Worn Leatherette

Funny how some things seem like a really good idea at the time, but how you wind up feeling kind of disappointed. Take the idea of an erotica exhibition, think about it...take a cold shower and come back to be disappointed...

It should have been a great idea, it should have been vaguely erotic, but it wasn’t. It was more like Camden market with wall to wall dildos. Even the crowd looked the same. Lads, lagers in hand, roaming in sniggering packs; happy young marrieds holding hands and thinking "this week Erotica ‘97, next week B&Q for kitchen cabinets". If you saw a women in skin tight PVC or leather you just knew she was working on one of the stands, probably one that specialised in skin-tight wall to wall leather dildos.

It wasn’t even as if anyone had dared to stretch their imaginations just a tiny little bit. Nothing about Taoist or trantric sex, but plenty of studded collars and chocolate body paint. It wasn’t even as if it was vaguely sexy, it was very much "no nudity or else we’ll get arrested" and "no sir, you can’t blow up Sexy Suzy here, even if you have just bought her". Then again, we should be grateful for small mercies, but not for the inflatable sheep that dominated one stand and had a sign next to it saying "break the ice at sex parties".

Even the exhibition of "erotic art" was as predictable as Playboy. Which reminds me, in a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss, Penthouse had a small stand. Hustler, on the grounds that if you’d seen the film, you could buy cut-price copies of the rag, had the BIGGEST stand. It was crowded, usually with lager lads, but sober lager lads because lager was a rip-off £2.50 a bottle.

Naturally there was a floorshow. My companion glued her eyes to four blokes with the kind of tanned, muscled bodies to make most of us feel inferior called The Dream Boys, but the rest of what passed for entertainment was most cut price than cabaret. I reckoned the bored looking, lingerie clad, models with glued on smiles and sun-bed tans were probably thinking about doing the washing up, or worrying if they’d locked the cat in the bedroom again. Sex? Forget it.

Maybe it wasn’t all bad, you could get a DIY plaster caster kit, Ferrari shaped condoms, every flavour condom you could imagine except "man", glazed chocolate nipples and "cream filled chocolate willies". The really ghoulish could watch the body piercers at work on the more discreet parts of the body and wonder what that big bloke called Frank with the 12 inch bolt was then to do.

Then again, maybe it was all bad. It was just about as erotic as a frozen turkey, although if bondage is you thing or you want a leather body suit like the one in "Pulp Fiction" you maybe got your money’s worth. Me? Well I got bored, got a couple of beers, bought some German condoms and an Aids badge, then we went home to do something really erotic.

And the worn leatherette? Well I spotted just thing for repairing it, latex body paint!