Five years ago, Henry decided to leverage all of the relationships he had painstakingly developed with big money people in the VIP lounges at New York's Eurotrash nightclubs. Europeans, he knew, were dirty with money but had no scruples. They weren't afraid -- disdained, in fact -- America's rotting veneer of morality that hid its seething desires. That made them the perfect investors for his project.

There was a study he either read about or made up that revealed that sexual repression resulted in a much higher level of cruelty in a society. America, he knew, was a cruel land.

Henry wanted to set America free, help it get in touch with itself, so to speak. He was a great admirer of President Clinton because the man, with all his desires, had humanized the presidency. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to look up to the president as this chaste guy, he believed. Maybe it was better if we all see him as human. Then he could get his job done.

Everybody's inner child wants to have sex, Henry often said to people.

One by one, he hit up his pals and gathered cash. Then he ran an ad, hired actors and technical people, and launched his web site with a limited but smart ad campaign. The ads were just seeds, he knew. Word of mouth would create the harvest.

At Henry's web site, three women and three men shared a house that had one primary and two supporting webcams in each room. Each of the six were good-looking and young -- but not so much so that the whole thing looked phony. Everything about the people and the place had to say, hey, this house really is somewhere and it's all real. Henry provided a great salary, free room and board, designer clothes and an outrageous entertainment budget. In exchange, the actors had to take one shower for a minimum of twenty minutes each day and screw like rabbits every single chance they got. They could not have sex with the same partner twice in a row and they had to do it in a different room each time. They had to have sex twice a day, and they had to spend most of their time in the house. The women were all bisexual but preferred men. Henry offered them a significant bonus if they had a spontaneous orgy once a month. An omniscient moderator wrote gossip copy at the bottom of the home page, telling the ongoing saga of this happy, moral-free home.

The media slammed the site, which was officially called "House-mates," as it rode an almost instant tidal wave of popularity, questioning whether the First Amendment had been stretched too far, ridiculing the idea.

Henry laughed.

In his world, negative publicity was one of the greatest marketing tools ever conceived. It made everybody money. In America, you could cut off a man's penis and throw it out of a moving car and become a celebrity. You could make a movie completely distorting Jesus' life and making fun of Christianity, get picketed by nuns, and make a mint. You could go on a killing spree and make millions on a book deal and the rights to your life story.

Nobody in the media ever praised a guy for buying a blowjob from a transsexual in his car just before he drives into the Holland Tunnel and goes home to his wife in New Jersey. But he does it, and so do many more just like him. If there's an unsatisfied market and you've got the right product, then people will buy it. They may not admit doing it, but the money, nonetheless, changes hands. Since the market was constantly unsatisfied with the amount of sex it was getting, there were endless amounts of money to be made with new approaches.

The only thing that amazed Henry was that people would let their credit cards be milked each month so that they could watch slightly grainy images of people having sex. They could rent a porno for a fraction of the cost and get more from it.

But then again, Henry knew, it wouldn't be real. Peeping also felt dirtier, more satisfying than watching a porno, like finding and plucking forbidden fruit.

A year later, he wrote checks for unbelievable amounts of money to his happy investors, buying them out, and then started pocketing all the profits.

Lorna, his favorite prostitute, batted her eyelashes and asked him, "Do you think you could get me on for a bit part, Hankie? Maybe in one of the orgies?"

"Not a chance," Henry said. "We don't let hookers on the show. Not the right kind of bad publicity that I want."

"Nice," said Lorna, viciously. "Thanks."

Henry ground out his cigarette. "Besides, I'm finished with that now."

Already, he was restless. He wanted more. Henry was never satisfied.

He left the site in the hands of a capable manager and called up the president of BOP, a cable network that was supposed to be cutting-edge but wasn't. The network's motto was, "We arouse the senses." It had one show, The Hunters, that was making money -- a dramatic series, twelve episodes each year, that centered around the hunt for a serial killer and had a reality edge to it with lots of real cops and smart improvisation. Once the twelve episodes were up, the killer got caught and the season ended -- then the show turned over, so to speak, with a whole new plot and killer for the next season.

The combination of how darned good that show was and that the rest of the network should have been called FLOP perfectly fit into Henry's pitch.