The Pornographer Diaries

8. Hitting bottom

I guess my subconscious homophobia must’ve still been bubbling away just below the surface a few days later because I turned to Don and asked him, just hypothetically like, what he’d rather have; some big black bloke shag him up the arse or his mum beaten up by muggers?

Don thought about this for a moment or two then asked if he couldn’t have both.

‘Why is it always a black bloke who’s got to shag you up the arse?’ Matt asked from across the room.

‘Yeah, who is he and what does he want?’ Paddy joined in.

‘No, seriously, seriously, whenever anyone’s got a hypothetical gun at their heads in this room it’s always the same big bloke black that gets wheeled out to shag us all up the arse or make us suck him off,’ Matt said. ‘Would it be all right then if he was white or something? I mean, the whole point of these questions, as far as I can make out, is to question our sexual orientation, aren’t they? I don’t think we necessarily have to chuck in the race issue too.’

Hasseem looked up. ‘Don’t look at me, I’m staying out of this one.’

‘No, no, hang on a minute, let’s put it like this then; Godfrey, who would you rather get bummed by, me or Hasseem?’ Matt asked. All eyes turned to me as I considered this question.

‘Have I got a gun to my head?’

‘Yeah yeah, don’t worry about that, you’ve got to do it, you ain’t got no choice. Now come on, which one of us would you rather get done by?’

‘I don’t know. Who’d be the nicest to me afterwards?’ I asked.

‘You know, this is getting a little weird, lads,’ Paddy said.

‘Come on, come on, answer the question,’ Matt insisted. ‘Me or Hasseem.’

‘Fine, if you’re going to be like that, I’ll go with Hasseem then and you can fuck right off,’ I told Matt in no uncertain terms.

‘Cheers God’, very sweet of you,’ Hasseem said blowing me over a kiss, which I pretended to catch and stick in my top pocket.

‘Oh yeah, like fuck you would. I’d put any money on it that in real life you’d really rather get shagged up the arse by me,’ Matt said, sounding a little bitter.

‘I wouldn’t,’ I insisted.

‘Yeah, Jimmy Hill.’

‘Tell us then, Matt, why should God’ go with you rather than Hasseem?’ Paddy asked.

‘Why? Because I’m white, and that’s not meant to be an insult on you Hasseem, or nothing. It’s just an observation based on what you lot are always coming out with, that this big black bloke’s going around shagging you lot up the arse, so that says to me that you’re all inherently racist. Not in an evil way, I don’t mean that. But just in that us in this country, no matter how fucking integrated and politically correct we all are, are still deep down scared of old darkie. It’s been this way for fucking centuries and it’s going to take more than a generation or two of living side by side before institutionalised racism vanishes from the collective consciousness.’

‘Bollocks,’ said fat Paul.

‘You don’t even listen to yourselves when you talk, do you?’ Matt said.

‘Alright then, Nelson Mandela, if we’re all so fucking racist, how comes God’ chose Hasseem over you?’ Don asked.

‘Oh he didn’t, he’s lying, because he just wants to disprove my point.’

‘That’s not true,’ I told him.

‘It is, it so fucking is.’

‘You’re just a bad loser,’ Hasseem said.

‘I’m not,’ Matt protested. ‘I couldn’t give a shit.’

‘You are,’ everyone told him.

‘I’m so fucking not... alright then, let me ask you this God’; why Hasseem over me? Come on, the truth. What swung your decision?’

‘Well, I don’t know. He’s a nice bloke, I suppose; we get on well together, got quite a nice body...’

‘Okay, that’s it! I’m out of here,’ Paddy said, heading for the door.

‘You know, you blokes talk about this so much I swear you’re all really gagging for it with each other,’ Susie piped in.

Susie hated our daily theoretical discussions, and not just because we shouted our thoughts from all corners of the room right across her desk rather than get out of our chairs (well, who could be arsed?), but also because she had a typically girlie pragmatic mind. See, in my experience, career women almost always make for the biggest moaners at work. They’re forever watching you and moaning when they see you skiving. They’re forever taking themselves and their jobs way too seriously and they’re always competing with everyone around them to see who can be the most conscientious at work. And it winds them up no end when they look about and see all the competition’s fucked off down the pub or are standing around in front of the mirror drawing Mexican bandit moustaches on themselves with big black marker pens. They hate the Devil-may-care-but-I-really-couldn’t-give-a-toss weariness that envelops most blokes after ten years in the work place and don’t get our lackadaisical attitude towards time-keeping and petty theft because they haven’t been working as long as us. It’s a simple fact. See, when a bloke’s born, he’s told from day one that he’s going to work, and that’s it mate, end of discussion. Whether you leave school at 16, 18, 21 or 28 (put it off as long as you like, egghead, but you’re still going), eventually you have to get a job and go to some soul-&-spirit-sapping office/factory/field and put in eight hours a day until you’re an old man. And then, and only then, are you allowed to stay at home and talk about what a fantastic life you had polishing car bumpers for the last 50 years, and please can you cut up my blancmange for me because my hands are a bit fucked?

Women though, women have only just started colonising ‘meaningful’ full-time employment so they’ve yet to discover just how shit a life-time in the workplace really is. Also, whether you like it or not, they’ve got the ultimate ‘get out of work free’ card, although I’m sure you’ve all marked me down as a right chauvinist for bringing this up. Well nuts to you all, it’s true and that’s all there is to it. When the thrill of sending me 16 memos a day wears off for Jennifer in Production, all she’s got to do is have a shag and it’s, ‘so long work’ and ‘hello coffee mornings and walks in the park’. And ‘Darling, could you buy an extension lead on your way home from work so I can stick the telly in the garden?’ This is a fact. Women can and do have babies. Men can’t. If men could, then I really would be bent over the desk having Hasseem throw all he could up me – gun or no gun.

Which brings me rather neatly back to my original point and Susie’s snipe.

Like I was saying, she hated our little think tank and thought it was a pointless waste of everyone’s time because no big black bloke was ever going to come in here with a gun and demand sexual favours from us, so why did we insist on discussing tactics for such an inevitability five days a week?

It drove her barmy.

This was a good thing, we all agreed, particularly Don, who was waging his own petty revolt against the woman who’d made his last few years a living hell. Why had she done this? Like I said before, she was a cunt. Of course not every woman boss is and there are more than a fair few blokes out there who are worse still but Don worked for Susie so she was the raven in his waking nightmares. It probably wasn’t even anything to do with Don himself, it was just that he was a bloke and that she was an old misery guts. I don’t know for sure but all the smart money was on her having been fucked over a few times before in the past so Don got to bear the brunt of her retaliation. Not a particularly nice thing for Susie to do but then again she wasn’t a particularly nice person. She was a cunt. Get the picture?

‘One of these days we’re going to walk in here and there you’ll all be on the floor rolling around together,’ she added, completing her all-encompassing put-down.

‘People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,’ fat Paul warned her, then added, ‘especially lesbians like you who’ve actually done it with other birds.’

‘Oh yes, and here it comes. I’m very comfortable with my sexuality, thank you very much. I’m about the only one in here who is. The rest of you are a load of repressed fags.’

‘Fuck me, make up your mind, either we’re a load of racists or we’re a load of poofs. I don’t think we can be both,’ Don said.

‘Have you finished those pages yet?’ Susie snapped, flexing her authority over Don and making plain her disapproval concerning his continued participation in this discussion.

Don didn’t reply. He merely held her gaze for a moment, gritted his teeth, then went back to work. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t answered. Susie hadn’t asked the question to get an answer, she’d asked it to bring him to heel. We all saw this and cringed for Don.

Paddy, back from the bog and the only one of us with equal status to Susie, asked her why she was always giving Don stick but went pretty easy on Hazel.

‘Are you two muffers at it or something? Because you want to try and make it a bit less obvious if you are.’

Hazel, who up until this point had stayed more or less out of it, burst into a string of denials.

‘Don’t be so fucking ridiculous, of course not, you stupid prat. Why are you lot always having a go at me? I haven’t said anything to you, it’s just all the time, fucking childish wankers, the lot of you...’

She went on for a bit longer than that and I couldn’t help notice the hurt look on Susie’s face, like as if she was taking Hazel’s vehement reaction to such an idea as a personal knock, which I guess was Paddy’s plan.

‘... you lot might want to fuck each other but count me out...’ she was saying as if her life depended on it.

Hello, I thought to myself, something’s gone on there then. I made a mental note to try and wheedle it out of Hazel with booze the next time she came over the pub.

‘Hey, there’s nothing wrong with it,’ Paddy said. ‘I don’t care, live and let live as far as I’m concerned. If I was a bird I’d probably be a lesbian too.’

‘I’m not a lesbian,’ Hazel insisted.

‘Neither am I,’ Susie echoed.

‘Alright then, bi-sexual, whatever you want to call it, it’s still gay, isn’t it?’

‘No it’s not. There’s no gay or straight as far as I’m concerned, I just have sex with people. I don’t exclude half of the population from my bed,’ Susie said.

‘So I’ve heard,’ Matt chipped in.

‘You know, you are all truly pathetic. How anybody as closed-minded as you lot ever got into porn I’ll never know. You’re no better than those idiots out there on building sites or in factories, you’re a lot of reactionary Neanderthals,’ Susie told us. ‘Let me ask you this then, and there’s no gun involved or million pounds or anything, what would be so bad about sleeping with another man?’

‘Fuck off,’ Paddy smiled, lighting a fag.

‘Why? Why fuck off? Have you even ever wondered what it would be like? Seriously, have you? Aren’t you even a little bit curious?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ Matt said, followed by a unanimous round of ‘no ways’ by the rest of us.

‘Then how do you know you don’t like it until you’ve tried it?’ Susie asked.

‘It’s alright for you lezzas, sorry bi-planes, because you’re all just munching down on each other but for us, if we wanted to go that way, we’ve got to get a big cock up the arse,’ Paddy explained.

‘Yeah, and a big black one at that,’ I shouted over.

‘So what? That’s where your G-spot is, that’s the male pleasure point. Get shagged up there and you’d love it.’

‘And this is something you’d know all about then, is it?’ Paddy asked her.

‘Doesn’t work like that. The female G-spot is some other place.’

‘Oh, how convenient,’ Matt said. ‘So while we’re all off buying tubes of Analsooth and wiping the tears from our eyes, you’re in a field somewhere having your elbow patted.’

‘It doesn’t hurt that much,’ Mary looked up and said.

‘Mary, you don’t?’ Jackie said, shocked at such an admission.

‘Yeah, I love it. Why, haven’t you ever done it?’

‘No I haven’t and never will. It’s horrible, it’s not for that purpose.’

‘Well neither’s your mouth but I love that too.’

‘Hey, Mary’s a party in one body!’ fat Paul pointed out, reminding me of Howard and Claire’s offer the other day. ‘Come on everybody, dive in.’

‘I’m up for it,’ Mary giggled.

‘See, look at the double-standards,’ Susie was still banging on. ‘It’s alright if Mary takes it up the arse but none of you are willing to try.’

‘Ah no, just hold your horses,’ Hasseem said. ‘I had a bird do this to me once while I was shagging her. She kept trying to stick her finger up my arse, telling me that I’d love it, so in the end I let her.’

‘Yeah, what was it like?’ Paddy asked.

‘It was like someone had their finger up my arse,’ Hasseem replied.

‘Oh yeah,’ Paddy nodded thoughtfully.

‘A finger’s nothing,’ Susie objected. ‘That’s not the same thing at all.’

‘She was wearing cricket gloves at the time,’ Don said, causing Susie to scowl at him.

‘Do you mind? We are trying to have a serious conversation here.’

‘Correction,’ Paddy pointed out, ‘You’re trying to have a serious conversation, the rest of us are trying to fuck about until lunchtime.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Susie nodded, her patience ebbing fast. ‘You know what, I don’t know why I even bother; you lot are a waste of time. I don’t think you’re even capable of having a serious conversation, that’s why you’ll never do anything with your lives. You’re going to end up sad, lonely old men that no one will want to talk to because you can’t be serious.’

This was girl logic if ever I’d heard it, and I had, several times from several different girls in fact. The argument, from what I understood of it, went something like this: Because we were always fucking around, cracking jokes and generally being silly, in the future no one will pay us the time of day because they’d know that serious and important issues such as feelings, relationships and hopes for the future would be brushed aside in favour of jokes about masturbation. No one would ever learn anything from us because we’d refuse to face up to cold hard truths in a stern and sober manner, therefore talking to us would be a waste of time as they searched for truth and beauty.

Now I can see this and would even go so far as agreeing with it if it weren’t for one thing: surely when we’re all lonely old men we’ll still have each other to get drunk and talk bollocks with and all the sour face old mooses like Susie can fuck off and fill their homes with cats. Or we’ll be dead.

‘What’s so great about serious conversations?’ Paddy asked. ‘We’re not curing cancer here, we’re publishing wank mags for crying-out-loud. Why have you got to be so miserable all the time? It’ll get you nowhere. Lighten up, enjoy life while you can because we’ll have enough real problems to worry about in just a few short years, you can count on that.’

‘Really? What are they then, Pad?’ Matt asked.

‘You know, old age, illness, World War III, they’re all on the way so we don’t have to go looking for things to worry about, they’ll find us.’

‘This is precisely the reason these things happen, because nobody is willing to discuss them. Everybody’s so busy cracking jokes that the real issues get lost!’ Susie exclaimed, like this was so obvious she couldn’t believe we’d all missed it.

‘How does Godfrey taking a cock up the arse from Hasseem start World War III?’ Don asked, not unreasonably in my opinion.

‘HAVE YOU DONE THOSE PAGES YET?’ Susie screamed at him.

There was a second or two’s silence as this latest humiliation sunk in then Don suddenly exploded.

‘BOLLOCKS TO THIS! BOLLOCKS TO ALL OF IT! I’m not taking this shit anymore. Fuck it! Fuck it!’ he shouted, jumping up from his seat. I thought at one point he was going to launch himself across his desk at Susie but instead he just looked her straight in the eye and squeezed as much bitterness into the following statement as he could muster. ‘You... are... a fuckingggg... WANKEEERRRR!’ he told her, practically spitting out each word. He then looked down at a startled Hazel and told her, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, ‘And so are you.’ He grabbed his bag and started stuffing his personal belongings into it, all the while raging about how there was only so much shit a man could take and how working with ‘you two lesbians’ was enough to put anyone off women for good, and how their only redeeming quality was that they were both mortal and would one day die, but why didn’t they do the world a favour and go and chuck themselves in the Thames because that’s all they were good for… etc etc etc.

‘I’m not a lesbian,’ Hazel objected.

‘Well you fucking should be. And what the fuck you two ironing boards are doing working on Bangers! I’ll never know.’

‘Right, that’s enough,’ Susie said, finally finding her voice. ‘Sit back down and get on with your work otherwise you’ll find yourself with a written warning.’

Don almost laughed.

‘I quit. Write me up all you like but you’ll have to post it to me at home because I’m out of here.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, you can’t just quit, you have to give a month’s notice.’

‘Watch me,’ he said, pulling on his coat.

‘Don, wait. Let’s just calm down and talk about this.’

‘You’re a cunt. You’re a cunt. You’re a cunt. That’s all I’ve got to say. You’re a cunt and a lesbian and a fucking ugly cunt and I’m not taking it anymore.’

‘You can push me only so far,’ Susie told him.

‘Push me? You want to watch yourself because if you were a bloke I’d fucking lump you one right in the gob and still might. Ah bollocks to it, you’re not even worth that. You’re nothing. You’re just a cunt and that’s all you’ll ever be. And you,’ he shouted across to Roger sitting next to me, ‘You’re a boring miserable wanker.’ Roger looked up, a little surprised to be singled out seeing as he hadn’t said a word all day. ‘And if Monty or Toldo were here I’d tell them what a couple of wankers they were too, but they’re not. Hold on, I’ll leave them a note each. Hazel, give me your Post-its.’ Hazel complied and Don wrote a quick goodbye to both Monty and Stuart and stuck them on their screens.

‘Right, as for the rest of you, you’ll all invited to my leaving drink which will be kicking off in The Abbot in about 30 seconds time. Bring your wallets because you’re buying.’

Susie made one last desperate attempt to try and stop Don from leaving. Under normal circumstances she would’ve loved to see him hand in his notice and disappear from her life without a fuss (which I think was what she’d always hoped for) but upping and leaving like this was going to reflect really badly on her. And she knew it.

‘Wait, just wait a minute. Think about what you’re doing. Your blood’s up, you’re angry, things were said but that doesn’t matter. I don’t care about that. Let’s just sit down and talk about this and we can work this out. If not for me, then do it for the mag.’

Don stared at her, absolutely incredulous. She’d threatened him with the sack so many times that he’d once told me that he felt like he was working on death row. And now, here he was, finally strapping himself into the electric chair and she was trying to give him a last minute reprieve. For what? So that three weeks down the line when he wasn’t expecting it she could throw the switch herself? Don knew her too well for that. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. It was his call and his fate and if he could fuck her up at the same time then that was just one more reason to go.

And as if to prove that conversations turn full circle if you talk for long enough, he had seven last words for her.

‘Go stick it up your fucking arse!’