Adventures in Temping Part I

Being a receptionist is hardly taxing work. In fact, for the most part it seems that I get to sit behind a desk, write on this blog and look up the same three american gossip sites. In an attempt to add a flavour of surprise to this slightly tasteless existence I decided to follow a link and start reading Fanny Hill, Or, Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure

Who knows why someone descided to place the entire book on the net or why they picked this particular pearler. It was written in 1794 and contains such classic moments as:

"But frequency of use dulling the sensation, I soon began to perceive that this work was but a paltry shallow expedient that went but a little way to relieve me, and rather rais'd more flame than its dry and insignificant titillation could rightly appease.

"Man alone, I almost instinctively knew, as well as by what I had industriously picked up at weddings and christenings, was possess'd of the only remedy that could reduce this rebellious disorder...."

Ah man alone. Nothing like a bit of patriarchial porn to make the afternoons fly by.

Putting aside the endlessly stated supremacy of the penis this story suffers, as with any pornographic text, from the boredom of repetition. It isn't just the characters who get tired of the same three steps repeated over and over again. At the same time it's still interesting to read because it's the same scenario over and over again. No anal sex. No cunnilingus. Barely any hand jobs even! Were people in the 1700's really so unimaginative? If you're going to write a book about fucking surely you may as well try to include as many different types of fucking as possible?