Ben Elton - Inconceivable

It’s always the way, though, isn’t it, Penny? The poor woman gets the short end of the stick. Our bodies are so complicated ! It’s like with contraception. The things women have to go through (all pointless in my case, it seems) and yet still men only worry about their own pleasure. I remember when Sam and I first started doing it regularly he wanted me to go on the pill or have a coil fitted because he didn’t like condoms. He said they were a barrier between us (well of course they are, that surely is the point). He said that they spoiled the sensual pleasure of our love-making. Basically what he was saying was that he didn’t want to put his dick in a bag. So instead would I mind either filling my body with chemicals or having a small piece of barbed wire inserted into me? In the end, I got a Dutch cap and God was that a palaver! Trying to put one of those in when you’ve had a bottle and a half of Hirondelle is not easy. The damn thing was always shooting across the bathroom and landing in the basin. Then there was that awful cream you had to put on. The nights that I nearly shoved toothpaste up my fanny and brushed my teeth with spermicidal lubricant! Makes my eyes water just to think about it.

Anyway, I’m digressing. As I often do when on the subject of the selfishness of men. Well, let’s face it, there’s just so much scope. But as I was saying re the Primrose Hill bonk, I just have to give everything a try, it’s a matter of life and… Well, I don’t know what, life and no life, I suppose, which is a pretty terrible thought. And anyway who knows what strange and powerful forces there are in the world? I mean the moon does definitely affect people, we know that. You only have to look at dogs. They go potty at full moon. And as Drusilla has pointed out, even vaginal juices have a tidal flow and so, when one comes to think of it, does sperm. I mean it might all just be a case of never having done it when the tide’s in. As for ley lines, well I admit that it sounds pretty unlikely. On the other hand certain places do have a special energy. I can remember once feeling very strange during a walk in the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey, and that’s supposed to be a mystic place, I think, isn’t it? Sam claims it was the macaroni cheese I’d had for lunch in that pub, but I know it wasn’t.

And what’s more, apart from any spiritual and mystical considerations, I had hoped that Sam might find the whole idea a bit raunchy. After all, we are lovers, aren’t we? Besides being boring old marrieds? Surely we can see all this in the light of a naughty, saucy adventure?

No chance, I’m afraid. Sam didn’t get home until half an hour ago (last-minute preparations for the PM tomorrow), and he’s insisting that he still has some calls to make. I’m writing this while he whinges and whines about comedy in his study. This was supposed to be our time, a time of erotic and sensual reflection. I’ve had my bath (by candlelight with rose petals floating on the water) and used all the soaps. I was really beginning to feel quite goddess-like and fertile and Sam is acting like it was just any other bloody night.

I bet Carl Phipps wouldn’t be in his study making calls about stupid comedy programmes while his lover lay damp and scented and naked upon their bed below.

No! I must not think that sort of thing. It’s wicked.

Sam has agreed to do it and that’s the main thing. I can’t expect him to suddenly turn into a romantic lead. All I need him to do is shag me at the appointed time and place.

T’will be dark in an hour. The moon is on the wax and the witching hour is nigh. Do you know, Penny? I’ve got this funny feeling that it might just work.

Dear Self

It’s four o’clock in the morning and we’ve just got back from the police station. They were quite nice about it in the end, once they let me put my trousers back on. I thought I handled the whole matter pretty well, actually.

Dear Penny

Sam was ridiculous tonight, quite bloody ridiculous. I mean you just do not give false names to the police, do you? Particularly “William Gladstone”. What chance is there of there being a man called William Gladstone having it off on the top of Primrose Hill in the middle of the night? I honestly think that if he hadn’t tried to give them a false name they would have let us go. I mean bonking isn’t illegal, is it? But of course when he claimed to be a nineteenth-century prime minister they asked for ID and immediately the game was up.

“ Oh yes,” said Sam, “that’s it, I remember, my name’s Sam Bell just like it says on my credit card. Ha ha. Samuel Bell, William Gladstone; William Gladstone, Sam Bell. Easy mistake to make.”

When they asked him his occupation I said, “Prat,” which made them laugh and helped a bit, I think. He looked like one of those men who stand on the end of train platforms. Not much of a turn-on at all. I explained to him as patiently as I could that Drusilla had insisted that a steamy passionate atmosphere was essential. We must both be highly, throbbingly almost primevally sexually charged. Timeless animals of passion, caught up in the eternal spinning vortex of all creation. After all, I pointed out, if we can’t be bothered to put the effort in then we can hardly expect the ancient gods and goddesses of fertility to do so either.

“ Hmm,” he said and nodded in a kind of stunned way.

Anyway, I made him go and put on his black tie and dinner suit, which he wears to the BAFTA awards every year. He’s always been disappointed when wearing that suit, having never won a single award. They always give them to someone fashionable with smaller ratings. I prayed that the ancient and timeless deities of the firmament would change all that tonight and give him the most important prize of all.

Lucy made me put on black tie, which quite frankly made us look like Gomez and Morticia, particularly since she’d really gone to town with the black eyeliner. I must admit, though, she did look fantastic. Like a beautiful model, I thought. I really did and I said so. “You look like a beautiful model,” I said and she said, “Oh yeah sure, I do not.” Odd, that, the way women react to compliments. They’ll expend any amount of energy telling you that you never say anything nice to them and that you don’t fancy them, but when you do pay them a compliment they say, “Oh yeah sure, I do not.” Nonetheless, I think she was pleased.

Sam suddenly started being rather sweet and I must say he looked very nice in his dinner suit. Most men do look good in black tie. Dinner jackets even make a paunch look sort of stately and dignified. Not that Sam has a paunch. Well, maybe a tiny one, but not really. Anyway, I thought he looked lovely, even though he still insisted on wearing his anorak “just till we got down to it”.

Actually I can scarcely credit it, but it was all beginning to get rather fun. Lucy had prepared some bits of artichoke on biscuits (fertile fruit, apparently) and oysters! We had them in front of the fire with a glass of red wine (just one) before getting in the car. Lucy had also bought a beautiful black crocheted shawl to keep her warm and it just looked fantastic with her white skin showing through the black, like a Russian princess or something. As I say, her make-up was all dark and Gothic around the eyes and her lipstick was like a gash of shiny crimson. And she’d put on some long droopy silver earrings I’d never seen before.

All in all, she’d really made an effort, which I loved her for. I myself had tried to enter into the spirit of things by putting on the silk boxer shorts I got last Christmas and had so far never worn.