RetroXotique

No red-blooded man could have refused that offer. Randy hurried to catch her up, and though it was her own house she took his arm while she led the way to her bedroom through a wilderness of polished marble floors and white gloss paint, the clicking of her stilettos echoing back from every surface. When she reached the teak and mahogany door she flung it open carelessly, and was already shrugging out of the little jacket by the time Randy had closed it softly behind them. She threw it on the floor and commanded “Well, what are you waiting for? Unzip me!”

Clearly, Randy reflected, this was his lucky night. Men thirty years younger would have sold their souls for Circe to invite them into her bedroom and demand to be undressed. There Jean stood in front of him, perfect from head to foot, with her hands on her hips emphasising still further the astonishing hourglass curves of her bust, waist and hips displayed in all their glory by the tight red satin sheath. It was not the first time he had been in this position, but even so his hand shook a little as he reached out and began tugging the straining zip down her back.

He had not expected Jean to be naked under her gown, like the slutty young actresses he had entertained from time to time, but nevertheless he couldn’t help being surprised by what was revealed a few inches down. Jean sighed and said wearily “Yes, before you ask, it is a corset. Get on with it, darling.”

“Wow. That’s amazing,” Randy said, as the zip descended further to reveal black lace, red satin with black piping down the bone channels, and black panels supporting strong steel eyelets between which was threaded a very taut scarlet lace. “I haven’t seen one like this since, what, that film premiere in fifty-four…” “That’s right, go on, rub it in how old I am!”   “No, Jean, I didn’t mean that! It’s wonderful. Outrageously sexy.” The zip had reached the bottom now, and he tenderly put his hands to her hips to pull down the dress. It turned out that “tenderly” didn’t cut it: the skirt was so tight that the dress had no intention of coming down unaided, and in the end he had to tug at it rather harder than was dignified before it fell to the floor.Jean sighed again and stepped out from the pool of cherry satin, a fetishistic vision in her red and black corset, black stockings and white stilettos. “I don’t think you’ve ever looked better,” Randy told her.   Jean shook her elaborately bewigged head. “Oh, you might say that—maybe you even think it—but that doesn’t count.”

“Why not? There’s nobody else here to appreciate you! I’m your only audience, and I can tell you that you’re getting a one hundred per cent approval rating, honey.”

Jean smiled at him: not the Hollywood smile with the two hundred watts of white teeth, but a genuine, rather tired, middle-aged lady’s smile. “It’s not just for you, that’s the thing. This is a costume for Rich Little Poor Girl: I’m breaking it in.”

“Breaking it in?”

“It’s a long story. They wanted me to do a seduction scene in lingerie, and I can’t just turn up in a few scraps of bias-cut satin because of the—things I have to wear under my costume. You know.”

“I can imagine, and honey, for me it just makes you even more sexy.”

“Again, I’m sure you mean that, darling, but that’s not what the boys of today think. The advertisers want to hit the fifteen-to-thirty demographic, and they’re not going to be turned on by a…a middle-aged lady in a heavy Lycra and satin corselette. They want lithe, skinny boy-girls with silicone implants writhing around wearing almost nothing. In my day that wasn’t thought dignified, and now…I’m just not up to it, I’m afraid. Not without a hell of a lot more surgery than I’m willing to risk, anyway.”

“So you thought, if I have to appear in underwear and I can’t do without the control, why not go for a sexy corset?”

“That’s right. There are problems, though.” She sighed again and flopped down on the bed, her long black-stockinged legs stretched out, and kicked off her stilettos. “Do you know how to give a foot massage, darling? Oh, that’s wonderful! Anyway, the first problem is that I don’t think it’s going to work. The young men of today have been reared on micro-bikinis and Hustler: they’re not going to see anything sexy about a mature lady in complicated underwear, however tight.”

“Jean, I don’t agree. I know what you mean about boy-girls, and they don’t do anything for me. A man needs something he can get a grip on! These girls, like the one who plays Zibeline in your show, whatever the hell she’s called—”

“Ashe, darling. Ashe Tate, that’s her name. Not a bad child, but they don’t make them the way they used to. Even poor Mamie van Doren could have out-vamped her.”

“Right. They have the tits, fine, that’s very nice, but that’s all they have. They keep going on too little food and too much exercise, and nothing else ever develops. I’m surprised they ever manage to have children, they look so much like boys. Overgrown twelve-year-old boys with artificial tits, that’s about all of it. Whereas you,” and he caressed Jean’s corseted curves, from bosom to waist to swelling hip, “are the whole package of womanhood. You’ve got it all, and in that corset more than ever. The young men of today may not know it, but they’ve missed something looking at all these top-heavy scarecrows who think that having a backside you can see is next door to a deformity.”

Jean laughed a little. “Maybe you’re right. Even so, that’s only the first problem. Look.”

She rolled over so that her back was towards Randy. He gasped at the luxuriant view of her exquisitely nipped waist and her full behind firmed and shaped by the tightly laced corset. “I am looking, honey, and I could go on looking all night. Except maybe I might have to grab you—”

“You can do that later, darling. Listen to me first. Don’t you notice there’s a gap between the two sides of the corset?”

“Uh-huh…about two inches, I’d say.”

“Yes, two inches. I had Lupe measure me exactly when she was dressing me. I had that dress adjusted to fit me when I was laced to twenty inches, but this corset isn’t laced nearly tight enough yet. There are two inches still to go: it’s an eighteen-inch corset, Randy.”

Randy gaped for a time. When he had recovered his voice he said “Eighteen inches!…Well, you haven’t lost your touch! Try your friend Ashe in an eighteen-inch corset, she’ll faint dead away.”

“Darling, I’m touched by your confidence in me, but I think I might do the same thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the tightest I’ve been laced, darling, except for a few minutes yesterday to nineteen inches. I could stand that, but it wasn’t pleasant: I couldn’t have taken it through an evening out. Even twenty inches for this evening was almost more than I could bear: you noticed I wasn’t enjoying myself. There are a couple of weeks to go before the Big Scene hits the soundstage, but I’m not at all sure I can make eighteen inches before then—at least, not without fainting. I’ve been wearing this damn thing night and day for a month—”

“Night and day?”

“—to train my waist into submission, so that I get used to it, and so that my figure can adjust. Rob Janetta told me to do it this way. Oh, he was right, I suppose, and I could never have gone out for a couple of hours laced to twenty inches when I started—which reminds me, darling, please loosen my stays before I faint.”

“Of course, honey. I’ll set you free.”

“No, don’t do that! Loosen them a couple of inches. I can’t afford to slacken off too much. I’ve got to keep up the pressure twenty-four hours a day if I’m going to make eighteen inches for the shoot.”

Randy did as he was told, untying the laces, then keeping a firm grip on them as they attempted to slip all the way out at once. When the gap down the back of the corset had widened to four inches he said “Honey, are you sure you don’t want me to loosen them all the way? That corset must be killing you!”

“It is, darling, and thank you the offer, but I have to be firm. The more I let out, the more I have to claw back afterwards, and I can’t let myself become careless. Tie the laces off at twenty-two inches. Thank you. As I was saying, I have to keep the corset tight all the time, and except for washing I must never take it off altogether.”

“Not even for sex?”

“Not even for sex.”

“This could get quite raunchy,” he said, with a devilish grin that made Jean tingle pleasantly.

Afterwards they lay in each other’s arms for some time, till at last Jean said “Well, all good things must come to an end, darling. I’m relying on you to lace me up again.”

She pushed herself up and walked across the room to take a firm grip on a marble-topped Queen Anne washstand, which did not at all fit in a Hollywood mansion half the age of its current owner. Randy followed her and uncertainly took hold of the laces. “I haven’t done this for more than thirty years,” he mused.

“Oh, you make me feel so old!”

“Don’t say that. That corset makes you look as if you’ve discovered the secret of eternal youth—for your figure, at least.” Jean laughed, and Randy went on as he carefully untied the bow he had made when he first undressed her “The last time I had to lace up your corset was at that Royal Film Premiere, wasn’t it?”

“Princess Pride, back in fifty-four. I shall never forget it!”

“You looked marvellous, honey, even by your standards,” Randy went on, as he began tugging on the scarlet laces of her corset.

“I should think so, after what I went through,” Jean said ruefully. “Just because it was a historical film and I had to be tightly laced for my costumes, they thought I should be corseted for my evening gown too. And I was fool enough to ask for a waist of seventeen inches!”

“If you managed that, eighteen inches should be easy,” Randy reassured her. “Is it tight enough now?”

“Try and get a three-inch gap down the back, darling. That’ll be twenty-one inches. I’ve had enough of twenty inches for tonight: I do need to sleep, even if it has to be in a tight corset! Anyway, what with running the gauntlet of the press at the start, that damn premiere took ages, and in the end I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to ask you to sneak out with me while the film was playing and loosen my stays.”

Randy chuckled at the pleasant memory. “Happy to help! And then we found something to do to take your mind off your aching ribs, didn’t we?”

Jean gave a stifled giggle. “Don’t make me laugh when you’re tight-lacing me, darling! So there we were afterwards, me with my dress off and my corset unlaced, smoking, and suddenly you noticed the damn film’s due to end in ten minutes!” “So I had to hurry to lace you up again…” “And you’d never done anything like it before, you didn’t realise quite how hard you needed to pull…” “And you were gasping away ‘Tighter! Tighter!’ until I thought I’d break one of your ribs if I pulled any harder…” “And you were grunting and groaning away, trying to get down the last inch that would let me get into my dress…” “And then one of the usherettes thought we were having sex in the storeroom and burst in to find out what we were doing!”   Randy laughed aloud. “She was a bit late for that! I had to give her some money to get rid of her.”

“Twenty pounds, I think, darling. It went a long way in fifty-four. So you put your foot in my back and pulled as hard as you could, until finally you got me down to seventeen inches, and then you squeezed me back into my dress just in time for the lights to go up and us to take the applause!”

“And then we met your queen,” Randy said softly. “The greatest event in any Englishwoman’s life, honey, the one time you have to be on your very best behaviour, and she had no idea what we’d been doing while she was watching the movie!”

“I’ve seen the newsreel many times,” Jean said. “It’s reassuring to know I once looked that good. I was right at the end of my tether, though: as soon as I got out to the limousine I had to unlace again. Still, I managed it long enough.”

“I’m sure you can do it this time too, honey.”

“Are you really?”

“Positive. You just need to believe in yourself and not panic, and find someone with a good strong pair of arms.”

Jean thought for some time before asking “How tight are my stays now?”

“I haven’t got a tape-measure, honey, but I’m about three inches short of closing them, like you said.”

“Well, I’ve got to face this some time. Lace me close.” “What?” “Do it properly, darling. Put a foot in my back, grab the laces, and pull as hard as you can until my corset’s as tight as it will ever go. I want to find out what an eighteen-inch waist feels like—and looks like.”   “If you say so, honey,” Randy said, torn between worry that Jean might be hurt and eagerness to see the results. He helped her to lie on the floor, face down and almost buried in the thick carpet; then he bent a little stiffly, put a foot in the small of her back, untied the temporary knot he had made in the laces of her corset, and straightened up to give a good yank. “Oh!” “Are you sure you want to go through with this, Jean, honey?”

“Yes!” Jean panted. “I went all the way with you: now I want you to go all the way with me!”

“All right, honey: I’m putting my back into it. Nnnnnnngh!”

“How much…further?” Jean gasped.

“Not far. Argghhh! Come on, you bastard!”

“Don’t…break the laces!”

“Your…designer…knew what he was…doing…when he made this…corset,” Randy grunted as he tugged away. “It will hold! There. Let me help you up. Can you stand?”

“…Think so. Thanks.” Randy carefully lifted Jean up, taking care not to strain his own back while he was at it, and leaning on him she tottered to the long mirror.

The results were all she could have wished for. Her waist was smaller yet, her bosom pushed up and out even further, and heaving with the struggle to breathe, and her broad hips stood out in sharp contrast, shaped into perfect form by the long corset. “Rob was right,” she whispered.

“What did you say, honey?”

“Rob…the designer…he was right…nobody’s going to…forget this…never seen anything like it…before…”

Randy put his hands to her waist as if spanning it with his fingers. It was very nearly possible. “If that skinny boy-girl of yours came on set naked as the day she was born,” he said softly, “nobody would even notice if you were dressed like that.”

“Good.” Jean took as long as she could admiring her incredible reflection, but she had reached her limit and she knew it. “Now…loosen my stays.”

“Are you sure? If you wait a little longer it’ll be easier the next time.”

“Loosen my corset…or I’ll faint!”

That was a serious threat. Looking at her in the mirror Randy nodded gravely, then untied his knot again. The laces whizzed out through the eyelets, and he had to snatch at them to stop the corset loosening too far. “There you are, honey,” he said. “I think you’re at twenty-one inches again.”

“Thank you, Randy, darling. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Seriously,” Randy asked, “do you think you can get down to eighteen inches with only a woman to help? It was pretty hard work even for me!”

“Susie works out,” Jean assured him. “She’s used to pulling hard. She’ll manage it.”

“I hope so. If you ask me, honey, it’s going to be worth it.”

Jean looked at her reflection and pressed her hands into the sides of her waist, as if trying to recover the dramatic silhouette she had seen for just a few minutes. “Oh, it is! I just have to hope I can stand it long enough to shoot my scene, that’s all.”

---

The intercom crackled and said pointedly “Would Jean Harper please come to soundstage 5? We’re not being paid to wait for you, baby!”

“That’s it,” Susie said. “We’ve got to try again.” “I don’t think I can do it!” Jean complained. “You’ll get there somehow,” Susie reassured her. “Stand up and hang onto the door-handle.” Jean did as she was told, and felt one of Susie’s feet pressing into her back. “Not far to go now,” her dresser’s voice came from behind her, chummy and reassuring. “Only the last inch.” “That’s—the—hardest—part!” Jean forced out, as Susie tugged with all her strength on the laces.

“You don’t have to put up with it long, Miss Harper. Only half an hour or so. Less, if nobody fluffs their lines. There!”

“If he messes up…” Jean panted, teeth gritted, “I’ll kill him!”  

“Well, I’m sure he won’t. Some of them, that Miss Tate for instance, they do so much blow they don’t care whether they know their lines or not, but he’s not that bad yet. Now, come on, Miss Harper,” she added, turning Jean round and examining her expression, “don’t look like that! You look about sixty!”

“I don’t think…I can stand it…”

“Yes you can, Miss Harper. Just imagine how Miss Tate’s going to envy you! She’d never get a costume like this, not with her goody-two-shoes character!”

“She’s lucky…”

“She’s not the star of this series. You are. Now come on, head up, shoulders back, look like you despise everyone—”

“Jean,” the intercom suddenly demanded, “are you coming or do I have to send someone after you?”

“No time for more pep talk,” Susie said with a smile. “You’ll knock them out.” She slipped the matching black tulle negligée Rob Janetta had made around Jean’s heaving shoulders, belted it loosely so that it didn’t betray quite how small was the waist about which it had been fastened, then gave her employer a friendly pat on the shoulder and unlocked the door.

Outside was the corridor, and how many hundred yards down it to the soundstage? And then how long would it take to shoot the scene? Jean set out, trying to walk calmly, never hurrying, because if she hurried and panicked she might faint. It was an effort to hold herself back: she wanted to get it over with. Also there was another urge within her: she wanted people to see her. That brought a faint knowing smile to her perfectly carmined lips. If she could hold out, if she could just play the scene as it was written, there would be nobody in television to touch her. She might even start seeing film offers again…

The soundstage was closed to stop plot rumours leaking out to the tabloids. Strictly speaking the security guard on the door was supposed to see everyone’s pass, but there was little need with the cast, and none at all with Jean Harper. “Morning, Miss Harper, ma’am,” he said, touching his peaked cap. “You’re looking fine today!”

Jean would have liked to drop a hint about how much finer she would look when he saw the scene she was about to shoot, but she needed to save her breath. She managed only a faint “Thank you,” and a graceful nod of the head as the door opened.

She usually liked making grand entrances, but this one was not quite what she had had in mind. Everyone was looking at the door waiting for her, and various unimportant minions who had fallen foul of her from time to time were taking advantage of her temporary disgrace to frown at her. As if she cared for their opinion!—and in any case, they’d soon regret it. She swept through them, the weightless hem of her negligée flying up in the breeze to expose her still-handsome black-stockinged legs and exquisite, impractical, five-inch heeled bedroom mules. Can you look like this? her expression asked them. Then don’t presume to judge me.

The director, however, was not so easily dismissed. “Ah, Miss Harper, so glad you could join us!”

“Meow!” Jean thought, but all she said was “I think when we’ve shot the scene,” a brief pause to take what she hoped did not look to the assembled lesser mortals like a desperate gasp for air, “you’ll find it was worth the wait.”

“It had better be. This is costing us money.”

“It’ll make more money back.” She had to pause for breath again before continuing. “I guarantee it.”

“OK, so we’ll see what happens. Places everybody, beginning of scene twenty-four. Miss Harper, you sit on the bed—or recline seductively if you like, that’s fine—and Mr Grothendieck, we need you outside the main door. Thank you. Quiet on the set, now! Vision on, sound on, and action!”

Philip Grothendieck or, as he now was, Coleridge Falkland, knocked on the door of the set. Jean’s heart was pounding as it hadn’t since she was a Rank starlet and went in front of the cameras for her first screen test. Again she was worried about letting herself down, and again she was wearing a corset tighter than she had believed possible. She had done her best to look relaxed, to lean back on the bed as if she was ready for pleasure rather than incapable of sitting down because her corset was so long and tight, and to mould her previous anguished expression into Circe’s characteristic look of erotic hauteur, but she still had her lines to remember, all the right actions, the marks to hit, and—

“Cut! Miss Harper, is there something the matter? Did you forget your first line?”

“No. I—I’m sorry.”

“It’s ‘Come in, darling,’ by the way. All right, everyone, scene twenty-four, take two. Action!”

The knock on the door came again. “Come in, darling,” Jean purred languidly.

The set door opened, and Coleridge entered. “Circe, I—is this a bad time?”

Remembering her Rank Charm School deportment, with its particular lessons on how to stand up gracefully when wearing a very tight dress and a corset, Jean unfolded herself smoothly from the bed, placed her precarious shoes on the floor, and stood without a single wobble. “Why should it be, Coleridge?”

“Well, you—you don’t seem to be dressed for business.”

“However I am dressed, darling, I am always ready for business. Especially,” and the pause in the dialogue gave her a welcome chance to regain some of her breath, “when I can mix it with pleasure.” As she spoke she was swinging her way across the set, picking every step with care, yet seeming to do it naturally. By the time her line ended she was alongside him, stretching out one elegant arm, pale as it emerged from the black tulle of the negligée, to put it round his manly shoulders.

“Circe—maybe I should go.”

“Why, darling?”

“I…I don’t think this is appropriate.”

“What’s inappropriate about it? This is my boudoir, after all, and if I choose to dress a little…informally while I’m here, what’s wrong with that? Do you think I live in those uptight business suits?”

“Circe, I…I don’t think I can discuss this with you when you’re dressed like that.”

“Distracting, is it?” Circe said, walking round him with a teasing smile, and running her vermilion-nailed fingers along his chest. “Poor Coleridge! You men are all the same. All right, darling, if it means so much to you,” and here she paced back across the bedroom, the feather-light negligée lifting almost to her hips and showing off her long, long legs in their black seamed stockings, “I shall take this negligée off.”

“Please!”

“Oh, don’t worry, darling. I’m perfectly…decent underneath.” And with one deft movement she untied Susie’s artfully careless knot, slipped the negligée from her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor in a pool of black gossamer.

A gasp ran round the soundstage.

“Cut!” the director shouted. “What the hell is wrong with you people? It’s like a disease! You’re supposed to be professionals, for Christ’s sweet sake! Is there anyone here prepared to pretend they did not hear me call for quiet on the set?”

There was quiet on the set indeed.

“Sure! You heard me! So what the hell are you doing making noise while we’re shooting?”

There was another long silence. This time it was broken by one of the lesser mortals: Caitlin Matukewicz, the third assistant director. “I’m sorry, it’s just…we’ve never seen anything like her before.”

“I’m flattered,” Jean said, and she was.

“Miss Harper, if you don’t mind me asking, wh—what are your measurements in that thing?”

“I have an eighteen-inch waist, if you really want to know,” Jean said, feeling so proud she began to worry it might burst her laces. “I don’t know about the other vital statistics, but I’m sure we can find out.”

“You just look so amazing…you know, a few weeks ago, you promised to sign an autograph for my little girl. When she sees this show, she’s going to go wild…do you think you could get me a picture of yourself in that costume?”

“Well, I haven’t arranged a shoot yet,” Jean said smugly, “but when we do—”

“Quiet!” the director shouted. “Whatever you may think, this is not a meeting of the Jean Harper Fan Club! Not that,” he added, with a distinctly lecherous glance at his leading actress, “I have any problems seeing why you’re all so excited. We’ll get that photo-shoot organised as soon as we can, but in the meantime, people, we have a TV show to shoot! First positions, please,” and as his cast of two returned to their initial places, “and can we please keep the set quiet this time? I know Miss Harper’s new figure is enough to take anyone’s breath away, but let’s do it silently.”

“He’s right,” said the wardrobe assistant who was helping Jean back into the negligée that she had dropped on the floor. “You do look breathtaking.”

“I know,” Jean said, and added to herself, “I just hope I can keep enough of my own breath to get through this scene so that I can get back and unlace…”