Chapter 66
Aida
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
—Milton, Paradise Lost
There should be no room for ego in my profession. The way I see it, it’s kind of like politics. You know you need people who can serve as well as they can lead rather than being total egomaniacs, but, alas, that career path is rife with power-hungry dicks.
It’s the same with the news. Disseminating the news is a service, not an ego trip.
Obviously, many news broadcasters disagree.
Their endgame is being a household face and name.
But what I’m trying to say, very inarticulately, is that there’s usually a disconnect when I see myself on camera.
The stories aren’t mine to tell. I’m merely a vessel whose job it is to relay other people’s stories with clarity and accuracy and sensitivity.
That’s it. It’s never about me.
Looking at the latest draft of Paradise Found, the second part of my documentary, is a totally different feeling. Because, while the programme deals with some huge universal truths, the channel for those truths is not only my story but the most horrifyingly private part of that story.
Lorna Davidson’s words keep running through my mind. They’re a paper cut that won’t heal—measly and insidious and fucking painful.
Unseemly and staggeringly ill-judged.
That she applauded the concept made it worse.
Called it beyond timely. What she objected to was the crassness (her word) of my decision to craft such a dialogue around my own lived experience and the inevitable tabloid frenzy it would pique, undoubtedly detracting from the importance of the subject at hand.
Fuck, that hurts, and it doesn’t help my PMS and insistent headache.
But I’m nothing if not determined, and having one of the most overtly feminist writers among our broadsheets slam my baby right out of the gate has me determined that this will be the most beautiful, elevated, thought-provoking sex documentary ever produced.
And you know what? Watching it makes me feel better, because we’ve crafted something wonderful here, and nothing about what’s playing out on the big screen in front of us feels crass to me.
Last week, we spent a couple days filming additional content at Alchemy.
The production team felt the debauched vibe of the Masked Ball was the perfect depravity with which to end my search for paradise—on air, at least—and they hadn’t gotten nearly enough footage on the evening of the actual party.
So The Playroom was re-decorated, and the on-stage acts re-hired, and God knows how many scantily clad extras employed to recreate the bacchanalia of the evening.
In addition, Cal and I were drafted for reshoots, and I know instinctively as I watch the footage, edited into a riotous, trippy Baz Luhrmann-esque carnival, that this is close to being our climax.
Unfortunate pun not intended.
At the time that most civilised Britons were taking their elevenses last Wednesday, Cal and I recreated the moment he dragged me down Alchemy’s main corridor for our masked tryst.
I wore my original red dress and ornate mask for the shoot.
My lipstick was smudged in a far more orderly fashion than it would have been on the night, my hair mussed just so.
In short, I was sexily dishevelled, my arms and chest and collarbones daubed with horrifying amounts of highlighter to achieve an alluring sheen for the cameras.
And Cal? Cal was in his trusty balaclava, shirt off, his gorgeous upper body oiled up to create a similar effect and black dress pants as well tailored as always. He looked the real deal: thuggish, terrifying, and sexy as fuck.
The only part they didn’t try to recreate was his enormous hard-on.
I watch my on-screen self as Cal marches me down the corridor, his body towering behind me and his grip firm on my upper arms. The Lacrimosa that was playing that night haunts my ears over distorted voices shouting and laughing and making merry.
The artful camera angles and sultry lighting and dramatic shadows ramp up the tension to a level that’s almost foreboding.
The final frames slow right down.
Cal bends his masked head to whisper something in my ear.
My face swings to the camera, mask glittering and smudged scarlet lips parting in slow motion in what appears to the viewer as a knowing smile.
A carnal smile.
I look like a woman who’s well aware she’s about to find paradise.
* * *
‘Holy fucking shit,’ my publicist Mara says, which is my reaction exactly. ‘That is hot as fuck.’
I stare at my frozen face, over which the words Searching for Paradise have appeared in the show’s classy serif.
We must have shot eight or nine takes of that scene, with Lizzy encouraging me to dig deep and recall the heady mix of apprehension and desire I felt that evening, walking to our private room.
It was she who directed Cal to bend and whisper something dirty in my ear, and it worked.
It fucking worked.
‘The footage is great,’ Lizzy confirms. ‘What we’re missing is the central message.
That’s what we wanted to brainstorm on today.
’ She pulls up a stool at the large white table dominating the room and collapses onto it.
‘You started this journey with a palpable air of vulnerability and apprehension, and I really feel we’ve communicated that in the first episode, not to mention your extreme frustration at all of the limited thinking around female sexuality.
‘Now we’ve upped the ante. This is the point where women start to go, Fuck, yeah, I deserve more than this shit.
And in that shot’—she points at the screen—‘you’re the cat who got the cream.
No doubt about it. You’re Aida Russell, and you’ve done what you always do, which is to identify a problem and go the fuck after it and find a solution.
‘But is this the story? Aida gets laid in style, Aida can have her cake and eat it, blah blah blah—is that the note you want to end on? Because we have an opportunity here to potentially overlay this with a bigger message entirely.’
She waves her hand around, and I stare at the screen.
However churlish it sounds, I really wish people would stop asking me what I want.
‘I love this so much,’ Mara chimes in. When I turn to her, she’s rubbing her heavily ringed fingers together, and I can tell she’s itching for a vape.
She leans back in her chair—she has, naturally, taken the only seat in the room that actually has a back—and puts her Balenciaga-clad feet on the table.
‘The whole world watched you lose your paradise. They stood by while your ex-fucking-husband turned you into a joke. And you never lost your class. You never stooped to his level. But you certainly needed to reframe the narrative.
‘And now look at you. You’ve created a beautiful piece of filmmaking that deals with really important fucking issues, and you’ve done it in a seriously classy way, no matter what Lorna Dickwad Davison says, and you’re having the time of your life getting fucked senseless by a guy giving serious Michele Morroni vibes right there…
You are having the last laugh. And it’s bloody wonderful. ’
‘I guess,’ I say unconvincingly.
She swings her legs to the ground and twists her body so she can full-on glare at me.
‘This is why you hired me. Rewrite the narrative.’ She brushes her palms together.
‘Done and dusted. Remember what you kept saying to us in pre-production? You wanted it to have the lucky bitch factor? That, right there, is the lucky bitch factor. Look at that fucking smile on your face. Even I’m jealous as fuck. ’
She gives me one of her rare grins, and it has me grinning, too, because she’s right. ‘Yeah.’ I drum my fingernails on the table in an effort to pull myself the hell together. ‘I know you’re right.’
‘Of course I’m right. I’m always right. You’ve gone from poor bitch to lucky bitch in a single, perfectly executed master stroke, which was the entire fucking mandate. And you, my friend’—she points at Lizzy—‘are a genius.’
‘She definitely is,’ I agree, more resolutely this time. Lizzy’s film is everything I could have hoped for and more. She’s captured the zeitgeist while elevating my storytelling to a timeless level. I don’t really know how she’s done it.
I swallow. ‘But what if that isn’t the end of the story?’
‘It’s never the end of the story,’ Lizzy says, ‘but we’re always going to have to choose a note to end on. And the question is, does this ending feel representative? Does it pull the messaging together sufficiently?’
‘No, I mean…’ I swallow. ‘Cal and I are… together, kind of.’
It’s an utterly inadequate depiction of how we are.
He asked me to be his girlfriend, and I still haven’t given him the courtesy of a firm yes.
He came over to my home the other day and flipped my mood upside down.
He occupies my thoughts and commands my body.
He’s gone from being a good-time guy I was supposed to hook up with once a week to being the single most important person in my life aside from my sons.
Inadequate or not, it’s enough to send Mara over the edge.
‘Oh, Jesus fuck, no,’ she groans, letting her forehead plant dramatically on the table. ‘Mother of God, tell me you’re fucking with me.’
‘I’m not fucking with you,’ I tell her, more firmly now. ‘He wants a relationship.’
She raises her head and grimaces in distaste. ‘And you?’
A beat passes, and then: ‘I want one, too.’
‘Fucking useless,’ she mutters as Lizzy titters.
‘He makes me happy,’ I plead.
‘Of course he makes you happy. If he put on a mask and tied me up and stuck his enormous dick inside me, he’d make me happy, too. That guy makes everyone happy. No wonder his Instagram following has grown by a hundred thousand since the trailer dropped.’
‘It has?’ Cal must be thrilled. I’m amazed he didn’t wow me with the stats yesterday.
‘Focus, Russell. You’re not supposed to fall for the young, hot, professional shagger. What did Simone call him? Your boy toy. You’re supposed to enjoy him, not sail off into the sunset with him.’
‘Why not?’ Lizzy asks, crossing her arms. ‘For the sake of the messaging. Is Aida Russell finds happiness with a hot younger guy after her un-hot, older husband fucks her over not a compelling message?’
Mara holds up her hands in defeat. ‘Honestly, you don’t pay me enough to deal with this muppetry.
You’re both intentionally missing the point.
This experiment is supposed to be about smashing stereotypes.
Breaking boundaries. Doing whatever the fuck you like with a guy who’s completely inappropriate and showing the beloved Great British Public that the sky does not fall when you indulge yourself once in a while.
‘This Cal guy is a bloody KFC Bargain Bucket. Fucking delicious, great for the occasional treat, and fills you up good and proper, but you’re not supposed to get hooked.’