The Pornographer Diaries

3. Welcome to the pleasure dome

‘Unbelievable,’ Barry said. ‘Un-fucking-believable.’

‘When d’you start?’ Gary asked excitedly.

‘Two weeks from Monday. I’ve given in a month’s notice at Caravanning and I’m using my last two weeks’ holiday to cut it short so I can start as soon as possible,’ I told them, unable to wipe the broad grin from my face.

‘But I thought you told us it went shit?’ Gary said.

‘I thought it did, just goes to show what I know,’ I told them and downed the last of my pint. ‘Can’t wait, I can’t fucking wait. Two more weeks and I’m out of there. I’ve done it. No more specky, no more sad wankers and no more Elenor. Thank Christ!’ I exclaimed, a wave of relief washing over me.

‘Never shag any bird you work with,’ Gary pointed out like the wise, happily married, old sage he was. ‘That’ll learn you.’

‘Fuck me Gaz, don’t tell him that, consider where he’s going to be working. Fill your boots my old son,’ Barry quickly countered. ‘You’re going to be getting so much it’ll be amazing,’ he half-snarled, staring off into oblivion. ‘And of course if there’s any spare knocking about...’

‘Don’t worry, you can have my leftovers,’ I agreed.

‘Gratefully received,’ he said.

‘Geezer on Caravaning, you know, matey I told you about, bloke I sit next to, he reckons I won’t pull another bird as long as I work there. He reckons no self-respecting girl will have anything to do with some, his words, sleazy pornographer. Funny thing is, old Elenor, she reckons the opposite. She reckons birds’ll be flattered by it. “This is a man who works with beautiful women all day long, if he’s interested in me then I must have something pretty special”,’ I said, putting on my well-worn Elenor voice and face. ‘Trouble is, he’s a middle-class PC Oxbridge ponce and she’s just some old nightmare who’s been playing with my head for the last year and a half.’

‘You know, I think I must be looking forward to you getting another job almost as much as you are just so we can change the fucking record,’ Gary said. ‘Forget Elenor, she’s gone, or as good as.’

‘I’ll second that,’ Barry agreed, waving at the barman who simply waved back.

‘Well, I’m very sorry if I’ve bored you over the last 18 months with my pain, I wish you’d have said something sooner so I could’ve shut up.’

‘Hey, apology accepted,’ Gary said with a regal wave of the hand. ‘Just get us some free mags and don’t mention her again and all is forgiven and gratefully forgotten.’

‘Oh yeah, me too. Free mags every month, you reckon you can?’ Barry said, hopping about on the spot.

‘I’m sure I can, which ones you want?’

‘I don’t know, whatever. All the same aren’t they,’ Gary shrugged.

‘Froth, Ace and Bangers!’ Barry said, putting in his order. ‘Do you do Asian Babes as well?’

‘No I think that’s someone else. Don’t you want Bling? That’s the one I’m going to be working on.’

‘Oh yeah, send us that one as well but make sure you don’t forget about Froth.’

‘You like that one then do you, Barry?’ Gary smiled.

‘No, I mean I don’t get ’em or nothing, it’s just a laugh. Bloke at work had some, just saw them, just thought it would be a laugh, that’s all. I don’t seriously want them, or nothing,’ he protested.

‘You want me to send them to you then or what?’

‘Yes.’

‘Here, don’t send them to my house either or Karen’ll open them, she opens all my mail. Send them to my work address but remember to mark them PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL otherwise my secretary might open them by mistake. Do they come in plain envelopes?’

‘I don’t know, I haven’t even started there yet, have I? Give me a chance.’

‘Man, you have just landed the best job in the world,’ Barry breezed.

*

If I was nervous for my interview I was even more nervous for my first day. I’d come to the conclusion by now that they hadn’t wanted me to bang Rebecca in front of Stuart and was fairly confident having sex in front of other members of staff wasn’t going to be something in my contract, but I was still nervous.

First day nerves and all that.

I arrived five minutes early and was buzzed through the security doors by the receptionist with the tits.

‘Congratulations,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘Welcome to your first day.’

‘Godfrey Bishop,’ I told her and shook her hand.

‘I know, Wendy Pickles,’ she replied.

‘Really? Look at that, we both have stupid names. Please call me God’ or Bish.’

‘Please call me Wendy or Wendy Pickles,’ she replied, dropping the smile from her face.

‘Er, shall I... er...’

‘Go on through if you like, you know where the editorial offices are, don’t you? At the end of the corridor. Just go and make yourself a cup of tea and find your desk.’

‘How will I know which one’s mine?’ I asked.

‘Bling hasn’t had a sub for about three months now so your desk with be the one covered with everyone else’s crap.’

‘Oh, thanks, and sorry about the name thing.’

She flashed me her teeth and went back to her book, all in under half a second.

I walked up the corridor and through the doors and found the office in darkness. I groped around for some lights, flipped them all on and was immediately struck by one desk at the far end of the room which had all but disappeared under dozens of boxes and scores of mags. I shifted a few so that I could see my computer and saw that it was already on and that someone had set a hardcore still from a porn movie as the desktop picture. It featured two guys getting orally pleasured by one girl on her knees between them – or rather, they’d been pleasured by the girl between them. I stared at it, transfixed for a good few moments before quickly looking away when the door swung open and a young girl walked in. She set her bag down at a desk across the room from me, took off her coat, turned her computer on and eyed me suspiciously before walking out again without saying a word. I picked up a few boxes off the floor and piled them back up on the desk in front of the computer.

The girl poked her head through the door again and looked at me like I was some kind of specimen before asking if I wanted a cup of tea.

‘Please,’ I replied, using my best Sunday school manners. ‘No sugar thanks.’ She disappeared again, giving me two minutes to lose my coat and sneakily turn a few pages of Bling over before she returned.

‘I’m Jackie,’ she said, handing me my tea. ‘I forgot how many sugars you said you wanted so I put in one and a half.’

‘Thanks,’ I replied and set my cup down. ‘Godfrey,’ I told her.

‘Yes I know, the new sub. I’m editorial assistant for Bling and Froth.’

We shook hands formally and I got a psychological blast of icy air up my pyjamas in the process. I’ve never met anyone so starched and joyless in all my life. This was a girl who worked for a porn mag yet she looked like a strong passage of Jane Austen would have her marching on Parliament with a megaphone to her gob. She handed me the latest copy of Bling and asked me if I’d seen it yet. I had, but even if I had Jackie would’ve been the last person on Earth I would’ve told.

‘It’s looking quite good since the redesign, quite nice. Have a look,’ she insisted, scrutinising me carefully.

I had a flip through and tried to make out that this was water off a duck’s back to me and as she hung over my shoulder. I’d never looked at a dirty mag in the company of a girl before, particularly a girl from the Addams Family after I’d only just met her and was horribly sober. It’s not something I’d recommend.

‘Now this girl,’ Jackie said, stopping me on a big double-page spread of a brunette lying across the page with her legs behind her ears, ‘this is Tanya, she’s our regular girl. We get loads of letters about her but I can’t see it myself, I think she’s ugly, well not ugly, but just you know, boring-looking,’ she said in all seriousness.

Tanya didn’t look boring from where I was standing, I can tell you that. ‘GO AHEAD, PICK A HOLE’ she was saying, or rather my predecessor had typed in quote marks next to her.

‘Don’t you think so? Boring? I can’t see it myself, and she’s got a horrible noony,’ she said, shaking her head, and for one moment I thought she was going to get hers out and use it as some sort of control noony. I suddenly realised that people who worked here had altogether different levels of squeamishness compared with the rest of the civilised world.

‘God, yeah, awful,’ I said, burning up with embarrassment. ‘When does everyone else get in?’

‘When they bloody-well please,’ she told me. ‘I’m always here at ten on the dot but no one else bothers to be on time. It’s like they don’t care or something. I hope you won’t turn out to be like the rest of them.’

‘No no,’ I assured her, not even convincing myself.

A third person arrived, to my relief, and dropped her coat and bag down on the desk next to Jackie’s and wandered over.

‘Alright?’ she said

‘This is Mary, Mary’s the editorial assistant on Ace and Bangers!. This is Godfrey,’ Jackie said, taking over proceedings.

‘Alright,’ Mary repeated and stared at me vacantly.

Mary looked like she was at the other end of the joy spectrum from Jackie completely. I know they were only my first impressions and everything but if Mary had ever turned down a fag, drink, pork pie or cock in her life I would’ve been seriously amazed.

‘How was your weekend?’ Jackie asked her.

‘Alright,’ Mary replied and continued to stare at me.

‘Did you see Duncan?’ Jackie asked.

‘No,’ Mary replied, stretching her vocabulary to its very limits. ‘I went shopping with me mum.’

‘Oh yeah, what did you buy?’ I asked, trying to show an interest.

‘Some pants and a pencil,’ she replied expressionlessly.

‘What d’you want a pencil for? We’ve got tons of them here you could’ve had,’ Jackie asked.

‘No, for my eyes,’ she replied, pointing at her eyes. Mary then pointed them at the magazine I was holding and made a similar observation to Jackie’s earlier noony comment. ‘That Tanya? She’s got a horrible cunt,’ she said, ‘It’s all mangled and horrible.’

‘Don’t say that Mary, that’s awful,’ Jackie objected.

‘She has though, you’re always saying it too an’ all,’ Mary insisted.

‘I don’t use the “c” word though. It’s a horrible word.’

‘What, “cunt”?’

‘Mary, don’t, it’s vulgar.’

‘Why? Everyone else always says it all the time.’

‘That doesn’t mean you should say it. You should rise above that sort of thing.’

‘But I’ve got more right to say “cunt” than everybody else ’cos I’ve actually got one and they haven’t,’ she said indicated between her tubby, fat legs.

This conversation went on for considerably longer that I care to remember, although thankfully it drifted away from my desk and finally I was left to my own devices. I spent the next half hour stacking the boxes in a neat pile on the floor and resetting the desktop picture on my computer to a neutral pattern.

I flicked through the issue of Bling again, feeling a little more comfortable about doing so this time and tried to appreciate the redesign, but tits and arses kept getting in the way. I put the mag away and spent an age shifting awkwardly in my chair, while I awaited more porn-hardened strangers.

A few materialised after 10.30am, glared at me and got on with their own thing and it wasn’t until 10.50am that someone finally came in and sat himself down at the designer’s desk next to mine. He looked considerably older than everyone else I’d met so far, late forties I would’ve said, and he looked tired and confused as if he’d just come to in a ditch.

‘Who are you?’ he said, furrowing his brow.

‘Godfrey Bishop,’ I told him and offered him my hand, but he was turning on his computer so he missed it.

‘Are you new?’

‘No, I’ve been here for years, you’ve just never seen me because I’ve been hiding under the desk.’

This must’ve been a company of starers because he was at it now.

‘Oh,’ he said all matter-of-fact. ‘My name’s Roger. I’m a designer. You’re going to be working on Bling aren’t you?’ I told him I was.

‘Is that the one you work on?’ I asked.

‘One? One my fucking arse. I do Bling and Froth,’ he murmured aggressively. ‘It’s a fucking joke, I’m the only bloke in here who has to do two mags every month, every other fucking designer in here just does the one but I get fucking two. Is that fair? You tell me. What other company would have their designers working on two mags, fucking wankers! I’m getting really fucked off with it, I can tell you that, fucking two mags? It’s just a joke, that’s all it is to them, a joke. They couldn’t give a shit, not a shit. Every time they’ve got a poster to do or a supplement to design, who do they come to? They don’t go to Don, yet he’s only got one mag, and it’s twenty-odd pages less than both of mine, no they come to me, fucking muggings. Well I tell you what, much more of this and I’m fucking off, I don’t give a shit, I’ve had enough. It’s a fucking joke.’ Roger turned his back on me, unpacked his sandwiches and went on for the next ten minutes muttering to himself before silence once again descended over our little corner of the office.

Several faces looked my way from a cluster of lads laughing and smoking around one of the desks close by before a tall fella approached.

‘The new sub, yeah?’ he said, in amiable contrast to Roger.

‘Godfrey Bishop,’ I said, stood and held out a hand.

The fella took it and said with a flick of the head, ‘come and meet the rest of the chaps’, so I followed him over.

‘I’m Paddy,’ the tall fella said. ‘I’m the editor on Ace, this is Hasseem and fat Paul, my designer and sub...’

‘Hey!’ fat Paul objected, though I don’t know on what grounds.

‘This is Don, designer on Bangers! and Matt, sub on Froth. All the other people in here are of no consequence,’ he said with a dismissive wave of the hand, which I notice took in the editorial assistants and Roger. There were still one or two other people dotted around the office but they were paying us no attention. ‘This is Godfrey Bishop,’ Paddy told the other, ‘new sub on Bling.’

‘That’s your name? Godfrey Bishop?’ Don said, shaking his head. ‘Jesus.’

‘So, you fancied a job on a porn mag, did you? Well, it can be alright here at times, once you get all the sex bollocks out of the way,’ Paddy said, making very little sense to me.

‘What did you think of that bird in your interview?’ Hasseem asked.

‘Oh yeah, what was with that? I didn’t get it.’

‘It was just a laugh more than anything, see how you all reacted,’ Paddy explained. ‘Stuart got her in for the day for a couple of hundred quid to sit in on the interviews, to see who could manage to finish the subbing test with her rubbing her tits next to them. You, apparently, were one of the few who managed it.’

‘Get this,’ Matt grinned. ‘One guy even got his cock out and started undressing in front of them both and got kicked out.’ Everyone broke up at that. Everyone that is, except me, who felt icy hands squeeze my heart.

‘So, she doesn’t really work here?’ I asked naively.

‘Course not you fucking donut, what would be the point of that?’ Don said.

‘Everyone thinks we’ve got naked birds stashed around the place,’ Paddy sighed.

‘The thing is with that model right, what was her name, Rebecca, the thing is, Stuart was meant to take pictures of the different applicants doing their subbing tests next to Rebecca so he could make a feature out of it and cost off her fee but he forgot, so he’s got to try and bury £250 somewhere in the books.’

‘Where is Stuart?’ I asked.

‘It’s Monday,’ Paddy replied. ‘He’s probably still unconscious somewhere.’

‘Hold on I’ll check,’ Matt said and picked up the phone. ‘Stuart called in today?’ he asked and ‘uhuh-ed’ a bit, then hung up and told me that Stuart had phoned in sick and wouldn’t be in today.

I scratched my head and wondered what I should do.

‘Read my paper if you want,’ fat Paul replied, reaching for the paper in his back pocket.

‘Should kill a couple of hours till lunchtime,’ Paddy said, ‘then we can go over the pub and get a drink. You need one Mondays, don’t you.’

The next two hours dragged by, and were made all the more worse by having nothing other than The Sun crossword to occupy my time. No one else seemed to be doing anything either. Roger was playing poker over the internet with his credit card behind me and losing quite badly by the sounds of it while Paddy, Don and the rest had dispersed around the office and were now chatting to other people, chatting on the phone or, in the case of fat Paul and Hasseem, playing baseball with two rubber tits that had been sellotaped together and an enormous plastic dildo. Every now and then the ball would careen into Jackie’s desk and knock papers or cups of tea flying and she’d have a mad fit and they’d stop playing for ten minutes before the whole process would repeat itself. One time, the ball flew across the office and smacked Mary on the side of the face. Mary blinked a couple of times and then started laughing.

By Christ, Paddy was right, I needed a drink.

One o’clock finally came and I was lassoed and taken to The Abbot, three doors along from Moonlight Publishing.

‘Guinness Paddy; Don, Guinness; Export for Matt and a Fosters and a plate of chips for Paul,’ the landlord said, reaching for glasses and tapping the till without waiting for confirmation. ‘Where’s Hasseem?’

‘He’s just talking to Peter but he’ll be in, in a minute,’ Paddy replied and the landlord went about pouring another pint of Guinness. ‘What d’you want?’ Paddy asked me so I said a pint of Stella. ‘Cliff, this is Godfrey, he starts work today on Bling,’ Paddy said, introducing me to the landlord (I’d never been introduced to a landlord before).

‘Yeah, when did you lot start fucking working?’ Cliff retorted. Ominous bells were tolling.

‘You come in here a lot then, do you?’ I asked Paddy.

‘Every now and then, when the mood takes us,’ he shrugged and we all went and sat down around a table by the fire. It was a traditional-looking pub and by traditional, I mean it didn’t look like it had had so much as a lick of paint since the sixties, although there was a television up in one of the corners showing the racing and a fag machine that now took decimal currency.

‘How are you enjoying your first day in porn?’ Paddy asked me.

‘I haven’t exactly done a lot.’

‘No? Oh well, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll probably do something tomorrow,’ he replied, savouring a few gulps. ‘Ah, just what the doctor ordered… me to stay away from.’

Believe it or not – I didn’t at first – but Paddy was an Oxford graduate with an MA in something brainy (I forget what) and an IQ you’d be chuffed to hit with three darts. He’d graduated some five years ago with a bright shining future in front of him and had come to London to make a go of his life, but had somehow got sidetracked along the way. In his first couple of weeks in The Smoke, he’d fired out dozens of letters to dozens of companies and received back dozens of job offers for his trouble. He had his pick of the cream of promising jobs but then one particular letter stood out from all the rest. He’d only applied for the position the same way he’d applied to everything in The Guardian that week, but now they’d invited him in for an interview and Paddy was suitably intrigued.

Five years on and Paddy could barely remember what that optimistic young grad had originally wanted to be. His wholesome, healthy and respectable upbringing had left a sleaze vacuum in his soul that only a drug and booze-fuelled lifetime of porn could slake, and now he was on the hook there was no getting off. He’d drunk away more brains than I was ever likely to have and regretted none of it. He was still a clever bloke, but these days his cogs concerned themselves with more worldly matters than anything that could be solved by going into a library.

To call him my porn mentor wouldn’t really be true; Paddy went places and did things I wouldn’t have touched with yours, but he was a good guy to know and the person I would come to turn to whenever I needed advice. Or more importantly my conscience absolving.