Chapter 18: The Peculiar Exorcism of Miss Jeri Turner

Livia does not share my hesitation. “Okay, calm down,” she says. “So I think we can condense this down into just saying you’re not into girls, right?”

“Absolutely not!” Jeri agrees. Then she realizes the exact phrasing. “I mean ... I agree. I’m not into hot girls at all. Ever. Not under any circumstances. Not even Kelly LeBrock!”

Oh, Cherry. Please keep working those Freudian slips. I’m crushing on you so hard right now. Even amidst my moment of existential moral panic, that thought makes it’s way to the forefront of my brain. I think it calms me a bit.

The audience laughs. The crowd is getting to Noodle levels of worked up, but it’s quieter, more visceral and emotional, this time.

“Gotcha,” Livia says. “But one thing confuses me about that.”

“I’m really not,” Jeri insists pleadingly.

“I believe you,” Livia brazenly lies. “But ... that might be a bit awkward tomorrow, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“You signed up for another wet t-shirt contest here at Summers.”

“I ... uh ... Marcelo told me that joining this show would help me boost my confidence. But I think I’m going to skip out. It’s actually boosted my confidence enough that I realize I don’t need to degrade myself like that.”

There is no conviction in that last line at all. Mind you, it always rings hollow to me, when a woman has a chance to do something sexy, and says she has too much self-esteem or self-respect to do it. Not that a lady can’t just not be interested or not enjoy it — unlike Livia, I don’t really believe that every woman is an exhibitionist at heart — but the implicit assumption and accusation that the exhibitionists must have low self-esteem rather then just different tastes, and the desperation of it, always rings false. I think I’m coming around more to Livia’s outlook on what makes a woman respectable.

“Listen to me,” Livia coos. “You already signed up for one contest at Summers. Everyone saw you. You chose that. You need to own it if you want people to respect you. You need to be at Summers tomorrow.”

“No,” she says. “I don’t. It was just peer pressure anyway, that got me in the first one. That’s not the girl I am.”

“Hmm,” Livia says. “Who pressured you to sign up?”

“Um. People. Some people did. Somewhere.”

Best unconvincing answer ever. Livia stares.

“Cherry,” Jeri finally blurts out.

“Who?” Livia asks.

“Um ... a girl I know. A bad influence. She pressured me.”

“Well,” Livia argues, “you’re pretty much stuck now. If she pressured you once, she can pressure you again. Honestly, Jeri, you know you’re going to be at that contest tomorrow, so you might as well get yourself in the headspace and prepare for it as best you can. And honestly, Jeri, you want to win.”

“You’re right,” Jeri admits, and blushes. And the crowd absolutely whoops. I don’t think Cherry lets Jeri hear it, however.

“Well, then you have a bit of a dilemma, don’t you?”

Jeri frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You ... don’t know? I guess you weren’t at the first contest long enough. Jeri, girls make out with other girls at these contests. It’s pretty much de rigueur. If you’re in the contest, you’re probably going to end up kissing other girls ... and honestly, it doesn’t always stop there...”

“Oh, no!” Jeri gasps in stark innocent horror. Oh, Jeri, you’re kind of hot yourself at times, mindless amalgamation of cultural cliches or not.

“I might have a trick I could teach you to help avoid ... people saying things about your sexuality, though.”

“What?”

“Tell me ... have you heard of porn star kissing?”

Jeri’s face twists into a grossed-out grimace.

“It’s not what it sounds like,” Livia assures her. “Porn girls are often straight, but they get paid to do lesbian scenes. But they don’t actually want to kiss other girls, so they do this weird little thing instead — and people know they aren’t gay. I can show it to you, if you want.”

“Umm...” Jeri’s really indecisive. “Okay, I guess.”

I interrupt at this point — I see a perfect opportunity. “Mimi, would you be a dear and grab me another glass of wine?”

Mimi looks confused and annoyed at me interrupting something she’s clearly looking forward to watching — but I meet her gaze meaningfully, and I make a little “bending over” motion with my hands. She finally gets it. “Sure thing, M!”

Mimi pours a glass of wine, gets up from the control station and walks over to us. She stands directly between Livia and Jeri, and leans over deeply, getting her jugs right in Jeri’s face as she hands me the glass again. What happens next is comedy perfection.

“So,” Jeri asks, “if I learn this porn kiss thing, you’re sure that people won’t think I’m into girls?”

As the words come out of Jeri’s mouth and Mimi’s cleavage again dominates her field of view, Cherry decides to seize the moment — and apparently control of Jeri’s left hand. Said hand snakes around behind Mimi, reaches lewdly between her legs and gives her pussy a quite firm, four-second, not-remotely-accidental squeeze. Mimi gives out a small, high-pitched “eep” ... and then just lets Jeri continue, enjoying the moment. I wink at her and catch the glass, putting my hand under it to catch any spills. I quite like Jeri’s current costume, and don’t want her to change it ... yet.

The audience bursts into uproarious laughter at Jeri’s expense, but I doubt Cherry lets her hear it. “Must have been a muscle spasm,” Jeri explains unconvincingly. “You know, from the dancing.”

“Sure,” Mimi says, and winks playfully at Jeri.

“If you learn to do porn star kissing,” Livia tells her, “I can all but guarantee you that tomorrow’s contest won’t cause any new rumors about your sexuality.”

How ... cleverly phrased.

“Let’s get started, then,” Livia says curtly. “Sit on my lap, facing me,” she commands. “You know, straddle me.”

Jeri doesn’t move.

“You want to learn this or not?” Livia asks.

“I’ll hold your hand,” I assure Jeri. “That way, it won’t feel gay.”

So, Jeri goes over and straddles Livia, with Livia facing toward the audience and Jeri facing the shadowed backstage area. Nice tail! Nice athletic black ass in sheer tights, too. And the position, and the tuxedo and bunny costumes, and the eye contact with Jeri looking down at Livia ... yes. Very nice. Mimi thinks so too, enough to take out a camera and snap a few high-quality publicity photos of the pose and the moment. Now Livia wraps her arms around Jeri’s waist, and from her perspective it must seem very romantic — if a bit possessive.

But in reality it’s more trademark Livia humor — literally behind Jeri’s back, instead of clasping her hands together she gives the whole audience an enthusiastic, two-handed thumbs-up gesture. Without speaking, she says “Yeah, dudes! For real, I’m gonna do it! I’m about to get some hot tongue action from the gullible, hypnotized babe! This is so awesome!”

Livia is a thirty-four year old woman with the heart of a wildly horny fourteen-year-old boy. I knew she read my books and learned from them, but this is when it crystallizes in my mind just how much she’s internalized the Adolescent Eye. It’s why she’s the one human being on the whole planet I relate to the best. She can be so utterly juvenile about sex, in an infectious way.

The crowd adores her for it, in a tension-breaking, almost cathartic manner, and we get countless thumbs-ups back — with Jeri oblivious to all of this by double-virtue of hypno-censorship and just facing the wrong damn direction. It’s like the dichotomy between the Cinemax erotic thriller and the zany teen sex comedy. Livia’s campy humor makes sex — even predatory sex — harmless and fun again.

In the moment, all I think is that Livia’s letting her dorkier side shine through to comedic effect. Given more time to contemplate later, however, I will realize this gag may have been more thoughtful than I initially give it credit for. After all, the crowd is more than half girls — and she, in one quick gesture, says to all of them, “yes, ladies, you have my formal approval to look at sex with the same gleeful, carefree immaturity as a fourteen year old boy. We in the vagina crew are, in fact, psychologically capable of that. It’s officially allowed as of today.”

Pretty slick, in the context of everything else she says today.

Anyway, she continues guiding Jeri. “Okay, so you’re going to stick out your tongue, and I’m going to stick out my tongue, and we’ll just meet in the center, okay? If you do it right, they don’t even have to touch — it just looks like it.”

Jeri does not get it right. They both stick out their tongues, and move their heads together. Jeri just keeps going, though, or Cherry takes control. Lips meet, and the two women kiss for real, their lips parting with a wet squelch and a big-hearted cheer from the crowd — led firmly (and ironically) by what has to be mostly straight girls.

“Okay,” Livia says breathlessly, “that was exactly what we were trying to avoid. I mean, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t enjoy it — I sure did, possum, intensely — but I’m sure you must feel scandalized and humiliated, and I’m sorry. I’m very sincerely sorry that happened. I couldn’t possibly have predicted it.”

Jeri flinches, but doesn’t say anything — so Livia continues. “Let’s try this one more time. Here’s how it works. You put out your tongue. I put out my tongue. They lightly touch. Your warm, full lips do not need to touch mine. You do not need to taste the flavor of my lipstick. Your body should not writhe and pulse in my arms. You must not forcibly penetrate my moist, inviting mouth with your wild, aggressive tongue. There’s no need to grind your pussy against my thigh vigorously as we kiss. And it only needs to last a second or two — you don’t need to latch on and just go at it until you can’t take any more pleasure. Do you understand? Are you going to be able to show enough restraint and decency to do this in a properly ladylike manner?”

“I’ll ... try,” Jeri says uncertainly, then catches herself. “I mean, of course I will! Do you think I’m enjoying this or something?”

The women lean close again. Neither remembers even the pretense of sticking out her tongue. Cherry rises up and compels Jeri to ignore every piece of advise Livia gave her. The body-grinding sapphic makeout lasts a good two minutes. I’d describe it, but Livia already did that, in wonderfully vivid reverse-o-vision. I can only add one saucy detail to the whole matter. If you doubt the passion of these women, and you bought the tapes, use slow motion right when Jeri gets up off Livia’s leg. You can see the wet spot on Livia’s right pant-leg gleaming in the stage light. Fun stuff.

“Well,” Livia says. “That was very ... lively. Jeri, love, I have some bad news for you.”

“What?” she moans sadly, her lower lip trembling.

“I’m pretty sure you’re an industrial-strength, pure-strain, utterly-beyond-redemption dyke. But there is a silver lining you should take away from this as well: you’re a really goddamn foxy dyke, and you kiss like a sex machine.”

“No, no,” Jeri gasps in horror as her disobedient hands grope, feel up and squeeze Livia’s ample chest rather roughly through her dress shirt. “That just isn’t true!”

Jeri is beginning to fall apart at this point — not to have a nervous breakdown or cathartic moment or any other real emotion, but to cease to be a coherently motivated intellectual construct with a sensible inner narrative. Our show is turning the prude-voice’s arguments into a caricature and a farce. Satire weakens the pompous, and farce even more so. The dynamic of power between Jeri and Cherry has shifted, I feel sure — possibly even permanently. Jeri isn’t going to be able to go back to being the demon on Cherry’s shoulder after we made her into a lewd punchline.

Now, this isn’t tightly scripted. We have a list of “snares” to use on Jeri, and we want to drop them in order of increasing heat. But there’s something about girls kissing for me, especially when it’s as passionate as Livia and Cherry were, and I’m horny and really want a piece of the action. “You know,” I say, “I can think of a way you could still prove you’re not a lesbian.”

“Really?” Jeri gasps, clutching at a faint ray of hope. “How?”

“Well, you could give me a private dance,” I say. “But it would have to be pretty steamy to top what you just did with Livia.”

That gets a fair bit of very angry booing from a segment of the female crowd — though people of both genders do also cheer. Honestly, I’m not trying to screw with or subvert the gay pride narrative here or anything. Remember, we know Cherry’s bi — she told us before the show. I just ... really want to get my hands on Cherry right now.

“Yes!” Jeri says. “That’s a great idea! I’ll prove it for sure!”

Now this seems stupid — even by the low standard Livia told Jeri to set. But I actually find it oddly credible. The puritanical psychology is almost pathologically blind to bisexuality as a concept. It’s a very binary worldview — people are gay or straight; anything in between is prevarication. So it makes sense that the ‘Jeri’ caricature would believe that. Back in reality, well, polls and surveys about gay demographics are controversial and diverge fairly wildly, especially in that bisexual people don’t always label themselves as such. But some studies suggest there are three or four bisexual women for every full lesbian. The trend isn’t quite as strong with men — but the bi-dudes still outnumber the gay ones.

Anyway, Livia needs to rescue the pacing — we have plans to use before the third Decan gets to that point. She isn’t angry — if anyone can empathize with saying something in a moment of pure lust, it’s her — but she does take the reins. “Well, Jeri, we’ll give you that opportunity — but I think we should calm down a bit first. Honestly, Jeri, don’t you feel a bit peckish? When I was, ah, ‘instructing’ you, you seemed a bit ... hungry.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I actually am. I guess the dancing worked up an appetite.”

“And the kissing?” I tease her.

“Trying to avoid thinking about that, thanks.”

Livia opens a cabinet drawer until the table and takes out a white plate filled with a stack of about forty maraschino cherries, most complete with stems. “Would you like a cherry? They’re very sweet and fresh.”

“Ooh, they look good. Do you have a fork?”

“You can just pick them up by the stem.”

Jeri looks cautious. “This is going to look naughty, isn’t it? Suggestive? I mean, I’m putting a cherry in my mouth with my fingers...”

“Well, yeah,” I confirm, “but really, after the kissing bit it’s a fairly tame thing to do, don’t you think?”

So Jeri picks up one of the cherries by the stem, holds it above her mouth and cautiously places her lips around it. She squirms, ever so slightly, and her face takes on an odd, difficult to read expression. She forces her hand away from her mouth and sets the cherry back on the gleaming porcelain appetizer plate.

“I don’t think I should eat these cherries. I don’t think anyone should. I think they are ... sinful.”

“What hubris is this,” I ask her, “to claim to know the will of the Almighty? Leviticus condemns shellfish, not cherries. The scripture is not as clear on these matters as bitter old men may have taught you. If you want to understand the truly sacred, go home tonight and re-read the Song of Songs.”

That doesn’t hit home. I misjudged. Cherry isn’t religious, she’s just remembering judgmental things people have said to her.

“I predict,” Livia says, “that you will eat one of these cherries.”

“You did something to me with hypnosis.”

“I did,” she says, “but not what you’re thinking. Neither Marcelo nor I are forcing you to eat a cherry. There’s other food if you want it. But ... I think you will.”

“Why?”

“Because I can see the struggle. People that don’t get it, they might say you were a girl possessed, with a demon whispering in her ear that she can’t manage to resist. But I know that’s not true. You’re a demon with a girl whispering in your head, and she’s sick of suffocating, and you can’t resist her any more. She’s fed up, and just done with you, and she wants a cherry.”

Cherry reaches forward, picks up a cherry, wraps her lips around it, licks it, fondles it, tears the stem off, envelops it and closes her mouth. She begins moving it around with her tongue. Jeri looks utterly mortified and helpless to control her own body. Jeri’s cute when she’s utterly mortified and helpless to control her own body. The cherry-suckling goes on for a full minute. Eventually, I hold a finger in front of her nose to check. “You can swallow that cherry, spit it out or keep playing with it, but regardless you should probably start breathing again.”

Cherry swallows with an audible gulp, then opens her mouth and draws in a fierce gasp of air.

“That was really tasty,” our mark says, “but I think I should...”

And then she trails off.

Livia chuckles. She takes the amethyst from her neck and swings it before Jeri.

“Are you trying to hyp...”

A few seconds of silence. It’s almost a punchline, how Jeri just trails off in the middle of that specific sentence.

And then Livia’s body language changes instantly, and she becomes the most dominant I have ever seen her. And I don’t mean she becomes the sexy dominatrix I want to spank me and tell me I’m a bad boy. I know Livia has that one in her, and am looking forward to experiencing it. This one ... if Livia pulls this one, I’m not thinking about spankings, I’m wondering if she has a Beretta and if there is a blunt object nearby I can use to dash her brains out in instinctual self-defense before she can return the favor.

“You have no control! You are not a person! You are not stronger than her! You have never been stronger than her, and you never will be stronger than her! Do you understand that? Tell me you understand! Hear and obey!”

“I understand,” Jeri says, eyes blank and dead.

“Submit to her! Say it! Say you submit to Cherry! She is a person! You are a tool she uses to survive the cruelty of our society! You emerge when she wills it, you fulfill her objectives and you go back into the darkness when she no longer needs you, and you know why? Because she’s real and you’re not! So tell her! Say it! Say you submit to Cherry, for now and forever, until the last of the stars in the sky have spent the whole of their nuclear fusion and guttered out!”

“I submit to Cherry, for now and forever, until the stars in the sky have ... burned out.”

Livia’s dominant power pops like a balloon, and she’s suddenly girlish, sweet and even a bit bimbo-like. “Nifty! Well, with that worked out I think we can all be besties again. Jeri, why don’t you get back in the driver’s seat. We have just a wee bit more sexy and hilarious degradation for you, but don’t worry. After this you can have a nice long nap and relax in the quiet darkness. Sound peachy?”

Holy fuck. I will talk to Livia about retiring tonal whiplash as a hypnosis technique after this. I’m not even going to argue about how it plays to the mark or how it plays to the audience — how it plays to me is “likely to cause a heart attack”.

Jeri blinks, coming back to awareness. “Uh ... peachy. Thanks.”

And then she remembers, and blushes. Cherry’s hand reaches out, fumbling, and she pulls the microphone out of my hand and walks to the center stage. She’s slow and almost robotic — not tranced, but like each step she’s taking is a struggle through deep mud, and she has to will each leg to move. When she gets to the center, she speaks into the microphone. She has this panicked, desperate facial expression, like “what the fuck am I getting myself into and why can’t I stop.”

“You know,” Cherry forces Jeri to say through gritted teeth, “I’ve got a whole bowl of cherries here, and they taste really good. I’m wondering if anyone out there would like to taste my cherry ... I mean, taste one of my cherries.”

The audience howls. We’re getting “Cathy’s tits at the Noodle” levels of enthusiasm here.

Livia speaks into her microphone. “Okay, folks, everybody stay seated right where you are. Anybody getting up in the next fifteen minutes gets booted out. Apparently our brave young volunteer is a pretty respectable girl after all, and she has some sweet treats she’d like to share. Maybe raise your hand if you’d like a taste. Marcelo, please escort her around, and make sure everyone stays polite and the people eating the cherries are the people she gives them to.”

So this goes down exactly like you might expect it to. The audience wasn’t privy to the cherry association being given — but most of them watched the second Decan and have little trouble figuring out what the game is about. So I escort our bunny-waitress around the crowd. She dangles cherries in people’s faces and they eat them. And she squirms and writhes visibly, and the crotch of her lovely green bustier gets a fair bit darker than the rest of the fabric. She starts with girls, mostly, probably thinking they’ll be gentler, but ... the whole crowd is pretty worked up. I escort her, and catch her to prevent her from falling on her ass when she’s overcome with stimulation. It’s pretty intense. I’m also sure that a number of straight girls, caught up in the whole sexual liberation and freedom from societal confines narrative, get very sensual with a cherry in a way that Livia enjoys immensely.

Throughout this, the face belongs to Jeri. It’s brilliantly flushed, visible in spite of her teak skin, and she looks appropriately horrified and humiliated. She’s pathetically trying to keep up a masquerade that nothing sexual is happening here. When someone gets overly sensual with a cherry, she’ll stare at them in sharp contempt and say, “It’s just a cherry, you sicko. Get over it.”

And the perpetrator will smile and wink at her and just say “Sure,” and everyone laughs. Except Jeri.

Lots of people grab, stroke and squeeze Jeri’s breasts. I permit this, as long as they aren’t forceful and she’s just acting ashamed rather than backing away. And Cherry instigates a lot of reaching over tables and stretching to hold out cherries, and her beautiful C-cups don’t always stay fully in that contoured bunny-girl teddy. Cherry does it, and as soon as Jeri notices, she grabs her chest in a protective pose and pulls the costume back up. I don’t think she can blush any harder than the permanent tone she’s stuck at for the duration, though.

Her nipples play a constant game of peek-a-boo that amuses the patrons — the men more than the women, though the latter still get a giggle. There’s one exception to that, though. Jeri reaches out over a table to feed a cherry to a rather muscular and roughly handsome shirtless guy. Her chest comes fully out, but she’s still dangling the cherry, teasing the beefcake. Well, a brave if somewhat nerdy-looking young lady decides to seize the opportunity, tilting her head around under Jeri’s torso, fixing her mouth around Jeri’s left nipple and just sucking and tonguing it. And Cherry just holds her there in that position for over ten seconds, letting the girl get her licks in. Pun intended.

As I escort Jeri though the audience, Livia and Mimi rearrange the stage. The table gets moved to the corner. The props I sent Mimi on a grocery run for at the beginning are taken out of the brown bag and set on the table. Mimi got six full cherry pies from A&P grocery — heavy things with a thick crust on the bottom and a full inch of whipped cream up top. They take them out of the metal tins — something Mimi has experience with. If you’re going to be tossing around pies for either comedy or fetish, get rid of the tins first — they can slice flesh when thrown or shoved wrong. One pie gets cut into six slices and put on small paper plates. The other five get put on large paper plates. They also set out a special pitcher of water on the table. It looks the same as the plastic jugs used in wet t-shirt contests — but it’s not.

Next they move this large, inflatable lounge chair to the front of the stage. It’s made of transparent, rubbery plastic. It provides a neat visual, and I know that balloons are a fetish to some people — inflatable furniture probably would be as well, if it were more common. And it will give a suitably distinctive visual look to the climax of our act. It helps that we also put lighting tracks on the bottom, so we can dim the lights to make the stage more shadowy and the inflatable chair stands out as if it’s in a spotlight, showing perfectly everything that happens in it. The chair is directly over a metal bridge four yards tall — the same one we used for cameras and nozzles with the Daughters of the New Century. It still has the digital timer from the banana-eating contest, and an odd rope dangles from it beside the chair like the pull-cord of a lamp.

Finally, they roll out a door, in a frame, on a wheeled platform but without any associated wall — just a door in the middle of the stage. Three larger objects on similar rolling platforms are set up just beyond it. The whole setup process is done rapidly and only takes fifteen minutes. The girls could have it done in five, but they’re tempted to keep watching what’s happening with Jeri and I — a constant temptation in our line of work that I’ve also faced many times, and sometimes even managed to overcome.

I escort Jeri back to the stage and seat her at the table. She looks resigned and beaten down. I would begin to feel genuinely sorry for the persona, if I couldn’t see faint traces of a very happy, very horny Cherry peering out of the cracks in the — at this point pretty farcical — façade. And her Aura is off the charts, obviously.

“Honestly, Jeri, you look famished! Come have some food and wine!”

She skirts over to the table. She unironically does look really hungry — excitement, including humiliation, will bring that out in a person. Livia hands her a paper plate with a slice of pie, as well as a glass of wine. She puts the glass to her mouth and downs it relentlessly, desperate for something to calm herself and soothe her nerves. The crowd chuckles, both in anticipation and sympathy. “I’ve been there,” I hear Lisette Crauer whisper to a lady beside her.

Next the pie. Jeri is being paranoid, but also starved. She holds the paper plate right up to her mouth and shovels it into her mouth with the black plastic fork. She flashes Livia a “really? cherry pie?” look when she realizes what she’s eating. She does actually finish the slice, so Livia just hands her another one. That’s when Cherry makes her move, shaking and jiggling the pie plate. A clump of whipped cream and sticky cherry filling lands on the green Debonair bustier, running down and leaving a streak. The audience roars with approval (except, perhaps, a few guys that don’t want to see this iconic costume go away).

“Jeri,” Livia scolds, “you’ve spilled pie on your lovely costume! You should go change quickly! That costume is a genuine antique!”

It’s actually our counterfeit, but it’s still a fairly close copy.

“I did not!” she says, petulantly defying reality and visual evidence.

I stand up and walk behind Jeri. I glance at Livia, then at Jeri’s cleavage. Livia nods, as we silently form a plan. We want Cherry to make her choice clearly, here — but there’s also a specific visual homage I want here, that I’m going to guide a bit. Livia reaches under the table to grab a maraschino cherry from an open bottle fixed to the table leg. “Oh, look,” she tells Jeri sweetly. “I guess there was one more cherry after all!”

Livia presses the cherry to her lips, and proceeds to be obscenely suggestive with her tongue before swallowing it with an audible gulp. Jeri moans and tenses, a shiver of oral pleasure passing through her entire body. She involuntarily stretches her legs out and leans way back in the chair. Her hands clasp into fists, and she gasps. I only have to guide the paper plate ever so slightly. I’m pretty smooth, honestly, what with all the stage magic training. If you’re not looking for it, you can’t see how I set it all up — even on the remastered N-VHS release.

A full slice of cherry pie, heaping with whipped cream, slides off the paper plate and lands with a loud plopping sound directly in Jeri’s ample cleavage, already emphasized by the costume, as she squirms under Livia’s oral tease. We have another perfect visual image, one of Livia’s “searing cinematic moments”, and Mimi is ready with the camera.

If you haven’t seen it, just try to visualize it: a bunny waitress, in full glamour, face and body alike stretched in unexpected and humiliating ecstasy, with a messy and symbolic slice of cherry pie dropped directly into her cleavage, the smeared red of cherry filling contrasting the vivid green of the bustier, the clear white of the whipped cream and the dark, fine tone of her skin like Burmese teak. She’s gasping in both shock and pleasure, and her perfect glamour-girl lipstick is smeared from the earlier kissing.

We never get as much publicity use out of this photo as some others — given some things that come later, both Warrant and Debonair will threaten to sue us — but it’s still totally worth it.