I was recently abroad on holiday and realised that there is now a new way to tell a Brit on the beach. To the long-standing giveaway of insect bites up the legs and sunburned bodies, it is now easy to identify the female of the species by the fact that she will inevitably be reading one of the Shades of Grey trilogy, unashamed and, apparently unaff ected by the titillating content of the newly categorised ‘mommy porn’ (which is, in itself, confusing given that both protagonists are years away from becoming parents themselves).
I didn’t spot a single Frenchwoman or German Fraulein reading a version of the books that have been credited with bringing sadomasochistic sex into everyday discussion. And trust me, here in Blighty, here’s no escaping it. My hairdresser was deep in conversation about the psychological undertones of the books while he battled with my hair last week; eavesdropping in cafes has lost its edge now it’s obvious that references to handcuff s and spanking are not personal disclosures, and now publishers are getting in on the act by sexing up the classics. Apparently Mr Darcy will no longer simply snub Elizabeth Bennet at the ball, he’ll take home a village wench and use his riding crop until she whinnies with desire. And Mr Rochester won’t just be mean to his lowly governess Jane Eyre, he’ll be REALLY mean, if you know what I mean….
Except that, actually, I don’t really know what I mean. Firstly I have to admit that I haven’t read the Fifty Shades trilogy, partly because I don’t think it sounds very good, but mainly because I don’t think I’m ready for so
much hardware in my fi ction. You need to remember that I’m so British that the nearest I got to erotica on my aforementioned holiday was when my boyfriend had to give me the Heimlich manoeuvre after I nearly choked on a piece of meat (no euphemism intended).
And secondly, apart from a slightly unhealthy interest in sneaking a look at the topshelf magazines in my early teens and a short foray into writing ‘nudge nudge wink wink’ stories for this very magazines many years ago (under the pseudonym Mercedes Munroe for any of you who happen to have collections of old R Mags piled up around your homes), I really don’t think I’m interested in knowing what happens to my literary heroines (or indeed anyone else for that matter) when they get between the sheets. I clearly belong to the generation that believes that too much information is not always a good thing.
Now please don’t think I want to go back to a time when we all stayed pure until our wedding night (as a middle-aged spinster that would have certainly wrecked my entertainment for the last thirty years or so…) but I’m tired of having other people’s sex lives shoved in my face (I was going to add ‘not literally’ but with all these people suddenly reinvigorated by their new reading habits, it pretty much is!). What with celebrities boasting about their libidos and physical fl exibility more suited to Olympic athletes, and bookshop shelves now fi lled to overfl owing with ‘erotic’ fi ction hastily published to satisfy a new craving for women who like being tied to the bedframe and men who like standing over them murmuring things like “You intrigue me, mistress”, there’s really no escape from the wretched subject.
So, I’ve decided that if you can’t beat ‘em (pun intended) the only thing to do is to join ‘em so I’m dragging Mercedes Munroe out of retirement to develop a new genre I’m calling Menopause Porn. It will feature women with uncontrollable hot fl ushes and men with an
unnatural desire to spend time in DIY stores discussing hardware with dopey shop assistants. When they fi nally get it together (and it will take some hundred pages or so because it takes her a while to be in the mood and he’s waiting for the football season to be fi nished on the television) the bed will creak with their lust and their combined weight, and he’ll reveal the steely side of his personality by dressing up as the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz while she, wearing only her favourite red shoes from M&S, cries out ‘Are we back in Kansas yet?’ And as their passion reaches its climax (after about three and a half minutes – because after all they’re trying to do this during an ad break in Coronation Street), she’ll glance at the windows and whisper ‘We really need to something about the double glazing’, leaving him shuddering and panting as he realises he’ll be able to nip back to B&Q before the end of the week.
Perhaps I need to be less cynical and submit to the fantasy that has overwhelmed my sex but it all seems such hard work so Christian Gray, if you’re thinking of inviting me to your Red Room of Pain anytime soon, you’d better make sure you’re holding a 50 Shades of Grey paint chart …