Published 'Parasol Post' 1999
It was at the tail-end of Winter. The year's head snapped off in its prime. George knew they were filming today, despite the weather. He had long since watched them erect their pieces of equipment (fiendishly expensive by the look of all the electronic paraphernalia)—for weeks now. But most of the takes had proved pretty mundane.
The local town square, indeed, had been requisitioned by the film company and, at first, the grizzled folk hereabouts felt excited by the prospect—eventually, though, drifting away in twos and threes of disinterest ... and the snooty film wallahs were now left pretty much to their own devices (albeit expensive ones).
Yet George had inside information. Today the film's sex scene was to be enacted in full-frontal al fresco. How he knew this for a fact was a bit of a mystery; George was not privy to the arcane machinations of show business glitter but, somehow, whenever, wherever, he must have smelt the smoke-signals of potential smut from a spare gaffer or rogue lens-shifter (some of which crew haunted the town's bars at godawful hours of the day or night). George had subtly set himself up as a semi-insider because of his near constant attendance at film get-togethers, with his pretending, no doubt, that everybody else knew his wherewithals except the very gaffer or lens-shifter or best boy with whom he happened to be chin-wagging at the time—and a recent half-drunken natter with the clapperboard man had inadvertently served to let slip the imminence of the film's sole sex scene.
Whatever the case, George, looking, as ever, old for his age, was snooping low on the periphery of the Square one rain-threatened day towards the end of the shoot. Already the more undesirable members of the crew had soaked the paving-slabs with water which—should there be a sudden storm—would solve any subsequent continuity glitches. How a sex scene was to be enacted in the open air of a town square and how it fitted in with the rest of the film's no doubt dubious plot was neither here nor there. George shrugged. Sex was sex whatever the context. He'd get a vicarious thrill however far-fetched. In this religious neck of the woods, you see, salaciousness was not a thing to be snifffed at. A growing lad like George could do with an eye-opener or two to fit him out for the protracted philandering he'd long planned to spend doing the wide world over. He'd had enough of his mother's apron strings and the town's rather prissy females who cocked a snook rather than lift a skirt for such red-blooded studs as George saw himself fast growing up into.
He stood on tippy toes to see if anything was afoot. He could hardly see over the Director's head which was bobbing about atop a rather bulbous wobbly thing—more like a barrage balloon than a body, but never mind. The leading lady in sheer tights and shortie nightie (and next to nothing else, George hoped) was stood shivering by one of the tents. The so-called dishy hero (George couldn't help snarling as his muscly torso hove to) was later seen hovering by the chuck wagon, feasting off a local pork delicacy—wearing a silk dressing-gown more suitable for a sleek harem than a cold and wet town square in Albania. So, yes, based on this slenderest veneer of assumptive truth, George guessed that his carefully filtered inside information had not been far from the truth. Erstwhile scenes he'd spied—from this very vantage point that he'd ear-marked for his surreptitious snooping—had shown this preening leading pair done up all over with several layers of peasant wear, huge fur capes and muffly scarves and more. Something to do with the mechanics of the rather plodding plot of politics and putsch. Now, today, all was hair-trigger ready for the off, bareness being merely a few flicks of the wrist away ... and George relished catching his first tasty glimpses of uncluttered female flesh and running cream.
"Balkan's Broken-Headed Child, Day Seventeen, gratuitous Sex Scene, Take One..." shouted the clapperboard man from so close to George's head, nobody saw the punishment fit the crime. Collateral damage wasn't half of it. Sleight of left hand, not even in the running.
A scared running, followed by the ruin of rain.
