Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made

Prologue

"Remember," he used to say, patting my head as I studied at the kitchen table, "context is everything. Everything you study in school and life is nothing but a collection of meaningless facts unless you know the stories that surround it. Context puts the leaves on trees and the sun in the sky. It is the bad breakfast that re-writes history, the bus ride that inspires relativity, the love that composes sonnets and builds cathedrals. It is the story not the fact that changes the world, the means rather than the end by which it is changed. Context is the story, context is the means."

Context: it was Dad's catchphrase, his rule of thumb, the abiding principle by which he lived his life. And though I didn't think so back then, the older I get the more I agree with him. One can observe a scene with one's own eyes -- a bag wafting in a breeze, say, snow falling from a black sky, or two lovers filming themselves in bed -- but without knowing the context, one is little more than a voyeur, and what one sees will likely fade from memory before the day is through. But throw in the context -- the apocalypse that imbues a single plastic bag with memories of all that has been lost; the woman gazing out at the snow and laughing as she remembers making snow angels on her fifth birthday; the girl who for years didn't dare reveal her exhibitionist craving for fear of rejection, but who now fucks wantonly in front of the camera, filled with love for this man who accepted and encouraged her to be herself -- and these events suddenly mean something greater than the sight ever could.

This book, too, is about context. Aren't they all? But tell me at the end: how much more arousing does that film become, for the context I recount here.

Chapter One

Were we to meet sometime - in a bar or on the street - and I were to introduce myself as Amelia Rose, you would be unlikely to know who I was. But just perhaps, if you were to peer closely into my eyes, you might find a hint of recognition. I'm a little older now, perhaps less perky than once I was, but that age has taught me never to underestimate the shock that registers on someone's face when they realise from where that recognition stems. Particularly women. There have been two customers in the past year or so who have turned a terrible colour of puce when they made the connection. But -- in case this story inspires you to stop by -- please don't be embarrassed. I am proud that just the memory of me is enough to turn complete strangers on. If you've enjoyed the film, don't shrink back and make your excuses: sit down, share a coffee with me, and I'll tell you all about it. Because that is what sex and nudity should be: a means of bringing people together.

I am 29 now, married, and running an independent bookshop. We have the best fiction section in England, a very loyal customer base and a pretty unrivalled collection of erotic literature to boot. Whether you want to discover something a little out of left field, international writers of global acclaim such as Elfriede Jelinek, the backlist of classic authors like Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, or the latest Philip Pullman, you will find it here, right alongside erotic collections, confessions, and sex guides. And when you bring the book to the counter I will smile, regardless of whether you recognise me or not.

I remain much the same person I was aged eighteen: a voracious reader, compulsive book buyer, and obsessive dreamer. I tend to live in my head somewhat more than most people, fantasising the day away, but there's nothing I like more than turning these fantasies into reality. My husband and I -- and occasionally some of our closest friends -- have a pretty fulfilling sex life, all things considered.

Only last month, for instance, we got together with Anna and Ben and spent a weekend screwing each other senseless at their house. The liberation I feel letting myself go in the company of those I love is a little like that I imagine a toddler feels when jumping into the ball pit at a party with their parent watching on. There is exploration and a little fear, but with it a sense of individual exertion, of pushing oneself to the very limit of enjoyment.

My mind is perhaps best compared to an ocean of champagne: there is vastness, there is effervescence - and, if you're not used to it, the effect can be quite overpowering. There's not a great deal I haven't tried sexually in the last decade and I have to thank some wonderful friends for helping bring my fantasies to life.

The only cloud on an otherwise blue horizon is a fear that one day I might lose this power of imagination. That I might one day be overtaken by dementia, left a hollow shell of a person, is more than I can bare. Ever since I first heard of Alzheimer's it has terrified me. A couple of months ago an elderly gentleman came into the shop looking for help in getting to the hospital. Although I helped him as much as I could, I was engulfed by a sense of the utter loneliness of forgetting. What torture must it be to live life without point of reference; without being able to sit in a chair and cast the mind back to a beautiful day in June when the flowers were in bloom, a plane floated overhead, and life was full of possibility?

What beauty can exist without memory? The mere thought of that emptiness is too much for me to bear. Confronted with this horrific possibility, I have decided to put my life onto paper, so as to save some of my memories for posterity. Even if sometime in the future I have completely forgotten everything else in my life, I will be able to take this book off my shelf and relive it all, from the first tentative plans, to the glorious culmination of all my dreams and fantasies.

You probably don't need me to describe exactly how amazing that weekend was; I think it was obvious from the glazed look in my eyes. But for those of you who haven't seen the video, and for my blank future memory, I shall start at the beginning...

Back in the late 1990's my friends and I caused a stir on the internet -- e-famous before YouTube even existed. You see, when we were still fresh faced, virgin teenagers, we made a movie which somehow found its way onto the internet to be watched by thousands of hungry eyes. You remember that couple, Diane and Mike, who said they would lose their virginity live on the internet? Well, ours was like that, except that ours wasn't live. Oh, and unlike theirs, it wasn't a hoax. We did it. For a whole weekend we explored, investigated, and fucked. What a weekend it was.

Sometimes, now, the video appears on xhamster, PornHub, or other erotic video sites. You can even buy it, pirated of course, on DVD in some adult stores. It has passed the test of time with flying colours. And given the reception of critics and punters alike, that is no surprise. One critic described it as "pornography to end all pornography," the sort of amateur video "you dream about in your wildest fantasies but never expect to see." Another critic wrote, slightly flamboyantly: "You know this kind of thing must be out there somewhere, hidden in people's bedside cabinets or in a false case behind the normal videos, but you never expect it to become brazenly available. Pretty quickly, when you watch porn for a living, you become inured to almost everything; you lose the belief that there is anything in the world which can make your jaw drop and your chest clench. But here it is; this video of six teenage virgins took my breath away. It lasts for an astonishing 12 hours, each second of which is packed with the most exhibitionistic, joyous sex you can imagine. If there is ever one example of pornography to convert the reluctant or demonstrate the depths of joy available to the human body, then this is it." My favourite came from a very well known female director, "it is one thing to see a good amateur group sex video for they are two a penny. But never have I seen an amateur video which actually shows people voluntarily and excitedly losing their virginities. And they don't lose their virginities in a safe, cuddly, amateur sort of wide angle shot way. This video fits into every category you can imagine: amateur, teen, lesbian, anal, group, small breasts, big breasts, point of view, bi-sexual, gay. It has everything anyone could ever dream of and is the first genuinely must see video of the internet generation. It is sweet and it is loving and it is hot as hell. I only wish I'd been there with them."

High praise indeed. We are all proud of that video which exists in the ether, showing the world the story of our sexual discovery. It was self filmed and thoroughly, entirely, 100% genuine. No fake-tans in sight. No bottle-blonde hair or fake breasts, no hairy men with dancing pecks and cocks that cum on demand. No impossibly loud moaning, faked orgasms, or stupid plots. Well, not until the spoof script we enacted, anyway. Just six normal people discovering the pleasures of sex, naturally, amongst each other. From scratch.

This is the story of that wonderful weekend, and the movie that changed my life forever. If I can have only one memory in the future, I hope it will be this one. I have always wanted to be a writer and, since experts always say you should write about what you know, I'm doing just that. And what do I know better than that weekend? I relive it in my head regularly. I even watch the video occasionally. That weekend was then, and remains today, the most amazing experience of my life. And now, I bequeath it to you...

To understand the background I must take you back a few months earlier. It must have been December 1998 and I was lying in bed when the idea came to me. Well, when I say 'lying,' what I mean is that I was sprawled out, semi naked on my bed, legs splayed wide, right hand glued to my pussy while my left hand danced its way up and down my body, stopping to caress my breasts and tweak my nipples, bringing every inch of my skin alive. I was small and feisty, a little under 5'2". My naked breasts, freed from the bra which was now pulled up to leave the little orbs exposed, heaved in puddles on my chest, round and pert with ultra-sensitive nipples poking straight out into the cool air. My long brown hair fanned out from my head and my hips bucked with each thrust of my middle and index fingers. My public hair was long and untrimmed, the scent of my sex clinging to each strand and filling the air with a heady aroma.

I was enjoying my usual fantasy about my best friend Anna. For many years we had spent Friday nights together, watching movies, listening to music, gossiping, doing homework, laughing and so on; all the things that teenage girls do together. We had been best friends since we started school when we were only five years old, and had remained almost inseparable throughout that time. Like me, Anna had undergone some pretty major changes since she was five, growing from a small energetic child with blonde pony tail who liked to chase the boys around the playground into a studious teenager with a cute nose and blonde curls which cascaded across her face, partially covering her blue eyes and rosy cheeks. She ran for the cross-country team and seemed to get straight A's in anything she tried. She was tall, (5'10") with long legs and a body well toned from hours of training. Her breasts were smallish, a b cup at most, her stomach infuriatingly flat. I craved her figure. All the guys at school fancied her. But, like me, she had never had a proper boyfriend. I guess she was too busy winning races and studying to fit a love life in. Or maybe she didn't know how to start. For some people, relationships come easy as a teenager. For others it's a bit harder. But that doesn't mean we didn't have womanly urges. I knew, because I had seen her masturbate. And she had seen me.

It all began about a year earlier. Well actually, it all began one day when I was off school on my own, rolling around the house bored. It was a cold winter day and the heating was turned up high, frosting up the windows on the outside. I was bored of playing computer games, didn't feel like reading, and there was nothing to watch on TV. It was the sort of day young teenagers grow used to. The sky outside was grey and close. All I wanted to do was hide in bed.

I don't know what it was exactly that set me off that day. I didn't stumble over a secret stash of pornography, or read something racy or anything like that. But suddenly, from nowhere, I had the urge to touch myself. No, it was more than to touch myself, I wanted to put something inside me and see what it felt like. I'm not even sure that I knew what I wanted was sexual. It seemed normal, like the need to eat or use the bathroom. I walked around the house for the next hour or so, naked from the waste down, searching for the perfect implement upon which to impale myself, testing everything from empty wine bottles to Aboriginal music sticks. I guess my hymen must have been broken during childhood, playing sport or something. The implements went in easily enough. But, like a modern day, sexually liberated Goldilocks, everything was too big or too small, too hot or too cold. My legs were growing a little damp, as though I had peed myself, but nothing I slid into my vagina felt as I hoped it would. They all left me feeling unfulfilled in an indescribable way. With each failure, my desire to find something right grew stronger.

Eventually, I came across a vibrating pen in my brother's desk draw. It was purple and had a strange multi-armed monster at its top. You could retract the pen nib so it formed a gently tapered phallus, not dissimilar to a large wine bottle stop. I had a feeling the moment I saw it that it was what I had been looking for. Standing up, I spread my legs and gently, my pussy well lubricated but still tight, slid the pen inside me. In doing so, my wrist brushed against the switch which turned on the vibrations.

Oh my God. I gasped and almost fell over. As I held it in place fully inserted, the tingling, bubbling, vibrations overtook me. They reached up into my stomach and down to my toes. I had no idea what was happening. Every sensation was a thousand times more intense than it had been before. I felt on the cusp of something big, without any idea what it might be. It was like standing at the end of a pier, and looking down through the rotting boards into an ocean of champagne. There was vastness there, and effervescence too. And, to the uninitiated, it had a rather overpowering effect which left me thoroughly disorientated. I could feel my vagina engorge around it, there was a tingling all across the area which seemed to exist at the same time on my skin and deep down inside of me.

I pulled the pen out and felt my lips cling to it. The moment it was gone I wanted it back. I sat down on the edge of my brother's bed and pulled my legs up to make my vagina more accessible. Then, slowly, I slid it back inside me. The vibrations were deep and powerful, like an organ in church, and I was shocked to discover how much cavernous space there was lurking inside me. I wanted to make the vibrations louder, to make them fill me up completely.

While one of my hands held it still, my other hand stroked across my skin, absurdly aware of how sensitive it was. The skin across my stomach was on fire. My breath caught, then became ragged. I could feel something building deep down inside of me. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it was coming, unavoidably, and I didn't want to stop it. My hand continued up to my chest where it found my newly forming breasts and caressed them gently. I was acting on instinct. It was as if the history of female sexuality shouted down to me through the generations, guiding my hand. When my fingers made contact with my nipple, my whole body jumped. I pulled the pen out, and it brushed against my clitoris. My breathing became ragged. There it was, washing over me, a warm feeling as though I existed on the point of a needle, huge and tiny at the same time. My body clenched down upon the pen, gripping it firmly. It lasted only a matter of seconds. Then the sensations began ebbing away, and I was left thoroughly, wonderfully, satisfied.

I lay there for a long time, letting the warmth wash over me. Perhaps I fell asleep. I cannot now remember. But eventually I had to get up and return things to their rightful place. I spent most of the afternoon thinking about what had happened. Over the next couple of days I couldn't resist trying it again to much the same result. I don't know when I realised what I was actually doing. All I knew was that it felt good. Sometimes I found myself craving the strange sensations that the pen gave me, and no matter how I tried to concentrate on other things, I would return to my brothers room, and ask if I could borrow a pen for me homework. He nodded, barely looking at me, completely unaware of exactly what I was planning to with it.

Over the following months, the pen and I got to know each other better. Or, more exactly, the pen helped me to get to know my own body a lot better. I soon found how sensitive my clitoris was, and how I could get the most immediate pleasure by rubbing it with my finger as I pushed the pen in and out of myself. Later, I found that just holding the vibrating pen to my clit was all it took. What I was doing came naturally to me. Masturbating brought me into communion with the world around with me, and with my burgeoning femininity. Through I not only learned more about myself, but about the entire world.

It was a grand awakening. I still have the pen, even now. It is tucked safely in my bedside drawer and although it now looks incredibly slim and vibrates far too slowly to satisfy me, I occasionally take it out, run it under my nose, and think back to those first days of discovery. But, as I say, that was only the beginning...

Anna and I were close; we shared almost everything. At that age I don't know if there was much going on in my life that she wasn't aware of, and vice versa. One Friday night in the middle of December, we sat in her room on top of her bed, with the TV on in the background and a couple of scented candles burning on her nightstand. Anna's bedroom was on the top floor of her parents tall, thin Victorian house. She was an only child, and her parents expected a lot of her. But with this expectation came a degree of freedom. So long as she lived up to their expectations, we were free to enjoy the entire top floor of the house to ourselves.

An old episode of

Friends

played in the background, the one with all the poker, but we had both seen it many times and were not paying it much attention. A bottle of wine sat between us and we each clutched a full glass in our hands, occasionally taking a long swig and enjoying being grown-up. The room was warm. I was wearing a yellow tank-top and jeans, Anna had on a knee length, sleeveless dress and tights. My big jumper and her cardigan were draped over the chair by her desk and our shoes were lined up by the side of the bed. Everything was perfectly normal.

"Have you done much revision for the mocks yet?"

"Sure," I replied, "a little. But they don't count for anything. No point in doing too much yet."

"That's okay for you to say, but they do count for our university applications. I bet I am going to mess up."

"Oh, come on. You do this every time, and every time things turn out perfectly. You need to relax a little."

"Maybe I always do well because I worry about it so much. Maybe I need the worry to make myself work hard enough."

"Maybe, but whatever I say, you are going to worry. How about we do something else, to take your mind off it." I looked around the room, wondering what we could do, and my eyes passed across the game of Poker taking place on the TV. "Have you got a pack of cards? I always wanted to give poker a try. How about it?"