SEXIS WRONG

went away with a replacement tape instead.
and without daring to speak, he nodded. I felt like giving him
the tape for nothing.
There is a pattern to the way that people buy pornography.
Not counting the compulsive browsers (like the chirpy postoffice
worker who came in every morning to look at the magazine
covers), most everyone slotted into one of two specific
porno consumer types.
The first type would come into the shop and start with the
sci-fi section—the farthest point from the porn—the impression
being conveyed that they were having a casual, leisurely
browse. Making their way around every single book, comic,
and magazine, they would finally, inevitably arrive at—hello,
what’s this?—the porn section. A routine adhered to on each
and every visit to the shop, this browser wanted to impress
that he had no real interest in porn but bought it out of curiosity.
“I like a bit of spanking,” the customer
said, “but this is ridiculous.”
The other type of customer would stride in with a sense of
purpose, always stop to make small talk on his way to the
pornography and stop again on his way back. These were folk
for which pornography was clearly not a hang-up—and they
wanted you to know it.
People rarely bought porn if there was a woman present in
the shop, and anyone in the porn section would surreptitiously
slip into another section—or out of the shop altogether—until
the threat of woman had passed.
There were, of course, some nonconformists. But these
were invariably customers who were illiterate or not of sound
mind. One young man brought to the counter a video that
carried an 18 certificate (e.g., it was a legit release) and asked
me to read to him the blurb on the back cover (I hesitate to
use the word synopsis). It was such a left-field request that
I complied and read aloud the ridiculous hyperbole. On returning
the tape to the shelf, however, he came back with a
second tape and the same request. I told him I wasn’t reading
another sleeve blurb. He claimed he was illiterate; I claimed
the blurb didn’t matter.
On another occasion, another young man brought to the
counter a videotape. He looked insecure, and I got the impression
he was mentally challenged. The video was part of
a series depicting Playboy models lounging around in swimsuits
and looked tame even by softcore standards. I asked
him if he wanted the tape in a bag. Without daring to look up
Both Bob and myself were surprised when one day a smartly
attired gentleman laid down cash for porn as a woman was
standing at the counter. Not only that, he then pointed to a
film fanzine on display that featured a suggestive image from
Pete Walker’s House of Whipcord on its cover and said, “I’ll
have that, too.”
One of the curious things about my time working in a porn
shop was that I never bothered to look at any porn. Of course,
I saw the covers on display and flicked through magazines
that were brought in for exchange to ensure that everything
was in order, but I never felt the urge to look through the stuff
for kicks.
On Christmas Eve, my last day of employment, I was sorry
and relieved at the same time. Doing nothing all day was pretty
taxing. But the job had its perks: Money
was the biggest, and I cannot imagine
there are many employers who actively
encourage smoking and drinking (I didn’t
do the former but a lot of the latter—polystyrene cups of coffee
from the café next door complemented with large shots
of whiskey as protection from the cold).
Although I no longer worked there, I continued to pop into
Bookchain from time to time—more often than not to drop
off publications from Headpress, my own publishing outfit—
until it closed its doors and got knocked down along with the
rest of the block.
As unlicensed sex shops in Britain go, Bookchain was not a
typical representation. Arguably, it wasn’t even a sex shop—
it never used to be, but that’s how it ended up.
Every place around the country selling smut on the sly will
have its idiosyncratic origins, its stories to tell. I’ve a few
more myself with this one, the last of the Savoy shops, but
they were crushed beneath the rubble on Peter Street.
David Britton: Wish you could have seen our
shops in the seventies. They really were something
else, and to see M. John Harrison wrapping up Big
Bouncy Ones From Jamaica was an education. I do
miss those days of piracy and excess in that squaremile
center of Manchester we called Savoyland.
* A British form of pantomime theater often performed at Christmastime.
174 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG