Velvet Ribbon by Sam Smith

‘I need a good porn name.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thought of any good ones?’

Gordon pulled his sandwich out from the brown paper bag it was wrapped in. A couple chunks of cheese tumbled out the side and onto his jeans. ‘Just one. Velvet Ribbon.’ He bit the sandwich.

‘Velvet Ribbon?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, chewing.

I leant back on the bench, staring at my sandwich, thinking about how to bite it without getting any cheese on my clothes. ‘That’s a stupid porn name.’

Gordon looked offended. ‘What, why?’

‘It sounds like a brand of toilet roll.’ I cupped my hand around the end of the sandwich and bit it. A shred of lettuce slipped out into my palm.

He shook his head. ‘No it doesn’t. It’s soft, it’s intimate, it’s clean.’

‘So is toilet roll.’

‘Well, do you have any suggestions?’

I threw the little piece of lettuce to a pigeon that had been stalking around us since we sat down in the park. It picked up the limp leaf with its beak, shook it around and dropped it. Pigeons don’t eat lettuce apparently. ‘Well, it needs to be kind of manly for a start.’

‘Velvet Ribbon isn’t manly?’ Gordon wiped his mouth.

‘No. It needs to sound like an angry hot sauce.’

‘What like?’

I took another bite of my sandwich. ‘Magma Brute.’

‘That sounds horrible,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but you don’t-’ A woman in a blue dress walked past. Me and Gordon both pretended to be really interested in our sandwiches. When she was out of earshot, I continued. ‘You don’t want it to sound too nice. It’s got to have a bit of an edge.’

‘Okay,’ Gordon nodded. ‘What about something like Spicy Burns?’

‘That’s more like it,’ I chewed my sandwich.

‘Hmm,’ Gordon kept nodding.

I threw another piece of lettuce to the pigeon. ‘Why do you need a porn name anyway?’

‘No reason,’ Gordon bit his sandwich.

‘Oh,’ I nodded.