An unfolding story of 2020 ...
A lifelong collector of goods and objects from far and wide has passed and left the entire collection and the business built around them to his only remaining relative, a distant niece on a career path of her own as an archivist. Vikki has taken on the task of administering the estate and liquidating the business and collection. However, she has come to find out that many of the goods have been cursed or enchanted with amorous powers that affect those who encounter them. These are the stories of some of those encounters with objects found at Amorous Goods.
When my occasional Google on the subject finally threw up that explanation of the brand name Amorous Goods, a lot of things fell into place. I now realise that my part in this story was an even smaller one than I thought.
You may by now have heard of Rumpleton. But you will not find it on a map. It is a village in cyberspace. Its ladies, and occasional gents, come from all corners of the Earth, of the human colour range, and of the sexual spectrum.
But it is a real place, in its way, born in rural England at the start of the long lockdown summer of 2020, when we all had our parts warmed by the sun but missed the hot breath of the pub.
*
The story goes back at least 20 years, though, to the
Calendar Girls
who were celebrated in an English film -- Women's Institute ladies in Yorkshire who teased us tastefully into the new millenium, posing naked behind pot plants and Victoria sponges. You have to be old enough to appreciate what a moment that was. Suddenly it was all true. The librarian and the GP and the fishmonger's wife were all secretly itching to get their tits out and show you the pictures.
There were a thousand spin-offs. One, still going, was a website called
Village Ladies
-- idea being your naughty neighbour stripping off as far as she would dare, often with a friend or two and a bottle of wine. Sometimes they peeked in each others pants and played with each others tits. Sometimes they just got undressed. Whatever, you got the whole shoot -- dozens of pictures from hats on to knickers off. Initially it was still quite common to stop right there. But the ladies quickly upped the stakes so that showing a bit of pink was more or less required. No problem anyway.
A lot of professional dirty grannies got in there. But with them were plenty of more or less amateurs, happy to flash their best underwear and then pull it aside for a share in a couple hundred bucks. OK, some wanted the money. But many did it just for the kicks. And there was a huge audience waiting for real striptease by real women. Only thing was, they never spoke or wrote.
*
It was around this time, beginning of the new century, that I found Rosalie Tush. She was only getting started when her knickers came off. And she talked proper filth. Somehow, I got my portfolio in front of her and she wanted to meet.
The bistro I chose was a relaunch of an old village drinking hole I remembered a little from my days on the road as a photographer. The marketing boys had sunk a million into trying to make it a "destination" but it was well on the way back to being a hole.
A heavy waitress showed me to a table in a dining room made from fitting a skittle alley out with blond wood. I sent her for a wine list, thinking a bottle of fizz might upgrade the atmosphere a snitch. Then Rosalie came in and it was The Ritz anyway. She was nestled in fur and silk like a lapdog in a starlet's handbag. Her jewellery chimed when she moved. The smell of her galvanised the waitress like magic dust. Since then, of course, in view of the unfolding revelations about Amorous Goods and its long secret history, I've had to consider that it might actually have been. But whether magic, deep science or Rosie herself, it was a smell designed to make erections .
On film, Rosalie looked ample and lush. In life, she was surprisingly petite, although her tits and ass were big. Think Dita Von Teese, lightly rolled in muck.
Rosie had made a living out of flogging her puss, as she always put it, since she started stripping at 17. By this time she was in her 40s, but still a truly beautiful woman, to any eye, and still blossoming. She was natural class from the streets. Always got the arm of the guy she needed.
But as she put it so sweetly that night: "I had enough of pretending I like spunk in my hair. But pulling my knickers aside for the camera, I still get a thrill out of it every time. Pussy power. I love it. I live off the heat from all those eyes, babes, waiting for me to say -- she dropped into Rosie Tush -
"You like the look of that, sugar? You want to see more? You want to bury your face in there and eat me until I've had all I want?"
I said, you saying that, that's what does it for me. And she said: "Yeah, I get dirty talk."
*
And she did. In retrospect, Rosie Tush was the pioneer for a whole new generation of independent cam girls. For group sex, you still needed a camera crew. But for a solo show, she realised, you could get a result from a smart phone. Luckily for me, Rosie still had a few pretensions to grandeur and she still needed somebody following her around for some of her story lines.
And so I was present at the laying down of some of the best porn of its era.
"All you have to do is turn up and keep my ass in focus,"
Rosie told me that night, with one of her brilliant smile
s. "I can do the stories as long as you can get the pictures."
We did good. But the other side of the new porniverse meant it was all instantly and constantly ripped off. Mickey Brannigan, her manager and minder, cut the filming budget to beer money and Rosie did nearly all of it herself, like most of the other girls were doing by then. Then, nearly 10 years ago now, she looked at the rushes and decided that was all the naughty pictures she was going to make.
We would still meet up occasionally when she wanted a safe escort. I had stared into the most delicious pussy on the planet and never made a move. She was just too magnificent. And anyway, I was getting on a bit myself. I'm a baby boomer, work it out from there. I like to think I'm in reasonable shape, considering, but I've been a bit hesitant about ripping my shirt off for even longer than Rosie. When she retired, I more or less retired, down here to my trailer, with a bag full of out-of-date cameras
For ten years, the world rushed ahead of both of us.
Rosie got a bit of pension out of her reputation and her library. Her website lived on, although increasingly it sold mainly as part of a bargain package including a string of other sites. Her best stuff just got pirated to fuck, which made me mad. I believe Mickey did lean on a few upstarts on her behalf in the good old days, when he still knew most of the old players in porn. Now it was all coming from Sydney or Montreal or Krakow or somewhere he had no pull.
*
The girls were always there, of course. At the dawn of photography, they were lifting their skirts with glee. But they used to be mainly the commoner sort. Who knew how widespread was the urge to tease?
In the 1990s, there was an academic paper on the subject of "blue girls". They didn't do sex for money, or not just for money, but they liked being filmed. Often they had husbands that liked it too. Seems to me also, as an interested observer, that they often had girlfriends that liked it too. Lesbians totally get pussy worship, n'est-ce pas?
Must have been March in the fateful year of 2020 I got a call from a lady asking for Igor. Calling me Igor was Rosie's little joke.
"Speaking."
She said: "My name is Cynthia. Rosie said to give you a ring?"
I said OK.
She said: "She wants you to come and watch me undress, apparently."
I said OK.
Turned out she lived a mile from me. The pubs were shut but people were still visiting a little, before the lockdown really got organised, and I took advantage of the window.
Cynthia was auditioning in a tight purple corset over pink Capri pants, with mauve lipstick. A brassy but handsome blonde. Done "a bit of modelling". Married a man who liked her for it and they both fancied her having go at being a cam girl. But so far, he had done all the filming and Rosie's mob had told her to try again. He was somewhere in the house -- probably listening.
The thing that should have worried me at the time was, she was practically a neighbour. But I supposed Rosie was thinking of my convenience and logically it didn't matter that much. She looked like the kind of milf would enjoy the neighbours talking about her if they ever cottoned on.
*
Cynthia said:
"What do you want me to do?"
And I said: "Just talk. Or let me talk for a bit, if you don't mind. And excuse me if I get a little dirty."
She made a kissy face and picked up a cat.
"Rosie sent me because I'm your market," I said. "Or I'm the market she wants. I'm in love with girls who put out for the camera."
"Put out?"
"You know. Display themselves to turn you on. Push their fannies at you like they want em fucked. American slang I think. It's the fact they want to do it is sexy, even more than the pictures."
She said:
"I understand pictures ok."
I said: "I bet you do, your experience. But here's what I think is missing a lot of the time. You have to tell me about the picture you are making and why you are doing it. You have to say you are showing me a rear view because you know how nice it looks and you would like to be looking down that dark tunnel to the honey pot yourself and watching that tight little asshole wink in anticipation of a finger."
"Ooh,"
she said.
"A wordsmith."
I said: "You already know, you have to look at a lot of other girls to find out how you want to look. But here's a harder one: find one you want to sound like."
I left her one of my new cards, written out in pen on the back of a cigar packet, omitting the caravan site address. But I'd already told her I lived local.
On the doorstep, she said:
"It would be nice to meet down the pub one of these days, wouldn't it?"
We both gave a few seconds of silence to a disappearing world.
As she closed the door, she said in a low voice with a giggle in it:
"But I'll send you some pictures of my fanny for now."
I called back: "I've had dates ended worse."
*
A few weeks later, Rosie called.
"I'm missing a big boat here, honey,"
she said. "
There are 100,000 sailors stuck on ships that can't dock. And back home, everyone wants to take their girlfriend to an online porn party because everyone is scared of real fucking. Mickey is tearing his hair because I'm not doing them."
I sighed silently. Mickey was most of the problem. Him and Rosie, they both loved the old scene, run by their old dodgy mates in their favourite dodgy pubs. Being in his stable was like wearing a T shirt saying Past It. Mickey could read the figures but he did not have much class in imagination.
I said: "Sweetheart, you know what I think. It's all about your name. You've got to take charge while you can still swing a million dicks any way you point. And you've got to teach the girls to talk. Talk, talk, talk. More dirty words per minute than even you ever managed before."
She took that in for 10 seconds. I heard her blowing smoke. I knew she wanted to say she had tried all that. We talked a little about what was going on and she asked me if I had heard of Brookelynne Briar, a Montreal indie whose traffic figures had somehow got to Mickey. I said I'd cast a professional eye.
"By the way,"
