Read Online Altar Ego by Kathy Lette - Free Book Online

‘Much more reliable than a man.’
    ‘You must have the sort of vibrator that requires a lorry drivers’ licence,’ Simon scoffed. ‘Warning. Wide load.’
    ‘Yes. Just like mine.’ I rallied on behalf of my friend. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t chipped our teeth! Now leave her alone.’
    A knife tapped on a glass as the Best Man rose to his feet for the ritual Humiliatingly Indiscreet Speech By Groom’s Soon-to-Be-Ex-Friend.
    ‘
You own a vibrator?
’ Julian interrupted the silence in horrified amazement. Surrounding tables gawped at us, simultaneously. ‘
When did you get a vibrator?
’
    Now, even the Best Man was looking in our direction.
    ‘Julian …’ I shushed him.
    ‘I just can’t believe that you’d wait till now, five years into a relationship, to tell me you don’t want children and you own a vibrator.’
    ‘Maybe you’re insufficiently in touch with your feminine side?’ Simon, the Red Adair of Relationships, suggested.
    ‘Oh fuck off,’ I said, femininely.
    ‘Would you
mind
?’ hissed someone’s great aunt, two tables over.
    Oh, nothing like a wedding to bring out the best in people. Much more of this and I’d develop a facial tic. After the lame speeches I was just contemplating finding a bathroom window I could escape out of again, when I first laid eyes on Zachary Phoenix Burne. It wasn’t hard to spot him. The collective female ‘phwaah’ that filled the room as he took to the dance floor could have been the give-away. I had never, ever seen anything quite like his cardiac-arresting combination of tangled black hair, pernod-coloured, stray-cat eyes, straining Levi fly buttons, silver-stud earring and musculature last seen on George Clooney in his rubber Bat suit. Each bicep was the size of a guest bedroom. On the left hibernated a death adder, which reared to strike whenever he flexed. This guy wasn’t just sexy, he was a crotch-moistener. A mammary-achingly, take-me-now-you-brute , drop-dead dreamy hunk of spunk. But … in an understated kind of way. The tear in his black jeans, situated just below his butt, was in the shape of a sly smile. No. More like an eye that winked as he moved. And moving was what he did best. ‘Dancing’ is too tame a word. It was more like floor-carving. The guy could give dancing lessons to Michael Jackson. It was as dirty as you could get without latex. A girl could get up the duff just by jiving with a man like that. If he was trying to come over as a hot-to-trot stud puppy with buns of steel, then he’d definitely scored.
    ‘Okay, Kate. Have I got a
guy
for
you
.’
    ‘I don’t want a guy, you big galah … Bloody Hell!’ Even Kate was dumbstruck when I swivelled her towards the dance floor.
    ‘We have a ten.’ I mimed the actions of an Olympic Judge holding aloft the score card of a parallel-bar performer.
    ‘And a half,’ adjudicated Kate.
    When Zachary Burne left the floor, the sound of a hundred women tearing their eyes away from his body was like Velcro.
    ‘Do you want to dance?’ I asked Julian, curling my fingers around his arm.
    ‘You know I can only do two types of dances. One of them is the funky chicken and the other one isn’t.’ Julian brushed aside my hand as though it were a hive of hornets. ‘
You own a vibrator?
’
    All around us, on chandeliers and banisters and chair backs, there were reclining carved cupids, lyre-plucking Hymens, naked Apollos and Adonises lounging lasciviously. ‘Come on, Jules. Dance with me …’
    ‘What I really want to do is hail the winged chariot.’ He yawned, peering at his watch. ‘Jesus, what are you people? Vampires?’
    What makes Julian an unusual human rights activist is that he hates humans. Leaving early was part of his People Avoidance Programme. This was a guy who liked humankind in theory, but not in practice.
    ‘You always want to go early,’ I sulked. ‘You’re a social premature ejaculator, do you know that?’
    ‘Spoken by the woman who climbed out of the