A literary confection in celebration of The Great Anaconda's Naissance (AD 1992) (33 summers)
by one Don Juan Henrey, gent. (?)
The purple and gold telephone purred for a seductive instant before being picked up in the red, erotically enameled talons of the voluptuously beautiful young woman seated behind the rosewood Sheraton desk. A little petulantly putting to one side her copy of Hello, she breathed languorously into the eager mouthpiece.
"Good afternoon, Oakley Industries: Lord Oakley's Personal Assistant," she susurrated, placing a heavy emphasis on personal.
"Hi there," came the breezy but marginally nervous reply. "This is Wayne Kingsbury. I'm the freelance who's got an appointment with Mr., er, His Lordship."
"Oh, yes," the beautiful woman replied, as if it made no difference at all to her or her employer. "Get in the lift and press sixty-nine."
She flicked a switch in the handset and the curiously panting, agitated voice of he Lord and Master presently came on the line.
"Uh, ooh, oh yeees ... I love it ... Oooh, baby ... Erm, er, yes, Miss Goodhead ... er, I told you we weren't to be disturbed."
During this strange passage, various muffled and not-so-muffled shouts, oaths, squeals, squelches, yells and moans could be made out, but absolute discretion was one of the virtues which had enabled Felicity Goodhead to win and keep this inordinately highly paid job. She replied in a clear voice, in which there sounded both the respect and passionate love - a love that dare not speak its name - she nurtured for her legendary, and most well-hung, employer.
"I'm afraid, My Lord, that Kingsbury is here, and on time."
An exasperated voice snapped back, "Oh, very well, damn and blast it. Send him in, the Son of a Byronist."
A few moments later Kingsbury, a short and deformed figure, was shambling across the expanse of purple and gold Wilton towards Miss Goodhead. However, he had barely shuffled a few crab-like steps when the low whine of a powerful electric motor spun his gaze away just in time to glimpse a section of richly gilded oak panelling slide back. Lord Oakley emerged, with a flush of enthusiastic exertion mantling his smiling visage, in his wake following the remarkable figure of a tall, bronzed, godlike man, his magnificent torso glinting with some oily substance, dressed only in a Q-string (a briefer version of a G-string) and holding a rahther large spear. Turning to this apparition of beauty, Oakley exclaimed:
"Well, Julian, that was lovely - simply lovely. Just come up with that sort of performance on film, and we'll really have a winner."
"You can count on me, big boy," Julian replied, and disappeared into the express lift with a saucy wiggle of his derriere.
Kingsbury made a mental note to link this episode in his article with Oakley's recent purchase, through his property company, Pixie's Hill Developments, of the Rock 'n' Roll Fag Bar in New York, but his train of thought was interrupted by his interviewee's voice itself:
"Mmmmm ... he'll make a lovely, super Wotan. You see, Kingsbury - mmm, think I'll call you Scum - you see, Scum, Anaconda Productions Inc. begins filming The Ring - under my direction, of course - in Bumslapping - that's in Norway, as I'm sure you didn't know - later this month. Come in then, Sc ... no, hang on, on second thoughts, I think I'll call you Alberich. Much more appropriate," he added with a petulant snigger.
Kingsbury settled himself into the three-legged milking stool that was placed rather idiosyncratically opposite the enormous bison hide desk, behind which the complex day-to-day running of Oakley Industries took place. The flush in Oakley's cheek gradually died down, but Kingsbury noticed a lascivious glint in his eye as the notorious emperor of industry ran an appreciative glance over the deformed journalist's kneecaps, which showed white just under the hem of his leather mini.
Kingsbury decided it was high time to begin the interview. However, for his own very personal reasons, he was determined to discomfit his illustrious subject.
"Most people would say that you're just a waster and a loser from Hemel who happened to get a few lucky breaks and exploited them at the expense of others, wouldn't they?"
A slight smile of contemptuous disdain showed intself momentarily at the corner of Oakley's wide, sensual, slightly moist lips. He enjoyed a challenge, especially where high emotion appeared to be involved.
"Yes, most people would, Albie. Most people are also stupid, ugly, lazy, incompetent whingers. Most people are not beautiful, brilliant, dynamic, magnificent billionaires," he replied, preening the while and insouciantly buffing a scarlet-enamelled toenail.
Kingsbury felt his hackles rising, but quickly told himself that this was no time to get sexually aroused. God, though, how he loved it when someone talked nasty; his own deep vein of arrogant bitchiness could not help but respond. Squeezing his hackles between his leather-clad thighs in an effort to control his excitement, he tried another approach:
"I've heard it said that you made your first million by doing down your two partners."
Oakley lit a bowl of crack, and puffed at it meditatively, his eyes assuming a far-away expression under their coating of green and beige lid-gloss.
"You know - well, you don't, do you, Alb - that Steve, Danny and I first published The Byronist purely for our own pleasure; creativity was simply pouring out of us - none more so than Steve, don't you know - and we simply had to find an outlet for it all. Well, it all took off in the most amazing way: that little weekly was soon to be seen in all the fashionable salons of Kensington, Mayfair, Chelsea, Hampstead and St. James's. Quite the cause celebre. Nothing had been seen like it before. Steve's autobiographical column, The Diary of a Vampire Yuppie, my own fashion and style page, Jottings from Hemel and What the Well-Dressed Anaconda is Wearing; Danny's food and drink report, which you could sometimes actually almost read under all the stains, and such fabulous items as Auntie Hector's Agony Page, Gregory's Fucks of the Week; Fiona's Jolly Classroom Japes, or, How to Put One Over on Miss, and Renee's French Letter from New York. Along with all those glossy piccies that Robert took of the staff at the weekly Office Orgy, er, I mean, Editorial Meetings - well, you simply had to be beautiful to work for us - it was just the only publication to be seen with. And, yes, well, I suppose we all did rather let all that money go to our heads - the weekend jaunts to Clacton or Ulan Bator, the sleek fleet of chauffeur-driven Hyundais, the prize flock of Loch Lomonds, the houses in Antibes, Rio, Neasden, Capri and Morecambe, the vast vats of baby oil and K-Y, the way we would smash up restaurants before we had had anything to eat, the new outfits for Julian, the headlong consumption of hand-rolled Bavarian knockwurst, the way we'd buy out all the seats at an Andrew Lloyd Webber show, only to pelt the cast with putrid avocados, the first editions of Byron, de Sade and Blyton, the girls, the boys, the sex-androids, the croquet orgies, the impulsive trips to Sainsbury's on a Tuesday afternoon ... yes, it couldn't last, but those were the days ..."