Chapter 5

We headed back to the studio shortly before three after staying in the pub for a couple of drinks after the meal. Mel invited Ashley to join us, but she said she was working until five so Mel promised to give her a tour of the studio the next time Ashley was free instead.

“I’ll make sure it’s a day that Dick is performing,” she’d told her with a cheeky grin.

“Is this usually how you go about hiring new actresses?” I asked Jim with a smirk as we watched the current porn star talking playfully with the potential one before we left the pub.

Jim shrugged. “We find new girls in all sorts of ways. There’s a regular ad in a few local papers around the country, for example. Models Wanted, sort of thing. We can’t be too explicit about what it is we want but I think most people who see it understand. We get a few calls a month from it and maybe half a dozen a year who go all the way and film a scene or two. We use agencies mostly though. There’s a local one, believe it or not, that gives us access to a lot of European girls—a few French, Spanish and Italian, but mostly from Eastern Europe. Girls from the likes of Poland, Slovakia or the Czech Republic can do one scene here and make more money than the average monthly wage back in their own country. Stay for a month and they can make more than a year’s salary if they’re prepared to do a scene every other day or so.”

Once we got back to the warehouse, Gail, Emma and I headed for Gail’s office while Jim went to his. Daisy went to the editing suite and my girls hung around in the performers’ lounge where they could play video games or watch TV or whatever it was they felt like doing as they waited for a lift home. There was nothing else being shot that day or we might all have stayed around to watch.

“Andy, are Dick and Kitty’s accounts all active now?”

“Yep,” said a dark-haired kid who couldn’t have been much older than Dom. He was sitting in front of two large monitors with a lot of code on one and one of the studio’s websites on the other—a living cliché of a computer nerd. He answered while tapping away on his keyboard, without taking his eyes off the screen.

“And are the phones ready?”

Andy waved a hand towards a table to his left, again without taking eyes off the screen. Gail collected the two smartphones from the table and handed the gold one to Emma and the dark grey one to me.

“The pin codes are your six-digit dates of birth—day, month, year,” she said.

I unlocked the phone and began to swipe around to see what had been installed. Not much was the answer.

“We’ve set up profiles for Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. Be careful about what you post on Facebook. Anything overtly sexual is going to get you suspended or banned.”

“Doesn’t sound ideal for porn stars,” I said.

“It’s not. But you need a presence there. You can write about sex, but any pictures of dicks or boobs with nipples showing is a big no-no. Instagram is nearly as bad, although you can get away with a bit more on there. You have pretty much free reign on Twitter though. And on Snapchat to some extent.”

“I’ve never used Snapchat,” I admitted.

“I’m not surprised. It’s the kids that use it most. Let Mel guide you on that. I know Dom uses it a lot as well. She even sells some of her snaps.”

“Huh?”

“She gets punters to send her some money, via Paypal usually, then sends them a series of dirty snaps directly.”

I shook my head. “The things people will pay for.”

“Don’t complain, it’s going to make you a lot of money. Now, like I said, you can get away with pretty much anything on Twitter. If you want to post a picture of Kitty sucking your dick before you go to sleep tonight, that’s fine.” She paused. “Thinking about it, that’s a good idea. You should play up the whole living in a harem thing. It’ll win you a big fan base.”

“You’ve already got a couple of hundred followers,” Andy said without looking away from his screen. “Lot of follow-backs from the accounts I’ve followed for you and the usual creepy dudes who follow anything that might post free porn. Not bad that for a couple of hours. It’ll grow pretty quick once you start posting and we start to do promos on the account. I know some guys who have big followings and I’ll get them to do a follow suggestion for you both. Oh, and you’ve been tagged in a couple of tweets already. Mel retweeted a picture of you and some bird I didn’t recognise. Ashyboo97 or something. She looks fit, to be honest. I’d do her.”

“That might be the most he’s said in one go so far this year,” Gail said.

I had already opened the Twitter app and clicked on the notifications icon. Sure enough, @xdickrodgersx had been tagged in a tweet by Mel.

Attached to the tweet was a picture of me with the two girls sitting on my knees. I had my arms around their waists and my hands were resting on their thighs. I looked like a dirty old man with a couple of playboy bunnies.

Ashley certainly was a stunner. If Mel succeeded in getting her to shoot a scene she wouldn’t look out of place. Tall, slim and elegant, she had medium-light brown skin and light brown hair that was probably lightened from its natural colour by a shade or two but retained its natural frizzy curls. She was probably mixed race—if I had to guess I’d have said one parent was from somewhere in West Africa and the other was white, but I could easily be wrong. I could already see how the contrast of her skin against mine, or with her limbs tangled up with Mel’s with look fantastic on camera.

I quickly typed a reply.

I tapped on Mel’s profile to have a look at some of her other tweets. There was a whole series of tweets, retweets and replies with Ashley and @freddiefoo95, who I assumed was the boyfriend Ashley had spoken about.

I tapped through to first Ashley’s profile to find a whole bunch of the photos we’d taken that afternoon, all of them with a couple of dozen ‘likes’ and a handful of retweets. Then I checked Freddie’s profile and found a whole lot of abuse aimed at Mel primarily but Ashley too. I shook my head. This kid needed to be taught a lesson. So, I tweeted him.

“What are you grinning at?” Emma asked as I tapped away on the screen.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t?” Gail said, looking at her phone. The tweet I’d just sent must have appeared on her timeline.