Alice Read online

  The fourth act featured a conversation between Dinah and Laurel, which, although unclothed, contained no sex. The act ended with Edward discovering them and killing Laurel in his anger. The final act showed Edward in jail about to be hanged for his offence. Dinah visits him and they cuddle, and she claims that her love for Laurel could never match that for a real man. The play ended with Dinah sucking off Edward just as the hangman is about to enter the prison cell.

  “Phew! Powerful stuff!” gasped Mouse after the play. “That was quite a strong performance from Prudence Smith, wasn’t it? How she could do it three times in an evening, I don’t know. And there’s a matinee on Wednesday as well!”

  Mouse and Alice went into the bar after the performance, but Alice could only have fruit juice to drink because of her age. Mouse enthused about the play to Alice and several of her friends.

  “That was quite an orgasm in the third act,” commented one. “I’ve not seen one like that for ages! It takes real skill to remember your lines when you’re in that much ecstasy.”

  “Surely, it was just acting,” suggested one of the men in the group. “You can’t have orgasms like that to order.”

  “That’s what you think!” laughed another friend, who was nonetheless being quite affectionate with him. “I’ve had better than that.”

  “I got some of his sperm,” announced one of the girls, small and timid with small round glasses. “When he went by that is. I put it all the way right up me. You never know: I might have his baby!”

  “I think it’s chemistry,” opined Mouse. “When you get Prudence Smith and Lionel Johnson together you expect it to work don’t you! Every play I’ve seen either of them in has always been a success on that front.”

  “Bit weak that Pauline York though,” commented one of the men. “It’s not as if she had much to do really.”

  Mouse made no comment. Nor did any of the other girls.

  IV - Rabbit Sends in a Little Willie

  “Utterly bourgeois!” was Dodie’s assessment of the play Alice and Mouse had seen.

  “How can you say that? You’ve not even seen it!” Mouse objected.

  “How can it be anything else given your description of it? It’s nothing but an excuse for titillating and athletic sex scenes in a story that reinforces accepted stereotypes, particularly with regards to lesbian love.” Dodie smiled at Alice who was wearing the Mickey Mouse tee‑shirt she’d originally worn. “Don’t worry, Alice, I’ll show you real theatre. Vibrant living theatre!”

  Dodie escorted Alice to a converted warehouse called The Doss House, in a poor part of town that Alice hadn’t seen before. Mouse declined to go. “There’s no point,” she explained. “I either don’t understand it or I don’t enjoy it. And usually both.”

  “Well, this shouldn’t strain too many people’s cerebral processes!” exclaimed Dodie when they arrived to see The Mushroom Garden, subtitled Mould, Dung and Modern Life. The audience was fairly mixed. Many of the women had their hair shaved and like Dodie wore nothing but military looking boots and a vest to just below their navel. Many of the men dressed like the women and some wore shapeless jumpers and baggy corduroys with sandals. Dodie seemed to know everyone there, and shared cigarettes with almost everyone she passed by.

  “This is Alice,” she’d say, cuddling Alice close to her and nervously pulling her pubic hair. “I’m introducing her to culture.”

  “She’ll get it if she’s in the front row,” laughed one of the men whose penis dangled just below Alice’s line of sight.

  Eventually, Alice and Dodie sat at the front on plastic seats that were arranged in concentric circles around an otherwise undistinguished area that represented the stage. Curiously enough, the front seats were not the most popular. “Audience participation is the rule in modern theatre,” explained Dodie. “Modern theatre is about breaking barriers. Breaking rules. Getting across to people. Okay, it’s still limited by the censorship rules. No buggery. Only simulated sex between two men. But all the main rules are broken.”

  “Is there going to be audience participation in this play?”

  “I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t.” When the play began Alice’s confusion only grew more intense. There may have been some story line in the speechifying and sex scenes but it seemed to occur at almost random moments. The actors and actresses, who also didn’t shave off any body hair, never seemed to play very well‑defined characters but they did do a lot of shouting and made obscene jokes about each other, the present government and the audience. Alice’s vocabulary grew by more and more colourful swear words, of whose meanings she wasn’t absolutely sure.

  There was some audience participation, but to Alice the actors seemed to be simply bullying people in the audience. At one stage, they dragged a girl out of the third row. One of the actors was fucking one of the actresses. They persuaded the girl to take off her vest, and she revealed two very large breasts. The actress being fucked took the girls’ nipples in her teeth and one of the actors slowly caressed her pubic hair. While this was going on, a couple of actors performed a rather tuneless song on the theme of racial equality.

  Alice was quite relieved when the break came, but the performance was left in a very unsatisfactory state with one of the actresses leaving stage after giving a monologue to the backing of badly‑tuned piano to the effect that she was in despair at the lack of imagination of both of her boyfriends. Alice was rather hoping Dodie might enlighten her how this made any sense with the rest of the action.

  “It’s fairly obvious really. The way the actors have been disrespectful to the women, including those in the audience, is symptomatic of a very unprogressive attitude. It’ll all become obvious in the second half.”

  This wasn’t true. Alice’s mystification merely deepened. She was also very embarrassed when one of the actors proffered his erect penis which had just been dipped in each of the actresses’ cunts to the women in the front row to do what they would. Alice didn’t like the smell so she waved it aside. Dodie, however, threw herself enthusiastically on to it. This seemed to be a general cue for audience participation. Before not very long, there was an orgy on stage where some half of the participants was from the audience. Being art, however, it lasted less than fifteen minutes and members of the audience returned to their seats. Dodie who had just been fucked by three of the actors wiped her pubic hairs with her vest which had come off in the proceedings. “That was a scene to remember!” she whispered.

  From Alice’s perspective the play still never got very far despite several more tuneless songs, some rather clumsy dancing and some monotonous monologues. There was however quite a lot of applause at the end, particularly for some of the more energetic of the cast. The applause never seemed to end as far as Alice could see, while the sweating, mostly naked, cast wiped semen and other stains from their bodies.

  “I loved the improvisation!” exclaimed one of Dodie’s friends afterwards as Dodie and Alice bundled out of the theatre. “I’d say that was about 75% improvisation. Pretty brave!”

  “You were great, Dodie!” laughed a woman friend who kissed Dodie very seductively about the lips. “You really got the thing going. I thought it would never have got beyond that poor girl in the first act wobbling her breasts about.”

  “Yes, they weren’t very selective there. You could see she’d never done that sort of thing before! You fancy a drink?”

  Dodie and her friends took Alice with them to a very basic pub with rather tatty decor and a loud juke‑box where they smoked reefers, drank bottles of beer and talked politics. Alice was exceedingly bored by all this, but she couldn’t help envying Dodie’s stamina. She was already making arrangements to stop off with some of the others, presumably for more love‑making.

  Alice was then taken along to the house where one of the men, Rabbit, lived in a kind of commune. “It’s totally different to Mouse’s bourgeois home,” advised Dodie. “How surprised she’ll be when she finds out where you’ll have been!” As
she said this, they arrived at a run‑down Victorian House, on the door of which was a bright brass plate with the slogan Bailiffs Out scratched on it. They went in without knocking, and bundled into a very large untidy living room.

  “How queer it seems,” Alice said to Dodie. The living room was a mess of ethnic junk and ancient scrappy furniture. Cushions and broken‑down armchairs were scattered about randomly, as also were cigarette butts and unemptied ash‑trays. The centre‑piece was a gramophone which was playing some noisy jazz music.

  There was a table in the window, and on it a collection of curious pipes and glass bottles. “Would you like some?” asked Dodie seeing where Alice was looking.

  “What is it?”

  “Have some!” urged Rabbit, who lit a little pile of charcoals in a receptacle with a petrol cigarette lighter. “It’s best opium,” he explained as he drew some of the smoke in. Alice wasn’t at all sure what to do, but nevertheless she put it to her mouth and took a long breath herself (which left her coughing in violent discomfort). “I know something interesting is sure to happen,” she said to herself, “so I’ll just see what this stuff does.”

  What it did make Alice was very giddy and lethargic, and much sooner than she had expected: before she had smoked very much, she found her head slumping back against the wall and her body slouched undignified across the settee. “That’s quite enough ‑ I hope I won’t be sick ‑ As it is, I can’t sit up ‑ I do wish I hadn’t smoked so much!”

  Alas! It was too late to wish that! Her head went on spinning and spinning, and very soon she had to kneel on the floor to keep herself from vomiting: in another minute she could barely do this, and she tried regaining her position on the settee which the other guests made available for her. Still her head went on spinning, and, as a last resource, she put one arm around the shoulders of the girl next to her, and one foot on someone’s lap, and said to herself, “Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me?”

  Luckily for Alice, the opium had now had its full effect, and she felt no worse: still she was very uncomfortable, and as she didn’t know the way back to Mouse’s home, no wonder she felt unhappy.

  She closed her eyes against the bright light of the room, but she couldn’t close her ears against the barrage of jazz music. After a few minutes she heard a voice addressed to her. “Alice! Alice!” said the voice. “Don’t you want some more love?” Then a hand gently shook her shoulder. Alice knew it was Rabbit coming to look after her, and she trembled till she disturbed the couple next to her.

  “Poor dear! She’s not used to it is she!” came Dodie’s voice. “Better leave her.” Alice rested her head on the settee and tried to sleep. She heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded that the others were enjoying themselves.

  After a while the noisy jazz stopped. There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear whispers now and then; such as “Well, I must be going now!” “It was lovely seeing you again and thanks for the dope!” “I really must be going to bed.” Alice opened her eyes in the semi‑gloom lit by only one table lamp to see Dodie apparently dozing on the chair opposite. “I wonder what they’ll do with me,” thought Alice. “I’m sure I don’t want to stay here very much longer.”

  She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came the rumbling of a good many voices all talking together, including Dodie’s: she made out the words: “Won’t she stir at all? ‑ Will she mind if we make love? ‑ Perhaps she’d join in? ‑ She’s out of it enough. ‑ I’m sure she’d like it if we did ‑ Open her legs, Dodie ‑ She’s so pretty!” At this stage she felt several hands stroking her inner thighs and some lips pecking her face. Alice groaned appreciatively.

  “Off with her tee‑shirt!” exclaimed one girl who pushed Alice forward and slipped it over her head. “Urggh! She’s been sick!”

  “Only a little bit,” said another girl. “She probably wasn’t even aware of it!” As indeed, Alice hadn’t been.

  “She seems to be enjoying it!” said one of the men whom Alice could see through the blear of her half‑closed eyes. “I bet you and Mouse have been training her.”

  “What are you trying to say, you bastard!” said a very indignant Dodie.

  “Oooh, Rabbit! You’ve got such a big one!” exclaimed another girl, and Alice could see a large penis rearing up in front of her. “Are you to go down on her?”

  The other voices mixed up in Alice’s mind: “Yes, Rabbit, you’ve always said you liked them young! ‑ That’s because he prefers boys, doesn’t like real women ‑ Yes, I’ll do it! ‑ I’ll come after ‑ if she doesn’t mind of course ‑ Go on Rabbit stick it in her!”

  “Oh! So Rabbit’s going to come inside me, is he?” said Alice to herself. “I’m not having any of that. I might be weak, but I think I can kick a little!”

  She pulled her foot back as far as she could, and waited till she felt a probing finger at her cunt. When the probing object was replaced by one too thick and blunt to be anything but a prick, and she felt a hesitant rearranging of the people trying to stimulate her: then, saying to herself “This is Rabbit,” she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next.

  The first thing she heard was a general chorus of “There goes Rabbit!” then Dodie’s voice alone ‑ “Are you alright Rabbit!” then silence, and then another confusion of voices ‑ “She got you right in the balls ‑ Serve you right I suppose ‑ Tell us all about it!”

  Last came a little feeble, gasping voice. (“That’s Rabbit,” thought Alice with a little satisfaction), “Well, I hardly know ‑ No more, thanks: I’m better now ‑ but I’m a deal too flustered. She’s got a strong kick!”

  “Poor Alice!” said Dodie sympathetically.

  “We must take her to bed,” said another of the girls. There was the silence of busy activity, and Alice thought to herself, “I wonder what they will do next!” After a minute or two, Dodie lifted Alice up and gave her a little kiss on the face. “We’re sleeping in Lizard’s bed. He’s sleeping with Guinea‑Pig, so there’s space for us. Are you alright, love?”

  Alice nodded as Dodie led her out of the living room. A couple of people were gathered around Rabbit, who were giving him something out of a bottle. They waved goodnight to Alice and Dodie, as they went upstairs to a very flat mattress in a very untidy bedroom.

  “I’m sorry, loveliest,” said Dodie as she comforted the distinctly uncomfortable Alice. “Too much too soon, I suppose.”

  Alice nodded weakly and rested her head on the stained pillow and her arms around Dodie and went straight to sleep.

  V – Pig and Poppies

  Alice enjoyed visiting toy‑shops and sweet‑shops, and she was always happy when Mouse or her mother lent her some money to look round them. Alice had just bought some very nice mushroom‑shaped sweets from a confectioners in the high street and was eating them from the little paper bag when she saw what looked like a disembodied grin in front of her.

  As she looked more closely, she could see the grin belonged to a very dark skinned girl who was sitting in front of a very dark building on a little rug. She was wearing no clothes whatsoever except for some exotic pendulous ear‑rings and she was surrounded by a group of curious onlookers.

  Alice herself was very curious so, she joined the group. The girl was in fact a street performer and she was displaying some very active masturbation to an appreciative audience who threw coins into a little hat the girl had in front of her. She was standing up with a wide grin on her face, making the occasional little sound of ecstasy while sliding an ivory dildo in and out of her vagina and massaging her clitoris with her fingers. She nearly doubled up on her knees with apparent delirium as she pressed away at her groin.

  Eventually, she released her fingers from her clitoris and rubbed her breasts very suggestively. She had very round breasts with stiff little nipples that she stimulated to keep as rigid as possible. She slid the dildo faster and faster whil
e gasping very loudly. “Uuhh! Uuhh!” she cried. And then a more full‑throated “Aaahh! Aaahh!” This went on for long enough to attract quite a large audience. Her performance ended with a few “Ooohh! Ooohh!”s and “Aaaargghh! Aaaargghh!!”s as she pulled out the clearly damp dildo from her vagina and smeared over her breasts, nipples and face the clear liquid she’d generated between her legs. Several of the audience applauded at this stage and more money was thrown into the hat.

  Gradually the audience dispersed leaving Alice alone, eating her mushroom‑shaped sweets, with the black girl who lay slumped in apparent post‑coital bliss.

  “Please would you tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners to say anything, “if you’re alright?”

  The black girl opened her eyes and looked up at Alice. Her grin reappeared and shone across her face like a beacon of good humour. “Of course,” she said in a slightly foreign accent. “Why ever should I not be?”

  “You were making ever such funny noises,” Alice commented.

  The black girl laughed. “That is my job. I sit here. Or I stand here. And I please myself. And if I please myself very much, I make good money. And if I please myself with little noises, I get more money. Look!” She showed Alice her cap which was full of coins. “That is nice money. Now I can eat and sleep happy.”

  “So you do it only for money?”

  “Of course, my dearest,” laughed the black girl. “Why else would I want to do this with so many people looking?” She smiled so wide Alice thought the corners of her mouth might reach her ears. “My name is Kedi. I come from abroad.”

  “I’m Alice. I don’t come from around here either.”