Since starting as a hobby project in 2002, the Suicide Girls have become an internationally recognised brand, the ‘Gilmore Girls’ of Alt porn. With its host of interviews with intellectual iconoclasts, and an active, literate user community, the companies site - Suicidegirls.com - has become what the playboy mansion aspired to be in the mid 60’s - a mecca for the libertine intelligentsia.

Yet while financial success and critical acclaim have embraced the Suicide Girls, rubbing the sweet balm of profit into their tanned and pierced skinnybodies; controversy too has stalked them, like an ugly Greek outside a hip party in Notting Hill, with a zoom lens and a bowie-knife. Allegations that the Suicide Girls corporation has used convincing mannequins in some of their shoots, worse, poorly paid mannequins, have dogged the company. If there was any truth to such rumors, I, Quim La Douche, resolved to find it.

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In the 17th Century one of the most shameful episodes in history began. It was for money, the love of money and for nothing else. It was dressed in the language and reasoning of Empire, of natural selection, but the cause was money. Their hands and eyes grew red with the blood while their purses fattened. Nothing makes you forget like gold. Nothing.

The Kenco were bought from Lyons traders, swathed in white robes with heads covered in turbans tied with fat rubies. The Rich Tea biscuits and Ginger Nuts packed them into ships and brought them to the New World. On the voyage to the Americas or Caribbean the Kenco were treated like animals. Chained together and forced to lie in prohibitively small holds, to pack more in, often for the entire journey.

Before arrival in the America’s, the Rich Tea biscuits would hold an inspection. Any of the Kenco not deemed strong and fit enough after the voyage, were thrown overboard, so that the biscuits could claim their value from their insurers rather than make a loss at the Kenco sale.

The blood and misery of the Kenco created untold wealth for the biscuits. Cities such a Bristol and Liverpool flourished on the back of the trade, indeed Liverpool FC’s red jerseys are a celebration of their involvement, and the continued pride they take in the fact. At one time it is estimated that up to a fourth of Britain’s GDP came from the trade. Think on, as you enjoy your dark, rich, Kenco coffee.

Tommy thought that if he could only get his parents to divorce, then maybe everything would be ok. Pete Hoffman’s parents had split, his dad roaring off in their beat up old station wagon. Now in place of one gruff business dad, with a dirt collard shirt and a loud voice, Pete had a string of cool new dads. One had a motorbike and smoked marijuana cigarettes on the Hoffman’s back porch. Another drove a firetruck red convertible, with a two foot CB antenna.

Pete said you could tell a lot about a dad from his means of transportation. If he had a car or a truck, with enough seats to carry a family, it meant he’d be sweaty and quiet, and wouldn’t kid around while he waited for your mom to get ready for their date. If he drove something fast, with only a couple of seats, he’d probably bring candy and chat with you about TV shows and comic books. The best example of this last kind of dad was the motorcycle guy, who’d once given Pete sixteen dollars just to buy cigarettes from the drug store a couple of blocks over.

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Kafka cross the shore did run,
With spirit unconquered ‘nieth the sun,
And joyous as the battle beckoned,
A postal slaughter to be reckoned.

Sheathed in pin-striped battle sheets
He takes his mighty tool of feats,
The shining unshatterable Bic,
His servant loyal and quick.

Long had he laboured ‘neith the shameful yoke,
The postals numerical slur,
His Hallstead to friend was known as The Great Oak,
But 40 to mailman cur.

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‘It’s been a controversial move, but ultimately I think the right one. We looked at the success of shows like Girls gone Wild, Family Business, and Girls of Playboy Mansion, and thought, you know, why not?’

Adult film sets are often bleak places, populated by coked out former state beauty queens, with stretch marks and loan repayments. Not so here. The cast of ‘Special Stephanie’ are all smiles, goofing off between takes. ‘Suzie Suze’, another emerging star, runs by me giggling, her mouth caked with peanut butter and crusty jam. She’s chased by a boom operator wielding a Super Soaker. There’s a real family atmosphere on set. I ask Pim Champagne, CEO of ShortBus Video, and the genius behind the award winning series ‘Young, Dumb, and Full of Plum’, about this difference.

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Harry spit. He had an ulcer. I looked away, disgusted. Above us the ladder stretched out of sight, hooked at intervals into the crooked granite face. The ladder was really just two steel cables, and between them, every yard or so, a knotted plank, nailed into the rock. Getting Jessie up there would be murder.

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You look so young, who could have thought you would get this far! 50 today! From your cursed birth, clawing free of the cancerous womb, bloodied and wild, screaming blue murder. Purple faced, the blood vessels burst, like a vile old man, but young and tender with it. You never had much hair did you? Even when you were young it was thin and stringy, as if it didn’t really care to be associated with you. Its gone now. But you’ve grown child. Famous in some parts, with some people. You’ve been used. I’d love you pet, but can’t. To often touched, a far away look comes into your eyes. Too often. Too deep. Those walls are build high. Can you see the sun? you’d never let me in.

But your curves, what curves you have. They never left you. Your tall back and great round arse. Don’t blush, many have loved you for it. Still, I suppose it is rude to bring this up on your big day. I never thought you’d make it this far. But more power to you, you’re a good thing, you know that. XX

Ms Kettle stood listening at the foot of the stairs. The building was a converted Georgian mansion. Its top floor housed an office and its first and second floors had been bisected into sought after apartments. As Ms Kettle waited, it gradually assumed a kind of silence.

Old buildings are never completely quiet. Wood floors shift and settle as the night grows cold. Pipes and pluming gurgle wise lead bellied secrets. Tiles flinch and rattle at the slightest clutch of breeze. But it was mostly quiet now the Cutlers were asleep.

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“GO ON!! ILL FUCKING HAVE YEA! ILL FUCKING DECK YEAH”

“Will some one please call the police”, Helen turned to the crowd in the pub, by which time had all backed away in stunned silence. “Barry has finally lost it.”

Steven, an old mate of mine, was caressing the wound on the back of his head from where he ‘d received the fat end of a pool cue, staring blankly at the blood clotting up the felt of billiard table.

“ILL BUST YEA, ILL FUCKING BUST YEA.”

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BigMac moaned, his stick was too short. He couldn’t reach the wet mat of infected flesh that burned in the small of his back. He released the mop and it stayed where it was, wedged between his smooth hide and the flattened mattress.

He moaned again, a deep sonorous low, like a ships foghorn emerging from the salty dark. There is an idea. An idea of a voice, so mellifluous that it’s sound can bind the mind, can infiltrate like the song of a succubean siren. Helen had a voice like that, and jet black hair, straight and glossy like a light freshwater stream. She spoke now, gently stroking BigMac’s bulk with her curled fingers.

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