The unexpected knock on the door sealed my fate. A lifetime’s work shot down in flames. For something I did one afternoon nearly thirty years ago.
My assistant answered the door, revealing a young man in a sharp suit, a sharper haircut, and a supercilious grin on his face. He said he was from the Daily _____. Could he come in, he had something to show me.
I was busy (genuinely so) and didn’t want to see him. ‘You will,’ he purred, as if he were in a movie, ‘I have a video called Office Boys.’
Office Boys. I hadn’t thought about that since the day we shot it. The sleazebag didn’t have to tell me what was in it, I already knew.
It was 1999, I was nineteen and at university. An entrepreneurial student in Media Production saw a gap in the market: gay porn. The money he offered was good so we hijacked an office and shot Office Boys. This was before the Internet took off and it was just bare bums and some kissing.
We thought it was a laugh, and precociously, that we were pioneers in sexual freedom. None of us were actually gay and we did it only the once.
Now, the representative of the Press was bleating about my flouting ‘family values.’ I kid you not. Did he never go online? These days kids put up their own dick pix.
But, that was the end of my Cabinet career, before it had really started.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 