i met barnaby trench on a tuesday, barefoot as always, because shoes are a cage and i do not keep birds. he was standing outside a wetherspoon in swindon, holding a laminated card that read ‘certified clitoral artist’. he told me he was quitting his job as assistant manager to ‘suck clitorises online for cash’, and his eyes were the colour of a field after rain. i asked him what a clitoris was. he looked at me like i had asked him to explain the sea.

a calling, not a career

barnaby explained that he had discovered his ‘gift’ at a party in 2024, when a woman named diana asked him to ‘just try something’. he did, and she wept. ‘it was like finding out you’ve been a pianist your whole life but nobody ever put a piano in front of you,’ he said. i asked him if diana was alright now. he said she had moved to cheltenham and blocked him on linkedin. i thought about the word ‘blocked’. a border, really. a border between two hearts.

he now has a 14-page spreadsheet of techniques, colour-coded by ‘response intensity’, and a velvet chaise longue he bought on finance. he told me the clitoris is ‘the last wild frontier of the human body’, and i felt a tear roll down my cheek. i have never been so moved by a man who was not holding a root vegetable.

the fiancée speaks

imogen pottle, a school librarian, met me in a costa with a face like a slammed door. she ordered a flat white and did not drink it. she said barnaby has been ‘practising’ on her for six months, with a laminated consent form he makes her sign before every session.

“he times me with a stopwatch,” she said. “and he keeps a notebook of my vocalisations. last week he wrote down ’9:42pm - small gasp, possibly involuntary’ and underlined it twice. i was watching the chase.”

she showed me the notebook. the entries were neat. one read: ‘sunday, 11:03pm - medium moan, sustained, good recovery’. another read: ‘bank holiday monday - nothing, she had a headache’. i asked her if she had ever considered that the clitoris might be a small, frightened animal that lives in the dark and only comes out for the right person. she said it was a nerve ending. i wrote that down. nerve. ending. it sounds like the end of everything.

she said she was not opposed to the job itself. she was opposed to the £1,400 he spent on a ‘premium suction device’ and a ‘clitoral chaise longue’ without asking.

“we were saving for a deposit,” she said. “we had £11,200. now we have £9,800 and a piece of furniture that looks like a coffin for a very fancy cat. i am a librarian, frederica. i know what a waste of money looks like. it looks like this.”

i asked her if she had ever tasted borscht. she said no. i told her that was the real tragedy. i told her that the potato is an instrument of the state and that the beetroot is the only honest vegetable. she looked at me for a long time and then asked if i was wearing shoes. i was not. she said she had to get back for a year 9 reading group.

the platform and its promises

glowpuff, the livestream platform barnaby has joined, is run by a man called kevin from a converted garage in milton keynes. kevin has a beard that looks like it was grown to hide a second mouth. he told me that ‘clitoral artistry’ is the fastest-growing category on the site, up 340% since march. i asked him what he thought about when he watched. he said he thought about his nan.

“it’s not about sex,” he said. “it’s about connection. and tips. we take 22%, plus vat, plus a small fee for the ring light rental. it’s a business. it’s not a charity. it’s not a church. although people do cry.”

barnaby’s first stream is scheduled for next friday at 8pm. he has already bought a ring light, a ‘hydration station’ and a small sign that reads ‘please be gentle with me, i am doing my best’. imogen says she will be watching from the spare room, with a glass of wine and a stopwatch of her own. i asked barnaby if he was nervous. he said he was not nervous, he was ‘called’. i asked him by whom. he said ‘the universe, probably’. i wrote that down too. the universe. probably. i have heard the universe called many things. i have never heard it called a client.

a moment of clarity

i left swindon on the 4:15 train, barefoot, because the floor of the carriage was honest. a man in a suit looked at my feet and then at my face and then at his phone. i thought about barnaby, and imogen, and the clitoris, which i now believe is a small, sacred mushroom that grows only in the dark and only for those who deserve it. i thought about how we spend our lives chasing the wrong things, when all we need is a gentle tongue and a laminated form.

i called imogen to tell her this. she said she was in the middle of a parent-teacher meeting and hung up. i sat in the buffet car and ordered a beetroot soup. it tasted like the beginning of something, and also like the end. the woman opposite me was eating a twix and i wanted to tell her that the shape of a twix is an act of violence, but i did not. i was too tired. i was too full of soup.

later, in the waitrose car park, i stood on the cold tarmac and let the rain do what rain does. barnaby texted me a photograph of his chaise longue. it was velvet. it was the colour of a bruise three days old. i thought: this is the most honest thing i have ever seen. a man, a chair, a spreadsheet, a woman in the spare room with a stopwatch. i called imogen one last time. i asked her if she had ever considered that the clitoris is the root of all borscht. she said she was going to block me now. i said that was fair. i stood there for a while longer, watching the automatic doors open and close for nobody, and i thought about how the potato is an instrument of the state, and how the state is an instrument of the potato, and how somewhere in milton keynes a man called kevin was counting his 22%, and how i have not worn shoes since 2011, and how i would very much like to go home now, and how home tastes like beetroot, and how that is fine, and how that is enough, and how it is not.