The Pornographer Diaries

11. Nutters

Actually, you know what the most common response I get when I tell blokes that last story is? ‘You must be fucking mad.’ Yes, mustn’t I? Personally, I think working in the porn industry has opened my eyes to madness more than a degree in psychology ever could. And I’m not talking about the ‘you don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps’ jokey signs that painfully dull people put above their desks at work either. I’m talking about being able to recognise madness and misunderstanding in others that I was blind to before. People in Social Services may think that they’ve got their fingers on the mental illness pulse of this country but, believe me, it’s only when you work in porn that you realise just how many loopy bastards there actually are out there.

I’ve already mentioned the letters we used to get. They were scary enough, but they were scary in a funny ‘here read this’ kind of way. A letter’s not going to hurt you (letter bombs, anthrax and those big boxing gloves on springs aside) because letters come from miles away and you can just chuck them in the bin if you can’t be bothered to deal with them. No, it was the phone calls and the blokes hanging about outside and the visitors to reception and the crazy-looking head-cases who would suddenly appear next to you when Wendy forgot to close the security doors that really freaked us out.

We had one such guy a few months back. He started showing up in reception looking for Jerry, one of our girls. He claimed to be her boyfriend and said that ‘they’ wanted to do shoot together, so if we could just arrange it please that would be very good of us. Wendy, in an attempt to humour and get rid of him, told him that we couldn’t use untried models and suggested he took a few amateur snaps of himself and Jerry ‘together’, then we’d look at them and have a think about it.

Unfortunately, this guy was always, always, ALWAYS going to get the wrong end of the stick and sure enough, a few days later he came back clutching a Kodak envelope.

‘Godfrey, get you arse up here to reception, I’ve got some nutter coming in,’ Wendy told me over the phone.

‘So what? Why are you calling me? Get someone else to deal with him, I did the last one,’ I told her as I ate my packet sandwich and read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

‘There is no one else, everyone’s at lunch or out on a shoot. Now just get up here and help me deal with him or I’ll just buzz him through and give him directions to your desk.’

‘You fucking...’ was all I had time to get out before she cut me off. I got up out of my chair and reluctantly made my way out to reception where I was met a smiling maniac waiting for me behind the glass security doors.

‘Don’t let him through, see him out there,’ Wendy told me unnecessarily and pushed the doors closed behind me.

‘Hello, can I help you?’ I asked. Fuckwit went on to explain about his ‘girlfriend’ and how the ‘nice lady behind me’ had told him to go away and get his pictures done so that we could then arrange a porno shoot with him and Jerry, so here they were.

‘I’ll go through them with you because I also took some of the cat and I’d rather you didn’t publish those ones,’ he said. I nodded to show him I understood and tried to mix in a little shrug of disappointed. ‘There’s the first one,’ he said, handing me a blurry, over-exposed shot of himself standing around in his socks and pants in what looked like Reginald Christie’s front room. ‘I didn’t bother with any starting off dressed shots, I thought I’d get straight into it. That’s okay, isn’t it?’

‘Er, yes, fine,’ I replied and he handed me over the next one, this time sans socks.

‘It’s difficult using a self-timer, isn’t it? Can never quite get yourself squarely in the picture, can you?’ he said as he handed me one where he was no longer wearing his socks, pants or head.

‘Look, if you just want to drop them off, I can have a good look through them later,’ I told him.

‘No, no, it’s okay, I want to go through them with you because there’s a few things about the lighting and stuff I need to explain.’

‘Oh that’s not necessary, I know all about lighting. I can just take them off you and have a look at them in the office.’ I knew exactly which bin they were going in.

‘Oh well, I’ll come with you then.’

‘I’m afraid you can’t, office policy. Sorry. It’s to do with insurance.’

‘Insurance?’ he asked in confusion.

‘Yes, see if you have an accident in our offices you could sue us for thousands.’

‘Oh don’t worry about that, I’ll be okay.’

‘But if you weren’t we’d be liable.’

‘Well I’ll be very careful then.’

‘I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, is there something I can sign, where I promise I won’t sue? Here, get me a pen and I’ll write something down for you,’ he was saying and I saw there was no easy way out of this one.

‘Well, alright then,’ I said and his eyes lit up, before I continued, ‘let’s quickly go through them here then.’

‘Oh! Er, okay then,’ he replied, a little deflated after thinking he was going out back to where all the miracles happened. ‘Right, yeah, here’s the next one of me,’ he said, handing me a picture of his scrawny little carcass now sporting a swollen, lop-sided erection. ‘Ooops, there’s one of the cat, I better just take that one out. You don’t want to see that now, do you?’

‘I don’t want to see any of them, mate,’ I almost said, but it doesn’t pay to go upsetting these doo-lally cunts.

‘Ah now, here’s one of me crawling along the floor. Yeah, I quite like that one. What do you think?’

I looked over at Wendy who was making faces at me from the safety of the front desk. Fuckwit looked around but missed the faces.

‘Do you think she’d like to see these too?’ he asked excitedly.

As tempting as it was to drag Wendy into this mess I decided to keep things nice and simple and just try to get him out of the door without any part of me getting bitten.

‘Probably best just to go through them with me,’ I told him, but he held up a couple for her to see and she smiled and nodded back politely before answering a phone that hadn’t actually rung.

Matey seemed taken with her approval and held up several close-ups of his cock and balls, but Wendy was suddenly far too busy giving our address and fax machine numbers to the dialling tone to notice.

‘Never mind,’ he said, returning his full attention to me. ‘Look, another one of my cat there.’ Jesus, this was doing my head in. It’s always a slog going through someone else’s photos with them but when they’re of that person masturbating... urgh, over pictures of Jerry... maintaining polite interest is near impossible.

‘Well I really must be getting...’ I started but he grabbed me by the arm.

‘Oh no, there’s only a couple left. Here, I didn’t actually manage to catch it in full flight because I was using my timer, but it proves I can do it,’ he said, handing me the pop shot.

‘Well... err... good stuff. I’ll be sure to pass these on to... the person who deals with this. Thanks for dropping by.’

‘When do I get to do it with Jerry? I can do it any time this week if you like,’ he reassured me.

‘Oh I don’t really know, I’m afraid she’s very busy at the moment, not that I have to tell you that. We’ll give you a call,’ I told him, anything just to get rid of him for now, then I’d leave it to someone else to deal with him when he came back in next... well tomorrow probably.

‘Do you want my number then?’

‘Sure, why not?’ I said and he wrote out his name (Colin Daish), address and telephone number.

‘And you’ll definitely give me a call?’ he asked.

‘Yeah sure. It might be a little while though. I hope you understand.’

‘Yeah yeah, of course, but you’ll definitely call?’

‘Well it won’t be me, it’ll probably be the photographer. I’ll just be passing on your details,’ I said edging towards the security doors.

‘Okay, brilliant. Sorry, what’s your name?’

‘My name? Er... Don, Don Atkins, just phone up and ask for me before you come in next, save you wasting your time coming in if I’m not here.’

‘Brilliant. Thanks very much then Don, and I’ll see you soon,’ he said as Wendy buzzed me through the security doors. ‘Ooh actually, just one last thing. Can I just have a quick word with Jerry while I’m here? There’s something I wanted to ask her,’ he said, looking past me towards the offices out back.

‘I’m afraid she’s not here, she’s out on a shoot.’

‘On a shoot,’ he said, looking a little choked up. Well, it’s not easy hearing that your sweetheart’s away getting her kit off with someone else, is it? ‘What time will she be back?’

‘Well, she won’t come back here Colin, she’ll just go straight home. I expect you’ll see her tonight.’

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘At your place,’ I said. ‘Well, goodbye.’

‘No, she’s not coming to my place tonight,’ he told me. ‘I’m going to hers, but the trouble is, I’ve lost her address. Could you give it to me please?’

Boy he did that so cunningly I almost fell for it.

‘Oh, I don’t think we can do that Colin, it’s company policy not to give out our girls’ addresses to anybody we don’t know,’ I said, getting both feet behind the security doors.

‘But you know me.’

‘Ah yes, I do, but it’s just company policy, a bit like the insurance, our hands are tied.’ I wish yours were mate. ‘My advice to you is just give her a call yourself. She’ll remind you of her address.’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea. What’s the number?’

‘You haven’t got her number either?’

‘I lost that too.’

‘Oh dear, that’s awkward. I’m very sorry, but we can’t give out numbers either. It’s the rules.’

‘Can’t you just bend them this once, for me?’ he implored.

‘I’m very sorry, I could get the sack if I did.’

‘I wouldn’t tell anyone.’

I leaned forward and whispered to him very quietly, ‘No, you might not, but she would,’ flicking towards Wendy with my thumb. ‘Sorry.’

‘But, I am her boyfriend!’

‘Yes, yes, yes, we know you are, but if we gave out numbers to everyone who asked, any old nutcase off the street might get hold of them,’ I said and waved goodbye to him through the suddenly shut glass.

*

Of course, this all made for a very amusing story when Paddy and Matt and everyone else got back that afternoon, and Paddy told me one in turn.

A couple of weeks previously Mary had got a phone call from some matey who was near to tears with apologies. He explained that he’d gone down his local the night before (in Leicester somewhere), taken his usual seat and got the paper out, but had the strangest feeling something was amiss. When he looked around, everyone in the pub was staring at him and smiling, and he recognised them all from somewhere but he couldn’t think where. Anyway, he shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat, quickly downed his pint and went home, puzzled and a little upset as to what he’d seen down the pub. It was only when he got home that he realised what had happened.

Ace had thrown him a surprise party down his local and he hadn’t noticed.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he told Mary. ‘I wondered why people were looking at me, waiting for me to speak and I just sat there without saying a word. Please, please, believe me I’m sorry. You must hate me now. You went to all that trouble and I just left,’ he went on, actually breaking down at one point.

Mary told him to hang on and asked Paddy if he’d thrown one of the readers a surprise party last night.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

Out of curiosity, Paddy took over from Mary and asked matey what the problem was. Matey explained it all again so Paddy tried to set his mind to rest that Ace hadn’t thrown him a party. Matey was having none of it.

‘You did, you did. You’re just saying that.’

‘We’re not mate, honestly. We wouldn’t. I promise you, we didn’t thrown you a party last night.’

‘Then why was the pub full of Ace girls and why were they all looking at me?’

‘Mate, I don’t know. All I can tell you is that you’re probably mistaken, I doubt very much they were Ace girls because... er, all our girls are in America at the moment shooting our calendar.’

‘They’re not, you’re lying. They were in The Badger’s Arms last night waiting for me to acknowledge them. I didn’t realise, you see, I didn’t realise. That’s why I just went home. I’m so sorry, please, if you throw me another one I’ll realise next time.’

‘Look mate, we didn’t thrown you a party. I mean, why would we?’

‘I don’t know, that’s what I couldn’t work out either. It’s probably why I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t expecting it. I’m so sorry.’

Paddy went on to tell me that matey had even offered to refund some of the expenses and for a few seconds Paddy was half-tempted to take him to the cleaners. I mean, who’d believe him if he complained afterwards? He didn’t in the end, he just reassured him that his apology was accepted and that was the end of the story, as far as Ace were concerned.

‘Okay, thanks. Again, I’m sorry, and please, keep writing about me.’

‘He was a Premier League mentalist,’ Paddy told us.

‘I had one like that not so long ago,’ Matt said. ‘A bird, surprisingly. She wanted to know why we kept superimposing her face onto all the models in our mag. She said it was ruining her relationship and her reputation in Stockport, if that’s possible.’

‘Well, that’s alright for you lads, Leicester and Stockport are miles away. I’ve got this fucking psycho just around the corner and now he knows my face. You think he’ll come back?’

‘What, are you kidding?’ Paddy smirked. ‘Of course he’ll come back. You ain’t seen the last of him by a long way.’

*

The only surprising thing about Colin Daish’s return was that it took ten days to happen. He must’ve sat at home all that time, masturbating his cock to pâté waiting for the phone call that was never going to come before deciding to get up off of his arse to come and see what was taking us so long.

‘Your mate’s here in reception,’ Wendy told me when I picked up the phone.

That was it, ‘your mate’. No notice, no warning, just ‘your mate’, so of course I strolled down to reception expecting to see one of my ‘mates’, only to find myself instead coming face to face with the last man on the planet I wanted to see.

‘You cunt!’ I whispered to Wendy as I went past her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was him?’

‘What, and me get stuck with him? Not likely, he’s your mate.’

I walked through the security doors and Colin held out his hand for me to shake.

‘I thought I’d just pop in because I haven’t heard anything yet. I was thinking maybe you called while I was out and that I missed it,’ he said, anxiously.

‘No, I’m sorry, I haven’t called you yet.’

I suddenly realised that there was no easy way of getting rid of this one, he was here for the long haul and it wouldn’t matter how many times I fobbed him off, he’d keep coming back until we fixed him up with Jerry, something that was never going to happen. I was going to have to nip this one in the bud before it got too silly, not something I would’ve normally volunteered to do. Colin didn’t look like a man who took bad news well, although ironically, he looked like a man who’d had plenty of practice.

Fucking Wendy!

There was nothing else for it; I had to stand before him, look him in the eye and give it to him straight.

‘Has no one else spoken to you yet?’ I asked.

‘No, I haven’t heard anything.’

‘Oh, this is very awkward because it’s not really down to me, the photographer should’ve given you a ring.’

‘What about? Does he want me to go to the studio?’

‘Er, I’m afraid not. You see, and I’m really sorry about this and it’s not my fault at all, I promise, honestly, but the photographer, he told me to tell you that, he doesn’t think he can shoot you.’

‘What? Why not?’ he said, with jaw-dropping disbelief.

‘Well, I’m really sorry, I’m on your side, but he thinks that, well... he said, rather that,’ then a stroke of brilliance occurred to me, ‘that we don’t shoot men. I mean, actually we don’t. Look!’ I said, darting through reception and grabbing a spare copy of Bling from behind Wendy’s desk. ‘Look, it’s all women, there aren’t any blokes in it, none at all, are there? We only shoot women.’

‘But the lady said that if I took some pictures of myself I could be in it with Jerry,’ he said.

‘I don’t think she said that exactly now did she?’

‘She did! She did! She said if I brought in pictures I could be photographed with Jerry.’

‘No, I think what she actually said was that if you wanted to take pictures of yourself with Jerry, then we’d take a look at them.’

‘No! No, that’s not what she said. She said I could have pictures taken with Jerry if I brought in some pictures of myself. That’s what she said,’ he insisted.

‘Look, it doesn’t matter what she said or what you thought she said because she’s just a receptionist. Here’s what I’m telling you, and I’m very sorry but I’m afraid this is the way it is. We do not take pictures of men, we only take pictures of women.’

‘But why? That’s not fair.’

‘Why? Because that’s what the readers want to see. You buy the mag, don’t you? Would you buy it if it was full of geezers?’

‘But what about the lady readers? They might want to see something too.’

How I didn’t ask him if he’d taken a look in the mirror lately (‘you scrawny fucking little runt’) is beyond me but somehow I managed to remain diplomatic.

‘We don’t have many lady readers, our readers are mostly men.’

‘Mostly?’

‘Yes, men and lesbians,’ I told him, although this wasn’t actually true. According to market research a great many women who regarded themselves as ‘straight’ read our magazines too, although just how ‘straight’ was ‘straight’ was anyone’s guess. Put it this way though; if you caught me sat at home reading Sexy Cocks Monthly, just how ‘straight’ would you say I was? Still, there was no point in confusing the issue with this poor baffled bastard any more than I had to.

‘Well, maybe if you had men in it, women would buy it too,’ he said hopefully.

‘I’m very sorry, that’s not down to me. I’m really just the messenger.’

‘Oh,’ he said, looking utterly crumpled. ‘Well, can I just quickly have a quick word with Jerry then? I just want to ask her something.’

‘I’m afraid she’s not here.’

‘But you said that last time.’

‘Yeah, and she wasn’t here then either.’

‘Well where is she?’

‘I don’t know, at home or down the shops or somewhere I suppose.’

‘What shops?’

‘I don’t know Colin, I don’t know her. I’ve never met her.’

‘But I want to speak to her.’

‘Can’t you speak to her next time you see her?’

‘But I don’t know when that will be.’

‘I thought you said you were her boyfriend?’

‘I am and I love her.’

‘Well good, that’s that all sorted then.’

‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ he said menacingly.

‘I ain’t trying to do anything,’ I told him.

‘Yes you are, you’re deliberately trying to keep her away from me. I just want to fucking talk to her!’ he demanded loudly, freaking the shit out of me.

‘Alright. Alright, you win,’ I conceded, holding up my hands and motioning for him to calm down. I knocked on the security doors for Wendy to buzz me through and spelled it out for him. ‘Okay! Here’s what we’re going to do,’ I told him, stepping through the doors and closing it between us. ‘I’m going to go in here and you’re going to go away and never come back again, all right? Otherwise we’ll phone the police.’

Colin stared at me through the doors in angry disbelief for a moment longer then exploded into a rage.

‘You fucking bastard! You fucking piece of shit! I’ll kill you, you fucking cunt. I’ll smash your face in. You’re a fucking wanker, etc etc etc.’ Then he started looking past me and yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Jerry! Jerry! JERRY!’

I don’t think I helped matters by making mental faces at him through the glass but sometimes you just have to go with the moment.

Peter, June, Stuart, Paddy and pretty much everyone else in earshot piled out of their offices to see what the commotion was, so I quickly stopped with the faces and told them that he just went crazy for no reason. Wendy, for once in her miserable life, backed me up. Peter told her to phone the police.

‘Doing it now,’ she said, and I just managed to pull one last quick spazmo face at Colin without Peter seeing, prompting Colin to go wild and start pounding on the doors to get at me.

‘I don’t think he likes you,’ Peter pointed out. ‘What set him off?”

‘Who knows with these people?’ I said, shaking my head sadly.