Adventures of a London Call Boy by Ben Franckx Page A

students at the Tate, professionals and arty types by the River and bohemians at the Barbican.
    In the past, these had been great spots for quirky, impromptu liaisons, and I’d always loved arty girls. My fondest memory was one visit to the Tate. Upstairs there was some installation or similar, part of a retrospective of one artist or another, whose work consisted of a series of large rectangular mattresses, scattered apparently at random in a big white room.
    I wandered around, trying to work out what it was all about, before I caught sight of a pretty little Japanese girl across the way. We sort of half knew each other, as it happened that she’d been dating my friend Archie for a while. I tried not to imagine what horrible perversions he might have subjected her to during their brief liaison.
    She was smiling, at the exhibit, at other visitors and at me. Eventually I made my way over to her side of the room.
    â€˜Hi Cesc,’ she said, with a broad smile.
    â€˜Do you understand this?’ I asked.
    She shook her head.
    â€˜No. It’s a big bed,’ she said, with a giggle.
    I looked around to see how full the room was. The member of staff was not on the stool by the wall; a couple of other visitors were vaguely reading the explanatory plaques. I noticed that in one corner of the room, a few of the mattresses had been piled up, making a sort of den.
    â€˜Come on,’ I said to her. She shot a glance either side, laughed, and we dived towards the corner. Once we were half hidden, I pulled another mattress across the opening and we hid down out of view.
    I looked her up and down: she was small, pretty and trendily dressed, in a puffball skirt, a top with rips across it and punky boots. Her hair had been cut into a jagged bob. We kissed, quickly, before she pulled back and looked at me.
    â€˜Is this part of the show?’ she said, laughing.
    â€˜Oh yes. It comes with the donation.’
    We kissed again, keeping low to the floor. I ran my hand up her shirt; she was braless and her nipples were hard and stuck out almost further than her tits. My other hand went to her knickers, and she gasped as I slipped my hand under the thin fabric and towards her clit. Soon I had slipped the knickers aside, unzipped my fly and manoeuvred myself between her legs.
    â€˜Wow,’ she said. I stopped, my cock paused before her pussy.
    â€˜What?’ I said.
    â€˜I love this museum.’ I slid into her, slowly, trying not to disturb our shelter. Soon, the sensation took me over. She was hot and tight, and squirmed and whimpered with pleasure beneath me. Soon, we were both coming, breathily and enthusiastically. So enthusiastically, as it happens, that I realised only after I’d rolled away that two or three other punters had been watching the whole scene.
    I guess that’s the great thing about galleries: people think you’re an exhibit. What was it Archie said to me once? A quote from one philosopher or another: ‘Art is the ever broken promise of happiness.’
    â€˜Of a penis,’ I had said to him.
    But now, though, sex in museums was just a happy and arousing memory. I was cruising round the same spots, finding only couples and school trips. The few singletons I did see wanted nothing to do with me, I guess suspecting me of being some sort of museum pervert or scammer.

Chapter Fourteen
    A month passed: no sex, no job, two more unsuccessful meetings with someone so utterly unlikely to get me a job that he almost laughed at his own efforts, and a lot of frustration watching other people succeeding at what used to be easy for me.
    Something had to change, and I decided that if it wasn’t the work, then it would start with the sex. And I suppose, inadvertently, it was Celeste’s fault that I ended up as a call guy.
    This much was Celeste’s idea: I started Internet dating.
    I seldom take her suggestions too seriously, but this one seemed less feather-brained than usual.