LONDON 1986
Sarah pushed open the swing door of the Parkside Gymnastic Club and narrowly avoided getting her sports bag caught as the door closed too quickly behind her. She pulled it higher on to her shoulder and slid through into the main hall.
A gaggle of younger girls in brightly coloured leotards were using the various pieces of apparatus or were chalking their hands, chatting over drinking bottles or slipping out of tracksuits. Two older male gymnasts were keeping a brotherly watch and advising and as one caught sight of Sarah, he called a greeting.
"Preevyet, Sarah!" He gave a friendly smile
"Preevyet, Aleksei!" She replied and he beamed, acknowledging her attempt at the Russian 'Hi'
How, in the mid-1980s two Soviet gymnasts had ended up coaching gymnastics in a small inconsequential club in South London was anyone's guess. Rumours were rife involving inevitably, spying, the KGB, defection and a whole raft of even more implausible theories.
Aleksei was taller, blonde, with a short boyish haircut that made him look as if he had come straight from a Soviet poster; staring optimistically into some glorious socialist future whilst holding up a hammer in exhortation to comrades. Sergey was shorter, dark haired, more compact and would have looked at home commanding a nuclear submarine.
All the younger girls had crushes on one, or the other, or even both. Sarah being the oldest girl at the club, a positively geriatric twenty-four, had a more grown-up relationship and had even picked up a few Russian words which amused Aleksei and Sergey no end.
Sarah was actually a pretty good gymnast but had long since given up any notions of achieving any status in the sport. She came now mainly to keep in shape and to get some peace and personal time away from her boyfriend, Frank.
Frank had been a nice guy in the beginning, but a series of pretty bad career choices and lost jobs had left him bitter, controlling and far happier in the company of his pub mates than with her.
She surveyed her figure in the full-length mirror in the changing room and pulled on her depressingly plain, baggy leotard over her knickers and tights. Despite putting a small amount of money aside from her part time job in a local minimarket to buy a more modern sexy lycra one, Frank had vetoed the idea outright and the money had been swallowed up paying bills, while he inevitably went to the pub.
"Trying to impress those Russian perves, are you?" He had accused her.
He had visited the club a couple of times, probably just to check up on her, and he had not been overly fond of Aleksei and Sergey. A feeling she suspected was entirely mutual, although both had been completely charming and swore to her they liked him.
"They're only after those jailbait little girls in their tight little leotards pulled up their tight little cunts and arses, For fuck's sake, most of them probably don't even have pubes yet!" Frank had ranted with a disturbingly self-revealing turn of phrase, when they'd got home.
"They're not interested in you, with your bush and womanly curves!" He'd smiled and with a sick leer, had grabbed her possessively. She'd grudgingly taken it as a compliment although she really knew better.
She was, she realised from the mirror, not particularly thin, certainly not thin enough for competitive gymnastics. She knew her breasts were too large, and her bottom, well yes, too curvy, but she had a good covering of muscle, a flat stomach and shapely dancer's legs. Mrs Jarvis, the elderly woman who ran the club, had shocked Sarah when not too long ago she had rather too candidly taken her on one side and commented to her quietly.
"You're not really young enough or thin enough to get far in competitive gymnastics these days but..." She'd hesitated, before continuing,
"You're agile, flexible and have an excellent sense of timing. You have the sort of body men drool over; You'd actually make a bloody good exotic dancer!" Then with a wink: "Trust me I've been there..." She wouldn't elaborate and had simply left Sarah with a rather disturbing image.
So with badly dented self-esteem and zero self-confidence, Sarah in her shapeless, hopelessly unfashionable leotard, went to join her Gymnastics class.
As she sat tired and with muscles aching on the bus home that night, with only the prospect of an empty flat or worse a drunk, skint, horny Frank to look forward to, she finally decided she was going to leave him.
Maybe I WILL try stripping! She thought rebelliously with a surprising frisson of excitement.
Three weeks later she threw most of what she owned into a suitcase and after a short bus journey, arrived at Carla's small, cramped flat. Carla worked with her at the minimarket and had only met Frank once. He had, however, left a lasting and altogether unpleasant impression. Frank would not remember her, Sarah was sure. She could crash on Carla's sofa until she found her feet but how on earth was she going to do that?
"Raj's upset you left but Frank has been around twice and is in a ugly mood." Carla told her a few days later as she hung up her uniform after work at the minimarket. Raj was the old man who managed the minimarket and he had begged Sarah to stay, but he was a small, harmlessly nice man who would have been no match for an angry, probably drunk Frank.
It was London in the 1980s, Money was in short supply and jobs were hard to come by.
After a couple of weeks of fruitlessly filling in job applications and waiting in soulless unemployment centres, Sarah was on the brink of despair, living on the charity of Carla and with only very few options left to quickly make some money. She hesitantly outlined her alternative options to Carla, who was surprisingly supportive.
"What about the art schools, they're always looking for models?" She had suggested
Sarah had followed her suggestion and after overcoming her nervousness had stripped off and sat naked and ultimately bored senseless in front of the studiously scribbling class. The money wasn't good enough, the work was unreliable and intermittent. She found keeping still with her muscles aching to move almost impossible. Sarah realised that with her gymnastic skills she needed to move. She also now knew that she wanted a more appreciative response. Sarah wanted to perform!
So eventually Sarah found herself climbing a narrow wooden staircase and then waiting for an hour in the cramped reception of the 'Some like it Hot' adult entertainment agency with a couple of gum chewing girls who looked her up and down with barely concealed disdain. Finally, she found herself sitting across a desk from a tired looking old woman in a small office.
Ms Hargreaves the proprietor inspected her closely and issued a rather condemning judgement
"Bit old for this game ain't yer?" Ms Hargreaves concluded unsympathetically
"I'm only twenty-four! I've done a lot of gymnastics, can do the splits, Have modelled for an art class, NAKED!" Sarah blurted.
Ms Hargreaves had been unimpressed. Her impassive face had completely crushed Sarah's carefully constructed and meticulously practised speech into a plaintive list of disconnected babble.
Three agencies later and having climbed a small mountain of narrow wooden staircases Sarah found herself sitting in front of Mr Smallwood, a dapper but anachronistic little man in a 1940's suit, with a thin moustache and large, black old-fashioned glasses, who grandiosely called himself the Talent Scout/Theatrical Agent for 'StripperGlam Artistes'
Smallwood looked up and surveyed Sarah through his thick glasses and then rummaged through the grubby looking spread of correspondence on his desk. Finding what he was looking for he looked up again and spoke.
"Ms, er, Hargreaves has informed me..." It was, Sarah realised, a close-knit business community.
"That you are a gymnast!" He said, eying her lasciviously "And that you can, do, the, um, splits, mmm... NAKED!" Sarah's stomach turned over.
"No, Well, Yes, but..."
"Splendid!"
He paused, looked at a diary on his desk and totally out of the blue stated.
"We do get quite a lot of requests for gymnastic models. A few..." His expression took on a disapproving look.
"...are of questionable legality. We only provide models that are certifiably over the age of eighteen, which of course, you say, you are?"
Suddenly Sarah was shocked and became aware that he was not only assessing her age, but also mentally undressing her. It made her squirm.
"Of course! I'm twenty-four." she replied indignantly
