People call me BC. Big Cat. A nickname I've had since I was a boy. However, during my years at art college I was known as 'Fluffer'. These are the stories of that time. Fluffer's tales.
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I lived in a house by the sea, almost on the beach, with this other guy called Richard from my course. He was, in fact, an actual dick, and I looked forward to him moving back to his parents in the holidays so I could have the house to myself.
I returned from Fleur's expecting four blissful weeks of the summer holidays without Dick. (So not unlike Fleur in that respect...) Then, annoyingly, Dick's sister, Orla, needed somewhere to study during the break and he offered her his room.
But I couldn't believe my luck when this pre-Raphaelite, red-haired elfin girl turned up with a big blue rucksack brim-full of books, and even bigger blue eyes brim-full of humour. And not so much a resting bitch face as a resting cheeky smirk. One of those people that lit up a room, not like her black hole of a brother. And since Fleur wanted to be alone, Sara with her annoying man Alan, and Mme Jolie with her lucky husband, I was single.
Unfortunately, Orla wasn't. Dick trumpeted this fact on his way out. He jabbed a sausage digit at his sister's arm, blaring, "This one might be on the pill, mate, but that's not an invitation. She's TAKEN." And went on to underline what this meant with his characteristic subtlety and charm: "So you do NOT FUCK my sister!" Like she wasn't even in the room. Like it wasn't up to her who she fucked.
Anyway, it turned out her boyfriend was one of Dick's golf mates.
Initially, it was kind of a relief that Orla had a partner already. We studied together in the lounge with these big doors open and a cool breeze rolling in from the sea. I worked at my drawing board (angled up between us so I could concentrate) and she worked on the sofa with her books and papers spread around the floor. Orla was doing a psychology degree and her project was on the male view of female sexuality.
In the evenings, we took beers down to the beach where we chatted. By which I mean Orla lectured me on the failings of the patriarchy, as constantly represented by her lazy and entitled boyfriend, and which included the patriarch's reticence to 'go down'. Or watched movies. By which I mean Orla rented films that she'd decided I had to watch: 'Unbearable Lightness of Being', 'Betty Blue', 'Sex, lies and video tape.', 'Nine and a half weeks.'
I hope you can see the same pattern that I could there. Was Orla trying to tell me something?
I was in a pretty tender frame of mind and worried I only saw what I wanted to see. So, as much as I found her delicious company, and extremely pleasing to look at, I tried to cool my jets. This didn't go down so well. After Monday's evening at the beach, I thanked her, yawned, and said I was off to bed and she complained that men got tired too easily. By Saturday, after whatever arty porn it was that she'd stuffed in my eyeholes, Orla crossed her legs, crossed her arms, and flattened her lips white when I left her. I think I even caught a tut and exasperated sigh behind me.
But then, one morning, she brought me a cup of tea to my desk. Now this was loaded because she did literally nothing to help around the house. Except eat the food I cooked her off the plates that I'd wash up, and shift her feet so I could hoover under her.
She left the tea by my drawing board and hovered, clearing her throat. "I need a favour," she said eventually to her bare toes, which never kept still by the way, and then immediately went purple. I shrugged but reckoned if she asked me to wash her knickers for her too, I'd have to put my foot down.
"You know I'm studying the male view of female..." She flip-flapped her hand. "Well I need some... reference material." Her eyes widened like I was supposed to know what she meant, or maybe it was an attempt to hypnotise me with their enormous spooky paleness. Then she took a deep breath and launched at the next bit.
"Have you got any porn? Um that I could use? For reference? Only?"
She must have hypnotised me, after all, and plunged me into an altered state of reality. I shook my head as if I had a wasp in it. "Did you just say you want porn?"
Remember these were the days before the internet made it all ubiquitous. If you wanted to see people having sex you had to do the top-shelf-reach-of-shame at the newsagents, or head to a seedy backstreet shop. Even then, in the UK, there were rules like no erections and no penetration, so it was pretty surreal fare: Women getting ecstatic over bushy limp dicks dangled in their general vicinity.
"I don't want porn." She shook her fingers as if trying to flick something yukky off them. "I need it— No! I mean. Fuck it. Forget I asked. Sorry."
"No don't worry, it's fine. Whatever. I don't have any though."
"Really?"
"Your surprised?"
When Orla laughed - which was a lot - she went floppy, like a puppet with its strings cut. She reigned herself in. "I thought all blokes had a stash. I chucked my boyfriend's out, and my brother's got loads. That's why I came here, to be honest. But"—grimace—"he's taken it with him to Mum and Dad's. Damn it. I need it to illustrate objectification."
Then she peered at me, and fluttered her hands at my face, giggling. "You want to buy porn for Orla... you want to buy porn for—"
Next thing I knew I was leaving the petrol station shop with a plain paper bag wedged under my arm. Orla had come with me at least, even if she'd waited outside.
The bloke in the shop, after insisting I buy his 'special import' from under the counter, had nodded at her as he slipped the thick glossies into the bag. "Why do you need these, when you have a girl like that?"
"She's not my girlfriend. And the mags are for her."
"Man..." His eyebrows raised half off his head. "Does that make you the luckiest, or the unluckiest man in the world?"
His words rang round my mind as Orla danced and cheered me all the way to where she sat on the forecourt. She really was a very beautiful woman. But it was her demeanour that made her. It shone through her perky posture. Her enthusiasm reflected in every quick flip of her sylph-like, pointy curves. Like a grownup fucking Tinkerbelle.
Why did all the best women want someone else? Or no-one else? I was still heart-stung by Fleur, in case you couldn't tell. It had only been a couple of weeks since I left France. And though Mme Jolie had power-flushed me so thoroughly I still, over a week later, hadn't woken with a hard on, that was hardly a relationship.
"My hero!" Orla slung the paper bag package into her big blue rucksack. "It's too sunny to go home, wanna work on the beach?"
"I don't have my sketchbook."
"Yes you do!" She patted her bag.
Call me an approval junkie, accuse me of trying to woo her if you like, but I decided to show off. Instead of visiting our local beach, I borrowed a mate's rowboat and took her to a private bay that wasn't accessible by land. It was a beautiful spot and if it happened to turn her head/force her hand/open her legs, then... cool.
I think I made some kind of impression because Orla, sunbathing at the back of the boat, flicked sneaky, flutter-blink gazes over my arms as I rowed. Then, when she looped a leg over the side of the boat to dangle her foot in the water, and the wind blew the skirt of her floaty dress up over knees, she tucked it down between her legs but otherwise let it be. I let her catch me ogling her bare thighs. She rolled her eyes. "I'm feeling a little... objectified," she said to the sea.
I shrugged. "It's nice to be objectified sometimes."
"Maybe." Still not looking at me. "From the right person."
She didn't cover her legs. In fact she waved a knee.
I aimed the boat toward a sandy inlet bounded by sheer cliffs the size of tower blocks. I wondered what would happen if I mentioned her boyfriend. Right now. "Can I ask why you chucked out your boyfriend's porn stash?"
Orla pulled her foot back into the boat, tugged her skirt back down, and wedged her hands between her knees. She frowned. Not an expression I'd seen on her so far. "Why do you think? He didn't need it anymore. He's got me for all that."
"Damn," I growled. "Lucky fucker."
Orla's laugh briefly folded her in half, then she tucked her hair behind her ears. This girl loved being flattered. But then don't we all?
"Though, if you really give him everything he needs," I said. "Why didn't he throw his porn away himself?"
Her frown re-appeared. Then she caught my grin and splashed a fuckload of seawater over me.
We hit the shore. I was in shorts, so jumped from the prow into the shallows and started hauling it, and Orla, up onto the sand. Orla insisted on helping, despite her dress. "It's only shallow," she said and stepped off the back into calf-depth water and pushed. Then a surprisingly large wave tossed us all onto the beach and drenched her up to her waist.
Anybody else wouldn't have found that so funny. Orla sloshed onto the beach, glad at least her bag was dry in the boat.
The inlet was a sun-trap so the sand was too hot to sit on. We settled on some flat rocks at the base of the cliff that had got less sun blasted but were still gorgeously warm. I pulled off the t-shirt Orla had soaked and laid it to dry in the sun.
Stomach in. Chest out.
In my vanity, I side-eyed Orla to see if she might be checking me out again, but she was more concerned with her own clothing. She bit the inside of her cheek, peering down at herself, her skirt clung to her legs like seaweed.
"Yuk," she said, squirming, then reached up her skirt. She sparkled at me. "Can you at least... look over there?"
I gazed out to sea while Orla writhed, then peeled off her sodden underwear. She laid the almost transparent scrap of cotton next to my t-shirt, then shook the excess water off her skirt all over me.
I won't tell you what the thought of her secret nakedness did to me right then. Suffice to say bare feet in a skirt still give me an erection.
She rummaged in her bag and pulled out my sketchbook and pencils, then her folder, and finally the plain paper bag. No towels. No swimwear. If you wanted a portrait of Orla that would be it. She was the sort of person that would plan ahead to bring a friend's sketchbook to the beach, and all her own books, including pornography, at the expense of actual beach-wear. And was happy with that.
I hadn't planned on swimming anyway. I opened my sketchbook and returned to scribbling ideas for my school's summer project while catching the mid-morning rays.
Or tried to. Orla fiddled about beside me, laying out papers, putting rocks on them, reclining this way and that. Peeping into the paper bag. Closing it. Then moving herself a few feet behind me to another rock that had a back to it like a stony armchair. Repeating the process.
Finally she settled but even the constant wriggle of her feet on the rock beside me became distracting. Then the rustle of a paper bag. Then Silence.
Her toes curled.
I turned to find her with her skirt fanned out in the sun, flicking through the 'special import' magazine, her eyes wide, jaw dropped. She looked up at me as if I'd made the bloody thing myself, and slapped it shut with her hand on top of it. "It's very... strong... isn't it?"
I suddenly felt oddly protective of this waif scowling down at the thing in her lap. Even its cover was a woman grinning at a massive, hard cock. I hoped the petrol station shopkeeper hadn't slipped her some kind of German poo-porn. "Try the others if it's too gross?"
Orla shook her head and opened up the mag again, more fascinated than repelled. "It's just they don't usually show so many erections. Is this really what men like to look at?"
"Monkey see, monkey do," I said but she wasn't listening. She peered at the pages, crossed her legs, flicked her foot. I waited for the grimaces, the revulsions and recriminations but she scanned the pages quietly, with hooded eyes, chewing her lip.
