We star­ted a lit­er­ary journal called ‘Black Cock’. Like ‘Black Clock’, only with ‘Cock’ instead of ‘Clock’, and with black cocks inter­spersed through­out the pages, owing not to any par­tic­u­lar affin­ity or affec­tion for black cocks … it just seemed to fit.

Our books were expertly bound. Our sub­scrip­tion rates were fair. We believed in the cur­at­ive powers of fic­tion, occa­sion­ally poetry. Every couple of months we received a sub­mis­sion from a revered fic­tion author, occa­sion­ally poet, mis­tak­ing our pub­lic­a­tion for ‘Black Clock’. (Our web­site design was identical, you see.) The ver­dict: an over­whelm­ing yes.

We would like to accept this story for the next issue of Black Cock. Con­grat­u­la­tions! In inches, how long would you like the cock draw­ing that will accom­pany your piece? Also, can you send us a short bio?

Con­fu­sion? Yes. But we man­aged to wheedle con­sent. Hey – we paid. Take that to the bank and smoke it! Each issue was met with tower­ing acclaim. The choice of a new gen­er­a­tion. Innov­at­ive, both in con­tent and design.

Under­stand­ably, ‘Black Clock’ was pissed. They reduced their response time from three years to two. It didn’t mat­ter. We respon­ded in a mat­ter of minutes. What now, bitches?

Once we’d accom­plished everything we wanted to accom­plish we stopped, closed up shop. Already liter­ati were talk­ing about the ‘Cock’ (for the sake of con­veni­ence, the name was some­times shortened) in the same breath as ‘The Quarterly’. Howsa ‘bout that? We were proud of what we’d done, but edit­ing the journal no longer made us happy. Some­where along the line we lost sight – sadly – of the reason we star­ted the journal – to make sweet, sweet whoopee. With women. Sex. We wanted to have sex. Sex with women. And not have to pay. So we are start­ing over. We are start­ing a band. And, yes, we have a name in mind.

Ravi Mangla inter­views writers about their read­ing habits at his blog, Recom­men­ded Read­ing.