The Melting of the Ice Queen

I'd always been pretty confident. Tall, blonde, with long legs? It is a truth universally acknowledged that (unless you have a face like the back of a bus) you will be desired

- and even then, if your tits are big enough (which as it happens mine aren't). I knew that. It had taken me happily through school. English public schools for girls are not the hotbed of lesbianism beloved of erotic story-tellers, but they have something in common with the world portrayed by David Attenborough's wild life films - they are full of prey or predators. Tall blondes are usually the latter; I wanted to be neither, so posed as the latter.

Rumour had it that I was a lesbian. Was I? It was a label the old folks used. Boys desired me. That amused me. I did not desire them. Maybe it was their desperation; it smelled of defeat. Maybe it was their arrogance; it smelled of desire. There are only so many times boys can attempt to goose you, feel you up or otherwise molest you before you slap them. My view was that once was one too many. That got me the name of the "Ice Queen." Like Lady Thatcher with the "Iron Lady" sobriquet, my nickname stuck because I liked it. That it said something about me probably helped it stick. People like labels. Other people, oh bloody Sartre was right, they are hell. Not letting a boy or man within a mile of my knickers did not make me a lesbian; did it?

I liked to think of myself as one of those Helmut Newton blondes; tall, inscrutable, with an edgy sex appeal. All would look on me and despair, I thought. Galadriel was an idiot. She could have had power. Being wanted by men gave me a sort of power. Mel, my best friend and lodger, said I came across as a bitch to others. But I knew what a bitch was; my mother was. Daddy always said so. No one cared what he said as long as the bills were paid. I caught her for the first time when I was sixteen. She and uncle Guy got careless. He was taking her from behind on daddy's desk. Her face was red, she was breathing heavily. I watched as he tupped her.

Oh God, I thought, I really don't want one of those in me; how could she? Bitches were subordinate. Ice Queens were not. So I told Mel I preferred "Ice Queen". She laughed - an attractive laugh, enhanced by the fact she said it over the breakfast table where we were both clad only in knickers and tee-shirts. I knew she swung both ways, so didn't mind her flirting. But did it mean I was "gay"? Words, words, labels, why did people need to label you?

I like words. Like life they are supple, they do not stay still; they are ambiguous. I was sexually ambiguous. I decided that when I was seventeen. Taylor Swift was a goddess. I could be one too. It was cool to be gay, but cooler to be ambiguous. Looking back, I give a quiet chuckle to think of myself that summer.

I smoked French cigarettes from a holder, and I wore a red beret. When I went to the Boul' St Mich for my eighteenth birthday, courtesy of Daddy's credit card, I was so chic even the French noticed. I was Simone de Beauvoir (but a good-looking one) crossed with Charlotte Rampling - but blonde. "Rampling" sounded delightfully dirty. I wanted to "rample," preferably in style. But I could never attach a noun to the adjective. I tried, I really did.

My Stella Macartney Ruffled trenchcoat demanded a trilby, but how clichéd would that have been? My Maison Michel red beret was a better, wiser choice. I loved the effect with my navy Jeanne Damas Gabin Dress which, cut to the thigh, allowed me to show my long, long legs, set off to advantage by my Satin Look Ballet Pumps with Ankle Ties. As for my lingerie, well that was to be guessed at but seen by no-one except, on occasions, Mel. Poseur? Mais oui, but I was eighteen and in Paris. That was my excuse when Mel and I told each other our life stories as only freshers at uni can. That was when she said I came across as a bitch.

This, and variations on it, became my signature look; my "brand" if you like. It would not have been classy to have screamed "class," but it was classy to understate and imply it. Simple clothes, but expensive and well-cut. No use looking like a super-model if one can't turn being a clothes-horse into a life-style choice.

That last summer before I went up to uni was a golden one. I spent some of it in Paris, and the rest of it in DC. Daddy was friends with the Ambassador, and it was easy to get an internship working for a Congressman. As he knew who my contacts were, he kept his hands to himself, but couldn't resist wining and dining his young intern. As eye-candy went, I went a long way.

I found myself in demand at fashionable parties, and week-ends in the Hamptons were commonplace. The men pursued the honeypot, while I proceeded to implement the best contraceptive device in the world - I kept my legs closed and my panties on. This increased the desire among some men - which added to my status. Maybe they all despaired too, but they definitely desired what I was not giving them. In practice, not having a sex life was another plus, as it meant that no one got upset because I was giving another man what they wanted. I overheard a water-cooler conversation about the "English broad" which went thus: "she's such a fucking ice-queen, doesn't she make you hard just looking at her?" To which the answer was an unrepeatable: "Fuck, I'd love to make the bitch moan." Toward the end of the summer I overheard the same two men conclude that I was "either frigid or a dyke", but "nothing that a good fucking wouldn't cure." Men!

By summer's end I'd decided to get the whole uni thing over with as fast as I could. The model agency I'd worked for part-time in London was offering such regular work that taking the fabled "gap year" would have been mad. I could earn my year's fees in a month, and then some.

Cambridge was cool. I loved it from the start. My college, Trinity Hall, was where Daddy had gone, and it was small enough to be a community in which I could stand out. It was not fashionable, but not dowdy. Within a week I was in my element. The Union building became my stamping ground, and once more the men flocked - and got nowhere. The degree was hardly taxing. Who precisely found English hard? You read books, you mastered the weird theories, you read some lit crit, and you told your tutor all about it. Flashing your pins in short skirts kept the male tutors interested and happy, and as I was clever, with a good memory, I just got on with it. As long as you could pass the exams, no worries. It gave me a day a week in London modelling, and six days in Cambridge posing. Then Annie came onto the scene.

I blamed it on Mel. She was my lodger. Daddy bought me a small house off Downing Parade, and Mel moved in with me when we both decided that living in College was not for us. She had one of the spare bedrooms and used the other as her study. She was fun, and there were never any noisy smelly boyfriends. When I raised the topic before she moved in, she told me not to worry as she was mostly into girls, but kept her options open. As I was cool, I was cool with it, and it would be as ridiculous to suggest that I sometimes went about in my scanties to tease her, as it would to have suggested that I used to steal glances at her tits, which were much bigger than mine. But it was Mel who brought Annie into our lives - or rather it was her liking for very high heels.

High heels are always a problem when cobbled streets are involved, so it was not surprising when, in Trinity term, Mel took a tumble. Her ankle swelled, and it was off to Accident and Emergency by taxi.

I hate hospitals. They smell bad. They smell worse when you are in the waiting room with the proles. I had better things to do than hang around with Cambridge's low life, people to meet, dreams to pursue. Leaving Mel to rest her ankle, I went up to one of the nurses, a tall blonde with what the press called "full breasts". She was, I thought, rather yummy..

"Please, Miss, is it possible to get my friend seen quickly, we have a party to go to tonight."

She turned a pair of big blue eyes onto me, they seemed set in the face of a Renaissance angel. I just looked - entranced. That blue, those lips, oh gosh!

`'Calling me Miss and asking nicely always helps, so does looking like Taylor Swift!"

Her accent was Australian, her smile electric, her manner calm, brisk, but tinged with something I could not identify - but liked. I could feel myself blushing.

"I'm always prepared to ask a gorgeous blonde for assistance when I need it," I flirted back.

My internal monologue went into questioning mode, wondering what on earth was going on? My stomach was feeling odd, my heart fluttery, and as she drilled those baby-blues into me, I felt moist where I shouldn't feel - if that is I was straight sexually.

"Glad to hear it. Tell you what, come on into the triage room, I'll take a look at that ankle - but I expect an invite to this party - deal?"

Internal monologue was suddenly like listening to a scrambled phone message in an echo chamber. As the brain processed the impulses from my misfiring synapses, I was trying at the conscious level to recover my sophisticated, worldly and cool persona; but she seemed to have gone absent without leave, so I had to make do with another bloody giggle and something that sounded horribly like a stammer.

"Okay, yah, right, fab," giggle, "let's do it!"

Light-headed, I wandered over to Mel and, helping her up, took her to the triage room.

"Pix," she asked between grunts of pain, "why are you red in the face. Is it that sexy blonde you have just been making cow's eyes at?"

I denied indignantly the charge, telling Mel in a huff that I'd just been trying to get her preferential treatment. Mel smiled cheekily:

"Sure, yes. So if that was a blonde guy you'd still be making cow's eyes and blushing?"

"Was so NOT making them!" I protested.

"Making what?"

The Aussie nurse was smiling too.

"I said she was making cow's eyes at you," Mel laughed.

"Well she was," the nurse smiled in agreement.

"I was NOT!"

I attempted another rebuttal, but the look in her eyes stopped me in my tracks, or whatever I was on.

"Yes you were, you little madam, now sit there, shut up, and let me look at your mate's ankle."

If anyone else had ever dared speak to me like that I would have ... . Well whatever I thought I would have done, the internal monologue had gone somewhere were it was more concerned with the wetness between my thighs than it was with intellectual abstractions such as how I felt I ought to be treated. This, came the thought, was how I wanted her to treat me. There was a deliciousness in a kind of surrender.

As I sat, my knickers suddenly felt wet and sticky. I was wishing I'd worn something less exiguous than my La Senza lace thong; now I knew why they were called 'scandalous.' There was the distinct chance that my skirt would bear traces of a pussy that seemed to be leaking. I needed to go the loo and wipe; I made my excuses and left. Squatting above the bowl, thong stretched between my knees, my girl goo was all too clear. I peed and wiped. My lips were swollen. I washed.

When I got back the nurse was bending, pulling Mel's ankle up to her thigh, and as she did so I could see the outline of what looked like a thong against the taut skirt. God, I thought, that arse! I wished she was feeling my ankle.

As she examined Mel's ankle I felt a set of odd, even conflicting, sensations course through me. My internal monologue went thus: That arse, do you suppose it is a white lacy thong. God, is she as wet as I am? Don't be a fool, stay cool.

"Right, well the good news," said the nurse, stroking Mel's shapely ankle, "is it isn't broken. It's a sprain, I'll strap it up, but if you go partying you'll need a nurse close by, and no dancing. is that ok, Mel?"

"Not much point in partying if I can't dance, Annie, but I hate to pass up an evening with you, and Pix has her heart set on meeting Mr Right."

"Bloody do NOT," I protested. "You tease." Again, from nowhere that bloody annoying giggle. I hated blondes who giggled. Why had I joined them?

"Hey," I said, "why don't we go to the Fitz instead, there are live bands on tonight, and iI can treat us to supper - and thank Annie?"

Mel brightened.

"See, Annie, when she lets herself, she's just the best! Deal! What do you think Annie?"

"Well," she said, I get off in half an hour - shall I see you two there at 7:30?"

She was looking at Mel, I was sure she was. I didn't want to play gooseberry, but nor did I want to spend Saturday night alone.

I was sure I heard Mel say yes for us both, but my concentration was suddenly not what it usually was. It was as though my usual internal monologue was being fed through a faulty amplifier. There were tweets and woofs and echoes, and my head began to hurt as the usual levels mixed themselves up.

How dare Mel flirt with her like that? I saw her first! Oh my God that arse, want. Stop it! Be cool. You are the Ice Queen. You are not a lesbian. Oh my God, she's taking Mel's tights down. She's so cute. I am so NOT a lesbian. Meanwhile, Mel's tights discarded, the nurse was strapping up the ankle.

"There, Mel, done." She was looking straight up Mel's dress, and bloody Mel was encouraging it.

"You like what you see?" Mel flirted outrageously.

"I sure do, and if blondie wants to give me her ankle, I can check it out."

There it went again, the fuzz, the woofs, the distortions of the internal monologue. Was she talking about me like that? Oh my God, she was talking to me! She is gorgeous. Dummy, you are supposed to answer.

"Erm, there's nothing wrong with my ankle," I protested.

"No harm my looking, give it here," Annie responded.

I did. As she began to probe my ankle, I was aware of two things: my legs had opened, and the scent I was emitting.

Annie smiled, looking at me, and then Mel.

"She's right, Mel, her reaction is perfectly normal. But I still don't know your name, blondie."

"She's Lady Jessica Fortescue, but we all call her Pixie."

I blushed.

"Wowzer, a genuine British aristo hey?"

"Well, she's best known as the Ice Queen, did you see her in last month's Vogue?"

"Knew I'd seen those legs before," Annie replied, "but I thought you guys were students."

"We are," Mel replied, "but Pix models for an agency."

I wanted to say something, but had momentarily lost the ability to form words that would make sense. Why is my tongue too large for my mouth? That was the totality of my internal monologue which made sense.

"Good, see you guys at 7:30 at Fitz's."

Mel and I both stared at that arse as she provocatively wiggled it.

"Pix, you can close your mouth now,"

"You're one to talk, flashing your yaya at her", I shot back.

Mel laughed.

"She seemed interested. You reckon she's one of us?"

"I am NOT a lesbian, Mel."

Mel looked at me and then past me.

"That's a shame," said an Australian accent from behind me, "because I swing both ways." She goosed me.

"Always liked blondes, what about you Mel?"

Mel laughed.

"You'd be out of luck with Pix then. She's so deep in the freezer in the closet that we call her the 'Ice Queen' - virgo intacta."

I felt myself blush, as we turned and walked together to the cab. My internal monologue got even odder.

"Just thought I'd give you my number so we can text if there's a problem."

My phone was out of my bag in seconds, and I got the number first time, even sending her a confirmatory text. How could I do that when my brain had ceased to function?

This was getting silly. My clit seemed hyper-sensitive as I walked out with Mel to grab the taxi I'd ordered. It was brushing against the lace fabric of my thong. My small nipples were stiff. Why? What was this Annie woman doing to me? I was not gay, I was curious. I was not gay, men lusted after me. I liked guys, why I had some as friends. Yeah, sure, and they made my cunt feel as though it was hyper-sensitive did they? Of course they didn't.

Mel grabbed my hand.

"Thanks Pix, and by the way I wasn't joking, I think she likes you. Would you? I would!"

"I could see she liked you, Mel, and you know I'm not that way, though sure, I'm not averse to the idea."

Mel laughed, and just as the cab drew up whispered to me:

"Sure, and that was why we could both smell your yaya!".

Busted!