Monthly Archives: February 2015

L (The Make Up Artist) + **Competition**

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14

It’s almost the same shade as the lipstick rolling around the bottom of my handbag, but I want it, for the 1920s-style case as much as the name.

She comes over while I’m testing it on the back of my hand. ‘Do you want to see what it looks like on?’

I’m a sucker for other people doing my make up – I’ve never mastered the art of getting that polished look on my own. And she is, without a doubt, polished. Around her neck, a cursive L hangs from a delicate gold chain and her hair is a mass of carefully styled honey waves, but these softnesses are offset by her outfit, which is head to toe black, from her hot pants to her leather apron.

I’m inelegant and clumsy next to her, not helped by having to clamber onto what is essentially a bar stool. She swipes her brush through the colour and leans in close. I twitch, too strung out with life in general to stay as still as she wants me, and she giggles.

She outlines my lips in pencil and maybe it’s that that makes me feel like a blank canvas, like i could reinvent myself here, in Selfridges’ packed Beauty Hall. It’s noisy, hot, and bright, but I’m totally captivated by her. Her lips are ruby red, the kind of colour I dream of being able to pull off as my everyday look. She applies it straight from the stick, she says, and I girl crush a little harder on this rough-and-ready round the edges admission.

It’s strange, having someone focus so hard on your mouth when they’re not kissing you. She fills in between the lines, stepping back occasionally to appraise her handiwork. If I spent this long on my own make up, I’d never get to work.

‘I can’t get the pigment to even out,’ she says, as she continues to sweep colour over my lips. ‘It’s weird.’

Uneven, chaotic – this has been my mental state for months and I want to laugh at the fact that this gorgeous girl can’t make me look calm and sophisticated, no matter how hard she tries. Eventually, the frustration gets the better of her and she drops her brush onto the counter and swipes her finger roughly over my lips.

‘Ah,’ she says, ‘That’s better!’

Even before she hands me the mirror, I know I’m a sure thing. It’s no longer just the packaging and the name. It’s the sense that here, at 11.45 on a Saturday morning, I might have fallen a little bit in love. I pay, and she hands me the bag before turning her attention to the next girl looking for something pretty. Before I walk away, I linger for a moment by the testers and wonder what shade her lipstick was.

Love bite. That’ll be it.

*****

I joked to @Juniper3Glasgow this morning that I’d crushed on so many gorgeous women this week that I was thinking of giving up men for Lent. I think my love of cock will probably win out, but it did get me thinking that Lent is a great prompt for some flash erotica. And what better way to elicit flash erotica than to have a mini competition?

As I said on Twitter, the prize probably won’t be huge. And because at the moment I’m all about pick-and-mix selections of cute stuff, it’ll also be a surprise. And you’ll get the glory of winning, obviously. Plus, because Lent lasts for-bloody-ever, it’s a super generous deadline.

The Rules…

(1) Your story must be a piece of erotica on the theme of Giving Something Up. The more creative, the better.
(2) The post must (obviously) be your own work.
(3) There is no minimum length for posts, but they must be no longer than 1000 words.
(4) You must post the piece on your own blog and link back to this post in order for your entry to be counted.
(5) The competition closes at 23.59 GMT on Thursday, April 2nd. Any entries submitted after this point will not be considered.
(6) You consent to me linking to your post in a list of all the entries once the competition has closed.
(7) Should you win, you are happy to share your mailing address with me for the purpose of sending your prize.

If I’ve missed anything, or you have questions, please let me know…

Charlie xx

Vanilla Kisses

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11

Everyone expects me to be super-cynical about Valentine’s, but somehow I just don’t have it in me. Perhaps it dates back to Cambridge and just being exhausted by this point in the term, but despite being eternally single, I’ve always managed to turn it into a relaxing evening on my own. Valentine’s is about Crispy Duck and Pancakes, Dairy Milk and a bottle of Champagne.

This year will be a bit different, firstly because it falls on a Saturday and because of a certain film. And now because the build-up has been a shit, shit day – thanks, BBC.) Also, because the whole world has gone batshit crazy about vanilla, and I’m batshit crazy about gifts, I thought I’d combine the two*. I did this for my colleagues – hopefully you’ll have a recipient who’s a tad more special.

I’m calling these ‘Vanilla Kisses’ with my tongue firmly in my cheek. I ordered my lips cutter off eBay and forgot to check the dimensions – what turned up makes lips big enough to swallow even the thickest cock whole. So ‘Vanilla Kisses’ or ‘Deepthroat Cookies.’ Your relationship, your choice.

Vanilla Kisses

Ingredients and Kit

350g Plain Flour
100g Self Raising Flour
125g Granulated Sugar
125g Salted Butter
125g Golden Syrup
1 Large Egg, lightly beaten
Half a teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

250g Royal Icing Sugar
Food Colouring
Piping Bags
Squeezy Bottles
Presentation Box or Jar
Cutters ( I used lips and hearts – if one of your cutters is huge, it helps to also use a much smaller one to fill in any gaps in your box or jar)

Method

*Preheat the oven to 170C/350F/gas mark 4.

* Mix the flours and sugar together in a mixing bowl.

* Dice the butter and add to the bowl. Using just your fingertips, rub together the ingredients until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

* When all the butter is evenly mixed in, make a well in the centre and add the syrup, the egg and the vanilla extract.

* Using your hands, mix well, drawing in any of the flour left at the sides of the bowl and stop as soon as a ball has formed.

* Place the dough onto your clean worktop. Divide into two and squash the dough into two even-sized flat discs. Roll each disc out to the thickness of a pound coin. Keep turning the dough so it doesn’t stick to the worktop. Don’t use extra flour as it will dry the dough out.

* Cut biscuits from the dough, re-rolling the spare dough as necessary.

IMG_4237Ignore that mine are all different thicknesses – I’m bad at girth

* Cover a baking tray with parchment. Make sure the biscuits are not too close together as the dough will spread a little on baking. Cook for 14–18 minutes, depending on your oven.

* When the biscuits are just beginning to turn a golden colour remove the trays from the oven and transfer the whole sheet of parchment to a cooling rack or lift each biscuit off with a spatula. Do this carefully as the biscuits will be fragile

* Cool totally before icing, or the icing will melt.

* Make the icing by mixing the icing sugar with 40 ml cold water. Beat with an electric whisk for at least five minutes – the icing should be bright white and the consistency of toothpaste.

* Colour the icing to your desired shades – you’ll probably need less food colouring than you imagine unless you’re making red, in which case you’ll need enough to fell a grown man.

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* Use half the icing to fill your piping bags. If you’re a singleton without friends or housemates, it’s easiest to do this by putting the bag in a mug, folding the sides over the edge of the mug and going a bit crazy with a big spoon. It will, inevitably, get messy, and probably look more bloodbath than Valentine’s at this point.

* Hold the piping bag tight by the wide end (no, like *properly* tight) and shake it so that the icing moves down to the bottom of the bag. If you can tie knots, tie a knot in the bag above the icing, if, like me, you can’t, improvise.

* When you’ve made as many colours of piping icing as you need, add more water to the remaining icing very, very slowly and mix until it’s the consistency of double cream. Pour it into your squeezy bottles (there is no good way of doing this).

* Cut the very tip of your piping bags and practise piping a bit on a piece of parchment until you get the hang of it. Use this icing to pipe an outline round the edge of each biscuit – you’ll need to hold the bag slightly above the biscuit and don’t break the flow. When you’ve done the complete outline, press the tip down on the biscuit and lift it straight up. Do this with all your biscuits.

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If you fuck this bit up, you can wipe the icing off while it’s still wet and start over. No one will ever know.

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* Leave the outline to dry for 10 minutes, then, using the icing in the squeezy bottles, colour in the biscuits, trying not to go over the lines.

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* If you like, you can use the other colours to add dots/stripes etc or you could add silver balls, glitter and all other kinds of crap.

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* When you’ve finished your biscuits or have got bored of fucking around with them, put them carefully back on the baking tray and put in the oven at 80C for half an hour. This sets the icing and gives them a nice matte finish.

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* When your biscuits are completely cold, transfer them to a box/tin/jar/mouth of your choice. You may also want to pimp your packaging a bit before you hand your gift over.

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I took the label off before I presented these to my colleagues. I like them, but not *that* much

Happy Valentine’s Day!

‘Could you translate this passage, please?’

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7

December 2001. Two things occupy most of my thoughts:

1) Sex
2) My upcoming Cambridge interview.

The first of those has been bothering me for a couple of years by this point, ever since I learned how to make myself come. My desk has a mini shelf just next to my bed, and for some reason, because it’s low down I pretend my mum can’t see it, or rather, I pretend she can’t see the teetering pile of books on it. The pile that started off as mainly Mills & Boon ‘Blaze’ but now contains a couple of Nancy Friday titles, too – Men in Love and Women on Top, to be precise, because these are the raciest things sold in WH Smith and even though Amazon exists now and they’ll accept my Visa Electron, my mum will ask what I ordered, and I’m not good at lying.

My sexual fantasies are more fluid at this point than they’ve ever been since, with no sexual experience at all to go on – even my first kiss isn’t until January 2002 – and as I read about other people’s kinks I mentally flit from sex with other women, to BDSM, to rape fantasy, to anal. Everything seems possible.

My path through life hasn’t been dictated by my parents. Ever since they took me to look at a private school and I kicked off at the mention of Wednesday afternoons being dedicated to sport, they’ve pretty much left me to my own devices when it comes to studying. I have one frustrating conversation with my mum, when I’m choosing my AS subjects, which goes something like this:

Me: ‘I want to do AS French.’

Her: ‘Are you sure? Why don’t you choose something you’re definitely good at, like Chemistry?’

Me: ‘I’m doing French.’

This conversation could have been motivated by numerous factors. My mum, also a French graduate, never used it once she left university, and therefore doubts its usefulness – I want to point out that she picked children over a career, but I don’t. It could be that I’ve been consistently good at most academic subjects, whereas languages, which require confidence to speak in front of the class, have never been my thing. It could be that she knows I have a hopeless crush on the A-Level French teacher. She’s right about that one – it *is* what’s motivating me. But it pays off. Towards the end of Year 12, I get called to see the Head of Sixth Form.

‘What degree are you thinking of applying for?’ he asks. He’s barely 30, and he looks about 15. I don’t believe for a minute that he knows where my strengths lie.

‘Er, French?’

‘Great,’ comes the response. ‘And have you thought about Oxbridge?’

I haven’t. Oxbridge is for people who’ve dreamt of it all their life. I have Durham in mind. But he talks me round, and I pick Cambridge. My memory is that this is because it’s only 20 miles away and it’s not worth going all the way to Oxford for interview when I’m clearly not going to get in, but this seems ridiculous, looking back.

I remember what I wore, even now. Black trousers, purple fitted jumper with a cute keyhole neckline. We’re specifically asked not to wear suits. I wait outside the interview room and when the candidate before me comes out, she immediately has to knock and go back in, because she’s forgotten her scarf.

Shit, I think, you’ve fucked it. I think they’re looking for perfection, not absent-minded scarf forgetters.

The interview is a disaster. It’s one of the oldest and most prestigious colleges in the university, chosen because my Latin teacher once had a drink with someone who supervises there once in a blue moon. I didn’t go to the open day. I have no idea if it’s right for me.

They’ve made us sit a written exam beforehand, and now I know I don’t stand a chance in hell. I’m interviewing for French and beginner’s Italian, because you have to read two languages, but naively, I’m not for a second expecting questions on the latter.

More fool me. The first thing they do is hand me an A4 piece of paper with an extract from an Italian novel.

‘Could you translate this passage, please?’

I stumble through it. Fuck knows how. I can guess maybe 20% of the words, but the grammar is a mystery. I can’t give them the perfection they’re looking for.

And I’m right about that, in the end. I’m not what *they’re* looking for, but a month later I’m interviewed by a different college where I’m asked bizarrely easy questions like ‘Do you like Rome?’ They make me an offer.

They’re not looking for perfection, I realise, looking back. They’re looking for a spark. Which is a lesson I still have to learn about sex.

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One day I’ll learn to love you

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14

You’re warm, and soft, and curvy. You have good bits, like tits and beautifully shaped fingernails. And today, I hate you.

And do I trust you? Ha, you must be kidding. Why would I trust you when you constantly let me down?

Take this week, for example. Every time I stand up, my left ankle tries to collapse. My right knee is tired of putting up with that shit – I know, because it aches so badly.

We don’t understand each other, you and I. The ankle thing, someone suggested, might be because you don’t like the cold. Oh. I *love* the cold. I didn’t know it caused your muscles to contract, made you tight and inflexible. At night now, that ankle gets a hot water bottle. Does that help? I wish I knew.

I tell my mum what I found out about you, too: that it’s not just that the left leg is shorter, it’s that the hip muscle has yanked it up and won’t let go.

‘What’s the point of knowing that,’ she says, ‘If you’re not going to do anything about it?’

But I don’t want to change you. I want to like you the way you are.

That’s not to say we don’t have good times. We just mainly have them alone. Just after Christmas, we went for a walk, and as usual, we set out later than we should – sundown, it turns out, isn’t at 5 p.m. in early January, it’s at 4. And so we’re under pressure. The walk is flat though, according to the book, so we’ll be fine, right?

I forgot about mud. It coats my boots, means there’s no friction between you and the ground. I force you to swing from branch to branch to get down the first bank, and they snap and you have to clutch and grasp for another. Over and over again. We survive. Just. And I’m proud of us.

There’s more mud, and water that slops over my boots, but we cope. Ultimately, it’s not you that brings the whole endeavour to an abrupt end, it’s me. I have plenty of ridiculous fears, but this one I think, is justified. Staring back at us, from the field which ‘has a stile in the corner diagonally opposite’ are three bulls. Uh uh. No way.

So together we try to scramble back down to the road. And we almost make it. We’re probably three steps from safety when you fail me and I land flat on my back in the mud. I could cry, but there’s no one to see my humiliation. So I forgive you and we set off along the road instead.

We get to a junction. Googlemaps seems to think we’ve gone the wrong way, and then my phone dies. Obviously.

There’s a grim looking hotel and I go in, and ask the guy on reception to call me a cab. And could he check they’ll take cards?

‘There’s a cash point in the petrol station,’ he says. Then: ‘I can’t call it unless you stay here. Sometimes people do runners.’

Yeah, he’s a cunt.

In the petrol station I ask a woman if she’s going the way I need to go. It’s only just over a mile, but it’s dark, I have no torch, no phone and there’s no pavement.

She’s not, but she points in the opposite direction. ‘You can get back that way, too. It’s quicker, and there’s a pavement.’

Thank fuck for that.

We drive home via Sainsbury’s. I want to buy you something nice for tea. I’m proud of you. And it even makes me laugh when, later, in the bath, the bits of twig floating on the surface confuse me until I realise that my hair is bloody full of them from when we were swinging tree to tree.

We’re ok, you and I. We just need to learn to love each other. To trust each other. And maybe, once we’ve done that, we can start to trust other people.

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