"Pants on Fire"

Chapter One:
pg 1 - 3 1/2

Of course an erect penis is all very well at the end of a party, rather to be desired generally, but it's not the first thing you expect to see when you enter the room. Yet there it was, in all its concupiscent glory, on the head of a man with a small goatee beard.

I'd been feeling a tad conspicuous in my own headgear coming along the road but, on seeing this creation, my two-foot halo of flamingo-pink feathers, cunningly fashioned out of three cheap feather boas, suddenly seemed a bit tame.

'Well, you certainly seem to be enjoying yourself,' I said to Dickhead, leaning past him to refill my glass with champagne. I'd already drained the first one in the five paces between the waiter at the door and the drinks table in the corner of the large white room.

'Did you make it?' I asked him, taking a closer look at the lovingly painted papier-mache.
He turned, giving me a very unsubtle once-over.

'You know somewhere you could buy one of these? Of course I made it.'

'Clever old you. But why?'

'Because I come to this party every year. Which means that every Australia Day for the past twelve years, I've been in this room, wearing a stupid hat. I've always felt like a dickhead, so this year i thought i might as well look like one, too.'

I nodded enthusiastically - this was my kind of conversation.

'So, following your argument, am I to take it that the gay over there wearing the Indian chief's headdress has always felt like one of the Village People and now he's decided to go public about it?'

'Loud and proud, baby. And that's the other reason I'm wearing a big fat dick on my head. Because that's what this party is really all about.'

'Big fat dicks?'

'Yep. They might be talking about opera, or the government's new policy on unemployment benefits - which stinks, incidentally - but what every man in this room is really thinking about is cock.'

You included?'

'Oh yes. Especially me.'

I hoped my face didn't fall too obviously. Not that I've got anything against gay men - in fact, you could probably describe me as a full-blown fag hag. I just didn't particularly want this bloke to be gay. He was very attractive in an odd way. despite the ghastly goatee, and he was funny. Even when he was being quite rude I couldn't help noticing he had beautiful green eyes, and I liked the way they creased up when he licked the paper on the joint he was rolling. And I liked the way he lit it, it took a quick toke to flame it up and then held it to my lips.

'The only difference,' he explained, as I sucked prettily, 'is that I'm thinking about my own.' With which he took the joint out of my mouth, clamped it between his teeth, winked and pushed his way back into the crowd, holding four glasses and a bottle of champagne.

'And if you want to continue this conversation,' he said over his shoulder, 'try the back bedroom.'

'Otherwise known as the Persian room,' said a voice from behind me.

I turned round to see a slim man, dressed entirely in black. He was about thirty-five, with dark skin, short black hair standing up straight like a brush, and one ironically raised eyebrow. You noticed the eyebrow particularly, because it stayed raised whatever the rest of his face was doing.

'Persian?' I said, picturing a lavishly tented parlour, with belly dancers and Nubians.

'Persian rugs. Drugs. Anthony Maybury, how do you do?' He held out his hand.

'Georgia Abbott, lovely to meet you.'

'Yes, I know, the famous Georgiana Abbott. I was wondering when I'd meet you. Good handshake. That looks like a real Pucci catsuit. Nice shoes.'

'What? How kind, although I wouldn't say I was famous. How did- '

'Darling,' he said, both eyebrows now working in turns. It was like watching a puppet show.
'What you have to understand is that this is a very small town and you are new to it. You've moved here from London, an acme of world glamour, rivalled in our colonial imaginations only by New York. You have worked for European magazines, which we buy like slavering wretches at vastly inflated prices when the cover date is already three months old because we think they might let us in on all the interesting stuff that's happening over there in the fashionable hemisphere. We've seen your name in print, and I know for a fact that you have been to Naomi Campbell's house and have Karl Lagerfeld's home phone number. To us, you are famous.'