Текст книги "Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 1"

Автор книги: O Thiam Chin

Соавторы: Stephen Leather,Alison Lester,John Burdett,Aaron Ang,Hari Kumar,Yusuf Martin,Christopher Mooney-Singh,Jonathan Lim,Erich Sysak,Annabel Pagunsan
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

NIGHT AT PASSION TOUCH
Hari Kumar, Singapore and India

I open the door of my flat and step into my living room. It suddenly looks small and depressing. And lifeless. In this little slot in the sky, I am nothing more than a claustrophobic pigeon. Depression rules me within these four walls, which seem to be inching closer day by day like a sinister army, a tightening noose. My tiny apartment is known by the number 15–75, which fills me with a deep longing for homes that had names, religions, moods, ghosts, personalities, attitude… Here the walls creep in, the furniture grows, the air rots and silence splits my head slooowly. My block is a giant filing cabinet. Of people filed away to be forgotten.

In the last few months after my estranged wife Nisha had got this job she would be travelling often, leaving me within these carnivorous walls to get hypnotised by the TV. Not that Nisha was great company; our home had become an art-house movie in the recent months, with monosyllables hanging in the air like the Sumatran haze. But she was a presence nevertheless. She was a scent, a grunt, a flash of colour, a shuffle of feet, a word, an incomplete line… We spoke through Post-it Notes on the fridge.

When the TV became unbearable I got drawn into the Internet. Like God, I had 108 names in the many chat rooms I stalked. Like God, I could become male, female, genderless. Like God, I felt powerful, omnipotent. But the topic was always the same. The people were always sick. And the world was such a fake. I soon got sick of it and wondered how anyone could be addicted to this cyber-madness.

Of course, there were the plus points of the Internet, like email and free pornography. But then again, my email account started receiving more and more spam than regular mails. Daily emails promised me fourteen inches of masculinity; all-I-can-eat Viagra; a thousand “sure-fire” ways to make money, lose weight, grow younger, get out of debt, etc. Even the pornography became boring. There are only so many ways the human anatomy can be arranged and juxtaposed. To me, the Internet was just a shooting star.

So when the television and the Internet died their deaths in me, I started wandering after work, in order to avoid the frozen shadows of home as much as possible. I drove past the seedy underbelly of Singapore: places like Geylang, Desker, or Changi Village where the transsexuals were prettier and curvier than the female prostitutes. But that was as far as I could go with those night creatures.

But the massage parlours, “health centres” as they were euphemistically called, were a different thing altogether. Since most of them were located in shopping malls, they bore a facade of respectability. My first such “healthy” experience was in a massage centre in the fourth floor of a shopping mall off Orchard Road. For almost a week, I had been loitering around the mall mustering up the courage to open that door of Passion Touch Health Centre.

On that night I had downed two pegs of whiskey at a nearby pub, so I had some courage flowing fast through my veins.

After spending twenty long minutes gazing at the lingerie on a mannequin in a boutique next to the health centre and getting some dirty looks from the boutique’s salesgirl in the process, I held my breath and turned the door knob of Passion Touch. The opening of the door immediately set off some kind of chime that startled me for a moment and made me want to run away. The brightly lit lobby, though small, was, to my surprise, quite plush and even pleasant. I had expected a dark and dingy place with women hanging in the shadows, smouldering cigarettes between their lips.

The cheerful old lady behind the reception desk was watching a Channel 8 Chinese drama from a small wall-mounted TV beside the door. She looked at me and gave me a very bright, “Hallowelcome.” She opened a register and asked me to write my name and identity card number. I hesitated for a moment, feeling suspicious as to whether this was some kind of a blackmail racket. “No worry, lah,” the lady said, slapping my arm. “You so malu, hor.

Everyone write, see. You go any health centre, also write.” She flipped the pages to show me lines and lines of scribbles, most of them unintelligible.

I scribbled “D. Nair,” and for my IC number, I jumbled up three digits.

Thankfully, she didn’t bother to ask for my identity card.

“You first time, haah?” She gave me a motherly smile.

“First time in Singapore,” I said proudly, pushing out my chest and placing my arms on my hips. “I go London, Paris, New York, Bangkok.

Everywhere I go massage,” I said, looking at her over the tip of my nose.

“You tourist, haah?”

I nodded impatiently.

“So how come you have IC number?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Um… I… I… That’s my passport number,” I blurted out finally.

She nodded understandingly, then added, “For tourists, thirty dollars extra, hor. So, seventy dollars.”

I cursed myself under my breath and placed a fifty and two tens on the desk.

“Wait, hor. I call masseuse,” she said, putting on a toothy smile. As I waited, I took a good look at the lobby. In a niche in the wall were three large porcelain statues of Fu, Lu and Shou, the Taoist gods for happiness, wealth and longevity. They seemed to be looking at me with a what-a-stupid-boy-you-are expression. I ignored them and shifted my gaze to the high Chinese altar made of blood-red rosewood on which stood a few burning joss sticks emitting a thick scent and lazy fumes that rose up to the ceiling. Behind those joss sticks was a large statue, also porcelain, of Qwan Yin, the goddess of mercy, sitting on a giant lotus and holding a small vase on her lap. On her face was an expression of such equanimity that it disturbed me and prompted me to look away.

Within minutes, another woman who looked like the old hag’s elder sister appeared. The woman was fat, ugly as well.

“She, Jane, your masseuse,” the reception hag told me brightly, pointing to the fat woman.

I looked at her, wide-eyed, from top to bottom. “I… ermm… I… um… Can you get me someone younger? If you please?” I asked politely, while-in my mind-I said, “She Jane or maybe Jane’s elephant, but I no Tarzan, lor. Gimme someone young and soft for my young and soft muscles, alamak!”

“She vely good! Vely vely experience,” the receptionist said.

“I can see she is ‘vely experienced.’ But please… No offence… but, I want someone younger,” I said firmly.

The two exchanged something fast in Hokkien. Jane looked at me blankly and disappeared inside. “Hokay,” the receptionist said finally, “I give you vely chio ger. Vely young. But cost thirty dollar extra, hokay?” For a moment, I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. But having come this far, I was not going back without the “passion touch” of young, girlie hands. I nodded, halfheartedly, and placed three crisp ten-dollar notes on the desk. She pocketed them and said, “Good. You wait for thirty minutes, hor. She no here. I telephone,” she picked up the phone.

“You go in. Make comfortable. Sauna, TV all inside. Jane show you.

Jane make Chinese tea for you,” she said, covering the mouthpiece.

Jane appeared again and led me through a narrow corridor, which had numbered doors on either side. She opened door Number 8 for me and handed me a large, freshly laundered white towel. “You take shower, change towel and wait. You want moe towel, inside cubberd. I bling Chinese tea.

You want sauna, TV, you go end colido, turn light,” she said, motioning with her right hand.

The room was small and dimly lit with a clean single bed in the middle.

There was a cupboard placed against one of the walls and another door, which I guessed led to the attached bathroom. Although the air was stale and reeked of dampness, the room was clean. I closed the door, undressed and, after wrapping the towel around me, stepped into the bathroom. I was initially a bit reluctant in touching the towel-you never know what things it may have been used to wipe off. But then, it appeared clean and crisp and felt nice in my hands. Luckily, there was a fresh bar of soap in the bathroom; the tiny type you find in hotels.

I had a leisurely bath; the water was hot and refreshing. By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, there was a cup of hot Chinese tea waiting for me. I hung the wet towel in the bathroom towel rack, took a dry one from the cupboard, and wrapped it around my midriff. The hot tea helped in warming me up since I was finding the air conditioning inside the room too chilly for my skin.

By the time I finished my tea, there was a knock on the door, and before I could say “Come in!”, the door swung open and in came one of the prettiest Chinese things I have seen in Singapore. At that moment, all my feelings of having been fleeced out of my hard-earned money vanished in a trice. She could have been mistaken for a Shenton Way babe except for her skirt, which showed too much thigh for a bank teller.

She crushed her cigarette butt in the ashtray and gave me a sweet,

“Hello-how-are-you-I-am-Linda-oil-or-powder?”

“What?” I gaped at her.

“Oil or powder. For massage, you want oil or powder?” she replied with amused eyes.

“Oil,” I said.

From the cupboard, she took out a bottle of baby oil and gestured for me to lie on the bed. I lay on my stomach and became like a lump of chapathi dough in her hands. She started kneading me, and I started needing her. Ooh so badly! I moaned like I had never moaned before. “Aaaahhh… that’s it…

yesssss… ooohh… a little to the left… that’s the point… hmmm…” And she was going like, “Good muscles… not too much… not too little…”

“What’s your name?” she asked casually.

“James Bond,” I replied. She giggled.

She removed my towel with an expert flick and started on my buttocks and thighs.

“You married?”

“James Bond’s not married,” I replied.

She pinched my butt.

“Ow! Hope I don’t have to pay extra for that.”

She giggled again. “You’re a joker… You’re also a liar.”

“And you speak good English for a Passion Touch girl.”

“Was a remisier once upon a time… with the Midas touch… earning big bucks…” She applied light karate chops on my thighs with both her hands.

“Aaah… that feels good…” I said, letting off a sigh of pleasure.

“Now a masseur… with Passion Touch… earning big fucks,” she said with a chuckle and quickly added, “Have no regrets anyway. Now turn over.” I turned over and lay on my back. She deftly laid the towel over my middle. I looked at her straight. The dim ceiling light was behind her head and I couldn’t make out the look on her face. She leaned closely to massage my chest after sprinkling oil on it. Her hair fell on my face. I could smell her shampoo mingled with a faint scent of sweat. Garlic sweat.

“So what’ll it be? Hand job, blow, sandwich or the full course?” she asked; her tone was very professional.

“Sandwich,” I said confidently, although I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. I felt like a snack anyway.

“That’ll be forty dollars extra, okay,” she said softly.

“That’s one expensive sandwich!” I thought, and swallowed spit. But I didn’t want to give her the impression I was a cheapskate. So I nodded my head impatiently and asked her to get on with it.

She lifted my towel like a magician lifts the cloth over the caged bird.

She took one look at my manhood and said, “Now I know why you called yourself James Bond: that’s a nought-nought-seven-inch – nought-nought much!” she giggled.

“Nought-nought little either,” I said crossly.

“Just kidding. Don’t worry, you’re average,” she said, taking off her clothes. In no time, she was stark naked. She wore absolutely nothing under her natty outfit. She had a slim body with perky tits-very playful, like twin puppies, jiggling at the slightest movement, topped by tiny cherry nipples.

Her skin was like milk.

She unscrewed the spout on the bottle of oil, poured a generous amount on my chest and applied it thickly all over. Then she handed me the bottle and said, “Now it’s your turn.”

I raised myself to a sitting position and poured a handful of oil into my cupped hand. I then applied the oil on her chest and stomach. She gently pushed me back onto the bed, whispering, “Lie, you liar.” She then lay on me, skin on oily skin, like two slithering snakes. “No sex, okay. Only touch touch. For sex, my rate is a hundred.” Hundred bucks for a blasted fuck! I knew my wallet had only a fifty-dollar note. Not this time anyway, I thought. “Not that I don’t have the money, but I think I will pass this time,” I said.

She looked at me but said nothing. She hugged me tight and continued rubbing her body on mine. Her breath came hot on my lips. I could catch the whiff of Fisherman’s Friend mints, apple and cinnamon, I guess. Her hair fell around my face like a black curtain. My whole body tingled with sensations never felt before. Primal moans rose in my throat. Down below, I was hard as rock. Feeling my hardness, she asked breathlessly, “Do you want sex?”

“Do you… take Visa?” I asked between gasps.

“Cash… only cash,”

“But…”

“Yeah… many others do, but we don’t… Never mind,” she said, getting up, “There’s always a next time.”

“But where’s my sandwich?” I asked innocently as she was putting her clothes back on.

She looked at me blankly before saying, “Oh! I forgot to tell you-

usually a sandwich massage is an oily guy between two girls. But I didn’t think you wanted to lie on top of Jane. After all, you’re only James Bond, not Tarzan,” she chuckled.

“Oh yes-the sandwichmassage!” I exclaimed. Suddenly things were a lot clearer.

She gave me another blank look and said, “My time is up. Forty dollars please.” A month later, I rang up Passion Touch and asked for Linda.

“She go Austalia. Myglate myglate. With ang mohboyflend,” the reception hag said.

BANGING BILL’S WIFE
Stephen Leather, Thailand

This is the truth, the absolute truth, cross my heart and hope to die, as true as I’m sitting here. I can barely believe it myself, but it happened and it happened to me. The name’s Adrian, better not tell you my surname because it’s a small world. A bloody small world as it happens. I’m a stockbroker; usually I deal in shares, but I dabbled in bonds for a few years. Just on my way to my new job, and the company’s paying, which is why I’m up here in Business Class and not in the back of the plane with the plebs.

I’ve done all right over the last few years, though I have had my share of setbacks, truth be told. I worked for Barings before they went bust, even worked in the same office as Nick Leeson for a while. Nice lad, was Nick, just got a bit out of his depth, that’s all.

I worked for Lehman Brothers for two years, not long before they went out of business, and I was with a subsidiary of RBS in Hong Kong when they had to be bailed out by the British taxpayer. That’s why my mates they call me Jonah. They reckon I’m cursed. They’re joking, because I always make money for my bosses. Lots of money. I’m a rainmaker, that’s why. I bring in the business. When I move, most of my clients move with me. That’s what’s going to happen this time, as sure as night follows day. Most of them, anyway.

I never really liked Singapore, the whole place changed after Barings went under, but I’ll work anywhere providing the money’s good. I was in Hong Kong, working in the bond department of Standard Chartered Bank, when I got headhunted by the Singapore firm. You always know when it’s a headhunter on the phone. ‘Can you talk?’ they ask. Tossers. Of course I can talk. That what I do. I talk and people buy. It’s called selling.

Anyway, I go in to see the headhunter and it turns out the guy doing the hiring used to be my boss at Barings, Chinese high-flyer by the name of Robert Tam. I always got on well with Robert, so I fly over to Singapore and he introduces me to the top guys and, of course, they offer me the job. More money, expat package, they’d even have paid for school fees if I’d had kids.

The one problem was that my bosses in Hong Kong knew that I’d try to take my clients with them, so they had me out of the office as soon as I handed in my notice, and insisted that I couldn’t start work in Singapore until my notice period was over. Three months.

They’d pay me and my bosses in Singapore said they’d pay me, too, so I was getting double salary but effectively I was on gardening leave. But I’ve always lived in flats and never had a garden, so I decided to spend three months in Thailand. I’ve done a few R amp;R runs to the Land of Smiles over the years, but I’d never spent any real time there, so I figured I’d go and blow off some steam. Singapore pays well, but it’s not the most exciting city in the world for a single guy. I think maybe that was why Nick Leeson went off the rails.

Anyway, I booked myself into the Landmark Hotel on Sukhumvit Road, between the red-light areas of Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy, and started to let rip. Like a bull in a china shop. I did my rounds of the Bangkok bars, night after night in Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy and Pat Pong. I went through the massage parlours, the short-time hotels, the go-go bars, hung around the freelance joints like Gullivers, the German Bar in Soi 7, the Bed Club and the nightclubs attached to the five-star hotels. I spent weekends in Pattaya, the sex-tourist’s Disneyland-by-the-sea, non-stop sex fuelled by drink and drugs.

In the first month alone, I went with more than a hundred girls. At least. To be honest, I lost count. I’d have breakfast, then a soapy massage, then a nap, then pick up a bargirl and take her to a short-time hotel, then have dinner and then go to a nightclub and pick up a freelancer. And that would be a quiet day.

Sometimes in Pattaya I’d get laid four or five times, often with several girls at the same time.

I slowed down a little during the second month. I guess I was getting bored. Funny, right? Who would ever imagine that you’d get bored with sex?

But that’s what happened. There are only so many positions, only so many variations on a theme, and after a while it all became the same, pretty much.

Drink, shower, sex, shower, sleep. And money always changed hands. I think that’s what started to take the edge off it, the fact that I always paid. The girls smiled and laughed at my jokes and seemed to have a great time, but I was paying them. I began to realize that it was all about the money. No money, no honey.

That’s when I discovered Craigslist. It’s brilliant, Craigslist. Craigslist.

org: none of that dot com nonsense for those guys. It’s a website where you can buy or sell stuff, and where you can meet people too. Real people. And if you’re looking for free sex, then Craigslist is the place to go. I found it by accident. I think I was googling ‘Free Porn’ like I often do and it took me to a Craigslist page where a girl called Porn was looking for a date. She was a nurse at a Bangkok hospital and she was looking for a Caucasian guy with a good heart and I figured that two out of three was enough, so I called the mobile number, met her for coffee and an hour later, I was in her bed and between her legs. Sweet girl, and not very experienced despite her name. And she didn’t ask me for money. Not one baht.

It was a one-night stand and the start of many, all courtesy of Craigslist.

It was brilliant: hundreds of Thai birds gagging for it and not a penny to be paid. Most of the girls who posted put up their pictures so you could see what you were getting, and a few minutes on the phone was all it took to check that they were genuine. Then I’d go around to their place. I made that a rule.

They never came to my hotel, I always went to them. That was one of the things that made it fun-you got to spend time in their world. Mind you, most of them lived in tiny studio flats full of stupid stuffed toys with posters of Korean boy bands on their walls, but that’s not the point. I was getting to see real girls in their own homes and I was getting to bang them for free.

I slept with students, teachers, three air hostesses, half a dozen nurses, and even a policewoman; and yes, she wore the uniform and handcuffed me to the bed. I never told any of them my real name and I kept changing SIM cards because I didn’t want then phoning me after the event. Besides, there was no need to make any return visits because there was a constant supply of fresh girls coming on line. Word was spreading that the website was a great way for Thai girls to meet Western guys and new girls were logging on every day.

After a few weeks, though, even the thrill of free sex began to pale because there was just so much of it, and I was actually looking forward to starting work. But the week before I was due to leave Thailand, I found myself browsing through the Craigslist website, looking for something, or someone, to do. I checked the Women Seeking Men page but didn’t see anything there that I fancied, so I went through the Erotica section, but they were all pay-for-play birds. If I wanted to pay for sex I’d rather pick up a dancer from Soi Cowboy.

Then I went to Casual Encounters and, bingo, there it was: ‘Fancy A Gang Bang In Pattaya?’ I wasn’t sure whether the offer was giving or receiving, but I clicked on it anyway. The first thing I saw was a picture of a fit Asian bird, probably Thai, with great tits and hair down to her waist and a black strip across her eyes and nose so you couldn’t see her face, but the body was out of this world. Fit as a butcher’s dog, as my dear old dad used to say.

It was hard to judge her age. She wasn’t a teenager, but she could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty and didn’t look as if she’d had kids.

She was lying on a bed, her back against the headboard and her legs akimbo, her modesty shielded by a small white towel that wasn’t much bigger than a flannel. It was her husband that had placed the advert. He said that his wife had a fantasy about being gang-raped and he wanted to film her being shagged by half a dozen or so blokes and that anyone interested in helping to realize his wife’s dream should get in touch by email.

Alarm bells were ringing because I couldn’t think that any man with a wife like that would want another man going near her, never mind inside her, but I opened up a fake Gmail account and sent him a message saying that I was interested and asking for more information.

He got back to me later that night with another photograph of his wife, fully naked this time, but with another black strip across her face, and a list of questions. Where was I from? What colour was I? How old was I? How much did I weigh? And he wanted a photograph, though I didn’t have to show my face. I did, though, have to show my dick, which seemed a fair enough request considering what I was hoping to do with it.

So, I answered the questions fairly truthfully, though I did knock four years off my age and a couple of kilos off my weight. I took a photograph with the webcam of my laptop and made damn sure that I was holding my breath and attached that to the email. An hour later, he emailed me back with a mobile phone number and asked me to call him.

I went out and bought a new AIS SIM card and tapped out his number.

He was English, quite well spoken, bit of a Hooray Henry, I thought. He said his name was Bill and I said I was Jonah. My private joke; I said I was hoping to have a whale of a time, but he didn’t seem to get my attempt at humour.

He had more questions for me, basically checking that I was who I said I was. I guess he didn’t want a big sweaty African turning up to do the dirty with his nearest and dearest, which I guess under the circumstances was only natural. Eventually, it was my turn to ask a question, and to be honest I only had the one. Why?

It turned out that his wife had a bit of a past. She used to be a go-go dancer in one of the racier Nana Plaza bars and had been working for five years or so before he met her. In his mind, he was a white knight, riding to her rescue. I didn’t see it that way, of course. Five years working in a go-go bar meant she’d probably been with more than a thousand men. Sloppy seconds didn’t even come into it.

Anyway, she’d been the perfect wife for going on ten years apparently, a whore in the bedroom and a three-star chef in the kitchen. (Or maybe it was the other way around.) But recently she’d seemed unhappy, and after he’d got her drunk one night, it all came tumbling out. She missed the life, she missed having sex with strangers, and having just turned thirty-five, she was worried that men no longer wanted her. She didn’t look thirty-five in the photographs, I have to say. I mentioned that to the guy and he agreed, saying his wife spent a lot of time in the gym and the beauty parlour.

The news of his wife’s unhappiness hit Bill hard, but she explained that it wasn’t about him, she loved him and never thought about being unfaithful, but she had this ache, this craving, that just wouldn’t go away. He didn’t say who first came up with the idea, but between them, they arrived at a solution. One night, with half a dozen guys. All strangers. For that one night, she could do whatever she wanted, as many times as she wanted, and her husband would video it so that she would always have the pictures to relive the memory.

It was the first time that he had mentioned a video and I said I didn’t want to be filmed, but he said all the men would be wearing masks. He explained that his wife didn’t want to see the faces of the men that she was having sex with, and also it meant that the men wouldn’t be worried about being recognised, which suited me fine. Like I said, it’s a small world. I asked him if our dicks would also be wearing masks, and he said that was up to the guys. Condoms would be optional because everyone would have to email him a medical certificate saying that they were free of all sexually transmitted diseases.

He asked me if I was still interested and I said I was, and that’s when he gave me the details of where and when. It was that coming Friday, which suited me just fine because on the Sunday I was flying to Singapore to start the new job. The next day, I went and paid a doctor five hundred baht for a medical certificate. The doctor didn’t even bother asking for a blood test. I emailed a copy to Bill and he emailed me back to say that he looked forward to meeting me. I couldn’t get over how polite he was, considering that I was going to be banging his wife and all.

Bill said that he’d booked a suite at the Sandy Spring Hotel in Pattaya, not far from the beach. On Friday, I paid a taxi driver one and a half thousand baht to drive me from Bangkok and had him drop me on the beach road. I told him that if he waited for me, he could drive me back in a few hours and he agreed to wait. He gave me a card with his mobile phone number, and I walked up Soi 13.

The event was due to kick off at eight o’clock in the evening and would end whenever Bill’s wife said that she’d had enough. I was early, so I walked across Second Road and had a coffee and a sandwich in Starbucks as I watched elderly overweight sex tourists in vests and shorts waddle by with their bargirls. Pattaya is a funny old place, where every man is handsome and every girl is available-at a price. It’s also one of the suicide capitals of the world, where membership of the Pattaya Flying Club is achieved by taking a dive off a high-rise balcony, usually the result of a broken heart or an empty bank account and probably both.

At five to eight on the dot, I swallowed a Viagra tablet and wandered back down Soi 13 and into the hotel. I don’t normally use chemicals to get an erection, but I was a bit apprehensive about performing in front of an audience. A uniformed busboy smiled and wished me a good evening. The pretty girls at reception nodded and smiled as I headed for the lift.

Riding up to the eighth floor, I took my mask out of my pocket. The first mask I’d bought was a rubber Bin Laden from a stall on Sukhumvit Road, not far from Nana Plaza, but it was bloody uncomfortable and I could hardly see out of it. I ended up buying a cowboy set from the toy department of the Emporium department store that included a small black mask to be worn when robbing stagecoaches. It was small and I had to loosen the elastic, but I figured that so long as it covered my eyes and nose it’d be fine. I slipped on the mask as I walked down the corridor and knocked on the door of Room 807.

The door was opened by a big man wearing a dark blue robe and a stocking over his head. I tried not to laugh as he offered me his hand and introduced himself. It was Bill. I shook his hand and he closed the door behind me. He was holding a clipboard and he ticked off my name. He had a huge beer gut, the pasty white flesh flecked with blue veins like a ripe Stilton, and knobbly knees that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an elderly elephant. The fact that the stocking was squashing his features made it difficult to work out how old he was, but I guess he’d be in his fifties, early sixties maybe.

‘Am I the first?’ I asked, looking around. There was a sofa and a table and a large television but no other guests.

‘You’re the fifth; the others are in the bedroom,’ he said, nodding at a door. ‘This is where I meet and greet, and check that you’re who you say you are. I have to be careful,’ he said, in his plummy voice that made me think of afternoon cream teas and croquet on the lawn. ‘I wouldn’t want the wrong sort of person turning up.’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, though frankly I wasn’t sure who the wrong sort of person would be when one was talking about gang-banging one’s nearest and dearest.

He opened a door and took me through to the bedroom, where four men were standing around a cupboard laden with drinks. There was a short, stocky guy in a fake Lacoste shirt and baggy blue jeans wearing a black ski mask; a tall thin guy in a Chang Beer T-shirt and shorts wearing a rubber wolfman mask; a youngish guy in a tracksuit wearing a cardboard mask with a dog’s face; and a guy in a Spiderman mask who had taken off his shirt to reveal the hairiest chest I’d ever seen. He looked like an ape, and his bow legs and close-cropped hair added to the effect. They all nodded at me.