Wall of Willies

The Wall of Willies

Its lifespan can't have been more than about four months, but the Wall of Willies was a source of endless amusement and delight to G, L and me.
OK, to be fair, it wasn't all images of the male member - I think we added quite a lot of other stuff: assorted postcards, flyers, pictures cut out from the music mags we were all fairly hooked on with vulgar captions added via either Photoshop (which we weren't very good at but loved to play about with)  and the occasional sticky note reminding each other to Get On With Our Work, but it's the willies that probably haunt the memories of our colleagues, even now.
It was summer 1993, and I had been put in charge of the weakest (in terms of sales) of the three porn-mags-for-ladies that the company published. I had been given pretty much free rein - I think on the grounds that they reckoned I couldn't make it any worse than it had been. G was my second-in-command and L worked on a couple of other titles and helped us out as and when necessary.
We had decided, almost from the beginning, that the mag needed a Readers' Men section, Readers' Wives having been a longstanding trope of top-shelf magazines aimed at men since, ooh, forever. We offered a cash prize each month for the 'best' naked man pic, and I had primed the pump, so to speak, by getting a few male acquaintances to let me take snaps of them with at least their shirts off.

It was a different world in 1993, remember. No digital cameras, no email, no social media to put up a shout out. I'm not entirely sure how we got the word out that we wanted these pictures - we may have ruthlessly pinched some of the shots that were sometimes sent in to the other titles the company owned, and simply given the subjects fake names and/or cut out any identifying features. But we got quite a lot of 'legitimately' submitted stuff, sent in with the actual entry form clipped out from the previous month's magazine, and all.
Except that about half if not more of what we got was not from, as we had requested, female readers wanting to immortalize their husbands and boyfriends. It was from men who wanted to show us their dicks. I know the Dick Pic is, these days, somewhere between scourge of the internet and some kind of dating-related art form, but to the three of us, that summer, the parade of peen was, basically, fucking hilarious. Quite a few sent pictures of themselves in nothing but a hat and a pair of socks. One got himself into the most bizarre contortions on his unlovely sofa. Lots sent in pictures that were the result of standing in front of a mirror with a cheap camera and flash, and pressing the button - basically a supernova of white, a bit of ceiling at the top, and half a willy and a pair of legs at the bottom.
They all went on the wall. Every one. Frequently captioned by us, as well.

After a few months, someone from senior management Had a Word and we took them all down. Apparently not all the other staff appreciated them, despite the fact that a good half of the editorial floor was dedicated to porn mags - it might have had something to do with the publisher's enthusiasm to go more respectable, and the importing of staff to work on non-filth, who were generally horrified by the rest of us anyway.

About a month after that, the title was closed. I don't know what became of the willies.

My First Fetish Club

My First Fetish Club

I was a few weeks short of 25; this was autumn 1989. A friend from a mag I was freelancing for at the time had rung me a few days previously to tell me all about this chap who'd come in to their office to tell them about the 'S&M club' he ran. She said he was 'Just your type, and he likes brunettes, so you could be well in there...'
I phoned him and got the details - venue, opening time... there's a dress code. I fretted, a bit. I certainly didn't have enough money to buy any kind of head-to-toe latex couture, and I didn't really know where to look for that sort of stuff. I remember a lot of frantic digging in my wardrobe to assemble an outfit that I thought would be acceptable: the fact that I was a rock chick who liked hanging out with bikers helped, a bit. And I had a pair of cream leather thigh boots that were horribly uncomfortable, but which I liked to wear and pose in. I added my spandex trousers, a leather waistcoat over a camisole top, and a pair of fingerless leather gloves, then my big raincoat as it was pissing down, and made my way to Soho. In those days, Soho was still a bit 'dangerous', but it also had its share of bars and clubs that were inclined to big up the idea that they were situated somewhere edgy: this place was a ponced-up burger bar with a basement they rarely used, and it was a Monday night.
When I arrived, I got asked if I knew what sort of club it was, and informed there was a dress code. Yeah, I said. Fine. Look, I've done the best I can... and flung off the raincoat. I stood there wobbling on my heels (those boots were always an absolute sod to walk in) and one of the three people facing me said, 'Well I think you look lovely!'
I was in.
I don't know what I expected; I don't know how much what I saw compared with whatever expectations I had. After a while, a man engaged me in conversation. I remember he was quite a bit older than me, and that he had an American accent. I've never seen him since, which is a bit of a shame, because it was a fairly major conversation. I said, at the end, 'I never told anyone any of that before,' and he said, 'No one ever asked you the right questions.' Then he patted my arm and said, 'You're way too dominant for me, but you're going to have a wonderful time.'
I wandered about for a while, and then I found a seat, sat in it and looked around. A man near my own age approached, on his hands and knees and said, 'Madame, may I kiss your boots?'
He wasn't wearing any more than some collection of leather straps. I'd seen someone being whipped, and I'd seen a woman carrying a tray of drinks suspended from the rings in her nipples, but someone wanting to kiss my boots... that seemed harmless.
'OK,' I said, and he lay down on the floor and started kissing and licking my spike-heeled. slightly grubby, booted foot. I sat still for a little while, having no idea what I ought to be doing, but something about the situation appealed. It appealed a lot. I relaxed, leaned back in the chair and lit myself a cigarette (yes, this was when you could smoke indoors). I pulled my foot away, uncrossed my legs and kicked him gently in the shoulder with the other foot.
'Other one, now.'