People call me BC. Big Cat. A nickname I've had since I was a boy. However, during my years at Art College I was known as 'Fluffer'. These are the stories of that time. Fluffer's tales.
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I can highly recommend strip chess, but choose your partner carefully. It's not a game of chance.
I was in A Coruna, Spain where I'd been sent by my devious little cow of a best friend, Sara, as a peace offering. Sara had got me dumped by Charlotte--who'd freaked out when Sara barged into our hotel room just as the doe-eyed, anxious girl and I were finally starting to relax and enjoy each other. At least, that's how I saw it. All Sara saw was me splurging all over her meek friend, so bawled me out. Sara wasn't to know that Charlotte wanted me to prove how much I desired her. (Albeit in the unique and messy language of a sixties Italian erotic-art film!) And all Charlotte saw was Sara and I arguing over her like she wasn't there--shouting things she'd made us promise not to even gossip about.
Anyway. Sara must've felt guilty because she said if I could get to Galicia in Northern Spain, then a friend of hers had offered an open invitation to a luxury flat. Knowing Sara's tricks, I quizzed her about the nature of this friend. I didn't mind being paraded about as her well-trained "Fluffer", and the sex was always great now I'd got over the uneasiness of being used as some kind of flesh-and-bone sex toy, but it always came with some surprise pain: Surprise! You can't lick her! Surprise! Do up this derelict building in France! Surprise! Pose naked for strangers! Surprise! Give your flatmate's sister what she wants and lose your house!
But Sara assured me her friend worked twenty-four-seven as a caretaker at these fancy apartments, and that she preferred women anyway so she'd leave me alone. Sounded safe. Even her friend's name seemed reassuringly unattractive: Guapa.
When Guapa met me at the airport, I sensed trouble. First off, the woman was a supermodel. I mean, tall and slim and tanned, all cheekbones and wicked pout and black, tempestuous eyes. Her hair was a dark mane, blowing about her as she shook my hand with a brilliant white smile. Second, everyone seemed to know her. At least three times while we exchanged pleasantries, random men shouted, "GUAPA!" Each time she swore back.
I only learned later that Guapa was Sara's nick-name for her. A brilliant Spanish word without a direct English translation, meaning both beautiful and attractive.
Unlike Guapa's tiny, decrepit moped.
She swung a long, brown leg over the saddle and revved the engine, thumbing behind her for me to perch on the back.
No chance. "I'll... just get a taxi if you don't mind."
She rolled her eyes and shouted over the dentist-drill racket. "Just hold tight to me!"
I climbed on, and clung on, and Guapa roared and lurched forward before I was even settled. Her body was lithe and strong, but a meagre life-preserver. My arms wrapped four times round her. "Hold me tighter!" she screamed. "Don't worry senor, I won't think you're a girl!"
After the 40 minute hurtle on her knackered little hairdryer I was left trembling. Not just because of the traffic trying to kill us, or Guapa's loose interpretation of road and pavement, or her red and green colour-blindness. I'd gripped so tight, her gorgeous body had left its shape indented against my front.
Unfortunately, I'd made less of an impression on her.
She laughed huskily as we pulled into the courtyard of her apartment building and she parked up the bike.
"You ok, senor... pussycat?" She watched me wobble off the saddle.
"Big Cat," I said.
She laughed again. Shook her head. "I don't think so."
So how did we get from this ignominious beginning to playing strip chess? Five days hard labour, that's how.
It turned out Guapa's "caretaking" duties began and ended with tempting tradesmen to work for almost nothing on the four massive apartments she looked after. I was there because no Spanish builder -- no matter how bedazzled by Guapa's smile -- will work through a Spanish summer. It was so hot that the apartment block was deserted even by its wealthy inhabitants, who had moved off to their cool mountain retreats.
Meanwhile. there was a mountain of maintenance, and naturally my delightful best friend had signed me up for it in exchange for room and board.
So five days passed, working my bollocks off in the relative cool of the early morning, heading out to explore Galicia while Guapa took her afternoon siesta, then back to the work at the apartments for another few hours before she hauled me out for dinner. For the Spanish, this goes on into the small hours, during which she draped herself over me like I was an armchair--apparently to deter "dirty men"--while chattering away in Spanish to her friends. By the fifth day, I was drained and Guapa warned me to "take it easy" by which she meant rest during siesta, not actually do less work. But as I saw it, if I didn't explore during siesta there'd have been no point coming to Spain at all, other than to do her work for her in the day and pose as her bodyguard/boyfriend by night.
Guapa was a photography student and, when she wasn't locked in her room with her doppelganger girlfriend, Maria, (the part about preferring women appeared to be true) she was bugging me with her big lenses. Every day--the minute I got stuck into my work--she popped up like paparazzi: "El Gato! El Gato! Pose for me, your sweat is diamonds on your arms!" "Take off your shirt! Does burro wear a shirt!" "Hold boiler like this, over your head!"
I wondered what I was involved in here, caretaking or a gay calendar.
Maria never came out in the evening with us, or stayed over. She would arrive in the morning and leave just before lunch. Midmorning, I tried to ignore the unmistakeable, puffed, ecstatic cries that came from Guapa's closed shutters: "Si-si-si-si... Mother... F-fucker!" The breathily Hispanic rolling of her r's as illicitly irresistible as the roll of her arse. But one morning I couldn't help myself as an unlocked shutter blew open when I walked past. I got a glimpse of Maria's naked back, sitting on the low part of a chaise. She had her feet up on the seat either side of her--spread 180 degrees--and Guapa was knelt between. Not licking, looking. And snapping. She caught my eye over her girlfriend's knee and smiled coyly, almost apologetically. I pretended not to notice.
What with the mad hours I kept, the heat, and the sexually charged atmosphere, I was really cursing Sara. This was supposed to be a break, but had turned into a distillation of my entire life.
The next day at breakfast, Guapa and I sipped bitter coffee in the courtyard at a monolithic stone table beneath the shade of an olive tree. I felt fucked. Worse. Unfucked. Guapa, as ever, scrutinised me as she tore off chunks of Pan Gallego with her teeth and chewed with her mouth open. "You have day off today," she munched. "You work too hard, El Gato. Maria, she finished with me now, so we have maybe fun, you and me?"
I shrugged. Even this meagre empathy was the equivalent of a big hug and a kiss from Guapa. Then I wondered how many men -- or women -- had dreamt of her offering them "maybe fun". Then I rewound what she said.
"You've finished with Maria?"
"Si." She patted an envelope beside her, chewed off more bread.
"How long were you together? Are you not upset?"
"Ha?"
