Sam: Christmas Wind Up

Well the team at TT are winding up for the year - we are all taking a break and will be back on January 5th with the full complement of Mr Sex, Danonymous, Lee and myself to keep you giggling and thinking for 2009.

Thanks so much for your support, comments, gripes and opinions throughout the year - it's you guys we do this for and hearing from you all makes it really worth while. In case you are feeling a bit nostalgic, we certainly are, below are a few of our favourites posts from the year. Feel free to share your own!

http://todgertalk.blogspot.com/2008/01/mr-sex-reason-i-joined-this-blog.html

http://todgertalk.blogspot.com/2008/09/sam-glastonbury-with-twist.html

http://todgertalk.blogspot.com/2008/01/mr-sex-what-every-teenage-boy-and.html

http://todgertalk.blogspot.com/2008/01/sam-work-vs-sex.html

http://todgertalk.blogspot.com/2008/06/sex-toy-review-briana-banks-vibrating.html

Have a great Christmas and see you all again in the New Year!

Sam: Santa Baby

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Lee: We Need to Talk

When I’ve been dumped it’s always been pretty clinical, it’s just over. Ultimately at the time, when you are involved it sounds a bit blunt, but it’s the best way. Doesn’t leave any room for error. It’s black and white, bang it’s done. I think myself I’ve probably done it myself that way. I think it depends on the circumstances. I met one girl I met a few years ago and I got a text about meeting up. I wrote back saying, I’m out with my friends, down to my parents tonight, then down the hospital tomorrow to see my Dad. Should be back tomorrow night, failing that definitely around on Tuesday. In other words, we can definitely meet Tuesday, possibly Monday. I just get text straight back from her saying ‘I think we need to talk’.

I never saw her again. ‘We need to talk’, that is never going to be a good thing, that either means you are going to have to back down, or they are going to bin you. ‘We need to talk’ is effectively giving your four weeks notice. Anything else is just sugaring the pill. If anyone thinks it is anything other than that they should stop doing the lottery as well – they’re living in a dream world. 99.9999% certain you are going to get axed. 'We need to talk' and you just think right, I’ll leave it at that then.

There was one occasion where a woman just went off the radar. That is a crap one. It was literally everything was alright, then everything was off. Nothing. Silence.  Just on a purely, shit, what’s going on terms, it’s like, was she alive? Some inkling that you are still present on earth would still suffice. I am the sort of person who thinks, is she OK?

Talking about going off the radar, I met another girl, just got her a drink and was going to the loo. I came out and she was gone. My mate told me she’d gone down to the petrol station to get some fags. Well she never came back. And there was her drink. I thought shit. In the end I took a drive by to the Petrol Station  just to be on the safe side. She wasn’t there. She’d told me where she worked, so on the Monday I phoned her work and they told me ‘No, she’s not in’. This was not making me feel any more secure. I called them the next day again, and they said, no, still not in. So at this point I was really shitting myself, thinking, this is a crimewatch job. Something was said, and the woman said ‘oh, we’ve heard from her’. I went oh, that’s all I needed to know.

As it transpired, she went for a pack of fags and as she was crossing the road she broke her toe on the pavement. She ended up down at Whitechapel Hospital in the A&E and her parents came up to get her. Only me. 

You can see Lee this Saturday at the Fym Fyg Bar in Bethnal Green.

Sam: Welcome Lee Hurst!

Well in our never ending quest to keep you laughing, talking and thinking about sex and relationships we’ve managed to recruit Comedian Lee Hurst to join the Todger Talk team as a guest writer.

Keep an eye out for his meandering thoughts on sex, love and relationships over the next month. 

'Mr Sex': What to do when someone you've been besotted with for ages starts going out with someone else and you just want to scream "NO! NOOOOOOOOOO!"

We’ve been here before, oh so many times; you meet someone. You get on. Famously. Really famously. You start knocking about. You fall for them. You subtly (or not, as the case may be) let them know. Nothing happens, but you have this lingering feeling that it might. You still carry on seeing each other, and talk for hours about anything and everything. Nothing happens, but that’s OK, because you’re playing the long game. You tell your mates in moments of weakness. They tell their mates, some of whom are mates of her mates. You carry on seeing each other. You get to know each other better. Nothing happens. You tell your mates even more in greater detail in more alcoholic moments of weakness. You get absolutely locked into this other person, scrabbling around for opportunities to meet up and chances to impress upon them now absolutely mint you are. You develop full-blown Frienditis. And still, nothing happens.

And then, something does happen. They start going out with someone else, leaving you feeling like shit on a stick. What do you do? Well, if you’re like me (who happens to be the King of this particular situation), you do two things;

1) You inwardly scream “NOOOOOOOOO! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT FOR, YOU SUCKY MARE? YOU COULD HAVE BEEN MRS FUCKING SEEEEEEXXXX!!!”

2) You immediately fix the fuck up and look bastard well sharp.

Because although the natural reaction is to go all Emo and have a good mornge because someone’s inadvertently ripped your heart out and is currently wiping their arse with it, there’s a far greater emergency; preventing yourself from feeling any more of a twat than you already do. You think trying to snare someone is a bastard of a job? Try putting the brakes on your ardour. It’s like trying to pedal a penny-farthing backwards. That’s being towed by four rampaging elephants. On ice.

Whatever you do, you can’t win – but you can not lose. Here’s how I deal with it whenever the bouncers at Club Meaningful Relationship tell me my shoes are too casual, and they don’t like my face, and point me towards the Bus Shelter of Unrequited Love.

Now then; when shit like this happens, there’s two natural inclinations. The first one is to throw a massive sulk and blank said person. Which is a wrong ‘un: you’ll only prove they were right to cock their nose up at you in the first place, and I’ve lost more than one extremely brilliant friend this way. The second one is to go the other way entirely; to make out everything is cool, you’re completely alright about it, and nothing has changed. That’s even more of a wrong ‘un – you’ve still got a mard-on while they’re feeling massively brilliant about themselves, meaning that the balance of power (which was pretty skewed in their favour in the first place) is off the chart. Not only that, but you’ll be bending over backwards for them when you get the slightest hint that their new relationship might not be as brilliant as it seemed (been there, done that too – it’s fucking horrible).

First off, you take yourself out of the situation completely until you’re ready to deal with them again, because if you don’t, it’s gonna be an absolute train-wreck. Either you’re going to see them in the pub and be compelled to ease out of the place without anyone noticing (which’ll make everyone notice), or they’re going to come over and commence a conversation that’ll be as awkward as fuck. Not to mention everyone who knows about the situation will want to make sure you’re alright, which is the absolute last thing you want.

The only sane thing to do, I find, is to get away from the horrible soap opera that your life has become as soon as you can. I find sitting at home in my mankiest, ripped-at-the-crotch-so-my-bollocks-hang-out-like-clackers jeans and cramming takeaway curry into my maw whilst simultaneously playing Mario Kart, screaming “FUCK OFF AHT ME WAY, LUIGI!” and shouting along to this makes things better. You may want to try something different. It won’t be as good as my way, though.

When you’ve got all that out of your system, you’re ready to move on to phase two; re-establishing the relationship in light of the new situation, without making yourself look a total bell-end. This is a tricky one, because if they were worthy of your attention in the first place, they’re going to be as nervous about it as you are about letting you down, and worried that you were only being a decent human being because you were trying to get their knickers off. I find that smiling and nodding at them in the pub is a good start, followed by running off like a bastard.

Then, you pick up the conversation at a later date, but subtly omitting displays of outright affection. No more kisses at the ends of e-mails, overtly smoochy hugs at the end of face-to-face contact, or engineering chance meetings that end at your or their house at 3am. Most importantly, you quietly refrain from offering your services every five minutes, especially when they haven’t really asked for them. Basically, you make clear that you’re going to remain a faithful friend, but you’re nobody’s bitch – and you have to keep a bit of distance from now on so you can move on, whilst not getting in the way of their new thing. But without saying it, obviously, because that’s a bit of a mental thing to come out with.

When all this is established, you can move on to stage three; the rest of your life. At some point – fuck knows when, but it’ll happen – you’ll be able to talk openly and have a laugh about it, and it’ll happen so naturally that you need no coaching from me, and you’ll be proper mates again.

(You may have noticed that I’ve left out a very important part of the equation – the other person. I can’t really offer much advice here, because if you’re anything like me, you’re never going to be able to like the cunt, no matter how decent and undeserving of ire they are. When you’re really into someone, they could be going out with Jesus, and you’re still going to be muttering “Look at that fucking beardy twat, going around like he thinks he’s summat” to yourself. Best thing to do is be polite without getting involved).

Of course, you could circumnavigate all of this mither by simply saying ; “Look, I think you’re fucking ace. I’ll never stop wanting to be your friend. I didn't want to fall for you and risk fucking up a brilliant friendship, but I'm only human. I’m very sure I’ll be an absolute mard-arse in your presence at the moment, so I’m hibernating for a bit. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to pretend to be someone in a cut-off denim jacket, a large nappy and a mushroomy hat, and throw shells at Luigi for a bit. Because that bastard has had it coming to him for too long now."

But who'd be so gormless as to do that?

Danonymous Dan: Sick of Scolding

Sorry for my lack of words recently but I have been sick, and I don’t mean that in a Fritzel kind of way. I’m talking man-cold first class, with a medal in chesty cough, and a citation for blurred vision in the face of severe migraines. Honestly, when I sneeze I spray paint the bedroom.

Illness never seemed much of problem in life before – I’d just call in sick and turn the Xbox on. But I work for myself now: calling in sick means nothing gets done. If you couple starting a live music/comedy/arts production company with my stand-up comedy gigging, it becomes clear that my overworked self was due an illness. It’s a particularly virulent bastard too – all the people I live with have it, loads of the stand-up comics I know have it, and it lasts about two weeks, “Mum! Mum! I’m Dying!”

I don’t often wish I still lived at home, but when I am sick, like any man, I want the brow-rubbing, soup-ladling, hot-water bottle love that only a mother can give me. I want the ‘poor little bunny’ type stuff from the Man Stroke Woman sketch show.

‘But you have a girlfriend – surely she’s nice to you?’

My girlfriend lives in the US (major long distance, I know) but when I am ill I am sort of glad she’s so far away because her scorn at my sickness is somehow less cutting when delivered via a webcam.

During the periods of time we have lived together for months at a time the exact chain of events is this: I tell her I am ill; for the next five hours she is quite nice to me; and then that’s it. If I’m not better after that, she switches into scorn mode and I have to go and cower in an airing cupboard so she can’t find me.

Imagine my upset when I read a Telegraph article, which appeared to suggest this is commonplace – apparently many women do this? 

Now I know the research is just cynical PR nonsense dreamt up in the Monday morning meeting of whichever PR agency handles Reckitt Benckiser. However, we all know the scorn men receive for having ‘man-colds’.

The flipside to this one is that when she is ill, I do tend to try and offer lots of sympathy. In a slightly strange and thankfully-not-physical way, I turn into my mother. Why is this? If she’s ill, I jump to her every whim and wish, but if I am sick, I get beaten like a ginger stepchild. Also why is it that a mother will give this care, but a girlfriend won’t, despite that girlfriend receiving that level of loving caring attention from me?

I know what you are thinking… and no, I am not only nice to her just so she gets better quicker so I can knob her again. Of course, that is a gratifying side effect.

Sam: Ouch that hurts

My clients go through some rough and tumble, but one of them recently went to through something that took the cake. She and her man had been going through a really tough time and he had been wanting to ‘talk’ (coming from a man it’s nearly always bad news). So they got together for their ‘talk’, were walking along together and then he spilt the beans:

‘I think you ought to know, I’m going to change my relationship status on Facebook’.

We have all heard of people being dumped on Facebook, or by text but somehow this is so much more pathetic, so much more ridiculous. This is a man who is so gutless that when he try’s to do something face to face he has to use a website as a prop to dump someone. I’m still trying to put my finger on why this is so outrageous, gutless, spineless and well just leaves me a bit flabbergasted. You know what it is – he was pretending to have the guts to do it face to face, but in reality used an electronic dumping prop. In my books that is more gutless than just facing up to what a spineless scumbag you are and doing it on the internet or by text.

I guess that you can tell this really got my goat. Feel free to share and vent your own spleen if you need a bit of public catharsis. Certainly made me feel better.

Sex Toy Review: The Puma Swede Lotus Fleshlight

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Sam: Cultural Confusion

It’s Christmas party season, and I’ve been out chatting as usual. My most recent interesting conversation was with a very attractive and very single Italian woman. She was totally confused as to why, after years in England she had failed to snag a boyfriend.

Since these things are endlessly fascinating I started asking her some questions. Were the only guys that actually approached her idiot womaniser types? ‘Yes! How did you know?’, She asked surprised. How did she feel about making it clear that man was interested in her ‘Well I couldn’t do that, I’d be acting like a slut!’. Things started to become clear this was a case of cultural confusion. The thing is that in Italy if you give out any signals at all (e.g. making eye contact or smiling) you are pretty much seen as being totally up for it. You can start to see why friendly American women get into so much trouble and feel totally sexually harassed in Italy.

The interesting thing is that while all cultures tend to use the same basic flirting signals, the whole flirting dance changes in every county you go to – in some places it is as different as the language.  Sometimes it is louder, sometimes more subtle. The problem for this Italian woman is that in Italy the rules are very different to the UK. In Italy a man is interested he will relentlessly pursue his woman only giving up after a long and heated chase. ‘Of course in Italy No means yes!’ She proclaimed. ‘It is like a film I saw set in Rome, there is a man, who has just seen a woman, he runs up to her, proclaiming his love. She slaps him, tells him to fuck off and to get away from her. The next scene he grabs her and they both kiss passionately!’. Try the same thing in the UK and they would probably be calling the police.

So this poor Italian woman had completely turned off all her public flirting signals (as is appropriate for Italy), which means British men presume she is unavailable and she only attracts the womanising rule breakers. It would be nice is someone could get around to publishing the International Languages of Love. Would lead to a lot less confusion for everyone.