Timothy Lea - Confessions from a Health Farm

‘Is it?’

Wanda Zonker speaks what I later learn is one of the great truths of the beauty business.

‘ Anything that makes money is beautiful,’ she says, almost reproachfully. ‘Drop your shoulder and turn a bit more to the right. You’re showing too much puppy fat. We’ll have to work at those inches, won’t we?’ Her voice suddenly goes all husky and her shadow falls across one of the lights. ‘You’re still tense, aren’t you?’ She is now standing so close to me that her bristols are brushing my shoulder,

‘I’m not used to this caper,’ I say.

‘It’s the sex thing, isn’t it?’ she says.

‘Not exactly,’ I say.

‘You’ve no need to be ashamed. It’s a fairly common hang up.’ While she talks, her fingers are brushing against my hang down. ‘I come up against it every day.’

‘Really?’ I say. ‘Can I put this thing somewhere for a moment? My arm is getting tired.’

‘Of course.’ Miss Zonker brushes her lips against one of my biceps. ‘I think it would be a good idea if we broke off for a bit.’ Percy is now in a very breakable condition and I clear my throat nervously. Miss Z moves her hands to my shoulders and I breathe easier. ‘You’re thinking of me as a sex object, I can tell.’ She looks down between our bodies and we both know what she is talking about. ‘I think maybe we’d better get this thing out of the way, don’t you?’

I am not quite certain what ‘thing’ she is talking about but I am too shy to ask. That is why I learned so little at school. If I had my time again I would always ask.

‘Uuum,’ I say, to show that I have been thinking about it. ‘Whatever you think is best.’

‘I don’t want a sound working relationship to be sullied by any feelings of guilt emanating from a suppressed libido.’ She is a lovely talker, isn’t she? They must be very handy with the languages in Lithuania – very handy with the hands, too. Percy is practically going into orbit. I feel so uncouth behaving like this, but then, when you have an action man kit like mine you don’t have a lot of alternative. It sort of takes you over.

‘Excuse me.’ Miss Zonker peels herself away from the front of my body and pulls open a cupboard. Like a shelfful of imprisoned moggies, a bundle of furry rugs bounds into her arms. She tosses them onto the floor at my feet and prods one with her toe. ‘Lie down,’ she says.

I am very glad of the opportunity to wriggle into a bit of cover because I feel a right nana standing under the arc lights without as much as a dab of athlete’s foot powder to deaden the shine on my shimmering torso. Down at floor level it is much cosier. That fur feels fantastic against your skin! I do hope it is not habit forming. I would hate to feel that I had to borrow Mum’s fox stole next time I felt like a spot of nooky. You would have to watch the teeth, too, wouldn’t you?

‘That’s nice. Face me. Don’t smile.’ CLICK!

She is still taking photographs. I feel like a one hundred-and-eighty pound baby on a tiger skin rug.

‘Can you move –? No. A bit more – no. Let me –’

‘Ooh!’ She certainly knows how to arrange her sitters. CLICK! I have only just stopped blinking when she burrows into the furs beside me and snuggles close.

‘Now, where were we?’ she says. I don’t think she really expects an answer because her hands dive deep down below where my legs become one big happy family and start drawing themselves up and up and – ooooooh!

‘The massage is the medium,’ she murmurs.

‘Definitively!’ I agree with her.

The camera clicks and I wonder whether to tell her that she has forgotten to turn it off. I don’t give it a lot of thought because Wanda Zonker has ways of taking your mind off things.

‘Is that nice?’ she says.

‘Fantastic,’ I say. ‘Do you want me to do it to you?’

‘You can’t do it to me,’ she says.

‘I know. I mean, something like it.’

‘All right. Gently now … gently. Use your fingers like the tip of an artist’s brush … aaaaaargh! That’s better.’

All the time she is talking her own fingers are doing a spot of hampton courting and I feel that I must express my gratitude in practical terms.

‘Aaaah,’ she sighs. ‘That’s heaven. I can see you’re becoming less inhibited already.’

I don’t say anything because Mum always told me it was rude to speak with your mouth full.

‘Centre spread of Woman Now !’ says Sid sourly. ‘All right for some, I suppose.’

‘I believe they did a lot of retouching,’ I say.

‘They’d have to, wouldn’t they?’ sneers Sid.

‘On the body hues,’ I say. ‘Come on, Sidney. There’s no need to be like that. Just because I was the first British Mr November in the magazine’s history. I had no idea they were going to use the pictures.’

‘I can’t see why they did it,’ moans Sid, looking me up and down. ‘There must be hundreds of blokes with better physiques than you. Blokes who have whittled themselves down to a tight knot of whipcord muscle. Blokes like me for instance.’

‘I think you may have whittled a bit too far,’ I say. ‘Wanda told me that she daren’t use you in case your dongler got obscured by one of the staple holes.’

Well, I don’t want to boast but I have never seen Sid in such a state before. He is practically begging me to ring up birds he has not seen for ten years to prove that there is nothing wrong with his equipment. Of course, I made the whole thing up so I just sit back and enjoy myself. It goes to show how some blokes are always worried that another bastard has got a beauty that plays Land Of Hope And Glory while it submerges. I say ‘another’ but I reckon that we are all a bit like that. I know I am. The trouble is that you never see the opposition on the rampage, do you? You don’t know what you’re up against – or rather, what the bird you fancy is, was or has been up against. You see a bit of the placid flaccid when you’re in the changing room at the baths but – unless you lead a very exciting private life – it is not often that a male nasty in full flight skims past your peepholes.