“Yeah, what’s up with that?”

“I think you established on the first lap that I’d ‘given up’, then the second lap I tried to say that it wasn’t a focus, then this time … I dunno, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking you’ll have to use it soon or the bloody thing’ll probably fall off!”

“Really, is that how it happens?”

“Think so – how do you even know if it still works?”

“Well, we do have daily exams so, you know…”

“No, I mean for the real thing – shit, every guy can jack off in the privacy of their own computer…”

“Why ‘computer’?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you still use magazines?”

“No, I’m asking, why pornography at all – do people not have imaginations these days?”

“Oh, come on – that sounds about as bullshitty as ‘reading the articles’ in your Penthouse magazines…”

“Honestly – and for the record, thank you very much, the writers for Premium smut magazine are some of the cleverest wordsmiths you are ever likely to see – but why be bound by the pictures placed before you in a magazine or, as is the fashion, on a computer watching corny, predictable movies? I’ve always found the best director is the one in your own head – he can show whatever you want to see.”

“’Whatever you want to see’? Really? Shit, it sounds like hard work to me.”

“Of course, because what with the advent of the World Wide Web’s information-in-your-face highway, whenever, wherever and as Goddamned repetitiously as you wish those pictures to be thrown in your face, nobody any longer needs to utilise their brain’s own visual centre and its ability to conjure its own images.”

“Right … So what was I saying?”

“You were warning me how if I abstain from sex-before-marriage for too much longer, my undercooked sausage might just detach … I then rebutted saying how it shouldn’t have been an issue as I was undergoing daily performance reviews and achieving rock-hard results in the meantime … You claimed that any guy can ‘jerk off’ with pornography, where I rebutted again, advising that my picture show, generally, is entirely in my own head…”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t remember so much all the time, it can’t be good for you … But alright, yeah, that’s cool, like, you say your thing still works in your own head, but how do you know it still works in the bedroom?”

“Honestly, I don’t think it’s particularly fussed in which room the ‘examination’ takes place…”

“Oh be serious..?”

“Yeah, seriously, regarding function in that capacity, matter of fact, I, don’t know.”

“Shit … I mean that’s a bit of a worry, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘worry’ per se, but yeah, I guess, it might be construed by some as an ‘issue’.”

“You should get it sorted out then.”

“Hey, hang on, I didn’t say it had stopped working, I just said that what with the dearth of genuine sexual activity, I have no true way of knowing – can’t imagine there’ll be too much of an issue though … Despite my reality-based shortcomings, you know, I am a total player in my head…”

“Aha, fuck that’s hilarious … So when are you actually going to settle down?”

“Excuse me..? ‘Settle down’..? Shit man, I mean, far as I can see I’ve always been the ‘settled down’ one – always been the sensible one, the mature one, the serious one, the responsible one, the oh so fucking reliable one – for Christ’s sake man, I had a house at the age of twenty – shit if anything I’ve even been the dull, the boring, the inherently settled one … Settle down, really..?”

“You know what I mean…”

“In fact I don’t know if I do..?”

“You know, ‘settle down’, like, with kids and that..?”

“Oh, I see, you mean, ‘settle down’ as in suddenly becoming maternal, locating a sexually viable mate then starting a family and all that jazz … Become one of those typical folk you see getting about, living their horrendously typical lives with their frightfully conventional life-styles…? Dude, that whole scene strikes me as so fucking dull – it’s just boring, even contrived – good little grownups, adhering to the plan, playing house like the terribly wholesome young adults they have become in the last six months – it just smacks of expectation, you know, forced conformity.”

“Oh, piss off – you’re saying that starting a family’s an expectation, that it’s ‘boring’..?”

“The way young people seem do it nowadays, truthfully, yes, I do think it’s largely the desire to conform with your peers – find a girlfriend, turn her into a wife, buy a house, make the unspoken pledge that your days of careless humour, childlike frivolity and reckless abandon are behind you…”

“Oh you are so full of shit – that’s so wrong…”

“Yeah, like you, each time you enter into a serious relationship, you’re saying you don’t lose all your passion for good times – you’re honestly telling me I’m wrong?”

“Yes you’re fucking wrong!”

“Just reporting it as I’ve seen it … I believe your desire to be ‘one of the baby-bearers’ has become so overpowering that whenever you find a man who you think can do the job, you strap on your blinkers, shut out insidious distractions – which in your case is life in general – and devote yourself blindly to that man.”

“Oh, piss off.”

“You’re on the right track though, that’s how they do it, particularly those young women who have spent a lifetime in the holds of promiscuity – you’d be able to relate to this – once they’ve selected a suitable candidate to knock them up, of course in order to quell that compelling yearning to continue spreading themselves about, they need to shut out all other temptations in order to prove to that particular baby-daddy, that they’ll make good baby-mummies…”

“Oh, you are so full of shit.”

“…So they buy their nest then spend the next few years knocking out one, two, or perhaps even three tiresome sprogs, before becoming ultimately housebound, but of course for the time they spend with their other, similarly housebound, newly ‘blessed’ baby-mummy-and-daddy counterparts, eking out a life of drudgery and ultimately, growing stagnant amid a fucking dull existence.”

“Is that how you see it?”

“That is how I have perceived it, yes.”

“You think that having a family is a boring waste of time..?”

“Were you listening just now? I never said ‘waste of time’ … For the right to bear children is the peoples’ prerogative … As for ‘boring’, well that’s just how they seem to expect they’re expected to be – you know, grow up, have kids, relinquish enjoyment, grow old and dull together.”

“Fine … So you never plan to settle down..?”

“What? Are you fucking serious right now? Have you been asleep during the last half hour of impassioned conversation? How can I expect to make any sort of progress in that regard, when I can’t even find a woman who will give me a chance – an opportunity to show who I genuinely am, what I genuinely have to offer?”

“Your problem, you’re too honest … You gotta learn to lie, man – girls expect guys to lie, in the beginning at least.”

“What? Are you fucking serious? You want me to start basing relationships on foundations of lies now..? Is that how you’ve done so well for yourself?”

“Fuck up.”

“Fair enough, but you seriously think I should be less truthful in my conquests?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, no girl expects a guy to be completely honest about everything – especially about themselves … But you always are, for some reason..?”

“It’s because when I look around at this world of failing and, well, ultimately failed relationships, I can see two major aspects that need work – communication and veracity…”

“…Well, you got communication down…”

“That’s the dream, anyway.”

“…Still, you gotta lie a little, in the beginning at least…”

“Nah fuck that … There is no way I am changing who I inherently am, just to comply with your pathetic fucking ideal that sex is the most important thing in the entire fucking world.”

“Your loss.”

“Hah, I don’t think so – I think it’s the loss of all the silly little girls out there who allow themselves to become besotted with their fucking ‘hard men’ and their so called ‘bad boys’, who in fact turn out to be nothing more than lame-arse mummy’s boys who have fears of heights, or spiders, or needles, or worms, or bugs, or something else equally as gutless, that’s including responsibility and a hard day’s work and who, despite their macho façades, don’t even have the fucking maturity to hold down a relationship, let alone handle life, but because they portray themselves as irreverent shitheads who treat everybody like dirt, women fucking love them, because women seem to have this latent desire to be treated like dirt, that’s until they wake up one day and realise in fact they don’t want to be treated like dirt, and find themselves asking, ‘Why couldn’t I just have found a nice guy to ‘settle down’ with?’”

“Are you done?”

“Quite, thank you.”

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Pono Gaffick

Photography by Che Teads