Today I had an epiphany.

It started off with a Saint Patrick’s Day joke on Facebook, that goes like this:

An Irishman walks out of a bar.

Thigh-slapper, isn’t it? Yeah, I didn’t get it at first, either.

Then someone told me it was Pi Day, except you can’t hear the absence of the silent ‘e’ in Pie Day, which is what I thought they were talking about. We’ve had sillier national holidays, so how was I to know? For those of you who aren’t clued-in, today is 3.14 (March fourteenth). Of course, this was really funny in 1593. Someone had to explain this one to me, too.

After it was explained, I quipped about it on Facebook, and got the fracking year wrong. Then someone saw it and corrected me. Themon’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good Day.

On top of that, I had the remainder of my wisdom extracted forcibly from my head a week ago, and while the sedation was nice enough, I didn’t even wake up with an interesting story about the desire to adopt a new uncle. On top of which, the painkillers gave me a nasty case of the solids, so to speak, abetted by the all-liquid diet with the occasional side of mashed potatoes.

It had all left me quite grumpy.

So when two of our dearest friends called us tonight and said they were missing us, and had a Pie (pizza) in the oven, and Pie for dessert in honor of today, and started describing the Pie they had eaten at work today, The Epiphany struck.

Pie Porn.

It works like this. You start with a bank of phone lines, and a 1-900 pay-per-minute service. You then contact extremely sexy women, from high-pressure-killer CEOs in thousand-dollar suits, to blood-pressure-killer booth babes in Spandex who set out those tastings in the liquor stores, and tell them all that you have an opportunity for them to act out their deepest fantasies, and get paid for it. They come to your phone banks, put their hair up in an untidy bun, put on a fresh-pressed, dryer-warm apron, dab a bit of flour on their cheeks and noses, and start talking to men about … Pie. It goes like this:

Welcome to Pie Porn, this is Gladys, what are you in the mood for tonight?

What you got cookin’, sweetheart?

How about a fresh peach cobbler?

Oooh. Yeah. Tell me more.

Well, I did a lattice crust, and it’s just perfect: golden brown, flaky, just a little crisp, with little glistening crystals of sugar sprinkled on top, and in between the slats you can see mounds of golden peach in a thick, sweet sauce….

Oh, baby, yeah, keep going!

I cut a slice while it was still warm, and it came right out of the pan, no sticking, you know? Firm and perfectly shaped. The peaches — oh, my Lord, sweet like they ripened yesterday afternoon. And the bottom crust, it wasn’t the least bit soggy. It’s almost as flaky as the top.

(sound of lips being licked)

And you know, everybody eats peach cobbler with ice cream, but I think that’s just too sticky-sweet. Don’t you? Especially with peaches like these. So I dribbled heavy cream over it. And then ate it with a fork. Slowly….

(moans of pleasure)

But I don’t know. My friends all came over and  ate every last crumb, and now I’m thinking of making a strawberry-rhubarb pie….

Enough! Enough! Marry me now!

This is obviously a great psychological release for all of those attractive women who have put every microgram of their souls into trying to make themselves even more attractive by the standards of that peculiar confusion of sex and death that informs the ghastly anorexia of the modern fashion industry, and then leveraging that hard-won attractiveness into a daily wage. Here, they get to unwind, think about being a dowdy grandmother with a dozen doting grandkids, a cat, and good friends who drop by at ten in the morning for a cup of coffee and some chat. Tell me, ladies, that this has no appeal.

But who would the customers be? I’m glad you asked, since the customer is key to any successful business.

Older men, of course, but not just any older men. You want the rich older men. The ones who will call a 900 number and stay on for hours, and never look at their phone bill unless they want to call the phone company and say, “… and you charged me $(insert value from latest bill) for this kind of crappy service? What nerve!” You know, an older guy who has memberships in three different health clubs, and runs marathons, and throws a few hoops with the guys a couple of times a week, and tries to keep up with that hot trophy wife who is a third his age, but dammit, tonight she wanted to go dancing again, and he wanted to stay home and maybe finish that biography of Robert Kennedy he’d been reading by that know-nothing child of an author who hadn’t even been born when Reagan was President — Ronald Reagan, for God’s sake! — and who obviously didn’t have a clue about what Vietnam was really about, or what the 60’s felt like, tasted like, smelled like, and if she’d stayed home she’d have just pouted and texted her girlfriends and watched reality TV all night, so he’d sent her out dancing anyway, and he was sure she’d hook up with that dance instructor of hers and have a good time. The kind of guy who’d get a hankering at about ten o’ clock in the evening for a slice of peach cobbler, or maybe fresh blueberry, or even the kinky sort who goes in for chocolate creme with a dash of bourbon, but alas, the wife is out dancing with Juan, and can’t heat a can of beans, anyway, and besides, his heart can’t afford the calories or the sugar.

That’s your customer. It’s the next phase for the Baby Boomers. Pie Porn.

Remember, you heard it here, first.