I curl about on the backseat of an abandoned Daihatsu Charade and gaze up through the orange haze of the street lamps. Drizzle seems suspended in the air until a wind occasionally huffs a swathe of it through the stoved-in window and across my face. I try to nod off but my posture is complicated. I grapple around for cover, find a copy of this months GQ magazine amongst the grime, and place it over my face. Water from a blocked drain splashes in front of a nearby wall. What went wrong? Why this, why now?The structure of the endgame had just come to me like a vision when this had to happen. I'm getting worried that I may be one of life's L-drivers. L being a thumb and forefinger at right-angles, worn briefly against the forehead. I should be recording Krapps Last Tape but here I am living in Gilbert and George circa Shitty Life. Shitty shitty life. This is vaudeville, underneath the Archway ..going..delirious..
..not..too..late. turn..ship..around..Top Cat. Boss Hogg ..alpha..male. Step into the arena, sweep the boards and play hardball. Take the helm against zeta tendancies. Choose to choose. And choose to win. ..can..be..alpha male..I try to picture it, draw some tangiable vision of myself as a winner..choose to win..Something to emulate and aspire towards. But I can't. I crawl to a sitting position in the drizzle and read GQ. Here, surely, amidst the spoils of the alpha male - I can find a pathway out of this predicament.
-oOo-
Lady Victoria Hervey bestrides the London party scene like a comely colossus. "What is it we love about posh women?" "Men do seem to like them don't they? Perhaps if we were able to define it, then it wouldn't exist any more." They'd like to get off up on that pedestal of yours. Failing that, drag you their direction in your gumboots and your Agent Provocateur. Posh birds are well dirty, any Soho Shooter Bar all-male council will conclude. And foreign birds. Norwegians honk, Scots are shamelessly foul where it counts and the Japanese eagerly reek of putrefaction. Wherever you are, it seems, Other Peoples women are always randier and happiest banging like chimps against a circus wagon wall. But what about local sex, for local people? Quiet ones - filthy. Bubbly says gagging for it to me. The gorgeous know they gotta exploit the fact while they can. But Plain Janes put in the hours. And round about last orders, every female in the known world wants it right now. "It was inevitable my top would come off," gurgles buck-nekkid Hervey into the ear of a worried-looking hobby horse. Not a reference to her pedigree noggin bouncing about in a basket. Decapitated landed gentry go like the clappers. Who's up for a Kentucky?
Not being a member of the aristocracy isn't the reason I'm curled up in an abandoned Daihatsu Charade, considering gnawing human hand grease off a door knob for sustenance. ..read..on..look!..more Alpha Females..mmmm..
"I Am Lolita!" Anna Kournikova stands proud, fingers wrapped about her twenty million dollar hips, pulling spunky gibberish from the phrasebook of her brain. News pack pencils snap. Paparazzi bulb eruption. "Which way to the post-office, please?" - you'd imagine - would be a handier maxim to chant in the nightschools of Moscow but who can say. Not content with being the most looked up grown-up on the net, seems she fancies a fair slice of the kiddie porn market too. God bless your free world. Lolitas are children who awaken sexual thoughts even in guys or gals of noble heart and mind. Literary shortcuts to a battleground of sex and shame and control. Visual wink from painters and photographers who wish to "challenge" us. Sure, some young 'uns come up pretty as a picture long before it's right and proper. But, aesthetics being as unique to our minds as fingerprints are to our fingertips - why would any regular Joe feel pressed into pants-down action by a blank canvas? Is it redemption and cleansing they wish to plunge into? Not only is the sexual neutrality of kids bodies just plain dull, any sane sexual man should find all that daubing and dabbling a big yawn. Mere childsplay. As for fullblown reptilius paedophilius themselves, if we unpack their minds I'm sure all we'll find is a Tinky Winky toothbrush and some neatly pressed jimjams. Kids themselves or struck emotionally dumb by some ulterior, internal puritan. "Not thinking about dirty girls again, Thomas?" "Just playing with the other boys down the shallow end, mother." Gold star, Thomas. "Are you crawling home with a hickey on your neck, Thomas?" "No, mother, just leaking heavily from life-threatening tourniquet burns." Milk and cookies on the table Thomas.
The problems of Lolitism can swing both ways. An ex once recounted, with real sadness, how her dad stopped hugging her immediately she developed breasts. Just not..right. Obviously there's a balance to be had - no dad should be offering to slosh his eighteen year old undergrad around in the Matey, but hugs or being called sweet names or being walked about the room whilst a girl stands on her old man's feet are all good and proper, how things should be and for life. Or at least a slipped disk.
..more.. Sex commissars offer dirty words to the wise. "Dear Kate, why won't my lover let me try anal sex?" So this is why they call it an agony column. Once read that demands for anal sex featured in, I think, three quarters of all U.S. divorce proceedings gripe lists. Not sure if this means American bedrooms really are a living hell of white trash arm-twist or the travels of a harmless pinkie are being projected across hushed courtrooms as such; a surefire favour-swinger. It's a wild statistic though and probably a bit of both. Backdoor action and it's slack-jawed pals are, y'know - shrug - something extra to spice things up but let's face it - they also mean that the flowers of romance are well and truly at the bottom of the swingbin. Over in Pornland, rear view behaviour made an impressive curveball from being an incomprehensible mental illness belonging to bug-eyed spoons who lurked in Bizarre und Taboo Reeperbahn fleapit kinos through the nineteen seventies to being the de rigueur point of entry for any aspiring VCR marvel of the late eighties. And these days it is the job, it's the money-maker. "Anal sex - is the sex - of the future" (pronounced fewwwchewer) Salvador Dali once felt compelled to rise to his feet and proffer loudly across the heads of dumbfounded guests. He didn't expand, but retreated to his chair like his life's work was now complete. God knows what he meant - but he seemed to spend a lot of time circumnavigating tangles with companion Gala to whack himself miserably under the chin of some flinching lifemodel or other. I'm sure their grandchildren tire of the tale.
..stop..looking..at..girls..in..magazines.. Eyes front, young man. Chasing skirt was one of the many reasons the bands never made it ..the..bands.. Prophet K. The East Village Other. Many brief and died unnamed. Some could have been the dark lords of Britpop, loading it with more kudos, we stated confidently. But no business brains. No focus. Loose cannons with something to prove. Alpha people are just those closer to where you want to be than you are, and we wanted to fuck about beautifully. And the better the gig the more likely any managerial interest would get two rigid digits right up their schnozz. ..Al Gore.. paid Naomi Wolf $15,000 a month to try to turn him into a Big A in the run-up to the U.S. elections and where's he? ..male..role..models..
Parsons vs Hornby. Heavyweight champs of the male confessional. ..gotta..be..heavyweight..champ.. Sensitive sides may come as a newsflash if your pop was some cane-thwacking Von Trapp but those no stranger to the occasional sight of projectile blubbering across a Bells - often, I'd say, a sneaky attempt to top the fucker up - say yeah yeah. Three knocks on the forehead, a goodnight shoulder squeeze and it's off to the Playstation and F.A. Super Manager. The bigger they are the harder they bawl. As someone is bound to have said before.
..read..on.."I know I'm quite respected by other guitarists, but I don't think I'm very good." Noel Gallagher, Gerald Ratner of rock. Thought Oasis were the British Eagles, a wreath woven from rememberances of pop glories past. I'm just surprised how many came to lay it. Should've been smaller than the Stone Roses. Did The Beatles when The Beatles were hanging up their boots, all Hey Judes and no Drive My Car, God forbid a Helter Skelter or two. Oasis were cut to fit rock's lineage, and the best retro can ever be is faithful. Johnny Marr's in the guitar hall of fame too. From a long line of nervous, slightly feminine gentlemen guitarists. Quite right too. Once said his enjoyment of sex was limited as he kept wondering what his girlfriend was thinking. Mark, and curse, of an artiste, I'll suggest. The blight of all perspectives. Possibly lost it twang-wise when he had no doubts to crush or no-one to seduce.
..still..no..closer..chunky sports watches good to a hundred metres ..must..get..chunky..sports..watch..
-oOo-
GQ slips from my fingers and, despite the conditions, I fall asleep. And I start to dream I'm in the wings in some vaudeville theatre. Archie Rice, the entertainer, is having no luck at all. "Don't clap too hard, missus, it's an old building." "Here, Archie" I grab him as he walks off stage after throwing in the towel, "What is it you want - what are you after out there?"
He mops his neck and looks at me strangely, gestures me to follow him to the dressing room, where he will explain as best he can.