Town Pump Pt. 06 (Dollars & Scents)

Apologies for taking so long to post this chapter. The interval, I think, calls for a brief recap.

Candide Becker, a bookish, disaffected young woman, had morphed into the local town pump during late adolescence. After acquiring a reputation as the "nympho nerd" of Centerville, she took off to the big city and transformed into popular porn star Kandi Stryper, known for her gonzo-anything-goes performance, her vocal responses, and certain anatomical features: a giant clit and protruding nipples. After a few years at the top of the porn business, her meteoric career crashed and burned in a bonfire of drugs and booze and she returned to Centerville to find peace and recovery.

While attempting to put her past behind her, she met a former classmate, the photographer Daryl Metcalf. They married, and during the Covid lockdown, Candide "Deedee" Metcalf wrote her first novel and was persuaded to publish it under her porn name. After her book, a noir-ish thriller, sold moderately well. Her publisher persuaded her to follow it up with a memoir of her porn career, which became a runaway hit. She engaged her former porn producer and sometime co-star, Richard Silverman (aka "Dick Grosso"), as a manager. As her career prospects began to soar, her husband, Daryl, wonders: Is she drinking and using drugs again? Is she fucking that Silverman fellow? And where does all this leave me?

Nobody under age 18 is represented in this chapter.

Town Pump Pt. 06 (Dollars and Scents, aka "Smells Like Queen Spirit")

With the runaway success of her memoir, the seemingly unending round of TV interviews, and requests for personal appearances, Candide Metcalf had fully embraced her role as the porn-princess-turned-bestselling-author. It was a sharp reversal: when they had married, Candide was struggling to put that chapter of her life behind her. Now, it was very much in the forefront, the engine propelling her burgeoning literary career.

The switch had impacts on different aspect of her marriage. When she and Daryl had first started dating, Candide was surprisingly subdued in the bedroom. Far from the aggressive and vocal pornstar that had been the stuff of millions of male fantasies, her sexual demeanor had been markedly low-key, as if she were consciously dialing down her sexuality

And in the first years following their marriage, he was the principal breadwinner and had the more dominant voice in their day-to-day relationship. With the success of her books and the re-emergence of her "Kandi Stryper" persona, all of that had changed. The changes were subtle in some ways, conspicuous in others.

The wave of publicity culminated in a "50 Minutes" interview at their Los Angeles hilltop home, for which Daryl was asked to join his wife on their living room couch and cheerfully answer the reporter's questions regarding his attitude toward his wife's colorful past. As his spouse did most of the talking, Daryl gazed upon the row of AVN Awards -- the Oscars of the porn industry -- that Candide had removed from a box in their garage and placed in a prominent display on their fireplace mantel.

"Daryl, how do you feel about your wife's fame as a star of so many pornography films? Does it bother you that she has had so many sexual partners?" the reporter had asked.

Daryl had shrugged off the question, smiling first at his wife, then back to the reporter.

"No, Candide and I had discussed all that history at length when we began our relationship," Daryl had answered. "I accepted her for who she is, including everything in her past. I'm proud of her for recovering from past dependencies, for making sense of her own personal journey and using her history in such a creative way. I want to support her in every way possible."

"So you're totally OK with being married to a woman who describes herself as the 'town pump'?" the reporter pressed.

Daryl maintained that he was OK with it. But was he really?

The assumption of her ex-porn identity had come with considerable material benefits. Money was no longer a concern, their home was spacious, and a gleaming new electric BMW was parked on their driveway. But Daryl couldn't help but feel uneasy. If his wife, Candide Metcalf, aka Kandi Stryper, was a porno princess, was he a cuckold prince?

Equally disturbing was the pervasive presence of Candide's manager/partner, Richard Silverman, in their lives. Silverman, the porn actor turned producer, had a considerable sexual history with his wife, going back to his own porn career as the performer "Dick Grosso" and, later, as the producer behind the Dazzle Productions porn studio. Silverman had parlayed his successful career as a producer/performer into a thriving business, with tentacles reaching into mainstream entertainment enterprises, artist management, and the financing of films and even video games. From all appearances, his business acumen was serving Candide well, but Daryl had a gnawing feeling that their relationship transcended pure business.

Daryl knew it was silly for him to feel jealous. He had married a woman famed for her promiscuity, and she had warned him, early on, that monogamy might present a challenge. Still, they had spent a few years in a state of marital fidelity, and he was troubled by the thought of his wife re-assuming her role as the "town pump."

It had begun to gnaw at him.

Daryl brought his concerns out into the open.

"I'm proud of your success and I want to do everything I can to support you, but it seems that you've become more distant and the past few months. It seems like we're growing apart."

Candide was quick to respond. "No, no, Darul. I feel as close to you as ever, and I really, truly appreciate the way you've supported me as this all has unfolded. If I seem self-obsessed or distant sometimes, it's just that I never expected all this to happen. I never expected all this success and notoriety or fame or whatever you want to call it.

And I know, deep down, that it's temporary, that if I don't make use of it now, it will all be lost to me as quickly as it all happened. And then, all the work I've done, all the re-living past nightmares, it will all be for nothing. Bear with me please. You've been terrific so far. So let me just play this out. I promise you that I love you deeply. I love you more than the career, more than anything, but I'd be grateful if you'll just be patient for a little while longer. We both get to share in the rewards of all this after all."

Daryl nodded his head and paused before voicing a second, closely related concern.

"It's really disturbing to me that you've become taken Richard into your confidence more than me. He seems to have replaced me as your go-to person. When I hear you on the phone with him it's more like you're talking to a lover than to a business associate."

Candide protested.

"Oh God, Daryl, that's not how it is. Sure, our business partnership is close and requires a kind of intimacy that demands trust and confidence. But it isn't romantic. You have to remember I've known Richard for years and his wife is one of my very best friends. Yes, we fucked on camera, but it was purely for business back then. And our business is totally different now. We're making money together. Lots of money. Richard is very good at that. But you have nothing to worry about."

Darryl thought she was avoiding eye contact as she spoke that last part

On an April morning, just a week after her "50 Minutes" interview, Candide emerged from her home office with news of an impending trip to New York. Silverman was in talks for endorsement deals with the potential to be enormously lucrative. Face-to-face meetings were required. It would be a weeklong trip. She and Silverman would be travelling together.

When Daryl insisted that he accompany them, Candide had argued against it. There was no time for leisure on this trip, she said. The schedule called for back-to-back meetings and required her to focus sharply on the business at hand. "We'll go to New York together, just for fun, later this year," she promised. "This trip is strictly business."

Tempers flared. They both dug in their heels.

"Now I'm having trouble believing that there's nothing going on between you two," Daryl said.

Candide responded to his accusation while refusing to truly engage. "You're being ridiculous," she protested.

But in the end, for once, Daryl had prevailed. When Candide informed Silverman that Daryl would be joining them, Silverman reacted by inviting his own wife, the statuesque porn actress, Lisa, to come along. He booked two suites at the Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Their potential corporate sponsor, L'Quorial Corp., would fly them on the company's Gulfstream jet. They would travel in style, maybe take a few extra days to see some shows.

Silverman's strategy was paying off. As Candide's profile had progressed as a writer and personality, Silverman had rejected all offers for the usual pornstar endorsements and product deals that had flooded in. He and Candide had no interest in earning royalties from "Kandi Stryper Sex Dolls" or the "anatomically correct Kandi Stryper Fleshlight." They were after much bigger game, and the New York trip represented a major step toward realizing those ambitions.

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Daryl gazed at the reflection of his wife in the gleaming mahogany table in the gleaming conference room of L'Quorial Beauty Group, manufacturer and marketer of dozens of celebrity perfume brands. Her image, though diffused in the light bouncing off the table, was nonetheless striking. Resolute. Kandi Stryper, aka Mrs. Candide Metcalf, had grown into a formidable, commanding presence in just the two years since her first book was published. She had accumulated a small entourage. A publicist, an accountant, a marketing consultant. And, of course, her business partner, Richard Silverman.

Kandi Stryper had become an industry.

And yes, she still had a husband. Lately, Daryl had been feeling a need to remind her of that fact.

Taking his seat nearby but not next to his wife, Daryl Metcalf struggled to arrive at a definition of his role in his wife's life, or her various enterprises. Those things -- her life and her enterprise -- seemed to have become synonymous.

He had had to argue to be allowed to tag along witgh his wife and Silverman on this business trip to New York. As the photographer who would be shooting the ad campaign, he reasoned, it would be advantageous to establish an early relationship with the L'Quorial marketing team.

In the end, Candide had grudgingly acquiesced, but not before admonishing him to allow Silverman to perform his negotiating task without Daryl's interference. Daryl would be there for moral support, and window dressing. Daryl had agreed to her stipulations.

She didn't tell Daryl that they had had to do battle with the company for them to accept him as the campaign photographer. There had been no sense in further bruising Daryl's ego.

The conference room, Daryl noted, did not bear the scent of any of L'Quorial's many brands of perfume. No, he decided. The room smelled of money.

Diane Holzman, Chief Brands Officer, Consumer Beauty Division for the company, sat at the head of the table, flanked by Stefano Murti, the company's marketing whiz, and Markus Sobel, who would act as the product manager for the new fragrance. Also present for L'Quorial on that Mnday morning was designer Louis Garrell, who would be presenting concepts for the new scent's logo, bottle, and box, and -- placed just to the right of Holzman in a seat of honor -- the legendary Julien Bourdon, known in perfume circles as "The Hedonist," among the most famous "noses" in the perfume industry.

The master perfumer behind some of the most successful perfumes on the market, Bourdon's grasp of perfume chemistry, olfactory instinct, and artistic vision had created an aura of infallibility around the diminutive 70-year-old, impeccably dressed, as per his trademark, in a notched-lapel Versace suit with gleaming Medusa-head buttons. After some cordial introductions, an assistant to Bourdon -- a smartly dressed, model-thin woman in her early twenties -- opened a Louis Vuitton attaché case and extracted a dozen blotter strips. Circumnavigating the table in her navy blue business suit and three-inch pumps, she handed one of the strips to each attendee. The strips had been prepared with drops of the new fragrance in its most recent stage of development.

Bourdon stood as the strips were being passed.

"I wanted to capture something very basic, something that speaks to our most animal instincts while adding notes of glamour. I wanted to recreate the feelings we first experience in adolescence, when our hormones are firing with explosive fury, when just the glimpse of an object of our desire causes an almost-unbearable intoxication," said Bourdon. "The formula is quite complex, but it leans heavily on bergamot nectar, white musk, sheer jasmine patchouli, and Australian sandalwood. The skin musk is the heart of the fragrance, creating the illusion of clean, warm skin. Together with the patchouli, it creates an unapologetically sexual impression -- one that, if I may be permitted the liberty, reflects the candid, magnetic, and sensual personality of Ms. Stryper. It's not quite finalized, but I believe we are getting close. Very close." Bourdon turned his gaze from his patron, Diane Holzman, and beamed a courtier's smile in the direction of Candide Metcalf.

Bourdon, who usually required a full year to develop a new scent, had been given a tight timeline for a fragrance designed to capitalize on the notoriety of the former porn star, Kandi Stryper. "Make it sexy, make it fast" were the marching orders that came from his longtime client, Diane Holzman. He knew very little about this famous American figure, except for a few news items about the former porn star who had written a highly salacious, very successful memoir of her life as an exhibitionist. Not that he wished to pass any moral judgment on such a personage. On the contrary, Bourdon had a Frenchman's appreciation of a good courtesan, having been raised on the romance of the red-light women of Place Pigalle.

Having developed fragrances capitalizing on the fame and carnal appeal of wanton movie stars and audacious pop singers, he had no qualms about creating a scent that would base its appeal on the more overtly sexual qualities of a figure like Kandi Stryper. Something daring and forbidden. Something nasty.

Soon after he received the assignment, he set about doing research, sequestering himself in his apartment on the swank Rue de Furstenberg.

The perfumer nodded to his assistant, signaling her to click the remote device in her hand. The screen above the conference table flashed a slide depicting a pyramid-like image, constructed of a dozen slices, each bearing the name of a substance.

Bourdon nodded to Diane Holzman before turning to Candide and her small entourage. The Frenchman spoke confidently in lightly accented English. He had delivered presentations at this very table many times before.

"Our objective was to create a scent that would capture immediate attention but only truly reveal itself over time. We believe we are close, but not quite at the level of perfection we hope to achieve. Our fragrance opens soft and slightly cool -- bergamot and white tea hold the door before the warmth arrives. The heart is where restraint starts to slip: indolic jasmine and suede-like orris. What remains after two hours is the point of the composition: a warm, skin-close musk built on ambroxan and modern macrocyclic musk molecules, with just enough labdanum and patchouli to feel inhabited rather than applied."

"To be more specific, what we are trying to capture, what we are very close to realizing, is the excitement a boy--or a girl-- experiences when they first dip their finger into a girl's vagina, when they pull it out and wave it beneath their own nose. It's the most powerful of olfactory responses," said Bourdon, his French accent giving extra emphasis to the word "powerful." "It must be an animal scent, dark, sweet, irresistible, the essence of human arousal."

At the head of the table, Holzman held the strip to her nose and inhaled deeply. She paused, enjoying the anxious looks of her subordinates, whose eyes were fixed on her every gesture, awaiting her judgment. None of them would commit without her signal. She loved keeping her underlings off-balance.

After a sufficiently long hesitation, she beamed her approval, and, on her signal, her executive staff nodded their concurrence, each inhaling once more from their blotter strips.

Holzman finally spoke. "Thank you, Quentin. It's brilliant, as always. And you, Kandi -- or, I'm sorry, Candide -- what is your opinion?"

Candide liked the scent. Bourdon had successfully captured the spirit she and her manager had suggested: pure sexuality, heavy in the musk, a raw scent more redolent of female arousal than anything else on the market. Yes, its olfactory undertone strongly suggested the scent of a woman's well-fucked pussy. But even better. It was the scent that suggested the way a perfect pussy would smell in a perfect world.

Holzman signaled to her marketing director and the ad agency creative director to make their presentation.

Stefano Murti rose from his seat to speak.

"Most sensual fragrance campaigns rely on overt heat. This campaign will rely upon restraint and unpredictability to do the seducing -- which reads as more sophisticated, more prestige-tier, and gives the client a campaign that can run across more media without tripping platform content restrictions, while still feeling unmistakably sensual."

"Julien has suggested several names for this new fragrance. Julien, will you explain?"

Bourdon's gaze swept across the table, taking in the faces of his client and the pornstar's entourage. He paused, smiling, before making his pronouncement.

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As was his custom, Bourdon had thoroughly researched the titular name behind the perfume he'd been commissioned to create. He'd read both her books and the newspaper and magazine stories that had accompanied the book's climb atop the best-seller lists. He'd watched several dozen of the videos that lingered on every porn streaming site on the Internet. He had become fascinated by her progression from the wide-eyed ingenue with a salaciously conspiratorial grim to depraved performer in increasingly gonzo situations.

One clip in particular caught his interest and inspired him to stroke his cock for a full hour as he replayed it again and again. It was from her later, gonzo period, a scene of cuckold porn. The clip was an archetype of that porn category, and it culminated in a long uninterrupted shot of Kandi sitting astride the African-American porn star, E. Norm Johnson.

In the scene a naked man--Kandi's cuckold-- was seated to the left of a four-poster bed. He was not bound or restrained in any way, but he seemed rivteted, almost glued to the seat. The room was opulent, not one of those low-rent motel rooms that many of these clips seem to be taped in, and It had been well-lit, not simply by an LED panel that would flatten everything out. Kandi Stryper, wearing a businesslike skirt and blouse stood facing the chair with her back to the bed, her knees almost touching the seated man. Behind her, Johnson, pressed against her clothed back, his big hands resting on her hips, drawing her body closer and moving in a circular undulation, as if he were massaging his cock against her butt. Her hips were tilted back slightly, as if to offer her encouragement

Johnson reached to the hem of her skirt and slowly pulled it up to her hips, revealing a bald pussy unencumbered by panties. His cock slid between her legs and found the well-moistened opening between her lips. The penetration was tantalizingly slow.

Bourdon assessed that that there were three cameras recording the scene. A stationary camera seemed to be recording a master shot. Another camera was moving around the room on a steadycam. The third camera, was somehow placed directly behind the seated cuckold. When Kandie addressed him, the camera caught his point of view, her eyes bore directly into him and into the camera. The vewer could feel the full force of her taunt.

"I want you to see this, Henry," she said, addressing her cuckold and drawling out the words seductively. "I want you to watch. It's my gift to you, husband, a chance to see something truly essential about me, what I'm like when my body is on fire." The key light played upon Kandi's face, her eyes alive with the eyelight glowing in her pupils, her face an impenetrable blend of sympathy and cruelty.

"You've never seen my body on fire, Henry. I do love you, honey, but you don't make me feel that way. You just can't. Never, baby. Never."

Johnson reached from behind her and began to undo the buttons of her blouse with his big fingers. He worked slowly but steadily until the front of her blouse began to fall open. She shrugged her shoulders as he pulled off the unbuttoned blouse, leaving her standing in her skirt and a front-clasping lacy black brassiere. His fingers moved up to the center of her bra and with a deft movement, he revealed her breasts to the camera. Her nipples. hard with arousal, projecting from her milk-white mounds like a pair of sharp ruddy peaks misplaced on rounded hills. They poked urgently from her body, begging to be sucked or fondled.

Johnson's hands reached down to the hem of Kandi's skirt and began to slowly, slowly raise it to her waist. =She wore no panties. She had no pubic hair.

The camera panned down to the bald cleft of Candide's cameltoe, lingering on her big pink clit, swollen now, poking insistently from the flesh of its hood. As the camera lingered on that close-up, the tip of Johnson's cock made its entrance from between her closed thighs. It began a sequence of sexual peekaboo as it moved back and forth, in a sensuous thigh-fucking rhythm.

Kandi's cuckold sat, mesmerized, as Johnson pulled Kandi back upon his lap, spreading her legs as she squirmed backwards, her pussy now open, her clit shiny and round as a marble, her labial lips glistening with arousal.

Johnson's big cock made its appearance at the entrance to Kandi's slit, and she reached down and guided him inside, her eyes locked mercilessly upon her husband, the love and sympathy she had expressed just moments before now evaporated in a haze of pure animal lust.

Johnson began to pump his hips upward, vigorously plowing Kandi, and the canera zoomed in to show just how much he was stretching the hairless lips of her vagina.

Kandi, who was known for her creative vocal sexual performance, was exceptionally voluble on this occasion.

"Do it, do it, do it, do it," she chanted, her voice descending from a trill to a rasp as her legs raised to a 45 degree angle and her feet hooked behind the powerful haunches of Johnson's ass. they were bouncing rhythmically on the mattress while their observer maintained a stoic silence. A cutaway to the cuckold chair gave viewers a closeup of the man's face, weeping, streaked with tears, stricken with helpless shame.

Riding Johnson in the reverse cowgirl position, her legs splayed to either side of the the big man's thighs, Kandi's small, perfectly round breasts were jiggling with the heaving of her chest and her famously long nipples hardened with arousal. Her hips undulated in a sensuous figure eight movement, guided by Johnson's big dark hands which reached from behind and were bouncing her in a steady rhythm. The two of them moved in perfect synch as he thrust upwards to meet her and downwards to withdraw, a dance of continuous penetration.

Kandi and Johnson switched positions, moving to doggie and then to missionary, where they both resoundingly reached their peak. Periodically, throughout their vigorous copulation, Kandi would lock eyes with her cuck husband.

Bourdon considered that Kandi's orgasm might well have been faked but Johnson's was certainly the real deal. He came mostly inside of her, but artfully withdrew in just enough time to paint her vulva with a generous layer of think white semen.

Johnson rolled off to the tight of the mattress and Kandi turned to smile wickedly at her cuck.

"Did you enjoy that, honey? I certainly did. I am extremely well fucked."

Her legs were drawn up, bent at the knees, and she allowed one knee to swing to her right, opening up and allowing her cuckold and the camera a clear, unobstructed view of the mess that had been made in her closely-shaved nether regions.

"Come here, honey" she beckoned. "Come see what he did to me. Come, come closer. I want you to smell it I want you to take in the scent of real arousal, of true sexual satisfaction. I want you to be a part of this. Come closer. Yes, come give me your tongue, bitch. Smell it. Taste it. Take it all in. It's so much better for me when you're sitting in that chair crying like a cuck baby knowing that you can never do what other men can do for me."

The cuckolded husband complied meekly, his body language reflecting his abject surrender. He was a beaten man as he crawled on his knees the few inches to the bedside. Hoisting himself up to the foot of the mattress, he slowly lowered his head and inched his face along the spread of his wife's legs, slowly, slowly approaching her sodden vulva as she chanted a string of humiliating commands and insults.

At her urging, he inhaled deeply.

Watching the clip over and over, Bourdon imagined he could experience the flavors of that inhalation, the powerful scent of this goddess-like woman who offered her husband just the remnants of her sexuality. Musk, of course, but sandalwood and patchouli, too. A sweetness to complement the raw power of her body and her lover's ejaculation. Powerful scents, indeed.

After pausing for a long moment to inhale his wife's post-coital scene, the cuck husband in the video clips turned to the camera with a look of profound resignation. Tears roiled from his eyes, a mixed expression of lust and profound sadness played upon his face.

Turning back to his wife, he dove in with his tongue to capture the liquid coating her vulva and seeping from her vaginal opening. He lapped it up, dutifully at first, then eagerly as he was drawn into his erotic debasement.

The motion of his tongue hastened as Kandi Stryper seized his head between her hands and gently but firmly ordered him to continue.

"Lick it, Henry. Keep licking, bitch. Taste my lover's cum. Taste my pussy juices. Now, lick all the way up to my asshole. Get your tongue in there! Oooooohhhhh. That's good."

Kandi was shrieking now. Her voice spilling out from her mouth in one continuous, filthy exhortation.

Yes, bitch! Now, back to my clit! Suck it! Suck suck suck!"

Kandi moaned again as an orgasm overtook her. And this one, judged Bourdon, was the real thing. The cruelty of forcing her cuck's submission had clearly aroused her.

Bourdon watched the scene again and again in a ritual of voyeuristic r&d, masturbating absently as he took it in, imagining that it was his nose bathing in the aroma of their intense coupling. How to define that scent? How to capture its excitement?

And that's it! thought Bourdon.

That's what this perfume is all about....

It was not until his 12th or 13th viewing that he arrived at a name for his new fragrance,

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Bourdon stood up slowly from his seat at the table, unconsciously smoothing a wrinkle from his Versace suit. He cast a brief glance around the table before settling his eyes upon the one person in the room whose opinion truly counted.

He looked squarely at Diane Holzman as he spoke.

"What we want is a word that will capture the essence of what we are creating here," he said.

I have asked your art director to mockup a potential new logo with three possible names for the scent. I will ask him to make the presentation."

Bourdon sat down an nodded at the man sitting across the table.

Marketing whiz Stefano Murti stood up and passed around the boards his department had created while an assistant clicked through images projected on the screen behind the conference table.

"We wanted something bold. We wanted something frankly sensual," he said, smiling a little smugly as he unveiled the work.

He reached back into the portfolio case and extracted a board.

"We began with a name suggested by our agency."

Murti held the illustration up, showing the room a possible name and logo. The image appeared simultaneously on the screen.

"Kandi Stryper's Desire."

"It's good. It suggests sensuality but in a respectable, middle-America, department-store-friendly way. Some of us felt, though, that it didn't go far enough."

Murti extracted a second card from his portfolio. He held up the card.

"Monsieur Bourdon arrived at this name. Stronger, we felt. Still within the boundaries of reasonably good taste, but more aggressive."

The logo on the card read "Kandi Stryper's Arousal."

At the head of the table, Diane Holzman nodded her head. The other executives took her cue. They all smiled appreciatively.

Murti waited just a half-minute before continuing his presentation.

"And finally," he said, pausing for dramatic effect, "a last-minute entry -- more controversial, more likely to create a stir. Monsieur Bourdon came up with this name. We think it's bold. It's confrontational. Controversial. We expect pushback, but it will stand out from every other fragrance on the market. Take a look -- first at the proposed packaging. No one has ever seen anything quite like it."

Murti held up a board bearing illustrations, from different angles, of a proposed bottle for the new perfume. The top of the oval-shaped bottle was formed into a set of irregular lips -- a clear depiction of a woman's labia. The spout at the end sat at the place where Candide's famous enlarged clitoris would be.

Murti held up the board bearing the third name and logo.

"Kandi Stryper's Pussy."

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