Porn with a silver spoon in its mouth

THE OTHER day, at a luncheon for contributors to the Erotic Review, I suddenly saw my future unfold. That was before I got drunk, amorous, and tried to seduce the editor. Bum's rush, since you ask, but no need for me to apologise since I at least had the decency to be amorous before I got drunk, the wine simply releasing the inhibitions (which are on a bit of a hair-trigger anyway) and enabling me to yearn, gaze, shower rococo compliments, and generally bore the object of my desire halfway to death, particularly when all she really wanted to do was poke me in the eye and go home to her husband.

Serves her right. Being the editirix of an erotic journal is no job for a beautiful, poised and alarmingly demure woman. Being the editor of an erotic journal is a job for a man well-stricken in years, mouldering slightly, rural and penurious, dressed in loose ancient tweeds lightly decorated with egg, and giving off a smell of mice, teabags and pencil-shavings; a man who could no longer hope to arouse anyone to the contemplation of venery, let alone himself; in whom the passions have been reduced to the quality of that faintly corrosive, powdery exudate which congeals around the rim of a dud battery.

Or for me. I could do it. I could do lunches like that, with weary, hopeless voluptuaries nicely balanced by young women with a winning line in insincere smouldering. It would be a good move, too, because, what with one thing and another, erotica is going to be the new rock'n'roll.

You don't believe me? Look at the demographics. The Sixties People are rapidly getting past it. Their knees are going, their hips crepitate as they walk, gravity is doing what gravity does, their juices are drying up, liberal relativism and pot-smoking have extinguished their inner spark, they're all going deaf, and soon all that will be left is the contemplation of past glories. And there's going to be a fortune to be made in providing them something to contemplate, since their memories are all shot to hell.

I am not talking about pornography. Far too lurid, and simply arouses rage and jealousy. Won't do, although a friend of mine has a marvellous life at it. He used to be a legitimate film director but got fed up of endless rows about residuals, house-nuts, above-the-line credits, statutory hot meals and, above all, writers. So he went into the pornography line in the US, and is now immensely rich, although that doesn't seem to move him much. The main thing he likes is that there are no writers to deal with, and no wonder; there's no scope for them. I wrote a few scripts for him once, just to get him started, and it's just wearisome. Every scene goes like this:

INT. THE BEDROOM - DAY They lie on the bed and Do It. HER: Oooh. Oooh. (Another MAN comes into the room. He joins in.) FIRST MAN: Unghh. SECOND MAN: Urf. WOMAN: Oooh. Ooooh. Oooooooh.

Pretty soon he got the hang of it and could do it for himself, which cheered him up no end. Never again would he have to listen to a screenwriter saying, "You have butchered my script." Instead, he just writes his own, pre-butchered to taste.

The other thing he likes is getting home to his wife each evening. "In legit cinema," he said, "you've got all these starlets coming on to you. They think if they go to bed with you, they'll get the part. It's not like that here. Going to bed with people is what they do for a living. If they want to impress you they do things like buying you lunch and talking about Derrida. Much better. I'm home by 7.30, most evenings."

Which is all very attractive but it won't do, not for the new rock'n'roll. It's not communal enough. Too furtive. You can't imagine having a few close chums round to your little place in Gloucestershire for a bottle or two of a rather fine St Emilion and a look at your newest acquisitions, Tipsi Silicone in Tipsi Does It With Some Men in a Garage and the sequel, Tipsi Does It With Some Other Men, But in the Same Garage.

Erotica, on the other hand, is different. Erotica has aesthetic values. It has cultural resonance. It charms and enchants, as well as stirring the sludge of memory. Erotica screenplays go:

INT. THE BEDROOM - DAY They lie on the bed and smoulder insincerely. HER: I always wanted to be had by Foucault in the Senate House in Cambridge, cruelly, mercilessly, before the entire University Senate in academic dress. (Another MAN comes into the room.) SECOND MAN: Gosh, were you at Cambridge too? FIRST MAN: Yes, actually, Caius, actually. WOMAN: Oooh. Ooooh. Oooooooh. SECOND MAN: Really? Did you know old Sploddy? He's a judge now. I always say things are really getting bad when even the judges start looking younger. FIRST MAN: Ha ha ha! WOMAN: Ooooh. Ooooooooh. Hello? Hello? (The MEN gaze lasciviously at her silk peignoir. The FIRST MAN gently removes it from her pliant yielding body. The SECOND MAN puts it on.) BOTH MEN: Ha ha ha! (They Do It to each other.)

But it will go beyond that. I am planning a whole range of exquisite erotic screenplays - we won't actually film them, just sell the scripts, very post-modern don't you know - tailored to take account of national particularities. There'll be the English Series, with moustachioed chaps patting their wife's shoulder in an abstracted fashion before sneaking into their dressing-rooms to bed down with the dogs. Then there'll be the French Series, elegant men who will elaborately praise their mistress's every body-part until she blacks out with boredom, then sneak off to a brothel. The Italian Series, with ardent men describing the glories of their own performance then falling asleep. The Peruvian Series, with black-eyed, swashbuckling men stroking their womenfolk into a state of near-psychotic arousal, then sneak- ing off to shoot a policeman. And the Welsh Series, featuring plump rosy women sitting up in bed looking at their wristwatches and pursing their lips.

Something for everyone, in other words, and I advise you to get in on the ground floor. Send me your money now, and I'll put you down for lunch. !