All my life I have been a single man; not so much out of choice, more just because that’s how the Dictators of Fate appeared to believe my life ought to be destined.

Used to happen a lot but I could never understand people who would laugh, pat me on the back and tell me my ‘standards were too high’, because realistically, as an 18-year-old fresh out of an extensive stay at Burwood Hospital Brain Injury Unit, honestly, I felt as though I was ready to take what I could get.

Problem was, in those early days as a recovering head injury patient, nobody took me seriously – boy-friends or potential girlfriends – to them I was just someone who used to be somebody but, through an unfortunate chain of events beyond his control, was now effectively nobody.

A 17-year-old able-bodied young man afflicted with the kind of brain trauma which, after the brain had collided with the inside of the skull then the injured portion had swelled to the point where it effectively killed itself, left me equipped with the faculties of a two-year-old while forced to still live in the body of myself; lying incapacitated in a hospital bed, subsequently, I was beholden to learn to walk, talk, eat, drink then yes, fit in with the outside world, again.

While my new brain still had the ability to think coherent thoughts and, indeed, operate with basically the same level of capability as most, it was the projection of these thoughts and abilities that caused issues; problem was I looked like a braindead zombie and, I guess, I sounded like one too. In hindsight I can’t blame people for disregarding my presence, casting me off as someone to be looked at but not talked to; it’s in our natures, after all, to discern who will best receive our approaches and, think about it, we do tend to overlook the less functional.

The years passed me by and, as I effectively stood spectating while my dream career as a diesel mechanic was pushed out of reach by a worsening post-traumatic tremor, try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to harness that projected ‘normalcy’.

The injury was sustained in 2000; it wasn’t until around 2012 that I felt truly able to take my constantly rehabilitating brain (medical professionals will maintain that the brain does all the healing it is likely to do in five years but I beg to differ) out for a spin in the real world…

Don’t misunderstand me, I was always in the ‘real world’, just not so real as a ‘regular’ person might perceive it. Hitherto, happier to stay at home (in the house that was purchased in 2003) rather than to go out and experience the world, possibly as a result of the constant failure/rejection/spurning/ridicule I was forced to endure in that world, increasingly I had become a recluse.

…Here I started an attempt at meeting new people and, although initial attempts were  sometimes met with a familiarly uncomfortable response, I had developed sufficiently in the cognitive realm to appreciate that this was simply the ‘error’ aspect to the fabled philosophy of ‘trial and error’; thus it was with a demeanour of duck-backed perseverance that I pushed on.

Alas, even with my modified brain now projecting something (which I was pretty sure was) akin to normalcy, failure after failure – error after error – humiliation after humiliation, continued to drive me back, crushing me down and leaving me desolate.

Self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth, self-possession thus self-respect, at this point, were failing me. Too much failure. Helplessly, I felt myself going backwards, drifting back to the place I’d begun, that is, after losing everything and starting again; slipping, sliding, clambering, stumbling, and still losing ground. Life felt hopeless.

Nothing to hope, so little reason to look forward.

Then one day recently it turned around.

A simple encounter; a fortuitous tryst. A remarkable woman; a transcendent being. I could finally stop pretending; could finally stop being so hopeful that one day I would see the light – think I actually saw the light.

I realised then, that no matter how bleak things might have looked; irrespective how much compounded shit might seem to be crushing the last modicum of goodness out of life, rendering every day a monotonous chore, relief is never as far away as it sometimes appears.

One day, one person; one bright soul, one calming influence and it changed.

Thank you.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Moe Min Tuss

Photography by Chan Farm Ashun

Be Advised: Do NOT Enter this window if you are hoping to find tasteful content. The following is an uncharacteristically risqué piece but, as always, it is reality.

Also, given this entry is being shared through Facebook thus age restrictions are going to be not particularly commanding, I leave discretion to the mature minds of precocious delinquents around the world to decide if you’re mature enough to wear the R18 tag.

There. Hopefully those first few paragraphs filled Facebook’s introduction window; if not, this will. Good. Let us begin.

 

More than once I have heard women, sometimes while drunk, usually while surrounded by their peers, complaining, mocking, ridiculing their male counterparts, regarding topics such as: ‘Oh yeah, he only lasts five minutes, anyway…’

Every time I overheard the above, or similar, criticism, seriously, I almost choked in exasperation; therefore, now, on behalf of men everywhere, I offer this rebuttal: ‘Excuse me, women, I have never gone for more than five minutes without one of you complaining, ‘Oh, I need a break’, ‘No, I’m getting too sore’, or, you’re panting so damned heavily I fear you might be going into cardiac arrest, so, I mean, honestly, the fuck are you all talking about?’ You moan about how ‘most guys are so lame in bed’, about how much you want ‘stamina in the bedroom’; some of you brag about how you ‘love it hard’, how you ‘like a man to treat you bad in bed’, or how you ‘like it rough’, then when it’s given to you the way you apparently want it, you silly slappers can’t take even five minutes of hard love. Huh, I always thought pretentious men made the biggest blowhards but no, it’s silly women.

Another common female criticism is regarding the size of a man’s package. Over the years I have heard countless women glorifying ‘big cocks’, and similarly deriding smaller ones. Seriously, blowhards. Give them bigger, give it to them as hard as they claim to want it, for as long as they claim to want it and, huh, most won’t last even three minutes before complaining that something is upsetting them.

It might go something like this; in the beginning I’m told, ‘Just fuck me.’ Soon after that I’m further encouraged, ‘Fuck me harder … Faster … Harder…’ Then only minutes after that transition, upon doing only as I have been beseeched, the complaints might begin: ‘Oh, are you gonna, oh, finish soon? … Oh, can’t you just, oh, cum now? … Oh, I’m getting cramp, oh, oh, can we stop? … Oh, can we take a break, oh, oh, please?’

At this point I might quip something along the lines of, ‘Shit I’m sorry, I thought you said you wanted me to fuck you like a slut, all night long…?’

There it is; despite performing exactly how I (might) have been instructed, bringing to the game only what I was told to bring, presumably by the same variety of woman who openly complains to her gaggle about ‘most guys being so pitiful in the sack’, once again I might discover that, although sometimes, yes, it will be the men, invariably women do not perform sexually the way they claim they will. (Like I said before, though, this is purely a rebuttal for all those men in the world who, despite doing their best to please women with the equipment at their disposal, are still the target of derision; if necessary I can do the other side of the story at a later date – don’t label me a misogynistic pig just yet, thank you.)

Scientists/prudes talk about pornography skewing the perception of sexual reality for men; what about for women? Most likely they only make all these ridiculous claims about the desirability of perverted sexual exploits because it’s been so comprehensively embellished in pornography.

Do not misunderstand me, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying sensual (as opposed to firmer) pleasure with a smaller (as opposed to a larger) phallus but, if this is your preference, women, stop crapping on about the glamorous world and overall appeal of massive cocks performing all-night BDSM or similar.

Most guys aren’t into that kind of thing anyway and yes, the national average is 6 inches and 5 minutes; therefore, all you are doing, rather than endearing yourself to idiot males with your drunken smut-talk, is fuelling a common male shortcoming by pervading a sense of inadequacy.

Let’s not forget, the harder a man pretends to be in the eyes of a woman, generally, the more insecure he is in life.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Donna Lykit-Hard

Photography by Dirk Diggler

 

 

 

 

She was an attractive woman; any man could see that. Made sense then, every man wanted to be with her. Slim where it was required and voluptuous where it wasn’t, auburn hair shrouding a flawless face; dark eyes throwing up the contrast to her plump red lips, (Insert Preferred Exotic Name Here) was exquisite.

The above paragraph provides an adequate description of a generically beautiful woman; yet by adding a few qualifiers – largely unnecessary adjectives or adverbs – otherwise known as ‘superlatives’ (although, as scholars may point out, ‘superlative’ can be an adjective all by itself, just not in this case, thank you), I could have made it more than adequate – could have made it superlative – which, let’s be fair, in this modern world, is really/quite/pretty/very easy to do.

Admittedly, the written and the spoken word are dissimilar in usage in that, when someone is writing, firstly, generally, they give themselves more time to decide which words to apply and, secondly, they have the ability to read through the draft excerpt and edit any sloppy/foolish/extraneous speech before offering their words to the world; conversely, when someone speaks their thoughts, words tend to be delivered more quickly thus are less filtered, often resulting in humiliating and/or regrettable comments which, as the world will be quite aware, can be rather difficult to retract.

Indeed, he was quite aware, it would be rather difficult; it was kind of annoying and, to be honest, a bit shit. Conversely, he was aware it would be difficult and annoying; it was shit.

Which of the above sentences reads better? The former, wordy and arguably more descriptive, is more akin to spoken speech while the latter, less wordy and ultimately simplistic, is more like one would expect to read rather than hear.

The obvious question, therefore, why did I write this article?

First, another question: how do speech patterns/dialect become fashionable? Social Media perhaps – Facebook? Right, early 19^th century, first Cockneys of England, big fans of liking and sharing Facebook posts about their mortal enemies being ‘brown bread’…?

A nation’s dialect, generally, is decided by the speakers therein; one person utters a phrase which another person perceives as funny/memorable/worth repeating/worth hearing again, nek minnit, a fashionable proverb is born and from that, potentially, a variant vernacular.

Dialects/vernaculars/speech patterns can go out of vogue as easily as they arrive, too; who, in this modern age, even knew that ‘wherefore’ meant ‘why’? Of course, in Shakespearean times, ‘Wherefore art thou?’ meant ‘Why are you?’ yet that dialect vanished centuries ago.

Back to the original question; why did I write this? Alright, my first published article was ‘Mit Reklaw’s Truth on Speech’ and, although Sunday News chose to call it something different in print, it described the ridiculous nature of, thus my ongoing frustration at, modern speech patterns; over five years on, you might say, I’ve written a sequel.

The issue I have with the way we’re going, at least in New Zealand, is that everything is either ‘very good’ or ‘very bad’; please understand, ‘hate’ is not the opposite of ‘like’. It doesn’t need to be ‘really good’, it can just be ‘good’. It doesn’t need to be ‘so awful’, it can just be ‘awful’. You don’t need to be doing ‘pretty well’, you can just be doing ‘well’. You don’t need to ‘quite like’ it, you can just ‘like’ it; if you no longer ‘like’ it, you don’t need to ‘hate’ it, you can simply ‘dislike’ it.

The problem is, we’re using our words so thoughtlessly and needlessly, attaching qualifiers to everything we say and write, we are running really really really short on superlatives; now, in order to highlight a subject/topic, it seems the only way we know to emphasise our meaning is through repetition – of words or through exclamation points!!! (Also, millennials, stop putting a space between your word and your punctuation mark !!!)

Consider this: when Facebook began, if something appealed to you, you could ‘like’ it; well, ‘like’ has since been pushed back to merely a symbol of recognition and now if you genuinely like something, you have to ‘love’ it – but who truly loves to see a picture of what their friend is preparing to eat that night?

Too many words.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Whirr D Power

Photography by Don Tova Yuse

 

As New Zealand prepared to take on England in the 2019 Rugby World Cup semi-final, after the respective anthems had been sung, all in my viewing vicinity were impressed to see the English team assume a proud ‘V’ formation to receive the All Blacks Haka.

I recall my aunt being delighted at England’s stoicism; I on the other hand felt that, while it was good to see the opposition to an All Blacks Haka standing firm rather than, as I feel I have witnessed in past Tests, allowing this confusing declaration of war/greeting/farewell/celebration/pretension to effectively defeat them before the game had begun, I was aware that somebody, somewhere would likely perceive England’s staunch stance as ‘disrespectful’ toward this ‘proud Maori tradition’ of ours.

My aunt and I discussed it at the time, concluding that it was about time somebody – as teams used to do in the years before professional rugby turned soft – properly stood up to the All Blacks Haka; although, as I did point out, the pansies at the NZRFU would probably kick up a stink at England’s show of pride, labelling it in some way ‘disrespectful’ toward Maori culture…

Realistically there was no reason anybody needed to have disapproved; all England had done, simply, was not allow their national team to be emasculated by a nation with little else for their sporting fanatics to do but to pour their energy into their national sport, rugby.

…Sure enough, in the days following New Zealand’s capitulation to the English juggernaut (who would curiously go on to be defeated in the final by South Africa’s Springboks, a team who were previously beaten by the All Blacks), not unexpectedly there was official upset at, yes, ‘English Disrespect Toward the All Blacks Haka’.

Upon hearing of this supposed disharmony, I recall uttering a humourless chuckle. Are we so small, so weak, so very precious; is this the Kiwi way of trying to compensate for our team’s less-than-dominating performance, for the fact our mighty All Blacks weren’t allowed complete control over proceedings from beginning to end?

The All Blacks were outplayed by an English side which used injury breaks and other stall-tactics to slow the momentum of the game thereby, presumably to the chagrin of Kiwi viewers everywhere, preventing the All Blacks from exemplifying their superior game-pace thus taking control of the match and, as they do so frequently that their ardent followers may just have forgotten how to lose, winning.

The All Blacks Haka, New Zealand’s way of boosting themselves into winning form, a display which despite being done by no other major team at the World Cup tournament, according to those in the higher positions, must apparently be accepted by opposing sides with a show of meek respectfulness (pathetic gutlessness).

My opinion: let the All Blacks perform their beloved Haka for self-motivation if they wish, but perhaps let’s keep it confined to the changing rooms.

The rest of the world doesn’t really need to see it.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by K A Mate

Photography by Slappy Thighs

 

 

Home bought fireworks. Are they ever not disappointing?

 

That’s it. There’s nothing else that needed saying.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Sparkles Shithouse

Photography by Catherine Wheeler