If you had to, which would you sleep with? A vampire or a werewolf?

"An elf."

"Taken By An Elf? That's a thing? Why would you fantasise about being taken by an elf? Are elves intrinsically erotic? Bit short surely."

"You're thinking of dwarves," J says. It is her role in life to correct me. "And in Lord of the Rings Orlando Bloom is an elf. And quite a few woman like Orlando Bloom."

I don't think she is including herself in this.

"He has pointed ears though," I say. "In Lord of the Rings.

"So?"

"Not very sexy, are they?"

Or are they? To be fair, baldness on women can work for me [1], so who am I to judge?

"Still, elves, I say. "Elven erotica. It's pretty niche. I mean, I can kind of understand vampires or werewolves. Vampires have supernatural powers and they are usually dressed well and as long as they've rinsed with Listerine … And werewolves are all animal, aren't they? That might float some people's boats. But I hear elves and I think … I think leprechauns. "

J looks at me. This clearly doesn't merit a response. "Leprechauns are just elves with red hair and a pot of gold," I say. I'm not sure my supernatural etymology is correct here but I'm riffing, so I go with the flow.

"So, if you had to …" I start.

"Not this again." She's heard me ask this before.

"Come on. People applying for MI6 probably get asked it. It's a key question. If you had to, which would you sleep with? A vampire or a werewolf?

"Neither."

"You have to choose. Otherwise MI6 throw you to the zombies."

She sighs, then humours me. "A vampire. Werewolves aren't human."

"But vampires are dead. That undead thing is all just marketing. And they can't all be European counts, can they? Unless you accept the vampire as a metaphor as the dead curse of aristocracy. Marx said something like that, didn't he?" [2]

"Hmm," J says. She is no longer fully committed to this conversation.

"Now, how many full moons are there a month?"

"I don't know. One?" [3]

"So, there's a 29-in-30 chance that your werewolf will be in human form when you, umm, do the deed."

"The question states werewolves," she reminds me. "In essence, that's a big dog."

"Yeah, I guess. Maybe elves aren't so bad. Actually, do you even get female elves?"

An idea strikes me. "Do you think anyone has written 50 Shades of Fey yet?"

I am so pleased with myself, it's pathetic.

[1] Persis Khambatta, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979.

[2] Kind of. “Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”

[3] Listen, neither J nor I have a clue how many full moons there are. It is one, isn’t it? Two? 32?