Finger on Sex Business

Britt Eagles was teetering on becoming a real slut by the time she was eighteen.

*

Reeking of sex one evening (she'd been active in the steamed-up parked car of the 30-plus driver), she'd kindly invited her date in for refreshments when was about to drop her off outside her home because he looked so exhausted.

Her parents initially ignored them as they were watching the tumultuous climax of a porn DVD group anal video.

The younger couple were in the kitchen, spooning sugar into coffee to try to win back energy when Britt's mum came in yawning.

"Hop down to Youngman's Fry & Char and grab four barbecued pork chops, fried onions and salad burgers for us and your guest sweetie. We're right out of food."

Without bothering introducing her companion, Britt grabbed money from her father's wallet on the kitchen table, finding it mixed in with betting slips and IOU notes. She returned fifteen minutes later with supper.

"Where are mum and Ronald?"

"Bedroom," her rather replied and wolfed into his burger.

Upon hearing her mom cry, "Ye-e-e-e-s!", Britt felt a great desire to join them and was shocked by that thought.

She was becoming depraved, she sighed as she left the house, eating her burger while walking to her grandparents' home.

Grandma was sympathetic and disgusted.

"You did the right thing getting out of there, I'm afraid our daughter became a teenage slut and never grew out of it."

"Were you a slut granny?"

"Watch your mouth," her grandmother smirked. "I was saved from becoming a fuck-bunny by finding the right man. I was just nineteen when I married your grandfather."

"How did you know he was the right man?"

"Initially I didn't but I did notice he wasn't like the others – in, out and off. He stayed and talked and laughed a lot and seemed totally relaxed with me. I asked him one Sunday morning after sex in our woodshed would he stay for lunch. He said yes, that he would like to meet the parents of such a lovely young woman."

"I tell you, that was rather an eye-opener for me because even my own mother sometimes called me a slut."

Britt asked, "Then his interest in you grew?"

"Something like that dear. It was some time ago. The bit I really remember is from that time sex got a whole lot better."

Next morning over breakfast, Granddad Mike asked Britt would she leave home permanently if he and Mary gave her enough money to travel, rent a room and live on capital for a few weeks while she settled into a city she liked and found a job.

"What, leave here?"

"Yes," he grunted.

"We think it's for the best Britt," her granny urged. "You have the potential to be quite a lady. You look good and have brains but haven't yet had a good chance to get on with life and make something of it."

"Oh, this is a little overwhelming. May I take time to think about it?"

Grandma Mary said yes but was over-ruled by Granddad Mike. He said gruffly that unless Britt set forth that day the offer was cancelled.

Their tearful granddaughter returned two hours later with two suitcases.

"I'm so upset. Mom had to ask daddy to kiss me goodbye. She seemed not to want me to go. But when I said I must go forth and smiled and she said good, at last she could turn my room into a sewing room."

Before lunch, Britt's grandparents took her to their bank and opened an account for her and after she was instructed how to operate the account, they deposited £500 in it and handed her £75 in cash.

The three of them walked glumly to the bus station.

Britt shed tears as the bus rolled off and thought her benefactors looked happy and proud.

"Write us," her granddad had said, kissing her gently and adding, "Stay safe."

Granny had kissed and hugged her, patting Britt's s hair and saying it was for the best and they wished Britt a lorryload of luck.

Where they lived was uncomfortably cold for much of the year and Britt thoughtfully had decided to head well south. How far south she didn't know but somewhere with heated rented rooms would be fine.

She arrived at Leeds and after a cup of tea decided to press on because she didn't feel far enough away from her former home in Newcastle. She felt rich as she'd never had more than ten quid to spend before this and switched to train travel and for London because it was the only name on the list of stations south on the railway map she recognized.

Britt arrived in London on dusk with no idea where to stay and the taxi driver said he didn't know either. Britt handed him five quid and said, "Take me somewhere; London Kings Cross looks too flash and too busy for me."

"I'll take you to Putney where I'm overdue to visit my aunt. Oh, there's a boarding house near where she lives."

"What's a boarding house?"

"It's rather like a brothel but you pay for the bedroom."

"What's a brothel?"

The cabbie said quickly, "Are you running away from home?"

"I suppose you could call it that. I was pulled out of my home for my own safety."

"God, you young kids today are unbelievable."

However, there was no way that the cabbie, who had two daughters near his passenger's age, would take the innocent misfit at a boarding house to expose her to druggies and worse. Instead, he took her to Aunt Rita's.

They were welcomed into the house and when out of earshot of Britt, the cabbie said to his maiden aunt Rita Hawkins, "The kid's an innocent from up north who wants me to take her to a boarding house."

"Ryan, are you out of your tiny mind? She'd wake up in the morning in the gutter, stripped of everything including her dignity and don't think such mistreatment is likely only from males; female misfits are probably the worse."

Acting beautifully, Ryan threw up his hands, bowed his head and groaned, "Oh what am I to do?"

Right on cue, his aunt said, "Leave it to me darling."

After waving off Ryan and settling in, Britt said to her new benefactor, "You have pictures of famous people, paintings of flowers and great-looking places obviously far beyond the UK on the wall, but where is your story?"

"My story?"

"The pictorial essay of your life told by hanging photos."

"My dear, after the kind of life I had one certainly doesn't hang it on one's walls for her guest to view them derisively. I was a prostitute..."

A silence followed Rita's soft "Damn".

But young Britt said brightly, "I guessed from the moment I met you that you were a most interesting woman."

"Me?" flustered the long retired so-called Scarlet Woman.

"Yes, and you must have a thousand stories to tell."

Rita said firmly, "And you won't hear them from my lips darling; you're a juvenile."

"Oh, you disappoint me profoundly Rita."

Rita bit back before commanding the juvenile to call her Miss Hawkins. Instead, she said, "Cor girl, you talk above you station. How did you learn to say the photos people hang on their rooms tell their life's story?"

"I have no idea."

"Did your miraculously attend a highfalutin school perhaps on an endowment?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. My family lives in Byker and I went to school there but I've really learned things by reading."

"What, authors like Enid Blyton?"

"Yes, when I was young but I progressed from there and was a fan of the Bronte sisters and then turned to more recent writers and branched out into translations of foreign authors."

Rita said, "Foreign writers, I wouldn't give them the time of day. How did you get into them?"

"I picked their books from the pile of rubbish in a disused and boarded-up former warehouse."

"What porn books?"

"Oh no, they would have been snapped up or would swap like hot cakes. That's how I came to discover Tolstoy's

Anna Karenina

."

"I saw a film of that name and recall it was pretty tough going."

"Yes because it reflected the hard and often cruel times of the late 1800's."

"Is that right and what was the first name of that woman author Britt?"

"What woman?"

"She who wrote a book that became that film I saw."

"The author was Leo Tolstoy, a Russian guy, born in 1828 and died in 1910 and is regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time."

"What he became famous on the back of one book?"

"No, he was a prolific writer and his most famous novel was

War and Peace

."

"Oh, I've heard of that, it's often used as a question on classy TV quiz shows. But why read a Russian writer when you could read Shakespeare?"

"He was big into literature about 200 years before Tolstoy and I studied some of his work at school and read other of his essays and even plays in my own time but enough of this; tell me what's it's like earning money while on your back?"

"No way; definitely nothing about those times shall pass my lips."

But then watching Britt's smile practically drop from her face, Rita relented and said, "Perhaps I could talk to you once we know each other better and have finished off a bottle of wine."

"Ah, then tomorrow evening?"

"God Britt, back off a bit; you wield your mind like an axe."

"And I wonder about the source of that quote – from your secret reading?"

They laughed and Rita told her boarder to watch TV while she prepared supper.

"No. I'll come and watch to get to know the layout of the kitchen as you were good enough to take me in as a boarder and I intend to get meals sometimes while you watch TV or sit in the kitchen talking to me."

"Omigod," Rita cried in delight. "What have I done to deserve you?"

Britt would recall that moment two decades later when telling her story to her son Marty. She wondered how she'd deserved being taken into shelter, warmth and companionship by Rita Hawkins, a retired self-employed businesswoman who was reluctant, very reluctant, to talk about her socially-active past.

Of course, neither woman was aware that their lives would intertwine significantly for many years.

* * *

A week after Britt moved in, Rita opened a second bottle of cheap wine and began telling the boarder about the story of her life. She left school at 16 after beginning to show a pregnancy bump but the baby arrived early, still-born.

Rita was devastated and had no desire to return to school and so was packed off to her aunt and uncle's dairy farm in Devon where she began earning her keep working. Gradually she took over the role as housekeeper, allowing her aunt to convert her hobby of raising garden vegetables into a commercial operation.

Young guys began call on young Rita and one day her aunt spotted the young couple having sex in the orchard. When the guy swaggered off as if he's climbed Mt Everest, Auntie Mae spoke to Rita about the need to take protection measures against unwanted pregnancy and then said set up an old bed in one of the barns to give her niece greater privacy and suggested Rita ask the lads for pocket money in return for being generous with her favours.

Before long, the callers became older males. Rita found that's where the bigger money lay. In time her aunt or uncle visited her for 'freebies' and eventually they invited Rita to their bed regularly, giving the youngster a good grounding in sexual experience.

Rita had been agog to learn that couples would cheerfully do it with a third person and then her uncle increased the 18-year-old's knowledge base about the activities surrounding sexual activity.

Over the coming weeks, she learned such things as being tied up for sex and how extreme sexual behaviour could be gratifying but also could harm and even prematurely age the body.

Britt interrupted by blurting, "God, how repulsive,"

"Indeed, but Britt there can be a fine line between pleasure and the start of pain. With sex you can operate as a free agent, setting your limits," Rita counselled and Britt said firmly she would only settle for consensual one-on-one sex.

"Therefore, there's no need for me to mention dogs, horses and bed-posts."

Well-primed with wine, they cackled away merrily.

"Britt I think it's time you went out more, socially I mean. You need a boyfriend or two and I would mind if you invite a lad home for a drink or for a meal or you might find a lad who you like well enough to play with in bed. In that case, I'd give you a key to our back door and you could take him direct to your bedroom. All I ask is you practice good hygiene and adequate protection and keep down the bloody noise."

"Oh, thanks you lovely lady. Um, I'm far from being a virgin but would appreciate some advance tuition. I asked my mother for such instruction two or three times but she laughed and said it's like riding a bike, just do it and she refused to say anything further."

Rita said they could talk about that in coming days.

More Coming