Effusive thanks emanate from the Divery and gush somewhat messily all over a certain Blogville neighbour (who had probably better remain anonymous for reasons that should become apparent) who forwarded to me an article from The Noo Yawk Times called "What Do Women Want?"
My long term blogpals and lurkers will know that this is a question that has seriously vexed me for millennia and the lack of a decent answer to it has rendered me an undateable born-again virgin.
Inevitably, the article is no help whatsoever, but it did provide me with the best knob gag I have heard in quite some time.
Are people in the US not aware that "knob" is a euphemism for "penis"? Apparently not the researcher in this article, to my profound glee.
Anyhoo … peruse the article at your leisure. It contains some major mirth.
F'rinstance: Does anyone out there know what a plethysmograph is?
Do any of you actually have such a thing tucked away in a drawer?
I was not at all surprised to read that said contraption was invented by the clichéd "German professor" but you shall have to read the article to discover just what one does with one's plethysmograph, hopefully in the privacy of one's own home.
It also tickled me that the researcher was described as being "full of scientific exuberance." What a lovely phrase! Now I know why President Obama wants to bring science back to the USA.
The best piece in the article, however, has to be this wonderful knob gag:
""What women want is a real dilemma," she said. Earlier, she showed me, as a joke, a photograph of two control panels, one representing the workings of male desire, the second, female, the first with only a simple on-off switch, the second with countless knobs."
As a typical male (a person equipped with but a single "knob") I now feel utterly inadequate, but at least I now understand why women fill their bedroom drawers with various battery-powered contraptions such as "rabbits" and Boston Startlers.
And I now feel a little better about never getting dates; I would hate to get as far as the bedroom to be confronted with a disappointed wail of "you only have ONE?"
Toodle-pipski, smut fans.
Showing posts with label Joy Of Sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joy Of Sex. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2009
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Ah, Innocent Romance …
Right!
Let's get nauseating!
Let's plumb the fœtid depths of squirming embarrassment.
It's time to talk of the perils of underage drinking.
It's time to talk of the deep, traumatic horror and shame of getting off with a friend because you're both too drunk and horny to stop.
It's time to talk of "The First Kiss"!
Ew …
My first serious kiss coincided tragically with the first time I got really - and I mean really - drunk.
The year: 1972.
The place: Sir John Leman Grammar School for girly swots.
The event: The Lower School Christmas Party.
The girl: Janet K_, a good friend who luckily (thank God) saw the funny side and remained a good friend for many years - before marrying the vicar's son … So much for sanity.
Let's set the scene for this Gothick tale of debauchery:
Young Dive and my K2 canoe-buddy, the equally young Bav, both spivved up in crap paisley shirts and flares - Hey! This was 1972! We were HOT! - enter the darkened school hall (a temporary and very dreadful disco) and head for the bar like the seasoned drinkers we plainly are not.
We've only just turned fourteen but we have no trouble getting served.
The guys behind the bar like us. We both play lead guitar in local bands and we both write, illustrate, print and distribute Mawkin, the satirical evil twin of the "official" school magazine, which has just got banned from every store in town (and the two of us told in no uncertain terms to tone things down) for the Christmas Issue cover picture of Santa with a huge beard shaped suspiciously like a cock and balls (I was rather proud of that one - and the fact that it had sold several hundred copies before anyone complained).
Anyhoo, Adnams will be Adnams (the world's finest beer) and stupid little boys will be stupid little boys and before long we had got ourselves totally shit-faced.
Boy, oh boy, we were young, we were genuinely falling-down drunk and we were loving it.
To the extent that when all the lights suddenly came on in the hall and the party stumbled to a halt, we were just about capable of looking up and going "Ooooh!" but totally incapable of realising why everyone was glaring at us until we had been roughly shoved aside from the bank of light switches that we happened to be leaning on.
Oops!
Shortly after that, Bav decided rather wisely to go live in the bathroom and commune with the spirits of the toilet bowl, which left me to reel and stagger around by myself.
Never having been drunk to the point of helpless imbecility before, I could see no downside whatsoever to the sudden and dizzyingly tempting notion of shoving my sweaty, beer-breathed, pimply kid's face at the prettiest girl I could find and I headed into the fray with lechery in mind, a lopsided smile and a belch of hope.
Of course, Vivian P_, the girl I fancied most was surrounded by guys much older than me but my inebriated eyes - after whirling around the room a few times - finally focused upon poor Janet, sitting with a few of our friends … and a thought formed in the beery recesses of my mind … It went something along the lines of "Hey! Janet's pretty, and right now I happen to be God's gift to teenage girls! Woohoo!"
I remember leaning over her and swaying a lot (I needed to hold onto the wall to keep myself from falling over) and - much to the hilarity of our friends - turning on the drooling, drunken idiot charm …
And it WORKED!
(Perhaps it's time I tried it again … perhaps not).
With the somewhat astonishing result that a few short minutes later, I left the party arm in arm with a very tipsy but undeniably pretty girl and - thanks to wicked Uncle Alcohol - nary an inhibition between us.
Somewhat inevitably, what started as a beer-fuelled snog-fest in the woods down the road was soon getting well out of hand …
All I can say is thank God I was too drunk to go any further than we did.
Holy crap.
The cold air sobered us both up just sufficiently to induce a creeping horror at what we were doing and with whom, but the booze, our rampant teen hormones and the fact that we were both hornier than a roomful of rhinos urged us on to ever more hideous excesses of clumsy, fumbling, slavering lust until (mercifully) the freezing December air - biting into bits that are not supposed to be exposed to it - prevented us just in time from discovering alcohol's hilarious and inevitable combination of increased libido and decreased ability.
What made the trauma deeper and more horrifying for us both was - having been too insensible to stray out of sight of the path - being discovered by two of our friends (Hi, Larry and Susan) whilst trying to get dressed; doing up buttons as only a pair of hopeless drunks can whilst still slobbering over one another like a particularly nasty re-make of Turner and Hooch.
It was a small town and we had a lot of mutual friends and looking back on it, that Christmas - with our desperate attempts at denial and our frenzied avoiding of one another - was pretty darned funny.
We never did date after that, out of pure shame.
Shit, it took us weeks to even LOOK at one another again!
Fortunately, the sheer stupidity of our drunken misadventure, together with our friends' constant ridicule and laughter, helped us to see the funny side.
And Mum's remark - when the gang came round our house - of "Where's Janet tonight? Have you two fallen out?"
I still wince at the memory.
Let that be a lesson to any of you who think your teenage kids are well-behaved, don't drink and aren't likely to come home pregnant.
Kids … Huh!
Young, dumb, and full of cum.
Just add booze …
Now fess up, people.
Your own "first kiss" stories.
All the gory details; all the shame and embarrassment.
You know you want to.
Let's get nauseating!
Let's plumb the fœtid depths of squirming embarrassment.
It's time to talk of the perils of underage drinking.
It's time to talk of the deep, traumatic horror and shame of getting off with a friend because you're both too drunk and horny to stop.
It's time to talk of "The First Kiss"!
Ew …
My first serious kiss coincided tragically with the first time I got really - and I mean really - drunk.
The year: 1972.
The place: Sir John Leman Grammar School for girly swots.
The event: The Lower School Christmas Party.
The girl: Janet K_, a good friend who luckily (thank God) saw the funny side and remained a good friend for many years - before marrying the vicar's son … So much for sanity.
Let's set the scene for this Gothick tale of debauchery:
Young Dive and my K2 canoe-buddy, the equally young Bav, both spivved up in crap paisley shirts and flares - Hey! This was 1972! We were HOT! - enter the darkened school hall (a temporary and very dreadful disco) and head for the bar like the seasoned drinkers we plainly are not.
We've only just turned fourteen but we have no trouble getting served.
The guys behind the bar like us. We both play lead guitar in local bands and we both write, illustrate, print and distribute Mawkin, the satirical evil twin of the "official" school magazine, which has just got banned from every store in town (and the two of us told in no uncertain terms to tone things down) for the Christmas Issue cover picture of Santa with a huge beard shaped suspiciously like a cock and balls (I was rather proud of that one - and the fact that it had sold several hundred copies before anyone complained).
Anyhoo, Adnams will be Adnams (the world's finest beer) and stupid little boys will be stupid little boys and before long we had got ourselves totally shit-faced.
Boy, oh boy, we were young, we were genuinely falling-down drunk and we were loving it.
To the extent that when all the lights suddenly came on in the hall and the party stumbled to a halt, we were just about capable of looking up and going "Ooooh!" but totally incapable of realising why everyone was glaring at us until we had been roughly shoved aside from the bank of light switches that we happened to be leaning on.
Oops!
Shortly after that, Bav decided rather wisely to go live in the bathroom and commune with the spirits of the toilet bowl, which left me to reel and stagger around by myself.
Never having been drunk to the point of helpless imbecility before, I could see no downside whatsoever to the sudden and dizzyingly tempting notion of shoving my sweaty, beer-breathed, pimply kid's face at the prettiest girl I could find and I headed into the fray with lechery in mind, a lopsided smile and a belch of hope.
Of course, Vivian P_, the girl I fancied most was surrounded by guys much older than me but my inebriated eyes - after whirling around the room a few times - finally focused upon poor Janet, sitting with a few of our friends … and a thought formed in the beery recesses of my mind … It went something along the lines of "Hey! Janet's pretty, and right now I happen to be God's gift to teenage girls! Woohoo!"
I remember leaning over her and swaying a lot (I needed to hold onto the wall to keep myself from falling over) and - much to the hilarity of our friends - turning on the drooling, drunken idiot charm …
And it WORKED!
(Perhaps it's time I tried it again … perhaps not).
With the somewhat astonishing result that a few short minutes later, I left the party arm in arm with a very tipsy but undeniably pretty girl and - thanks to wicked Uncle Alcohol - nary an inhibition between us.
Somewhat inevitably, what started as a beer-fuelled snog-fest in the woods down the road was soon getting well out of hand …
All I can say is thank God I was too drunk to go any further than we did.
Holy crap.
The cold air sobered us both up just sufficiently to induce a creeping horror at what we were doing and with whom, but the booze, our rampant teen hormones and the fact that we were both hornier than a roomful of rhinos urged us on to ever more hideous excesses of clumsy, fumbling, slavering lust until (mercifully) the freezing December air - biting into bits that are not supposed to be exposed to it - prevented us just in time from discovering alcohol's hilarious and inevitable combination of increased libido and decreased ability.
What made the trauma deeper and more horrifying for us both was - having been too insensible to stray out of sight of the path - being discovered by two of our friends (Hi, Larry and Susan) whilst trying to get dressed; doing up buttons as only a pair of hopeless drunks can whilst still slobbering over one another like a particularly nasty re-make of Turner and Hooch.
It was a small town and we had a lot of mutual friends and looking back on it, that Christmas - with our desperate attempts at denial and our frenzied avoiding of one another - was pretty darned funny.
We never did date after that, out of pure shame.
Shit, it took us weeks to even LOOK at one another again!
Fortunately, the sheer stupidity of our drunken misadventure, together with our friends' constant ridicule and laughter, helped us to see the funny side.
And Mum's remark - when the gang came round our house - of "Where's Janet tonight? Have you two fallen out?"
I still wince at the memory.
Let that be a lesson to any of you who think your teenage kids are well-behaved, don't drink and aren't likely to come home pregnant.
Kids … Huh!
Young, dumb, and full of cum.
Just add booze …
Now fess up, people.
Your own "first kiss" stories.
All the gory details; all the shame and embarrassment.
You know you want to.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
All Hail His Pinguescent Majesty
Many thanks to Robyn, our inestimable keeper of arcane knowledge, for pointing out that The King is 77 today!
This wouldn't be a proper "Dive" post if I didn't make some sarky crack about Fat Elvis and the obesity epidemic, so here goes:
You kids won't remember, but way back in the seventies, the Elvis diet briefly vied for supremacy with the Karen Carpenter diet for the soul of America; but while a few young girls still kill themselves the Karen Carpenter way, an increasing majority of modern America has whole-heartedly embraced the Elvis diet, making it the most successful ever.
As a role model, The King has shaped the America we see today; a nation groaning under a hideous, heaving horde of wobbling, half-ton lardosaurs gorging themselves to death on junk food.
Elvis is succeeding where al-Qaeda failed; slaughtering whole generations of innocent Americans in a bloated, oleaginous, adipose apocalypse.
But what a fucking great singer he was (for which we can forgive his becoming a fucking great lard-arse).
Inevitably, this brings to mind an Elvis story from my past.
Back in the tragic year of his alleged death (I'm a firm believer in his immortality, though possibly not of his being a space alien), I played probably the easiest season of my life; rattling off Scotty Moore licks behind an Elvis impersonator.
Actually a rather good one, not like the dross you get these days.
It happened like this:
In the heady days of 1977, I was making no money whatsoever playing lead guitar in a band doing Yes, Focus and Mahavishnu covers, whilst listening to Punk and managing a spectacularly unsuccessful Punk band (what a monstrous master of the sell-out I was).
Being but a schoolboy I needed cash desperately to spend on riotous living … and more guitars.
So when a couple of old guys heard me playing Zappa stuff as they walked past the house and came knocking on the door to say "Will you join our band, please?", the only question in my mind was "Do you have paying gigs?"
They did … and so I became Scotty Moore for a season, playing stuff I could do with both arms cut off.
It was all rather splendid fun, made lucrative by the King leaving the building that very summer.
"Elvis" himself took a bit of a shine to young Dive, inviting me to his house for meals and introducing me to his lovely daughter (you can cringe now, Theresa; you know what's coming).
Being a lusty eighteen-year-old version of Dive, one thing swiftly led to another, and a few days later I found myself in their kitchen "helping" Theresa bake stuff.
To my utter horror, in walks "Elvis" to be confronted by his smiling daughter in a bright red sweatshirt with floury white hand prints all over her boobs.
Ahem …
To my (again "utter") delight, he simply grinned and told us to clean up and "go upstairs where it's more private and play some records or something".
Smiling like a couple of idiots, up we went, as it were … "up" being the operative word.
It was only later, at dinner, when they invited me to tea for Theresa's upcoming birthday.
"Great! What is it, your seventeenth or eighteenth?"
"I'll be fourteen." she said.
Fuck!
Fuck my fucky, fucking luck!
It turned out that they thought they had found "a real catch" and were already planning our wedding! Sheesh!
To be brutally honest, these folk were - like the real Elvis - people of a somewhat … er … "rural" outlook, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
As a result of which I dropped poor Theresa like a hot … well, like a hot underage girl, dammit!
Poor thing. On the rebound, she got herself an alarmingly porcine boyfriend within a couple of months but he promptly eloped with her mother!
That was just too "Deliverance" for me … Theresa's mum possessed none of her daughter's charms, resembling nothing so much as the grisly offspring of an unnatural liaison betwixt a dugong and a potato.
The upshot of which was that poor "Elvis" gave up singing and I ran away to college, getting the Hell outta Dodge.
This is what life is like in rural England.
I deal with it as best I can …
Happy Birthday Elvis!
You still rock, dude.
This wouldn't be a proper "Dive" post if I didn't make some sarky crack about Fat Elvis and the obesity epidemic, so here goes:
You kids won't remember, but way back in the seventies, the Elvis diet briefly vied for supremacy with the Karen Carpenter diet for the soul of America; but while a few young girls still kill themselves the Karen Carpenter way, an increasing majority of modern America has whole-heartedly embraced the Elvis diet, making it the most successful ever.
As a role model, The King has shaped the America we see today; a nation groaning under a hideous, heaving horde of wobbling, half-ton lardosaurs gorging themselves to death on junk food.
Elvis is succeeding where al-Qaeda failed; slaughtering whole generations of innocent Americans in a bloated, oleaginous, adipose apocalypse.
But what a fucking great singer he was (for which we can forgive his becoming a fucking great lard-arse).
Inevitably, this brings to mind an Elvis story from my past.
Back in the tragic year of his alleged death (I'm a firm believer in his immortality, though possibly not of his being a space alien), I played probably the easiest season of my life; rattling off Scotty Moore licks behind an Elvis impersonator.
Actually a rather good one, not like the dross you get these days.
It happened like this:
In the heady days of 1977, I was making no money whatsoever playing lead guitar in a band doing Yes, Focus and Mahavishnu covers, whilst listening to Punk and managing a spectacularly unsuccessful Punk band (what a monstrous master of the sell-out I was).
Being but a schoolboy I needed cash desperately to spend on riotous living … and more guitars.
So when a couple of old guys heard me playing Zappa stuff as they walked past the house and came knocking on the door to say "Will you join our band, please?", the only question in my mind was "Do you have paying gigs?"
They did … and so I became Scotty Moore for a season, playing stuff I could do with both arms cut off.
It was all rather splendid fun, made lucrative by the King leaving the building that very summer.
"Elvis" himself took a bit of a shine to young Dive, inviting me to his house for meals and introducing me to his lovely daughter (you can cringe now, Theresa; you know what's coming).
Being a lusty eighteen-year-old version of Dive, one thing swiftly led to another, and a few days later I found myself in their kitchen "helping" Theresa bake stuff.
To my utter horror, in walks "Elvis" to be confronted by his smiling daughter in a bright red sweatshirt with floury white hand prints all over her boobs.
Ahem …
To my (again "utter") delight, he simply grinned and told us to clean up and "go upstairs where it's more private and play some records or something".
Smiling like a couple of idiots, up we went, as it were … "up" being the operative word.
It was only later, at dinner, when they invited me to tea for Theresa's upcoming birthday.
"Great! What is it, your seventeenth or eighteenth?"
"I'll be fourteen." she said.
Fuck!
Fuck my fucky, fucking luck!
It turned out that they thought they had found "a real catch" and were already planning our wedding! Sheesh!
To be brutally honest, these folk were - like the real Elvis - people of a somewhat … er … "rural" outlook, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
As a result of which I dropped poor Theresa like a hot … well, like a hot underage girl, dammit!
Poor thing. On the rebound, she got herself an alarmingly porcine boyfriend within a couple of months but he promptly eloped with her mother!
That was just too "Deliverance" for me … Theresa's mum possessed none of her daughter's charms, resembling nothing so much as the grisly offspring of an unnatural liaison betwixt a dugong and a potato.
The upshot of which was that poor "Elvis" gave up singing and I ran away to college, getting the Hell outta Dodge.
This is what life is like in rural England.
I deal with it as best I can …
Happy Birthday Elvis!
You still rock, dude.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Fornication Invitation
I drove past Norwich's big, scary evangelical Christian church this morning. Or at least the building site, as somebody burnt it to the ground a little while back.
The rebuilding is taking place at an astonishing pace; perhaps we should award the construction contract for the 2012 Olympics to the evangelists, as the government are so pants that they will never get it built on time.
Now I have never really given much thought to the evangelists, to the extent that I'm still at a loss to know what branch of what church they profess to being (they're commonly known around here as "that big old cult [that's c-u-L-t-, Knudsen] place up on the ring road near Mousehold").
The only time their path crosses mine is the event of their annual cultathon (or whatever they call it), where they take over the football stadium for the weekend and bring the city to a standstill. The roads are gridlocked with tens of thousands of extremely polite Americans dressed like extras from the Waltons, which means I either avoid the city altogether or end up with smiley-noddy syndrome from all the excessive politeness.
Then it all changes …
I am travelling back from London on the train. It is packed as usual, but I manage to get a window seat and settle in for the long crawl back to Norwich.
Beside me is what can only be termed a lovely little old lady. Grey hair in a bun; old fashioned frock; reading quietly.
Halfway home; I've finished the paper and the crossword and am about to start on my book when along comes the trolley and the little old lady orders a coffee. Now, I've got a couple of free coffee vouchers in my wallet and, to reward her for not being a fat, elbowy businessman shouting into a mobile phone, I offer to treat her to coffee (big mistake).
She has a charming smile and thanks me sweetly as she accepts.
The trolley squeaks off down the aisle and she turns to me and says:
"That was really very kind of you. Are you a Christian?"
Not wishing to offend her with "Well I was brought up as a Christian, but when my brain started to work I rebelled and became the Godless heathen you see before you", I nod and say "Yes".
And suddenly people are turning and staring. A dozen faces all around me focus on my own. The blank eyes and rictus smiles of … uh, oh … evangelists!
"We're Christians" says the little old lady. "Which Church are you from?"
I start to dissemble. I'm stuck with these people for the next hour at least, and I really don't want to upset the little old lady, so I talk about my old church from childhood.
Luckily, she goes off on a long one about the lovely day they've all had in London at a "miracle ministry" or somesuch. I nod and smile in what I judge to be the right places. The scary faces are still locked on mine. Surely their necks must ache from being twisted round like that …
My heart sinks still further when she rummages in her bag and presses a bundle of tracts into my hand.
"You really must come along to our Church."
I hazard a guess: "Is that the big one up near Mousehold?"
I'm blinded by a communal BEAM from the surrounding faces.
The little old lady continues, but by now I am trying to make excuses, so she goes to plan 'B'.
She has noticed that I don't have a wedding ring and I fess up to my single status …
"This is my daughter, Emma."
And she waves to a drop-dead gorgeous girl in her twenties, who flashes me the kind of shy smile I wouldn't even get in my wildest fantasies.
"Emma is a member of our Church. She doesn't have a young man …"
WHAT?
I mean WHAT THE FUCK?
An increasingly surreal conversation follows, with the gorgeous girl smiling at me and her mad pimp mother telling me about all the young women who attend the Church, and how so many of them are reaching "marriageable age" with no "young men" of their own …
I want to tell her to look closely at me. I am a man in my forties. Would she really want me interfering with her daughter?
I want to yell at her; to tell her that in my experience, the Christian Church does not recruit members by offering strange, middle-aged men the chance to fornicate with the young women of their congregation.
The trouble is, Emma is … er … well, let's just say that she has got me all unneccessary. Even though I know that the beautiful girl's smile is the last thing I will see before the brainwashing starts and my bank account develops a Church-sized hole, I am almost tempted …
Somehow, I manage to last the rest of the journey without actually signing any banker's drafts, but the hard sell continues full force, and as I wave farewell to the group at the station and to the beautiful, smiling Emma, I realise I have agreed to attend a service there the next weekend. They certainly know how to prey on weak and lonely men …
Perhaps there is some kind of twisted deity watching over me, because that very week the big old culty Church burns to the ground …
And I T … W A S … N O T … M E !
Honest …
And even when it's rebuilt, there's no amount of gorgeous young girls gonna drag me in there!
I promise … Really … I do … er …
The rebuilding is taking place at an astonishing pace; perhaps we should award the construction contract for the 2012 Olympics to the evangelists, as the government are so pants that they will never get it built on time.
Now I have never really given much thought to the evangelists, to the extent that I'm still at a loss to know what branch of what church they profess to being (they're commonly known around here as "that big old cult [that's c-u-L-t-, Knudsen] place up on the ring road near Mousehold").
The only time their path crosses mine is the event of their annual cultathon (or whatever they call it), where they take over the football stadium for the weekend and bring the city to a standstill. The roads are gridlocked with tens of thousands of extremely polite Americans dressed like extras from the Waltons, which means I either avoid the city altogether or end up with smiley-noddy syndrome from all the excessive politeness.
Then it all changes …
I am travelling back from London on the train. It is packed as usual, but I manage to get a window seat and settle in for the long crawl back to Norwich.
Beside me is what can only be termed a lovely little old lady. Grey hair in a bun; old fashioned frock; reading quietly.
Halfway home; I've finished the paper and the crossword and am about to start on my book when along comes the trolley and the little old lady orders a coffee. Now, I've got a couple of free coffee vouchers in my wallet and, to reward her for not being a fat, elbowy businessman shouting into a mobile phone, I offer to treat her to coffee (big mistake).
She has a charming smile and thanks me sweetly as she accepts.
The trolley squeaks off down the aisle and she turns to me and says:
"That was really very kind of you. Are you a Christian?"
Not wishing to offend her with "Well I was brought up as a Christian, but when my brain started to work I rebelled and became the Godless heathen you see before you", I nod and say "Yes".
And suddenly people are turning and staring. A dozen faces all around me focus on my own. The blank eyes and rictus smiles of … uh, oh … evangelists!
"We're Christians" says the little old lady. "Which Church are you from?"
I start to dissemble. I'm stuck with these people for the next hour at least, and I really don't want to upset the little old lady, so I talk about my old church from childhood.
Luckily, she goes off on a long one about the lovely day they've all had in London at a "miracle ministry" or somesuch. I nod and smile in what I judge to be the right places. The scary faces are still locked on mine. Surely their necks must ache from being twisted round like that …
My heart sinks still further when she rummages in her bag and presses a bundle of tracts into my hand.
"You really must come along to our Church."
I hazard a guess: "Is that the big one up near Mousehold?"
I'm blinded by a communal BEAM from the surrounding faces.
The little old lady continues, but by now I am trying to make excuses, so she goes to plan 'B'.
She has noticed that I don't have a wedding ring and I fess up to my single status …
"This is my daughter, Emma."
And she waves to a drop-dead gorgeous girl in her twenties, who flashes me the kind of shy smile I wouldn't even get in my wildest fantasies.
"Emma is a member of our Church. She doesn't have a young man …"
WHAT?
I mean WHAT THE FUCK?
An increasingly surreal conversation follows, with the gorgeous girl smiling at me and her mad pimp mother telling me about all the young women who attend the Church, and how so many of them are reaching "marriageable age" with no "young men" of their own …
I want to tell her to look closely at me. I am a man in my forties. Would she really want me interfering with her daughter?
I want to yell at her; to tell her that in my experience, the Christian Church does not recruit members by offering strange, middle-aged men the chance to fornicate with the young women of their congregation.
The trouble is, Emma is … er … well, let's just say that she has got me all unneccessary. Even though I know that the beautiful girl's smile is the last thing I will see before the brainwashing starts and my bank account develops a Church-sized hole, I am almost tempted …
Somehow, I manage to last the rest of the journey without actually signing any banker's drafts, but the hard sell continues full force, and as I wave farewell to the group at the station and to the beautiful, smiling Emma, I realise I have agreed to attend a service there the next weekend. They certainly know how to prey on weak and lonely men …
Perhaps there is some kind of twisted deity watching over me, because that very week the big old culty Church burns to the ground …
And I T … W A S … N O T … M E !
Honest …
And even when it's rebuilt, there's no amount of gorgeous young girls gonna drag me in there!
I promise … Really … I do … er …
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Train Stiffy
It's difficult to write when, five time zones and an ocean away, far beyond hugging range, someone is wandering around, picking up pieces of her heart and trying to reassemble them into something that works.
That situation is just too awful for words, so I'll be my usual facetious and offensive self and write about my embarrassing stiffy on the train.
It's last friday morning. This time of year, daylight gets rationed and it's dark for the journey to work. A girl takes the seat in front of me. Not a regular commuter. Pretty. Late teens. I'm dozing, in and out of sleep. Joan As Police Woman is playing on my iPod; that nice track where she duets with Antony, you know the one.
After Manningtree, the train is full as usual. Sweaty Bike Man sits next to me, engrossed in his sports pages. Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General sits next to the girl.
Historical note: Manningtree is where Matthew Hopkins, self proclaimed Witchfinder General, started setting fire to any woman with an independent mind; a repulsive perversion which spread rapidly through this country, then across the water to Salem.
Mary Hopkin was a folk singer in the sixties with long, blonde hair. The woman who gets on at Manningtree looks just like her, hence, Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General.
I know I'm not alone in giving other commuters nicknames (I dread to think what they call me). In my carriage, we regularly have have Spike, Wiggy (the toupée from hell), Underbite and Backspace (two dim sports fans from Ipswich), and A Woman Called Horse, among many others.
Anyway, back to the girl … (WARNING: My regular dear readers had better skip the rest of this post as it's unnervingly like porn and I'm deeply ashamed of it, but there you go. God, I'm disgusting. Old Knudson might like it, though) …
She has fake blonde hair and a pageboy bob. I notice that much as we pull out of Manningtree. When it's dark outside, the train windows act like mirrors (albeit filthy ones), and I gradually become aware that the girl in front of me is acting strangely.
She keeps looking all about her at the other passengers, most of whom are dozing like me, then turning furtively to the window. If she'd turn her head a bit further, she would realise that the bloke behind her has a life-sized mirror image of her, not eighteen inches in front of my face (and not just me, but all the blokes behind me) …
What she's doing is this: she is very furtively and alarmingly erotically, sucking her thumb.
She has flicked her hair round to cover her face from the front. Her thumb, already glistening and wet, slips between her lips and, well, she's sucking away like there's no tomorrow.
Normally, I would find this faintly nauseating. I am extremely disturbed, however, to find myself fumbling with my iPod in a desperate attempt to cover a whopping stiffy!
Luckily, Sweaty is more interested in England's dire football team than the trouser mayhem beside him, so I manage to cross my arms over it to hide my embarrassment.
Concentrating hard on the mental image of George Bush doesn't help. I cannot stop myself watching the girl. What the hell is a girl her age doing sucking her thumb? Every time somebody stirs, her head whips round to the front, wet thumb diving for cover. Then she's back again, putting on a private porn show for an old git who is discovering a perversion I didn't know I had. The pretty girl, her eyes darting nervously in every direction but mine, her wet lips, her thumb, the … er … sucking bit …
Suffice to say that, when the train stops at Liverpool Street Station, this newly pervy old man has to sit there for several minutes, rummaging through my bag, shuffling papers, thinking of George Bush and blocked drains and washing up, until my trousers are a more socially acceptable shape and I can walk to work without being pointed to and giggled at.
I am disgusted to discover that I'm a voyeur. Eww! I'm also ashamed that I didn't cough or something to let the girl know I could see her. Yet another justification for my self-loathing.
So mea culpa. A public confession of my pervdom. I throw myself on the mercy of the court …
That situation is just too awful for words, so I'll be my usual facetious and offensive self and write about my embarrassing stiffy on the train.
It's last friday morning. This time of year, daylight gets rationed and it's dark for the journey to work. A girl takes the seat in front of me. Not a regular commuter. Pretty. Late teens. I'm dozing, in and out of sleep. Joan As Police Woman is playing on my iPod; that nice track where she duets with Antony, you know the one.
After Manningtree, the train is full as usual. Sweaty Bike Man sits next to me, engrossed in his sports pages. Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General sits next to the girl.
Historical note: Manningtree is where Matthew Hopkins, self proclaimed Witchfinder General, started setting fire to any woman with an independent mind; a repulsive perversion which spread rapidly through this country, then across the water to Salem.
Mary Hopkin was a folk singer in the sixties with long, blonde hair. The woman who gets on at Manningtree looks just like her, hence, Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General.
I know I'm not alone in giving other commuters nicknames (I dread to think what they call me). In my carriage, we regularly have have Spike, Wiggy (the toupée from hell), Underbite and Backspace (two dim sports fans from Ipswich), and A Woman Called Horse, among many others.
Anyway, back to the girl … (WARNING: My regular dear readers had better skip the rest of this post as it's unnervingly like porn and I'm deeply ashamed of it, but there you go. God, I'm disgusting. Old Knudson might like it, though) …
She has fake blonde hair and a pageboy bob. I notice that much as we pull out of Manningtree. When it's dark outside, the train windows act like mirrors (albeit filthy ones), and I gradually become aware that the girl in front of me is acting strangely.
She keeps looking all about her at the other passengers, most of whom are dozing like me, then turning furtively to the window. If she'd turn her head a bit further, she would realise that the bloke behind her has a life-sized mirror image of her, not eighteen inches in front of my face (and not just me, but all the blokes behind me) …
What she's doing is this: she is very furtively and alarmingly erotically, sucking her thumb.
She has flicked her hair round to cover her face from the front. Her thumb, already glistening and wet, slips between her lips and, well, she's sucking away like there's no tomorrow.
Normally, I would find this faintly nauseating. I am extremely disturbed, however, to find myself fumbling with my iPod in a desperate attempt to cover a whopping stiffy!
Luckily, Sweaty is more interested in England's dire football team than the trouser mayhem beside him, so I manage to cross my arms over it to hide my embarrassment.
Concentrating hard on the mental image of George Bush doesn't help. I cannot stop myself watching the girl. What the hell is a girl her age doing sucking her thumb? Every time somebody stirs, her head whips round to the front, wet thumb diving for cover. Then she's back again, putting on a private porn show for an old git who is discovering a perversion I didn't know I had. The pretty girl, her eyes darting nervously in every direction but mine, her wet lips, her thumb, the … er … sucking bit …
Suffice to say that, when the train stops at Liverpool Street Station, this newly pervy old man has to sit there for several minutes, rummaging through my bag, shuffling papers, thinking of George Bush and blocked drains and washing up, until my trousers are a more socially acceptable shape and I can walk to work without being pointed to and giggled at.
I am disgusted to discover that I'm a voyeur. Eww! I'm also ashamed that I didn't cough or something to let the girl know I could see her. Yet another justification for my self-loathing.
So mea culpa. A public confession of my pervdom. I throw myself on the mercy of the court …
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