My life may usually be hectic but this week, things reached ridiculous levels, both in terms of work and surreal juxtapositions.
Last weekend, my Dad and Stepmum came to stay. 2004 is turning into a very 'family' year for me, what with getting endless baby pics from my mum, trying to help her develop her businesses and generally spending way more time with her. Seeing my Dad continued the theme. It was ace seeing them - first time they've been to my flat in six years - and we had a lovely, gentle family weekend, talking about childhood memories and life in general.
They left on Sunday afternoon. And on Sunday evening, Tammi, a porn star - the one who's doing it to fund her mum's IVF treatment - came to stay. She was coming to London for a shoot and needed somewhere to crash. As I was interviewing her for a women's mag it made sense to offer her the spare room,. She's a friend of a friend, and I preferred the idea of her being safe with me rather than in some dodgy cheap hotel - with the added bonus that I could do a leisurely interview.
Even though she's only 19, she's really bright and we had a great evening drinking wine, blathering about the industry, men and life. By the end of the evening, I had a new 'little sister'. Couldn't help but wonder at the disparity between the image that people would have, of a sexpert and a porn star on a bed together, and the reality. Rather than having a pervy romp-fest (can you tell I've been writing for the tabloids all week?), we were both wearing pyjamas - not baby-doll style things, flannelette and T-shirt material baggy things - and swapping life stories.
On Monday, Tammi got a load more work and ended up staying for the rest of the week. She's a total sweetie; insisted on tidying the place while I worked, to say thanks to me for letting her stay, and helped me compile a load of research (more of which later). Today, she even got back from a shoot having stopped off to buy me lunch because she was worried that I was working too hard and not eating enough.
She's such a joy to have around that she's becoming my new 'semi-flatmate' using my place as her London base. Suddenly, I can see my male friends becoming much keener to come to dinner. When I introduced her by phone to my lawyer and acountant (because she needs both, and I'm being mumsy) they were certainly more than usually excited at the prospect of a new client.
So, porn star/family juxtaposition was odd enough.
And then there was the breasts thing.
On Tuesday, I had two appointments:
The first: an appointment at the breast clinic to get a mammogram as I've had a lump for a while and they wanted to check it for cancer.
The second: a topless photoshoot for a new magazine on 'Why I love my breasts'
I think the universe had just decided to take the piss. The former appointment was utterly outside my control because it was one of those 'we'll send you a card through the post. Turn up when we tell you or you'll have to wait for another few months' things and the latter had been organised before I had the date of the appointment, and, as they had three of us in the shoot, it would have utterly messed them around to cancel.
Now, having mentioned the 'breast-loving' piece, I should make one thing clear. Whilst I'm not offended by my breasts in any way - particularly now I've found out that they aren't infected with cancer - I wouldn't exactly say I love them. They're just 'there' (and because they're mere fried-eggs, gravity seems to be keeping them in about the same place as they've always been, which is nice.). However...
...a few years ago, a fab girl did work experience for me. We stayed in contact, as I have with several work-experience people. She's just landed a job on a new magazine launch. It's a pilot. She called me up, really stressed because she was struggling to find anyone flat-chested who liked their breasts. She's one of about five people I've semi-mentored who I really rated, and it's her first media job so I wanted to help out. She had practically no time, so I said I'd do it.
Because it was for the pilot, which would only be seen by focus groups.
It was only on the day of the shoot that I found out that it might actually appear on news-stands.
My mother will be so proud. Tammi was (again) an absolute sweetie. She asked if I was OK after the shoot, speaking as a woman with far greater experience of getting naked in front of a camera than me. It was really endearing, getting maternal concern from someone (almost exactly) ten years younger than me (found out she's twenty the day after I'm thirty. Which is a tad scary.).
As it was, the shoot was fine, though I don't think I'll do it again as it's not exactly good in terms of looking professional if the world's seen my tits. Well, not as a journo, anyway.
So, by Wednesday, I'd already had a weird week. I'd also, over the course of the week, picked up four commissions; two for More and two for the Daily Star. This is a reasonable amount of work (and something I was deeply chuffed about) - which took considerably more time than usual because the Star pieces included analysing all the data from their sex survey.
Now, I've done data analysis before; I did a psychology degree so I'm pretty used to it. But that was a fair few years ago. Thus, I'd forgotten quite how bloody dull it is. And how much time it takes.
I like doing the bit where you correlate all the results. But I'd forgotten the utterly mind-numbing process of gathering together the raw data in order to be able to correlate the results in the first place. Cue, me sitting surrounded by the world's biggest paper mountain, with reams of A4 paper, tallying up all the scores and cursing my idea to do a sex survey in the first place.
Luckily, I managed to just about fight off insanity by enlisting the help of my fab Cliterati sub-editor and Tammi. My neighbours must have wondered what was going on. The quickest way we'd worked out to tally the results was piling all the papers together and then going through each question in turn. Anyone outside the door would have heard the following:
"Oral sex, group sex, dogging, bondage, roleplay, lingerie, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."
Along with much giggling.
The analysis was brought to a (sadly, temporary) halt by people arriving for dinner; two male sex industry PRs joined Tammi, me and another mate who's a phone sex worker. Over the course of the evening, Tammi showed off the copy of Razzle she's in to the (very interested - obviously for professional reasons) male PRs, we swapped stories about everything from bizarre transexual experiences (one of the men) to nude tabloid appearances (also one of the men) to foot fetishism (err, one of the men again) and Tammi kept everyone (err, particularly the men) on the edge of their seats with 'true life' stories of doing porn.
My favourite story was about a bloke she worked with who was rough and did the 'gripping the back of her head' thing rather over-zealously, bashing her head against the bed, while she blew him. He didn't stop when she asked him to (hold with the 'but she had her mouth full' gags, OK) and told her that she should just get used to it, so she got revenge in the next scene. She was wearing a ring with a stone in it. She turned it around so the ring was facing inwards and proceeded to give him a very firm hand-job, ensuring the stone rubbed all his most sensitive parts.
I think she's going to go a long way.
Thursday was a really ace day. My first Guardian piece came out. I was dead excited about it. Sadly, I was also on deadline for three other articles, so I didn't get a chance to buy a copy until 7pm - and had to scour every shop within 20 minutes of the house to find a single copy. This is probably a good thing though, as I was so squeally that I'd have probably bought enough copies to wallpaper the flat otherwise. I was dead chuffed that they'd hardly changed a word of it.
And so, onto today. After finishing all the analysis for the sex survey, I finally got the piece finished. It's in the Daily Star next Monday and Tuesday, and I'm determined to get to the shops at a reasonable hour to buy copies.
I then got a call from the lovely mate who introduced me to his literary agent (as a result of my request on this site, which was cool). They like my idea and I've got a meeting next week, so I'm desperately hoping that they like my sample chapters, sign me up and get me a publisher (without demanding internal organs and 90 per cent of the profits for their cut). Then, all I have to do is write the book.
I'm shattered, but it's been an ace week. I love writing. And life's pretty cool too.
Posted by emilyd at January 24, 2004 02:10 AM