During an oppressive heat wave in 2018 I was sat on a bench facing a river outside a café/bar in a city where one generally moonlights as the other — behind me several games of pentanque were underway, the abstract sound of the jacks being pounded by the boules somehow harmonised with the buzzing of insects and bird song at the hedgerows by the water. On the opposite side of the river there seemed to be a steady stream of women riding their bicycles along the road (the smallest cobble produced an imperceptible vibration of their breasts), each with sun-kissed skin the colour of the café au lait on the bench beside me.

A month prior a French monthly magazine had paid me in advance to write an article describing pornography from three different eras and the deadline was that evening — alongside the fact that I hadn’t started the piece yet I had spent most of the advance in the 24 hours leading up to this point in the city where the magazine was based. The day prior I had flown from Berlin in Germany to first sample the local cuisine before attending a party the magazine was throwing to celebrate its 50-year anniversary an hour after my deadline. The editor of the magazine had called that afternoon and put what felt like remorseless pressure on me to send her what would be my first and only draft within the next hour.

Fuelled by amphetamine and guilt I removed my notebook and pen and began writing furiously, fabricating each scene until I reached the requested word-count. For a raft of reasons I never sent it to her that day and never did make it to the party that evening. Below is an extract from an inherently incoherent article that was never published. While the quality of the film is poor the female performer’s red hair resting underneath her head on a pillow nonetheless entrances me. Spread across the bed with an angelic look on her face her co-star mounts her seemingly sedated body, his Neapolitan mouth agape like a wild ape. He begins to caress her breasts in a manner that suggests it’s his first time doing so and the moment has a kind of anthropological quality to it, so much so that the viewer is disappointed not to hear the melodious whistle of the Bird of Paradise somewhere in the distance.

The expression on his face suggests some wrongdoing but the ethics of the encounter are ignored as he continues — eagerly but gently — fondling the breasts of our sleeping beauty. She’s wearing a black high rise thong (this style has weaved its way back into the fashion studios of Paris and Milan) adding tension and depth to a look that accentuates her figure wonderfully, especially her stomach and inside hip above the groin (an abhorrent word but one of the few to choose from to describe the genitalic periphery, although were we speaking more specifically about the delicious cleft a few inches either side of it, then we would have been spoiled for choice).

The model appears to be hairless but the man has yet to move onto the most densely populated of the 14 erogenous zones, however it’s not difficult to imagine her completely bare with the exception of an evocative “landing strip” made famous by the J Sisters. She stirs and moans softly and although this tantalising sound alone could get me off — for me, pleasure is received through the two cavities on either side of the muscle used to craft this lunacy — we can easily decipher that the moans are not her own: the scene has been badly-dubbed in Italian. Contemplating this detail I drink more café au lait. There is an almost perfect quality to the air — the temperature, the atmosphere — yet because of the delicious distractions on the opposite side of the river I can’t concentrate. Parched of pleasure I drink in the aromas that follow the bouquet of brunettes and blondes some fifty metres away. The light from the sun glistens in the water.

There is an irritable feeling under the pullover I am wearing — both around the neck and under each sleeve by the wrist — which seems to fabricate further distraction. I smell of sweat. The need for a cigarette becomes overwhelming. I rummage in my pockets. The rolling papers are thin so the tobacco doesn’t burn away as the cigarette rests between the slingshot of my fingers and I take my time to enjoy it, the nicotine and dryness of the tobacco combines nicely with the caffeine and moisture of the coffee. As I bring the cigarette up to my mouth for maybe the second or third time I notice a caterpillar on the sleeve of my shirt. Picking it up I hold it up in front of me, observing it with a kind of profound admiration before deciding to put it onto my tongue and closing my mouth. There is a moment of pause and I have to fight the almost uncontrollable urge to swallow. Suddenly yet sensually it begins its wonderful wriggling in the damp darkness of my jaws. I sit there a moment, enjoying the sensation until I realise that the feeling the caterpillar produces is arousing me. It feels like a tedious realisation to come to. My jaws are clenched and I’m concerned then not that I will swallow it but that it will crawl under my teeth and I will bite down on it. Cautiously it continues, but it appears to be moving only in a straight line.

There are some fifty-nerve endings on the human tongue and I would have to be patient if it is to tickle each one. Grappling once again with the urge to swallow I stick out my tongue as a man and woman walk by me. Horrified the woman spits on the ground in front of me before I put my tongue back inside my mouth. The caterpillar starts up again, this time more confidently in the direction of the back of my throat. Smelling our scarlet seductress more clearly with every stroke of ink gushing from the ballpoint pen on the page, I imagine her thin lips opening and closing with each rush of finely filtered blood to her vagina. The Ape of Naples removes his trousers absentmindedly, and with that, gains entry with a refined kind of force, the sexual communion finally realised. Produced sometime in the mid-1990s nostalgia played a minor part in the next experience. Like her male counterparts the female performer is wearing a suede mask. There appears to be a “masked ball” theme, the male performer’s masks are black, hers is red. However she’s not the vermillion vixen we had hoped for — her hair is the colour of champagne and straw.

She is being caressed from behind by one of the men while the other reclines on a suede chaise longue with his cock in his hand and cuts the shape of someone on a sun lounger by the pool at an all-inclusive swingers-resort in Corfu. Foreplay lasts a matter of moments and in a fashion akin to pornography of the time, the scene fades abruptly to one of the lively lads standing to attention while the seemingly eager female performer takes him in her mouth, the idle second man still tossing himself off like a pervert in a pub. I drink more café au lait. Man on chaise longue who at this point just appears to be downright lazy is enjoying all the fleshy features of a wet, insatiable mouth while the other takes up position in the driving seat — among a litany of thrusts he then removes his suede dinner jacket with a slick shake of the shoulders.

Due to the grainy quality of the film it’s difficult to decipher what colour the jacket is but is strikes me that it doesn’t compliment the maroon dress shirt he’s wearing underneath — but that’s mere trivia. The final romp features a blonde female performer who introduces herself, after some social probing, as Nicole. She enters the room, an open plan affair comprising of a kitchen, dining room and living area. In American Real Estate parlance the space would be more appropriately described as condominium. Nicole moves around the room almost in slow motion as the camera accentuates her legs by filming from the floor and I realise then what it must feel like observing a woman from the perspective of a rodent. Off-camera a male voice makes an incoherent comment. Nicole forcibly giggles. Pausing on the page I hold my tongue still: the caterpillar is gone. I must have swallowed it and its now somewhere inside me, drowning in café au lait. Nicole fingers the straps on either side of her bikini and turns around slowly without taking her eyes off the camera. Her features — on her face as well as her body — are stiff, so it’s difficult to decipher her age; however, as we look into her vacant eyes what becomes abundantly clear is that she doesn’t appear to have much emotional range. A man’s arm then appears into shot. His figure now partly visible to the camera, he bends her over, removes her neon G-string and instructs the cameraman to zoom in. What the viewer sees now is merely an abstraction.

It’s virtually impossible to define the flesh we see before us. In a tone at once shy and expectant he asks her if he can lick it, but promises like a petulant child, that he won’t stick his tongue inside (the absurdity of the situation appears to escape the Lothario). The idea enjoys a broad consensus with both Nicole and the cameraman encouraging him to continue. Tasting the asshole is like tasting the very conception of life itself; after all, the asshole is the first part of the embryo to develop during pregnancy, but we can assume he doesn’t know this and so it remains our little secret. He stays true to his word until she starts laughing, a playful, flustered kind of laugh that reveals her expensive teeth, at which point he apologises halfheartedly, claiming unconvincingly that it was just a reflex.

The camera zooms in on her face now, portraying an odd, almost-smile. With the sun beating down on me, the café au lait now empty, I have the feeling that I am beginning to fade away as the sun begins to set. “I have a really long tongue,” he says. “I know,” she replies. He then kneels down and sits back on his feet to admire what he calls “Pandora’s Box”. Condescendingly she describes this as “clever”, although he seems completely ignorant of her tone. The viewer can’t help but roll his eyes. For a second time he instructs the cameraman to zoom in (it’s clear though that our friend behind the camera simply steps forward) and, delivered with the wonder of an enthusiast describing a cloud formation, exclaims that it’s the best he has ever seen, pointing to some freckles she has on the rim. “I have freckles in the strangest of places,” she says, and last this embryonic scene finally comes to life.