Johnny O
I have this idea for a soft porn novel. You know the kind of book people leave behind at bus stations and train terminals, the ones with the covers torn off, the ones that catch your eye because of the provocative language, starting on page one, with very creative parts of speech for very intimate parts of the body. You’ll look down from your seat at the train station at the abandoned book on the seat next to you and the words “swollen hamlet of love” will jump right up at you and you will think, “well, this isn’t Tom Clancy.” If you bother to read on, you might see a sentence like, “Amanda took one look at the giant sequoia in his pants and felt the awakening of the River Amazon within her…” Yeah, well, you get the idea.
That’s the thing about the soft porn novel. It works exclusively in metaphor and double entendre. The words on paper don’t really say anything specific (as opposed to the even grittier hard-core porn novel), yet the reader knows exactly what’s going on. There are similarities between a soft porn novel and a romance novel, but they are not the same animal at all. Both have plots. But the romance novel will carry its story right through to the last page, while the soft porn novel will usually abandon the plot line after page two or three and get right down to sex, sex, and more sex. Both styles of novel deal with the human condition of desire. And in both cases, the protagonists get what they want sooner or later. The major difference between them being that in the soft porn novel, you, the reader, are right there getting a blow-by-blow account (so to speak), whereas in the romance novel the heroine might get her bodice ripped a bit, but the rest is left to the imagination. Where’s the fun in that?!
The working title for my soft porn novel is, “Johnny O: Confessions of a profession bra fitter.” Basically, it’s the story of a guy named Johnny O who makes quite a name for himself as a bra fitter for an exclusive line of lingerie (Hidden Valley). Johnny is well known in the industry for his soft hands, charming disposition and eye for detail (he can estimate a woman’s bra size to 1/32”). Johnny O travels around between the better department stores pleasuring women by getting them into the right bra and then getting them right out of it. The women presume Johnny O is gay until something comes up in the dressing room to prove otherwise.
I’m guessing the following dialog will appear in my novel, probably on the opening page. “Why, this is the most magnificent bra I have ever felt against my unblemished, milky white, ample bosom. I can’t believe that I have been wearing the wrong bra all of my life. I don’t know how to thank you. I…Ohhh, Johnny O!”
Well, that’s a synopsis of the story. No, actually, that’s the whole story. Johnny O will travel the world over fitting bras and making love to women in the dressing rooms of Macy’s, Nordstroms, Harvey Nichols, Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche. The women will all leave satisfied that they have gotten a good bra and a bit more than they were expecting – plenty of bang for their buck. And Johnny O? In the end, he’ll just walk off to the next department store. There will always be other women for him. And he will always rise to the occasion.
Watch for “Johnny O: Confessions of a professional bra fitter” in train stations everywhere soon.
6:20:59 PM  Stories
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