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.