fact. She was neither abused by her step-father, a genial - if distant – delivery-driver, nor neglected by her mother, a classroom-assistant and sometime club-singer. She got on well with her older sister and baby brother. Kids at school. Enjoyed TV and shopping and pop-music, same as the other girls on the estate. The only unusual thing about her childhood was its total lack of distinction, its complete and utter predictability, and it was this more than anything - its corrosive boredom, its mind-numbing mediocrity - that fuelled her desire to escape.

Whatever the reason, she had to get out. Daydreaming over the soap-stars and boy-bands in More and Just Seventeen, the footballers and film-stars pinned to her bedroom wall, she fantasised about becoming one of them. Of being whisked away to another world, where women carried Chihuahuas in Balenciaga bags rather than led pit-bulls in leather harness, where Louis Vuitton replaced T.J. Hughes and where tattoos on a male signified cool rather than a spell in the Scrubs. The smell of ink on glossy paper became associated with the good things in life. That crisp, clean world on the other side of the camera lens. The world where the beautiful people lived.

How to reach that world via the flyovers and underpasses of her childhood was the problem, though. No magic kingdom via the back of the wardrobe for her. She’d always enjoyed fairy-stories as a little girl, the handsome prince whisking the beautiful princess away from the wicked witch or the dragon to his palace. There were very few princes patronising the sports-bars and fun-pubs of her native Rainford, though, even if wicked witches and beer-monsters were in plentiful supply and the dragon available from your friendly neighbourhood dealer, assuming you were dumb enough to fall for its charms.

Education wasn’t the answer. She was bright and enjoyed learning, but to show an interest in school, to complete homework, even to show up to class on a regular basis, was to be labelled a swot, a nerd, a geek. The equivalent of having a target pinned to your chest in the bear-pit of teenage society. Concealing intelligence became a matter of survival. Besides, university – the escape ladder for so many blue collar wannabes of an earlier generation – had been placed out of reach of an estate kid like her. If she was going to get out of Essex, make something of her life, she was going to have to do it alone.

She’d already started travelling Up West when she bunked school, rather than hanging on local corners like the rest of her girls. For most of the Rainford Massive, the town was a comfort-zone rather than a trap. They were afraid to leave its confines, whereas she was only able to breathe once she hit the Smoke. Time sped up in the heart of the city, sound and vision registering with pinpoint clarity. She loved being amongst the crowds, people-spotting at Piccadilly Circus, drifting aimlessly along the Tube, dodging ticket-barriers and inspectors. Exploring the metropolis she intended to make her own.

Rainford became just a memory once she was loose in the capital. London was life, she realised, as she wandered the West End, trailed by nervous floorwalkers – her first audience - as she window-shopped Harrods and Fenwicks, Harvey Nicks, mentally outfitting herself and her dream apartment, squandering her imaginary fortune. This was where her future lay. Not back with the streets and pubs of her hometown. The council block her family called home.

That was when she discovered the club scene. Why go back to Rainford when you could dance all night instead? Whereas escape in the house consisted of TV and movies and music, entombing yourself in your bedroom as you daydreamed of freedom, here you could engage with the fantasy, live the dream. Inside the concrete womb of the club, submerged in the warm rush of drink or drugs, you could become the star you always imagined, dominating the dance floor by your moves or looks. The clothes you wore. Make a name for yourself by flaunting what you’d got.

She was already learning how to turn heads with the way she dressed. Her costumes were outrageous, black PVC leggings and knickers after Xtina Aguilera, see-through plastic trousers, Daisy Dukes and bondage gear, fur bikinis and biker boots. Whatever she could get away with. Much of her gear was obtained from sex shops or fancy-dress places – a one piece, zip-up rubber catsuit, whips and chains and thigh boots, Alice or Snow White in a mini-skirt and over the knee socks – early excursions into fantasy and sexual provocation. Other stuff she customised at home, pink feathers sewn to wonder bras, jeans distressed or turned into chaps with the help of scissors. Already, in her teens, she was learning that it didn’t cost a fortune to look hot.

Whatever she wore, it was calculated to shock, to draw attention to herself, to make herself the central attraction wherever she went. With a small posse of likeminded mates who’d abandoned the boredom of the suburbs for the romance of the capital, she became a face on the clubland circuit, appearing regularly at Ministry of Sound and Manumission and Smack Palace. Sometimes she would spend days at a time in wonderland, staying awake by chemical means or crashing with friends who were lucky enough to live close to the centre. It was only with reluctance that she travelled back to the family home to rest and refuel, using the place as a combined pit-stop and wardrobe department for the developing drama of her life.

It was frustrating to fall back to earth in suburbia after journeying to the stars in the city. Like a rocket trying to break free of the earth, only to fall back to the launch-pad as it ran out of fuel. She was getting higher and travelling further, however, the trips back to Essex becoming shorter and more infrequent. Eventually, she would break free of the gravitational pull of her background and, reinventing herself in the process, step into the story of her life as a fully-fledged character. Step wholly into the dream. It was, she knew, as she boarded the train for work, only a matter of time.

Three

Bump ‘n’ Grind

It’s simply that a normal, healthy chap likes to see a pretty girl without any clothes on - Paul Raymond

She was working as a dancer at Café Blanc, a foothold in the Smoke. Being paid for something she enjoyed was a good way of earning money. Besides, she relished the attention. The fact that the guys watching her - desiring her - couldn’t actually possess her was a turn-on. A power trip. Whereas some girls treated it as nothing more than a job, the equivalent of standing behind a bar or a shop counter, or lost themselves in the music, blanking the public, she upped the sexuality of her act, bending low on the podium, teasing them with a glimpse of cleavage before straightening once more. Twisting away from them as she merged once more into the beat.

Mark, the manager, stopped to talk to her at closing time. You really got the moves, Becca. That something extra. The guys really get off on you. He paused to kindle a cigar. We’re going onto Ogles afterwards, me and a couple of the bar-staff. You want to come with us?

They cabbed over to the club and were escorted inside by one of the bouncers. The owner, Ron Ogleby, stopped by their table for a word with Mark, his trademark lion’s mane of a mullet - coquettishly streaked blonde - a visual rhyme with his tiger-striped suit, greeting his fellow impresario with a manly abrazzo.

My man. It’s been a while. Scared of the opposition or something?

Been checking out Peppermint Pigsty the last few months. See how the new boys operate, you know?

Ogleby pinched the bridge of his nose, as if in pain. Don’t use that name in my place, Mazza. Not if we’re gonna stay friends. I got no respect for them. Not as people, not as an organisation. Frigging Wild West cowboys. Corporate cooze. It’s an insult to me to be compared to them. The fact they got a club in Moscow says it all. He became Lady Bracknell as he extended a hand to Becca. I'm very keen to keep up our high standards of good taste and respectability in comparison. A friendly atmosphere. I mean, you seen for yourself – all good, clean fun, innit?

It wasn’t exactly Alton Towers, but what the fuck. She didn’t want to offend the bloke. Whatever.

Ogleby ran his eye over, as if appraising a prize heifer. "Always good to see a pretty face in the club, anyway, my dear. Too many ugly old guys like Mazza at the tables for my taste, even if they are the ones with the