The Mammoth Book of International Erotica

UNTITLED by Paul Mayersberg

GREG AWOKE TO the fact that he was going nowhere. He didn’t think of himself as an imprecise man, but by his thirty-fifth birthday he was still without a defined career in the movies. He had had a long sequence of odd jobs: as a floor runner, assistant location manager, unit driver. He had no flat to call his own. He stayed with friends, rented when he could afford it, house sat, squatted.

His relationship with women had proved equally short-lived and imprecise. Greg had not found what he wanted in a woman. When he examined the long sequence of girls he had had he could not find a common denominator. Not in age or appearance or lifestyle. With women, like work, he took what he could get. Nothing lasted. There was no pattern to any of it. Sexually he was without direction.

Greg was naturally an optimistic man but now he gave in to depression. He found himself in a flat without a television and where the phone had been cut off. His dole cheque had stopped since he had been out of work for six months. For cash work, he went from door to door in good neighborhoods, knocking on doors, offering to wash cars parked in the street. His only evening solace was masturbation.

Looking for stimulation he rummaged through the two-room flat for books with sexy passages, old fashion magazines, women’s clothes catalogues. Underwear, swimwear, skin beauty products. The place, left empty for the summer by an acquaintance of an acquaintance, had obviously been occupied by one or two women. Among the magazines, books, junk mail and bills Greg found a typed manuscript, a screenplay.

The front page read UNTITLED. There was no author’s name but there was a date. The work was four years old. Greg started to read. It brought him back to his imagined career in films. “Untitled” was an erotic story in the style popular a few years back.

Two working girls, sharing a flat with one bedroom, took it in turns to bring their boyfriends home for the night. One night, one of the boyfriends came out of the bedroom at three in the morning and climbed into the sofa bed in the sitting room to set about seducing the other girl, while her friend was asleep.

To begin with it looked like a story of betrayal, but then it turned out that the girls had pre-arranged it. They had embarked on a programme of sharing their men. But without telling them. The next day the girls compared notes on the sexual performance of the boyfriends.

Greg read the script right through at a sitting. It was clear to him that one or other or both the girls had written it as an account of their own experience in this flat. The sofa he was now sitting on as he read it was the sofa-bed referred to on page 18 where Rick first put his hand inside Annie’s pajama top. Annie had protested to begin with but not too vehemently. She enjoyed his attentions. She let him take off her pajama trousers. She allowed him to touch and kiss any part of her. But wouldn’t let him enter her. That, she told him, would be too much. After all, he was Kate’s boyfriend and Kate was her friend.

Reading this, Greg found himself sharing Rick’s frustration. He put the script aside and relieved himself of the tension.

On page 27, four days later in the story, Annie allowed Rick to come between her breasts. On page 29 Kate laughed when Annie told her at breakfast, after Rick had gone, how she insisted that he lick the sperm from her skin. Otherwise, she said, she would never let him touch her again. Rick had not enjoyed the experience. It made him feel sick. Greg was with Rick on this. It made him feel queasy.

On page 31 Kate encouraged Rick to come in her mouth. Which he did. Then she kissed him open-mouthed and pushed his come back into his own mouth. She asked him to swallow it. After all, she had on several occasions. Greg’s throat contracted. He felt himself gag.

Greg’s sex life, his lovemaking, had been very conventional. He had read of these games but had never played them himself. The effect of reading and re-reading “Untitled” was to make him recognize that he had been as imprecise about his sexual life as he had been about his film career. In both he had taken more or less what was on offer. He had not sought more. Like Rick, he had a low expectancy of himself. Perhaps low self-esteem was the reason for his non-career.

Greg read the script countless times. He came to know it by heart. He never for one moment considered whether it was good or bad as art or craft. It was enough that it stimulated him. He lived the scenes from “Untitled” in the flat where they happened. He lay in the bed where Annie’s boyfriend, Alec, had covered his full condom with KY jelly and entered her anus. Greg had never found a girl who wanted him to attempt this. But so real was the scene to him that he bought some KY jelly with his food money in order to re-create the event exactly. It did not seem strange to him, masturbating inside a condom, when he could have done it without, without the expense of buying the thing. The point was, for those few minutes he, Greg, became Alec.

For three weeks Greg’s fantasies did not depart from the script as written. He muttered the dialogue as he re-created the scenes. It wasn’t masturbation as he had known it. He was shooting and re-shooting the script. One time he was Alec. Another, he was Rick.

Then, whether out of boredom through repetition, or through a half-conscious desire to go further, he transferred his sensuality to the girls, to what they were feeling. Until now Kate and Annie had been undefined, unspecific girls. He had imagined their limbs, their breasts, their movements, but not their faces. The script itself had not been specific about their appearance. They were in their twenties. They had hair. They did things. They talked. But it was all very general.

For the first time, it dawned on Greg that “Untitled” was not a very good screenplay. It needed crafting if he were to continue getting satisfaction from the material. He would have to re-write it, at least in his head. He sharpened his mental pencil.

What did the girls look like? He made Kate a blonde with short hair, like an old girlfriend whose name he couldn’t remember. He made Annie dark with long hair. She was based on a fashion picture from Marie-Claire in the bathroom. He gave them blue eyes and dark eyes respectively. Their breasts posed questions. If he made Kate blonde she ought to have full breasts with large pale pink nipples. Oughtn’t she?

And Annie, as a brunette, should have small tits with small dark nipples. It seemed right. Didn’t it? He designed her narrow hips with pronounced jutting bones. He could hold on to them. The pubic hair posed a problem. The familiar dark bush, or something more interesting? What about long straight strands? He could comb and part the hair. It could be something of a game, if not a ritual. Then, while he was doing that she could be painting her toenails. It would make a nice complexity of angled limbs, her hands and his hands, all reaching forward. Greg was no more a painter than a writer. But his erotic impulses moved him in the direction of art.

Kate came out quite lush-looking. Five or seven pounds overweight. So pale was her skin he could see the tracery of veins in her heavy breasts. Her pubic hair would be curly blonde, glistening, so her slit was quite clearly visible. A great contrast with Annie. Now he had the basis of conflict within himself. He might have to choose between them one day.

Greg was less clear about their faces. He kept changing his mind with regard to their mouths. When they spoke it was with the same husky voice. He discovered, to his surprise, that the voice was more important than the flesh. He started to give the girls things to say. Dialogue came into the equation. He was no writer so they talked, not just with the same voice, but like him. His thoughts, their voice, one mouth. Greg was alone in the flat. His expression was a monologue. But that too became repetitious, unsatisfactory. He needed conversation, guidance, surprise. Greg couldn’t surprise himself. He became bored and went back to simple voyeurism.

He would watch Annie and Kate, dressing, undressing, alone, together, in bed, in the bath. It worked well for a time. He was back on track, keeping within his limitations. Then, without his wishing it, the boyfriends appeared.

Rick’s presence in the flat irritated Greg. The man was in the way. How could he play with Kate in the bathroom with Rick there? What should Rick do? Stay in the sitting room reading a magazine? Of course not. He’d come into the bathroom to see what was going on. He’d get angry at Greg screwing his girlfriend. Then in another scene Rick sat on the lavatory watching them together. That didn’t appeal to Greg one bit. It inhibited him. Rick wanted to join in. A threesome. Greg wasn’t up for that, having Rick fuck Kate from behind while he was getting a blow job. No. Rick had to go.

Greg decided to write him out. What were the options? Rick could be called away on business. Or he could meet with an accident. But who was Rick? While Greg had spent days working on the appearance of the girls, Rick and Alec were faceless guys without lives of their own, or jobs. Rick became a salesman. Greg hated salesmen.

So Rick was called away to another town. Fine. Now Greg got on with his plan to take Kate and Annie to bed together. Now there was a threesome he felt comfortable with. To begin with he had the girls kneel facing each other. They moved close to each other so their nipples touched. They liked that. Then they kissed. Greg enjoyed that. But when he put his hands between them neither Kate nor Annie responded to him. They rolled over and got on with loving each other.

When Annie spread Kate’s legs and put her tongue to Kate’s vulva Greg’s hard frustration turned to resentment. They were supposed to be there for him, not for each other. Greg was furious when Kate trembled to a climax. He pushed Annie aside and straddled Kate’s thighs. He slipped in and out of her and came quickly. But it wasn’t properly satisfying. He hadn’t made her come.

Greg identified a difficulty here. In fact, it had been present all along. His characters were starting to behave the way they wanted. They were no longer under his control. Greg didn’t realize that this was the beginning of what every author longs for, characters who develop a life of their own, outside the manipulation of their creator. In his ignorance he reined them back. He urged them to conform to his desire. Specifically Greg wanted Kate and Annie to come simultaneously under his hands.

Technically this proved impossible. He would need two penises to do the job properly. So he had to content himself with sucking Annie while penetrating Kate. While each girl appeared to climax within seconds of the other, Greg couldn’t get rid of the thought that one, or both, was faking it just to please him. That writer’s problem again. Manipulation might be formally satisfying at the time of writing, but there was a residue of doubt when you read the passage back the next day. It seemed forced. The frustration remained.

If the purpose of writing was to shape random events and disparate characters into a pattern, Greg was perplexed that describing sex, creating erotic scenes for his own pleasure, left him dissatisfied. Why wasn’t there a proper climax in the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, as there was in the act of fucking? Why wasn’t writing, where you were free to invent anything you wanted, why wasn’t it orgasmic? It was exciting, yes, gave you a hard on, but it didn’t make you come.

So what was it for? The untitled screenplay, however he rewrote it, in his head or in notes, had become an indictment of his solitary life. Its intention remained vague. Being alone had metamorphosed into loneliness. The trouble was, he couldn’t think of a title for the damned screenplay. If only he could do that he’d be halfway to where he was going.

It was evening when Greg got back from washing cars. He switched on the light by the door and immediately sensed he was not alone in the flat. There was a faint smell, food or coffee, he wasn’t sure. He ought to have been afraid, but he wasn’t. He needed another human being. Curiosity and hope drew him to the kitchen.

Alec was there, naked, stirring himself a cup of instant coffee. Before he turned to Greg he said: “Is that you, Annie?”

“No, it fucking isn’t,” Greg replied.

“Come here.”

What did he mean, come here? How could Alec mistake Greg for a girl? Was he crazy?

“Come and hold this.” Alec lifted his cock in one hand. He really thought Greg was Annie. Enough.

A cheese-smeared bread knife on the green plastic-topped table invited Greg to pick it up. He advanced on Alec, gripping the knife. Alec’s penis rose to meet it. Action. And later, the plunge, the nightmare.

Greg was still asleep when the phone rang. He jumped. Was he still dreaming? No, the phone was ringing beside the bed. Someone must have re-connected it. Nervously, he lifted the receiver. A woman’s voice.

“Is Annie there?”

“Who?”

“That is 352 0251, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” Greg looked down at the phone. There was no identifying number on it. Panic set in. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” The woman’s husky tone became impatient.

Greg didn’t answer. Should he hang up?

“Look, Where’s Annie?” Demanding now.

Annie? Should he tell the voice that Annie was in Greg’s head? And in the pages of a screenplay.

“This is Kate. Whoever you are, I want to talk to Annie.”

Kate! No. Impossible. Greg panicked and hung up. His hands were trembling.

Almost immediately the phone rang again. He left it. It rang a hundred times, it seemed. When it finally stopped Greg took the receiver off. But it was no solution. Greg felt unsafe. He put a pillow over the receiver to muffle the high-pitched buzz. But he couldn’t suppress his mind. That dialogue. It had come by phone this time. Last time Alec had spoken in the kitchen. But Alec wasn’t real!

Annie and Kate were his characters. They were real to him. Greg forgot they had been drawn from an untitled screenplay. He concluded that he must now be hallucinating. He hadn’t heard or talked to anyone for days, weeks. Apart, of course, from himself. The phone had unnerved him. He left the pillow on it.

Greg had been in the bath for an hour. The water was tepid. He turned the hot tap on. Behind the splashing sound Greg heard another noise. A door closing. He turned off the flow and listened. Footsteps. He sat up. The water slipped over the side of the tub.

He stared at the woman in the doorway. It was Annie. His Annie. She was dressed in a raincoat, but her face… Annie.

Greg must have said the name out loud because she said, “Yes.” Then: “Who are you?” She had the husky voice.

“Greg.”

“Well, Greg, what the fuck are you doing in my bathroom?” The mouth was perfect, an exact version of the mouth he had given her.

“I’m… staying here.”

“No, you’re not. Get out.”

She waited. Greg couldn’t tell whether she was angry or just insistent. Did she mean get out of the bath, or get out of the flat?

“Come on.”

Annie reached down for the fallen bathrobe. She held it up. Greg was now more embarrassed than fearful. He eased himself up. Annie watched him. There was no point trying to cover himself. He climbed out of the bath. He slipped. Annie caught his arm. He felt stupid.

“When you’re dressed you can tell me what you’re doing here.”

Greg pulled the robe round him. Annie left the bathroom. Greg started to dry himself. Keep calm, he told himself. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He had imagined a woman and now she had come to life. Now he had a different role, always provided that he stayed on in the flat. Would there be room for him? Or would he go the way of Rick and Alec?

Annie came out of the bathroom and got into bed beside Kate. They yawned simultaneously and laughed together. Greg loved the way their breasts wobbled when they laughed. It was strange that he hadn’t seen or heard Kate come back to the flat. She was just there. Ah well, he would sleep on the sofa. He had nowhere else to go.

“He’s asleep.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“We’ll have to give him a name.”

“Who’s going to talk to him?”

Kate took a coin and spun it.

“Tails,” called Annie.

It was heads.

“That’s appropriate,” said Kate.

She went into the dark sitting room. Greg was asleep on the sofa wearing Annie’s bathrobe. He snored faintly. Kate knelt down. She parted the robe without untying it. She smiled. Greg was semi-erect. The tip glistened.

“Halfway house,” Kate whispered. “Unformed, but you’ve got the makings of an interesting character.” She licked him with the tongue of a cat.

Greg awoke.