notebook computer now securely stowed under his jacket and in his pocket there was a ballpoint pen and stenographers ' notebook with which he would jot down his impressions.
" Olympia , here I come, " he said to himself.
On arrival he followed the signs to the Grand Hall where he joined a queue that was already forming behind a man wearing a top hat and a black felt smoking jacket. In his right hand the man carried a silver-topped cane and in his left a blue sports bag as if later he might go for a jog. George hopped from foot to foot, not in anticipation of acres of erotica, but because he needed a bathroom. Behind him was a scruffy young man in a wheelchair clutching a bouquet of red roses extravagantly tied with ribbon. The young man ' s stockinged toes poked out incongruously through the frayed ruin of his runners.
As advertised, the doors opened precisely at noon and the crowd fanned out into the red carpeted exhibition hall. Towering overhead suspended on wires were two giant inflatable figures, one male one female, both naked, positioned as if tumbling or about to fall to their knees. Vast breasts bore down on George from above and buttocks the size of hot air balloons thrust upwards towards the glass domed ceiling. He took one astonished look and hurried in search of the facilities. Thus, greatly relieved, he dug out his notebook from his jacket pocket and embarked on a journey of discovery.
First thing: Oh dear, something called the Rackmaster, apparently the latest thing in suburban torture. George would have liked to have started with something a little gentler, but there it was front and center framed by a plasterboard wall papered in a faux stone motif that George could only describe as early dungeon. Beside it, looking bored, a man with a heavily bandaged index finger pecked away at a portable calculator. George wondered if the damaged digit had somehow got squashed in the Rackmaster. He felt sure that, like the spice cabinet he had once bought from Ikea, some assembly was required if the Rackmaster were to realize its full potential and in any event it was not immediately obvious how the device might be operated. But just as he was about to consult a brochure presented to him by a bandaged hand, a young woman in a skimpy gold lame bikini accompanied by a white-haired man dressed entirely in black obligingly arrived to demonstrate. Carefully and precisely, like a homeless person assuming proprietorship of a park bench, she lay on the rack to await her fate. It was not long coming. The man in black spread her legs and bound her ankles with the Rackmaster ' s imposing leather restraints. Thus spread-eagled, her head and arms were imprisoned in what looked to George like the mediaeval stocks in a village square. From his vantage point he noted that in such a position the poor girl ' s bikini offered little in the way of privacy quite possibly in violation of several workplace bylaws, but just as he was recording this observation in his notebook she started to giggle. Perhaps, he thought, she was being tickled to death. " Wot you larfin ' for? " said the man in black, not unkindly. " You ' re s ' posed to be in agony. "
George chuckled and noted this down. He moved on. He bypassed a display offering intimate area shaving kits – ' Dare To Go Completely Bare ' – declined an opportunity to sign up for a swinging holiday in south west France in ' a paradise created for liberated couples, ' and he passed on a free shoe shine at a booth from west Sussex that offered ' the ultimate leather protection. ' " Can I do something nice for your shoes, sir? " a woman had asked him, hopefully. A couple hurried by hand-in-hand, she carrying her shopping bag jauntily over her shoulder, and George couldn ' t help overhearing a snippet of conversation. " Blow job and a shoe shine at the same time, " the man was saying. " Not bad. "
He paid scant attention to Really Orgasmic Sweets, instead focusing his gaze on clothes by
Darren Hynes
David Barnett
Dana Mentink
Emma Lang
Charles River Editors
Diana Hamilton
Judith Cutler
Emily Owenn McIntyre
William Bernhardt
Alistair MacLean