Sam: "That's not a Dad - THAT'S a Dad"

One of the most difficult things that I’ve had to confront in having a stroke involves some of the fundamental issues concerning my manhood and being a man. 

Let’s put this in context and give you some background: In Australia, where I come from, men are men.  For my 14th birthday, I was taken walking in the Gammon Ranges by my father, where they only have rain about every 200 years.  We went with his best friend - a real man’s man who goes walking in the Olga Ranges with only a bow and arrow, making his living by hunting feral goats.  

So, on my 14th birthday, we climbed a mountain in the Olga ranges and we camped at the top.  It actually snowed there for the first time in 200 years. Masculinity-wise, it was all downhill from there; nowadays, I'm an office and TV studio-bound laptop-masher with one arm that doesn't work, who currently can only get around with a stick. 

As you can imagine, my image of what a true man is doesn't exactly match my current situation.

The real question I have to ask myself is; are my Dad and his mate a valid picture of manhood?  It’s certainly a very macho picture of manhood, and I have to realise that I won’t be Crocodile Dundee after I’ve had a massive stroke.  Probably a better question is; do I have to be Crocodile Dundee to be a good father?  I think I’ve come to the conclusion:  ‘No’.

I had a talk to one of my best friends about fatherhood, and he said that while most men are - obviously - physically capable of being a father, most are completely emotionally incapable and inadequate.  If there's one thing that my stroke has done is force me to become more emotionally adequate - so after much deliberation, I feel that in the end I have come to the conclusion that once you have had a stroke you can still be a man and become a real father.  And actually, I might even end up being a better father.

So what do you think?  Do you have to be Crocodile Dundee to raise a child?

Sam: Frenemies

Having a stroke has forced me to confront a wide range of issues - but the issue I didn't actually expect to confront was the nature of my friendships.

After having post-stroke central fatigue, where even talking is like lifting a mountain, it's forced me to confront the question of which friends make me feel good and which friends don't. In other words, which friends are really good and loyal - and which friends are frenemies.

After a bit of research, I've been relieved to find out that, apparently, most people have a lot of the latter. According to US studies in fact, usually 50% of our friends are frenemies, people that we feel ambivalent about. Not only that, but these people are actually bad for our health. When we are around them, we get so stressed out that it raises our blood pressure - so they could in the end be dangerous to our health, or even kill us.

When I've had to look at which friends make me feel good and give me energy and which friends I feel ambivalent about, I feel much happier surrounding myself with people who make me feel good. So I'd like you to do what I did and take the frenemy challenge - go through your Facebook list and count how many friends make you feel good, and how many don't. Post your findings here, and let's have a percentage breakdown of how many of your friends are frenemies.

Sam: You know you're getting better when...

When I first came out of surgery and was in recovery, one of my best friends came to see me. He asked me how I was, and apparently all I could say was "ARRRGGGHEEERRRUUUUGHHHHH".

The other day, I spent 47 minutes on the line to a bureaucrat who kept asking the same questions over and over because apparently the system was broken. I had to really bite my tongue and stop myself from saying; "Yes, I fucking know the system is broken".

The reason I was on the phone for that long was to apply for a programme that will help me get back to work and provide the assistance I need, but good Lord - expecting someone who's disabled to spend 47 minutes on the phone is ridiculous. But when you can get through an ordeal like that, you know you're getting better.

As opposed to; "ARRRGGGHEEERRRUUUUGHHHHH".

'Mr Sex' watches smoke leave his lips and fill an empty room

Readers of TT may be pleased to hear that while Sam's inner cynic has died, mine has been ripped from the grave, reassembled itself like Terminator 2, and is currently lurching around and scaring kiddies, utterly impervious to bullets and guided missiles.

Long story short; for more years than I dare admit, I have been wondering with creeping dread about how I would react when my ex - the woman who I consider to be the love of my life, the first and only I-want-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-you, I-can't-wait-for-you-to-meet-my-Mam-and-Dad, when-are-we-having-kids partner, the one I still dream about and tell friends never to mention in my presence, the one who it still feels like I'm cheating on whenever I'm with someone else, the one who... fuck it, THE ONE, full stop - got married. I have spent an embarrassingly huge chunk of my adult life with a self-imposed gun to my head, waiting for the bullet to strike.

Said bullet arrived six weeks ago, approximately 110 pixels tall by 200 pixels wide, due to an accidental click of a mutual friend's Facebook profile and saw a thumbnail I could have done without seeing. So that's it. The door - that was slammed, locked and bolted a long time ago - has now had a lorry-load of wet concrete deposited against it. There is absolutely no coming back from this one, even though I knew there never was.

So, this is how it feels;

1. You feel numb as fuck.

2. Then, you have a million questions, even though you know that the answer to any of them would be like a knife in the chest. What song did they dance to? (was it something I introduced to her?) Was her Mam happy? (I hope so - I miss her almost as much as I miss her daughter) Did her Dad (who never liked me) lump me in with the abusive shitbags she went out with before and after me in his speech? Did I cross the mind of anyone there who knew me?

3. (The one question you don't need to ask, of course, is 'Who did she get married to?'. Because it doesn’t matter. There's only one proper answer to that; 'Not me')

4. Then you want to thank all those mates there for not telling you beforehand, as you don't want to think about what you would have done that day if you'd have known.

5. Then, when its sunk in, you refuse to talk about it, for fear that 'Yeah, I heard my ex got married' will come out as 'Oh, by the way, I really fucked everything up, did you know?'

6. Then, you resist the urge to mentally lacerate yourself by playing this, this, this and especially this.

7. Then, when some semblance of lucidity returns, you calmly and rationally despise the world and everything in it. And then, through a process of elimination, you whittle that number right down to one; yourself.

8. Then you feel the urge to apologise to every girlfriend you’ve had since, for pissing them about and letting them go because – despite the fact that they were all attractive, intelligent, considerate and understanding – they all committed the crime of Not Being Her.

9. Then you feel the urge to apologise to every one of your mates who went from one relationship straight into a better one, as you realise that, no, they weren’t being heartless bastards while you were keeping the faith – they were behaving like grown-ups while you were continuing to be a hopelessly naïve martyr.

10. Then, you let on to your friends why you’re being such a horrible, pinch-faced shitbag, and try to accept their sympathy with as much grace as possible, even though none of then could ever understand your predicament because what you’re going through has never been experienced by anyone else, ever. And you bite your tongue when they try to cheer you up with videos of fat dads dancing really badly, not realising that every clip is set at a wedding reception (it made me laugh, though).

11. Then you don’t feel like updating your sex and relationship blog for ages, because you don’t want to think about either. Ahem.

12. Then you write a massively rambling post, stating that you’ve finally realised that you can’t live in the past, what you had is gone forever, it’s never coming back, and you know that. Yes, you’re still numb, and you know that one night - when the beer’s been consumed and someone says the wrong thing or the wrong song comes on - it’s going to properly hit home with an outburst of remorse and regret and snot, but at the end of the day, there’s still time to find what you really want, the world is rammed out with amazingly brilliant women who could make you happy, so you’re going to have to remove the crushing weight of your past, get hold of one and do it right this time.

13. Then you start worrying about how you're going to react when you hear she has a kid.

Sam: Death of a Cynic

Before my stroke, my view of human nature was pretty hard-nosed and cynical. Essentially, I was sure we were all just self-interested animals, only focused on eating, fucking, carving out territory and then protecting that territory and our own self-interest.

I survived my stroke, but strangely my cynic has died. In leaving hospital, I have been astounded at the incredible kindness shown to me by so many of my family and friends, particularly my mother and father-in-law, who have come and helped out with my recovery literally every other day and some of my very loyal friends, who have slept over when times are hard and spent days on end “working from home”, which really meant running around catering for my little needs during the day. And my extraordinary soon- to-be-wife, who has been a mixture of Wonderwoman and Supergirl, being incredibly loyal, loving, seemingly indefatigable. And many members of my own family overseas, including my mother who came all the way from Australia to visit me. And my stepfather whose wise words and steady character have helped keep me on course. Enough American-style gushy sentimentality!

My new view of the world adheres more with that of one of my great intellectual icons, Desmond Morris, who still says we are all animals, but that we are programmed to want to co-operate and help other members of our own species. Our brains are rewarded when we help other members of our own tribe.

A huge thank you must go to Mr Sex, who has pretty much single-handedly kept Todger Talk alive, kicking and thriving. So dear readers, in the comments section, can you please lavish your appreciation on Mr Sex.

And lady readers, if you live within commuting distance of Nottingham and you fancy lavishing more than words or you would like to make his next visit to London more exciting, please remember that Mr Sex is that rarest of men: he is single, can make you laugh, can talk about his emotions openly and his first published book was nothing less than ‘The Going Down guide’. I mean, ladies, what more could you want in a man? You can contact him through his blogger profile…

Sam: Hospital Survival Guide

If you ever have the unfortunate experience of being in hospital for a long stretch of time, or know someone who is about to, the following points might just help. Memorise all of them.

Firstly, and most importantly, ask for what you want. I asked for Morphine, and much to my surprise, I got it. I probably ended up keeping half the farmers in Afghanistan in business, which I think was a fair trade. They make a living, and I wasn't living in pain.

Second point: always remember that you are in a queue. So just before you're about to whack the button for attention, take a deep breath into the bottom of your stomach, and count to ten. Because there are probably thirty other people whacking the button at the same time, and the nurses are doing their best to get to you. If you were in a queue at the bank, would you shout "Get the fuck out of the way and give me my fucking money right now"? No. You'd wait.

Third point: throw round lots of mackerel. No, I'm not still on the morphine - it's a lesson I learned from What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage by Amy Sutherland, which is one of the best books I've read about human and animal psychology for as long as I can remember. Basically, because NHS staff get treated like shit by higher authorities - and distressingly, even by some of the people who they're looking after - they're deprived of mackerel (i.e., positive feedback). I find that by merely saying 'please' and 'thank you', you find very quickly that they're happy to do what you want.

Fourth point: understand the structure of the ward. The nurses don't really have the power to change anything - you'll have to get hold of a doctor for that. So don't harass them when you know they can't do anything about it.

Fifth point: find a spot for everything. Not because your essential items will get nicked - they just disappear. Particularly the stuff that keeps you alive, and fends off boredom.

Sixth point, and very important: pull your weight. If there's anything you can do for yourself, do it. Every bit of help you give the staff, they will pay it back twenty times over.

'Mr Sex': Hair Yesterday, None Today

Something you might not know about me; I’ve been shaving my head for over ten years. It had been on the cards for ages; I remember being in a barbers when I was 22, and he mentioned that my hair was really fine. And I thanked him. By the time I was 25, it was starting to thin out like a bastard, and I got obsessed with checking the top of my head on CCTV cameras. By the time I was 26, I took a razor to my scalp. It was either that, or my wrists.

In many ways, I was extremely lucky to go bald when I did. I was in London, a place where people generally don’t give a toss what you look like. And I was in the mid-nineties, when head-shaving was a bit fashionable and actually a bit sexy (thank you, Grant Mitchell). I had none of the dilemmas that my slap-headed ancestory had to deal with; getting a rug, using those mad hairsprays or trying to rock a Bobby Charlton were not options I could entertain. The best thing to do was get shot of it all and not give a fuck. Which I did, and I do.

In the spirit of Dan’s recent post, and for the benefit of men everywhere who are heading that way - and for women who don’t understand – this is what it’s like..

1. Yes, it really is a very big deal.

Losing your hair, no matter how brave a face you put on (or underneath) it, is horrible. For starters, it’s usually the first sign that you’re beginning to slip away from your peak. Not only are you constantly tracking the spread of your male pattern baldness, you also start monitoring people’s reactions to it. You watch the direction of their eyes when you talk to them, and are just waiting for them to make comment on it. And when you’re in a relationship, it’s even worse; it’s a very obvious dealbreaker (in fact, I still believe that me shaving my head was the nail in the coffin of the relationship I was in at the time).

2. When you do it for the first time, you turn it into an event.

There’s no turning back, and it’s almost a rite of passage, so you have to make the most of it. You could book in at the most expensive barbers you know and have someone apply the straight-edge razor to your head (seeing as it’ll be the last time you ever have need of places like that), or you could spend a couple of hours slowly doing it yourself – giving yourself a Travis Bickle Mohican along the way, of course.

3. You will spend the first week constantly touching your scalp, looking in every reflective surface in the vicinity, and feeling extremely vulnerable.

It’s weird how the lack of a couple of inches of hair makes you feel fragile as fuck. Just as someone who switches from glasses to contact lenses can’t help pushing a finger along the bridge of their nose, you will be flinching whenever the wind changes.

4. However, at some point in that first week, you will walk under a low-hanging tree and realise that you suddenly have an enormous new erogenous zone.

Seriously. And when it snows for the first time, your knees will buckle.

5. Your mates will deem it The Most Important Thing to Ever Happen in The History Of Everything.

One or two of them – the infantile sort whose sense of humour never left the laughing-at-one’s-own-genitals stage – will make constant references to Kojak, do the slapping thing Benny Hill did to Jackie Wright, etc etc. Yawn. The others will bang on relentlessly about how brave you are, as if you’ve amputated your own arms with a knife between your teeth during a polar expedition. Either way, you’ll be obliged to reveal it to everyone you know as if you were The Queen unveiling a statue, over and over again.

Oh, and none of your male friends will tell you what you need to know – that you don’t look like a twat.

6. Your female friends, on the other hand, will tell you that you don’t look like a twat.

But, unless they suddenly pull you towards them and say “My God, I never realised how sexy you are – let’s do it right here, on this pub table”, you won’t believe them.

7. Then they’ll tell you that you look like Harry Goldenblatt off Sex And The City.

But seeing as you’d sooner watch your Dad shit in a glass bucket than that load o’ rammell, you won’t know who he is, and get a bit scared that he’s a paedophile or something.

8. You will automatically lose any chance of getting some with at least 60% of the female population.

Sorry, but it has to be said.

9. Of the remaining 40%, half of those that would get with you want to because they think you’re something you’re not.

This was a real eye-opener for me. I used to have a skinhead cut when I moved to London, and an alarmingly high percentage of my peers thought I was a racist, Gay, or a Gay racist. As soon as I shaved it all off, a lot of people assumed I was hard as fuck (when I’m actually soft as arseholes). A lot of the women I ran into appeared to have a penchant for nightclub bouncers, and were a bit let down when I wasn’t nailing them to the bed and offering to beat the shit out of any man who had done them wrong, even if all he had done was short-change them by 5p at the newsagents.

10. Regardless of whether they fancy you or not, all women will want to stroke your head.

…whilst being totally unaware of Point 4, and not realising that to people like me, stroking a bald scalp is foreplay. I’ll be sat in the pub minding my own business, some pissed-up girl who I don’t even know runs her hand over my head on the way to the bar, and she might as well have licked it. When your female friends do it, it’s even worse; you have to fight to stop yourself running your hand up their leg in response. So please don’t do it.

(actually, fuck it; do do it. It’s the only pleasure I get nowadays)

11. You get used to it very quickly, to the point that you’d look weird with hair.

Although the downside to this is that you’re locked into looking the same way for the rest of your life. As the majority of men never use make-up, and we can never get away with going into town wearing a wig like women can, the only thing that men can do to change the way they look is to have a haircut. That option’s not open to me any more, which is a downer. Yeah, I could grow a beard, but it it’s an obvious over-compensating manoeuvre that fools no-one. Consequently…

12. You feel the need to tell every man to do as much mad shit with their hair as possible.

Not because it’s better. Just because you can.

Sam: Bye Bye to your Bush

I saw this and had to share . . . alas, if only we'd used the bush removal cream eight years earlier . . .

'Mr Sex': The Credit Crotch

Well, well, well. If you need any indication as to how far up Arsehole Street the global economy is, it's this news story about Larry Flynt asking the American government for a hand-out for the Grot industry;

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind," Flynt said in a statement. People were "too depressed to be sexually active", which was "very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such, but they cannot do without sex."

Well, I dunno about the former (and I know the latter is a complete bag of wank), but the issue is worth discussing. Here's my take on it. It's a bit rambly, so be warned.

After working in the business for enough years, I've come to the conclusion that the porn industry is the ultimate triumph of free-market capitalism. Think of this way; about 99% of all straight male pornography is made to be wanked over. But when you strip it down to its basic components, how much does a wank cost? Fuck all. All you need is a cock, a hand, and some sort of a brain to get the two working together and provide some sort of stimulus. When it comes down to it, and if we're totally honest with ourselves, the majority of us don't actually need porn to get a bonk-on, unless we're in a sperm bank.

So how come the porn industry manages to generate over thirteen billion dollars a year for producing things that the vast majority of its audience don't actually need, that the vast majority of us would be mortified to have discovered by others, that makes some of us feel a bit guilty about using, and is an incredibly poor substitute for the real thing? Because, well...that's the way it is, and has always been. Rationality goes right out of the window when the opportunity to see a bit of fanny comes our way.

Problem is, as you've probably noticed on the news, a free market means that people pay for things what they think they're worth, and when times are rough (and it's safe to say that times are as rough as North Korean toilet paper at the moment), they're not very keen on being ripped off. And the Grot business have been the reigning champions of piss-taking for years, because there general uptightness about porn means that the possibilities for scamming are endless.

(There's a great story about one of the top smut pedlars in the UK getting his start by running adverts in magazines selling 20 pictures of women and animals for a tenner, in the days when a tenner was a fuckload of cash. Punters who forked out would then recieve a packages containing ten pictures of women in bikinis, and ten pictures of kittens in wine glasses. Unsurprisingly, no-one wrote letters to the Trading Standards Commission complaining that they hadn't recieved the bestiality photos they ordered.)

The way I see it, you can draw a lot of comparisons between the porn industry and the record business. Both of them play on an outlaw image whilst being run by stuffy old men, both have taken the piss for years (remember when CDs - which are far cheaper to produce than vinyl - were going for £14 each?), and both of them have been bitten in the arse by the internet - sure, the porn industry managed to fend off illegal downloading for a few years longer, but that was only because it took longer for the spods to work out how to throw up video. Just like a teenager can download the entire back catalogue of the Beatles for nothing in the time it would take to play The White Album (skipping Revolution #9, of course), your average punter can download more grot in a day than they would ever purchase in a lifetime.

The moral of the story, dear reader, is simple economics, even for a fiscal div such as I. Yes, Mr Flynt has an extremely valid point, because at the end of the day it's just as much of a business as anything else and it does require an extreme amount of corporate nous to pull it off (seriously, the amount of times I've had people come up to me in the pub, convinced that they can make a fortune from a few Poloroids of their missus with her jubblies out on holiday).

But at the end of the day, if you make a fortune from ripping people off, you can't be surprised when they rip you off the first chance they get. And if you create a multi-billion industry through capitalising on and virtually celebrating an aura of illictness, you can't be that shocked when your audience starts getting at your product through illicit means. I'm pretty sure that even a massive financial crisis won't stop men wanting to glop away like a bastard - they just won't want to pay for it, that's all.

Sam: The curse of the drinking classes

Oscar Wilde once said that 'work was the curse of the drinking classes'. I would like to amend that to 'work is the curse of the blogging classes'. Some of you may have been wondering where Todger Talk's funny bone Mr Sex has been - well his talent has been snaffled up on a full time basis and he's been up to his ears getting settled in. So please do be patient, he will be returning on a more regularly once he has his inbox under more control.

PS anyone out there who would like to offer him a full time paid position on Todger Talk please do get in touch immediately. I'll buy you at least several pints, if not more.

Sam: Hurrah for a good cause

If you fancy a bit of fun, a trip to the beach side and feeling chuffed for helping a good cause, grab a ticket for the Burlesque against Breast Cancer. Run by the founder of Cliterati and sexpert extraordinaire Emily Dubberley, it looks like a night to remember. Here's the spiel:

What do Madonna, Mick Jagger, Fatboy Slim, Richard Branson, Snoop Dog and the Fun Lovin’ Criminals have in common? They’ve all been wowed by acts that are performing at the Burlesque Against Breast Cancer Ball. Taking place on 6^th November at The Old Market, Hove (an hour from London Victoria: nearest station Brighton) the ball offers one of the best burlesque, variety and cabaret line ups to hit the UK. The night includes:

· Glamorous drinks reception with burlesque hostesses and charming cads to put a twinkle in your eye

· Gourmet canapés to tantalise your tastebuds

· Table magic to enthrall your senses

· Burlesque makeovers to bring out your inner diva

· TV’s Mat Fraser introducing two hours of tassel twirling, fan-dancing, sultry singing, ariel acrobatics, sexy satire, and wondrous feats from Mantryx; Dolly Rocket; Eric Walton; Cherri Shakewell; Dolores Delight; Desmond O’ Connor; Patti Plinko and Her Boy; Lili Le Scala; and The Boy With Tape on His Face plus special surprises on the night.

· Luxury goodie bags to make you the envy of all your friends

Yes this is bit of a blatant plug, but hey, there's nothing wrong with a blatant plug for a good cause I reckon! If it tickles your fancy, you can get tickets here.

'Mr Sex': We deal with love now on a more personal basis...

When you get to a certain age, you get used to seeing your heroes dropping off. I heard about Barry White snuffing it at a sex show in Amsterdam, when Never Gonna Give You Up came on while some couple were going at it hammer and tong on a revolving stage, and all the English punters around me started clucking and saying "Eeh, in't it a shame about Barry?" and at the end, the bloke withdrew, stood up and saluted the air in tribute, which was nice. He would have liked that.

But anyway, I don't mind telling you that I'm taking the death of Isaac Hayes a bit more personally than usual. Yes, he was a genius songwriter (check this, this and especially this), and one of the greatest bandleaders and score-writers ever (say no more), but he also bookended the only proper, I-want-to-stay-with-you-forever, come-and-meet-my-Mam, when-are-we-getting-married relationship.

It's December 1991, and - for reasons I still can't work out even today - the most beautiful girl I've ever met in my life is telling me that she loves me, and she's been watching me from a distance for ages. Problem is, she's still with her boyfriend, even though he's a creepy-looking bastard who treats her like shit. We're breaking up for the Xmas holidays, and we're going to be at opposite ends of the country for a fortnight. I'm gonna have to do summat spectacular to pull this one out of the bag. So I do what everyone who's fallen in love does.

I make a compilation tape.

Although the technology has changed, and it's a fuck's sight easier to put them together than it was back in the day, you can't whack a tape for starting a proper relationship - especially if you're a dippy lad terrified of saying the wrong thing - and there are hundreds of trained professionals who can do it properly (even though some of them got shot by prostitutes, murdered by their cross-dressing mentalist dads, or couldn't keep their tea down). I couldn't sit her down and tell her that she only had to hand me a contract to be her bloke forever and I'd happily sign it in my own blood, but it would be a piece of piss to leg it to my already hefty record collection and spend a night with my finger hovering over the pause button. And I already know what's going to be the first track, because it's a tune I've been waiting to play to the right girl for years;

The Look Of Love, Isaac Hayes, Live at the Sahara Tahoe, 1973

And I just know that when she hears that, driving down to her parents in a battered Skoda, on a fucked-up tape deck with speakers that fizz and rattle like a bastard, that she'd be mine. While she was on the M25, I knew that a huge black American man in a gold chain waistcoat was sat in the passenger seat, putting in a severe word for me - and keeping his hands to himself, mind - and then saying "Can you pull in at this Little Chef, please, love? Curtis Mayfield wants to say summat. And then Chairmen Of The Board, and a few others."

But then again, I could have filled the rest of the tape with traffic reports off the radio and recordings of my mates on the bog, and it wouldn't have mattered a jot. I'm sorry, Dionne Warwick, I love you to bits, but that version is the most perfect love song ever. By Boxing Day, she's driven across the country to see me.

Fast forward six years. The relationship has slowly and inexorably turned to shit. We're still living together, but she's threatening to leave on a daily basis. She sees her mates, I see mine, we meet up at the end of the night, in bed, not even touching each other. I'd say we were living separate lives, but that would imply that I was actually having one at the time. The last time we go out together, it's with some of my mates (who don't know that I'm in absolute bits, because we're all male and rubbish), at the Royal Albert Hall, to see - yep, you've guessed it; Black Moses himself.

He doesn't play The Look Of Love (and just as well - I would have to have been carried out on a gurney like Hannibal Lecter), but he goes into one of his trademark long introductions to a standard, harking back to the days when he was in black clubs, daring to attempt the whitest songs ever. And he talks about the One Who Got Away. The girl who he got involved with, and let go, and regrets forever. And he describes her. She's exactly the same as my girlfriend. And, as he goes into My Funny Valentine, I just lose it completely. Every bit of salty liquid in my body squirts out of my eyes. My mates look at me, in shock, and I grip her hand so tight I almost break it.

When we get home, I tell her everything. How much I love her. How I know I'm losing her. How I'll never get over it when it finally happens. And we have our last proper night together. I meet other girls, and I do them tapes, but I just cannot bring myself to use that song again. It'd feel like I was cheating on her, because if there was ever a song that absolutely nailed everything I wanted to say at one particular person at one particular time, it was that one.

And then two years later, a flatmate comes over and tells me about a girl at work he's besotted with, and he's promised her a a tape, and he asks me to help. And I peg it to the shelf, pull out Live at the Sahara Tahoe, and say "Side B, track one". They end up having two kids. I'm sure my mate did the bulk of the work on that, but I'm still claiming a tiny bit of responsibility. But not as much as Isaac.

I can play that song - fuck it, I'm actually playing it now - and can deal with it. Because after all, you love the song long before you love the woman, don't you? All I know is that, if there's any consolation to be had from this monumentally depressing bit of news, it's that I know for a stone-cold fact that wherever she is, and whoever she's with, she'll be thinking about me when she hears about it.

And I will always love Isaac Hayes for that.

'Mr Sex': Communicating Through Porn

A very small update today, alas - but I could sit here and write 50 million words on how unremittingly awkward, confusing and grim it is to be a male British Teenager, and have it totally eclipsed by two seconds of this. If you've never seen it, put 50 minutes or so aside, and thank me later.

Interview with Chris Needham, 2008
Taylor Parkes on the cult of Chris Needham