Hard

By Emma Gold
Published by Kensington
March 2004; $12.95US/$17.95CAN; 0-7582-0390-X

In Easy, Emma Gold's straight-talking heroine put a randy new spin on the sex life of the single British girl. Now she returns with the adventures of a new woman-about-London. From office politics (fending off the boss's advances; dating the co-worker's son) to bedroom diplomacy (no sleepovers past 3 a.m.; hetero lovemaking must be muffled so as not to offend gay roommate), the only sure bet is that when all the right balls are in the air (so to speak), all the wrong things will become . . . Hard.

The Job

I really quite like my job -- as jobs go. We get lots of people dropping in, and no one stays long enough to really irritate me. The bitching potential of different people coming into the office every day is phenomenal . . .

The Boss

In my opinion, Wayne has a tiny (ahem). All the signs are there: the flashy sports car with vanity plates, the failed marriage, the thin, short fingers, the small, shell-like ears, and the constant flirting. Does Wayne sound awful? Because the thing is, apart from the above, he really is a wonderful boss . . .

The Man

He walks me back to my flat. I have already decided it would be extremely unwise to invite him in, especially as I know my flatmate, Simon, is around and he is so unbearably randy at the moment that I am worried the mad glint in his eyes will send Luca running. But I'm randy as well, so I invite him in . . .

And so begin the hilarious over-the-top (and under-the-covers) exploits of a woman on the verge of a breakdown, a break-up, and, quite possibly, a breakthrough. She's about to prove that in the world of London's singles, only the sassy survive -- but just because life is hard, it doesn't mean your heart has to be.

Author

Emma Gold is a unique new voice in fiction -- fearless, honest and outrageous. She has had over 150 jobs from secretary to media lawyer, but has finally found career satisfaction as a therapist and writer. Emma Gold lives in London.

Reviews

"Gold's comedy is full of insights into work and falling for the right man, at the wrong time."

--Cosmopolitan (U.K.)

"A feisty tale."

--Mirror

"Wickedly irreverent."

--Daily Mirror

"Like a long chat with a friend, Emma might, at times, get on your nerves, but mostly you'll be thinking 'That's just how I feel!'"

--Company

Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the book Hard

by Emma Gold

Published by Kensington; March 2004; $12.95US/$17.95CAN; 0-7582-0390-X

Copyright © 2004 Emma Gold

The Colleague

I'm a pimp. I send girls out to work while I sit on my arse all day, chatting on the phone. I get part of their earnings and, obviously, the harder they work, the more money I get. But I am not unreasonable. I won't send girls out to clients they don't like (unless I am desperate) and I don't pressurize them too much if they are not feeling well enough to go out on a job (unless I am really desperate). I just hate letting the clients down, especially as there are loads of other agencies that are only too happy to send out a temporary secretary at the last minute. That's why I don't like the girls letting me down.

Anyway, I shouldn't be calling them girls. As I keep telling Bert, our short-arsed, crusty old bookkeeper, they are not girls, they are women. Last week, he even referred to a woman in her late fifties as a girl. "Look, Bert," I said, "I think once a girl has started menstruating, she is entitled to be called a woman." He looked horrified when I mentioned the word "menstruating"; even more so when I continued: "And I think they are certainly entitled to be called women by the time they have stopped menstruating." Bert scurried off, looking forlorn and harassed but not daring to utter his usual "silly girl" to me in case I mentioned women bleeding again.

I used to be a temp so I know what it's like to have to go out to work. But then again I used to be a lot of things: lawyer, drug dealer, estate agent, candlestick-maker, baker, TV researcher, party organizer, waitress, dental nurse, conference organizer, painter and decorator, shop assistant -- to name but a few.

As far as I am concerned, it doesn't really matter what you do. You work for someone else through the best eight hours of your day (daylight), during the best years of your life (most of your adult life), five days a week, forty-eight weeks a year, when you could be lying in bed, lying in the sun, lying in front of the fire, going to the cinema, reading a book, walking in the countryside, making a beautiful meal, hanging out with your friends, spending time with your loved ones, thinking, daydreaming, fishing, sculpting, painting, planting flowers, meditating. Or having sex.

It's a shame that I can't combine sex and money, but prostitution is the only thing from which I have not been able to make any money. I did once ask a guy to pay me for a night in the sack. We'd met each other several times through friends and got on really well. One Saturday night on the town during the Christmas holiday season we got on particularly well and he ended up back at my place. In the morning we lay in bed chatting quite amicably until he told me his plans for the day. "Yeah," he said casually, "today I'm taking this girl I'm really after to an art gallery and then out for lunch." Having seen from his face that I was not the girl in question (he wasn't smiling or even looking at me -- in fact, he was looking for his pants), I started getting dressed. "That sounds lovely," I told him. "By the way, that will be one hundred pounds." "What are you talking about?" he said, looking confused. "Well, you treated me like a prostitute, now you can pay me," I said. "I want some money." He started laughing nervously, refused to pay once he realized I was being serious, and then dashed for the door. He didn't even bother to haggle.

Still, like most people, I have rent to pay, clothes to buy, drugs to smoke and videos to rent. Therefore, I need to work. Now I know that some people enjoy working -- they may even look forward to going in to work -- but I have never been one of them. The best I can say is that, in the case of my present job, I don't mind going to work. There are always other things that I would rather be doing, but as jobs go it's not too bad. As I said, I send secretaries out to temporary assignments and they do the work. Meanwhile, I sit on the phone, chatting to the girls (sorry, women) and the clients, who are mostly women too. It is all rather nice.

I also get on well with my co-worker, Tina, who deals with finding permanent work for secretaries. Tina is in her early fifties but looks like she's in her late thirties (if you screw up your eyes), and I'm not sure that I mean that as a compliment. Her hair has been dyed yellow blonde and is pulled straight every morning with the help of a mega-wattage professional hair dryer and a variety of hair products that are applied at every stage of the daily ritual (during washing, after washing, before drying, during drying and after drying). I know about these products as Tina often slips out at lunchtime to invest in a new miracle shampoo/lotion that she swears will change her life. I am not the sort of person who likes to quell excitement so I coo over each new purchase (despite the fact that I believe she is wasting her time and money. Tina could have beautiful, curly, rich brown hair and her life would then be so much easier, but for some weird reason a lot of women seem to want the exact opposite of what they have in the hair department, hence, I suppose, the cruel invention of the perm. My six-year-old niece's greatest wish on her birthday was to have her lovely curly ringlets pulled straight). I have even become quite creative at making fresh and constructive comments on the product's smell, texture, predicted efficacy and informative literature.

Tina's eyebrows have been plucked and redrawn. The eyebrow on the right side has been drawn into an arched line giving her a perpetual "How about it, you and me?" expression. I think this is deliberate. Her nails are long, tipped, square and painted. I am fascinated by her ability to type at eighty words a minute with these talons. To be honest, I don't know how she even manages to hold a pencil, let alone write anything legible, but she seems to have integrated the nails into her repertoire of daily tasks.

She also manages to totter around quite effortlessly on four-inch heels every day. I've even seen her run for the bus a few times and it is an impressive sight. I know high heels make one look taller, slimmer and more elegant while making wondrous transformations to the shape of one's calf, but I personally feel very strongly about high-heeled shoes. They throw your spine out of alignment and fuck up your knees (hence the high proportion of women who require knee replacements as they get older) and, unless you are a real pro, walking any further than from a car to a dinner table is a distinctly uncomfortable activity. At lunchtime I want to be able to nip out, run up to the bank then down to the shops; with heels I can just about make it to the photocopier in the next room.

Tina and I disagree vehemently on the subject of high heels. She thinks I am making a fuss about nothing and claims to find them more comfortable than flat shoes, but I then pointed out that since she has been wearing high heels since she was about four years old -- when it was still fashionable to smoke -- she doesn't know any better. The way I look at it is that I don't mind wearing makeup (although it is a pain trying to remove mascara every night) and I don't mind doing the emotional housework in relationships (I did mind but I have come to terms with it); I don't mind strapping my tits up every day in a bra and I don't really mind doing the washing up at family occasions while my male relatives remain seated. But I do draw the line at footwear that (a) rearranges the alignment of the bones housing my central nervous system, (b) results in plastic knees, and (c) turns the basic human function of walking upright into a crippled limp after only a few feet.

However, high heels do look great on Tina, whose slim but muscley legs are often out on show, one way or another. She still wears very short skirts and I can't make up my mind whether I approve or not. In theory I suppose I do, but on a good day Tina looks like she is trying far too hard and on a bad day, she can look like a man in drag. She separated from her husband eight years ago when she discovered that he had remortgaged their beautiful home in Maida Vale to repay his gambling debts, and divorced him a year later when the said beautiful house was repossessed. Despite still feeling a little bitter about her change in lifestyle (she now lives in a maisonette in Hendon and works for a living instead of shopping and lunching), she is delighted that she is no longer obligated to fake pleasure during lovemaking with her tubby husband.

During one quiet afternoon at work when the phones actually stopped ringing for a couple of hours, when the boss was out and Bert, the dozy bookkeeper, was playing Solitaire again in the back office, she described her husband's sexual technique to me. Apparently, she would be lying in bed and he would emerge from the bathroom looking hopeful. As he walked towards her, a leg would be lifted and cocked to one side and his expression would temporarily change from desire to grimace as he farted. There would be an obligatory sniff of each armpit while kneeling on the bed looking at her, a rough grope of her breasts, and within minutes he would be on top of her, pumping away furiously. This lasted approximately two and a half minutes and she didn't know whether to feel pleased or angry that it was all over so quickly. He would then belch, fart again, roll over, and she would soon be serenaded to bitter insomnia by the sound of him snoring like a bear.

Copyright © 2004 Emma Gold

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