‘Oh there you are,’ Brian said. ‘Here, this is my mate, also called Brian, no relation. Here Godfrey, tell Brian what you was just telling me. Listen to this mate, you’re gonna love it.’
Oh fuck a duck!
Fifteen minutes of minimalist recapping later, I had two new best mates both called Brian, who I thought would never leave me again, but luckily some idiot off in the corner started singing Australian rugby songs and that was all it took. They announced to everyone that they had to have some of that, asked me if I wanted to join them (‘only if it’s in a murder/suicide pact,’ I think was my answer), then they bounded off with their tails wagging.
I thought I’d take the opportunity to slip away before they returned so I started filling my pockets with booze, fags, canapés and anything else free I could find when this rather saucy little bird came over and said:
‘Hello.’
‘Hello back.’
‘Are you going?’
‘Erm, I might do,’ I told her, suddenly not so sure. ‘Not really my type of party.’
‘What do you do for Philip Goss?’ she asked, very deliberately. This was a Philip Goss shindig. He had tons of companies all over London, only one of them was porn. Most were respectable pin-stripe businesses – accountants, letting agencies, advertising and marketing firms, etc etc etc. The canapés I was slipping into my pocket were his property management company’s by rights, but me, Paddy and Matt had been able to wangle ourselves a night of free booze by virtue of working under the same umbrella organisation.
‘Why?’ I asked back.
‘I want to know. What do you do?’
I gave her a good look over. She was a petite little brunette with cute freckles and a drunken slur. Lots of make-up around the eyes, short hair and an arse that looked like it had seen more than its fair share of action. I decided she’d do very nicely. Time to turn on the old charm.
‘I work for one of his porno mags,’ I told her.
This might seem like double standards, me volunteering this information to her, but that’s because it is. I’ve never really minded talking about my job to women, because with women it served as a useful device for cutting through all the usual old chit-chat and getting them onto the subject of sex without actually having to get to know them first.
‘And why do you do that?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, beats working for a living, I suppose,’ I said, giving her a cheeky little smile, which I didn’t get back.
‘So you think it’s okay to exploit women in this way, do you?’
Oh dear, not this old chestnut, I thought as the cheeky smile slipped from my face.
‘How are we exploiting women?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean by, “exploiting”?’
‘I mean showing us to be pieces of meat rather than real people with thoughts and feelings. I just wanted to know if you think that’s okay, and if not, how you can do what you do for a living every day?’
‘First off, we’re not exploiting women, we never have done. This is some fucking buzz word that they teach you all at big fat feminist school that you love to throw about without really understanding what you’re talking about. Exploiting women? How are we exploiting them? Okay, men like sex. Men have sex with women. Men enjoy looking at pictures of naked women because it reminds them of sex – and some of us need reminding occasionally. Who have we exploited? Have we exploited you? No, because you weren’t in the mag. Have we exploited the model? No, because she got paid for what she did and enjoyed the work. If anyone’s exploited anything, it’s the model who’s exploited her own body and men’s natural desires. Not us.’
‘You use women.’
‘Use them? What do you mean? Like banks use cashiers or restaurants use chefs. Then yeah, you’re right, we do use women. We have to, most female glamour models happen to be women. It’s a very hard racket for us blokes to break into. By that same token, I wouldn’t rate your chances of getting into the Chippendales.’
‘That’s completely different.’
‘I thought it would be.’
‘The Chippendales are just a dance troupe, an evening’s entertainment. It’s choreography not pornography that draws women to go and see them.’
‘Yes, and I can see how being ejected from the stage screaming, “I touched his willy! I touched his willy!” really helps you appreciate those moves.’
‘I’ve never done anything like that.’
‘No, you might not have but there are plenty of bir... er... women who have. I’ve never raped anyone, but that doesn’t stop feminist writers like Paula Atkinson accusing all men of being “sleeping rapists” now, does it?’
‘I’ve never even heard of her,’ she told me, although that didn’t surprise me considering I’d just made her up. Still, sounded good, didn’t it?
‘We don’t exploit women any more than calendars about Polar Bears exploits Polar Bears. Actually, we exploit women less because our women readily agree to be photographed. I don’t suppose the old Polar Bears have that much of a say in the matter do they? No, one minute they’re having a shit behind a bush, the next they’re up on the kitchen door of every conservationist in the country. How would you like that, hey? “Ahhh, look at her straining. Isn’t she cute?”’ I told her. ‘And our girls get an £50 extra if we want pictures of them having a shit. What do the Polar Bears get?’ I added just for a joke, although I don’t think she realised it was one.
‘It’s humiliating for women. You humiliate women. You might think they’re agreeing but you’re actually taking advantage of their insecurities and doing their self-identification permanent long-term damage.’
‘Have you ever even met a porn model?’ I asked her.
‘No, but that...’
‘No, no, let me make my point,’ I interrupted before she had a chance to get in her stride. ‘I know plenty of porn models and it seems to me that you’re making some pretty sweeping generalisations about a group of people you know nothing about.’
‘They’re women, and I think I know about women a bit more than you do, being that I am one.’
‘No, they’re not women, they’re people. Personally I think that was a little sexist of you, but that’s just me. I’ve met a lot of porn models and they come in all shapes and sizes; mentally, I’m talking about (most are almost identical physical clones of each other). They all have different reasons for doing what they do so I can’t talk about them all, but I think I can safely say one thing – they’d all be pretty offended by some of the shit you’ve been coming out with if they could hear it.’
‘Oh shit is it? Why is it then that hundreds of women are attacked every day by men who read porn?’
‘Why? Because nearly every fucking bloke in the country reads porn.’
‘I rest my case.’
‘Oh you do, do you? Well think about this; Holland has some of the most liberal laws in the whole of Europe with regards porn and prostitution, yet it also has some of the safest streets for women. Explain that one, Mzzzzzzz Pankhurst.’
‘The Dutch have always been more enlightened and more mature when it comes to sex.’
‘Yes, they think porn and prostitution are fine. I agree with them. You don’t. So who’s being immature?’
‘You think prostitution is the answer to solving hate crimes? You’d legalise the slavery of women, would you?’
‘Legalise it? I’d make it compulsory, like National Service. Two years in a knocking shop for every bird over the age of eighteen. Actually no, scrub that, just the good-looking ones, all the old boilers get three years in the ironing corps.’ I don’t know if she could tell but my patience had finally expired and I was suddenly concentrating my efforts on mainly winding her up. And I was doing a damn fine job of it too.