Читать книгу Uncle Dysfunctional - AA Gill - Страница 7
ОглавлениеSir,
I’m an American recently posted to England by my firm. Should I start saying sorry for things that are clearly not my fault, pretending to be more useless than I really am? I want to fit in.
Todd, London
Of course you should start fucking apologising. What is it you imagine isn’t your fault? It’s all your bleeding fault. If you didn’t start it you made it worse. And if you didn’t make it worse you didn’t sort it out. You want to know why you need to start apologising? Look at your letter. How did you start that? “I’m an American.” You could have said, “I’m a bald accountant.” “I’m a great shag.” “I’m a power-walker.” “I’m someone who cries at films, but only on my own.” There are an infinite number of ways we can identify ourselves, a whole wide emotional world of possible self-worth and introduction: father, son, husband, friend, colleague . . . But you chose “American”. You want to wear the national superpower hero suit? This is the first and most important thing you can think of saying about yourself? Well, fine. Then you can take on all the responsibility and accountability for all the fuck-ups and dumb shit that goes with it. They couldn’t get Hillary Clinton to do the job so we got you. If you want to fit in and have a good time perhaps you might consider rephrasing that. “Hi, I’m a visitor.” Or, “I’m new here.” Have a nice day.
Dear Sir,
Is there any way to choose paint with your wife without it descending into a row?
Simon, Kensington
I don’t have a wife. I don’t know who it is you’ve been arguing with. I did have a wife. If you’re rucking with her about paint, good luck mate. You’re in for a world of beige. With taupe accents. And don’t even start on tiles.
Mr Gill,
I’ve been pretending to like football for years because it seemed the thing to do. Can I stop now?
Anon.
No. Not while you’re still managing Chelsea.
Dear AA,
I haven’t read a book since I left university in 1994. Am I missing out?
Alex, Northampton
I don’t know. What else haven’t you done since you left university? Had a whipped cream fight? Jumped off a bridge? Talked about French films for five hours? Slept with a friend and remained just friends? Been so happy to see your mates on a Friday night you thought you’d burst? Spent a whole term in a wife-beater trying to flick cards into a bin and smoke Gitanes at the same time? Woken up under a tree? Broken up over politics? You see, Alex, when people write about things they’re not doing it’s usually a symptom of a greater malaise, a deeper depression. If you want to know if you’ve missed out on reading books, go to a fucking bookshop and try a few. They won’t mind, promise. If you left university in ’94, my guess is you’re just about hitting your 10,000-mile reality check. You’re doing an inventory of what you’ve achieved. And comparing it with the to-do list you had when you turned 20. And it’s a shock. There have been quite a lot of breakages. And pilfering. And it’s way past its sell-by date. You either feel trapped or let down. And you realise it’s not all still in front of you. It’s not all to play for. Half of it’s already been used up. And you’ll be lucky if you grab a draw. And the pattern for what the next 35 years is going to be like is already set. The horizon is closer, the panorama narrower, the goal smaller, the rewards prosaic. My guess is you didn’t read a lot of books at university. And the degree you took was not much more than a label to get you three years of brilliant fun. And the further from it you get the more brilliantly it shines, and by contrast how much dimmer and more predictable your current life seems. But don’t despair. There’s an answer – it’s not complicated. It’s: suck in your gut and get on with it. This is the human condition. Live with it. In particular, it’s the male human condition. When you were 20 you were a twat: insufferable, arrogant, thoughtless, boastful. You imagined all sorts of shit. You thought you’d be mates forever. You thought making money was about charm and being in the right place at the right time. You thought a plastic tube with a squeezy bulb would make your willy bigger and that being good in bed was a trick you did with your fingers, like shadow puppets. You thought England would win the World Cup before you were 30 and Salt-N-Pepa were the coolest hip-hop combo ever. So why should your post A-level wish list be any more reliable? The one thing you didn’t have then was this paunch of self-pity. My advice is, whatever it is you think is holding you back or conspiring against you, embrace it. Do more of it. If it’s responsibility you hate, take on more of it. If it’s work, stay later. That’s counterintuitive, but, trust me, without exception, the escape plans men make for themselves are all risible, pathetic, callow, selfish and destructive. Live with it. This is what you’re supposed to feel. This is being a man. Actually, on second thoughts, yes, you are missing out. Books, novels, are a great consolation. That’s why they were invented, why they’re written.
Mr Gill,
I’ve been told that flowers in pots aren’t a socially acceptable gift, and that red roses are infra dig and carnations are common. I don’t understand any of this, because I am common. I was brought up in a tower block in Sheffield. My mum was a dinner lady, my dad worked for the gas board. Flowers were for weddings and funerals. I’m very, very successful and very, very smart. The people I have to work and mix with seem to know this stuff genetically. Can you give me a quick guide? I know it doesn’t matter but it sort of does.
Rick, London
I could tell you that the only acceptable roses are white or very faintly pink, but not salmon. And that long stems without thorns, in boxes, are laugh-out-loud embarrassing. And that all orchids are always hopelessly Thai Airways and that flowers mixed with vegetables are very passé and that tight balls of trimmed blooms in carefully complementary hues are so over. And never, ever send dried flowers or lilies with the stamens cut out or almost anything out of season. But contrarily, things that look like funeral decorations are bizarrely rather chic. And ideally cut flowers should look like they came from your garden and that your garden needs a tractor to drive round it and has a greenhouse the size of a tennis court. And never hand over flowers. They must be delivered, but not by a flower shop. They should come instantly after the event you’re being grateful or apologising for. That is, within eight hours, including weekends and bank holidays. I could tell you all that. But I’m not going to. Put it out of your mind. Cast it into the Pit of Forgotten. Because you’re right. We don’t have to be told this. We do know it genetically. And you will always get something wrong. The wrong card. The wrong ink. The wrong words. The wrong sign-off. There is no end to this stuff. It’s like nuclear physics. You think you’ve found the smallest possible particle of snobbery but there’s always something more negligibly, minutely irrational. And you’re also right to say it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’re not quite successful enough. Give it a couple of years, propelled by your obvious Lawrentian resentment, you’ll do better than all of them. And then when all of your friends are posh employees, you can give them what you like. Paper flowers, bags of gypsophilia seeds. They will love and respect you from the bottom of their prune-like hearts. And I promise you still won’t feel any less uncomfortable and they won’t feel a scintilla less entitled.
Dear Sir,
Matching his and hers tattoos: ever acceptable?
Winston, Manchester
Only if you’re Danish bacon.
AA,
My fiancé’s from Glasgow. He’s insisting on getting married in a kilt. I’m from Utah. My family are very conservative and religious. They’re not going to understand. How can I get him into trousers without hurting his ethnic feelings?
Mary-Beth, by email
Ethnic feelings? He’s from fucking Glasgow, for Christ’s sake. The kilt is the least of your worries. Even when they find out what he’s not got on underneath, and they surely will, wait till your parents get a load of the in-laws and his childhood mates. The reception is going to be fabulous. Are you writing this up as a film treatment? If not, do you mind if I have it? PS, do you seat your mothers by height or age?
Dear Sir,
When, if ever, is it permissible for a man to sign off a text with “love” or “x”? And don’t say “best” is best, because it isn’t. Nor “yours” nor “faithfully” nor “peace”.
Love Derek x
Darling, sweetheart, cupcake. It’s permissible, as you sweetly put it, to sign texts any damn way you like. You’re all so bloody fond of the internet and you bang on and on about messaging and techno and plugged-in stuff, and you say it’s all about freedom and honesty, and the day after you get a Twitter account you’re all constipated about the raised-pinkie etiquette of how to say “cheerio”, and all the rest of the manners business and the after-you niceties. You sound like my grandparents. Why do you care? Why do you want to start making up rules and laws and a smirking snobbery about something you say is pristine, anarchic and lawless, and naked? If it’s any help, Alexander Graham Bell suggested that you answered his implement with a firm and clear, “Ahoy”. So why not start with that? And why don’t you finish with . . .
Dear AA Gill,
My wife and I went on holiday with her family. Her younger sister came down to the pool wearing a tiny bikini. “Ooh,” I said, “that’s one for the wank bank.” I wasn’t really sure if I said it out loud. The wife went tonto. “Did you just say you wanted to masturbate over my sister?” I tried to explain the harmless concept of the wank bank, that all men have one. But she won’t let it go. She has to know who else is in it, and if she’s there. And every time we go to a restaurant or a pub she says, “I suppose she’s a deposit in your savings account.” And now she’s asking her friends if their husbands have them, and the guys are complaining to me. But the worst bit is, I’m experiencing difficulties taking Captain Picard to warp speed. Where there should be Angelina Jolie in leather or Halle Berry in sweat, I can only see the wife, wagging her finger and shouting, “I hope that’s not my sister in there with you!”
Phil, by email
There is a wank-banking crisis. We all speculated and spent, in the biblical sense – borrowed from one ball to pay to the other – on fantasies of body parts we can’t sustain, or pay the interest. The 21st-century wank bank is full of arses and tits we don’t need, and we’ll never use. It looks like your iTunes library but without the sense of rhythm or a Genius button. And does it make us happy, all this ejaculatory aspiration? No, it doesn’t. Tell the wife she’s right. In these straitened times you can’t afford a big, fuck-off-I’m-busy wank bank. So you’re laying them all off except for a couple of tasteful classical statues and that memory of her with the sunburn and the drunken Brazilian on honeymoon, and that from now on you’re placing yourself in her hands or outsourcing to the internet.
Mr Gill,
I’m frightened.
Anonymous, by email
And so you should be. Frightened is the natural state for all men. There is much to be frightened about and of. What’s more frightening is you don’t know the half of it. The measure of a man’s life is how he copes with the terrible wall of fear. The traditional manly remedies are: rigorous self-delusion (an absolute refusal to face anything remotely akin to reality or even open an envelope); drink; and mood-altering masturbation. And for this you need a really comprehensive wank bank.
Sir,
My husband said he had something important to tell me. I could see from the fear it was serious. I’d suspected for some time that he might have been wearing my clothes, so I was prepared for a bout of tearful trannie guilt. Which, frankly, I’d be OK with. We’re about the same size and I didn’t marry him for his dress sense, so I might as well stay married to him for mine. But then he blurted out that he was a nudist. I must say I was surprised. Calmly, I said I thought I might have noticed if he’d been playing volleyball in the garden starkers. He said he didn’t want to be a collective nudist – he was a singular, secret one. And he would like me to be a secret nudist with him. What, just round the house? No, he said. Outside, together. Well I wasn’t overcome with excitement, but compromise is everything in a relationship, and after 20 years of marriage I was amazed that there was anything new to discover about him. I’m going to draw a veil over our sojourn in Hampstead Heath. If only I’d had a veil about me at the time. Never again. He said the deeply humiliating cascade of events was my fault for not being quick enough. He is still sulking. And he says he doesn’t know if we can go on if I can’t join him on his journey. At the moment I don’t know if I can go on if I do. It does seem a very stupid reason to break up what is essentially a happy though dull life with a nice home, a successful business and a secure family.
Sophie, West Sussex
He is not a nudist. Nudists are plural. A singular nudist is a flasher. He wants to implicate you in his sad little waggling insecurity. If he gets nicked on his own it’s six months on the nonce’s wing and a lifetime on the register. If he’s got you with him it’s a Benny Hill sketch, and the bobbies trying to keep a straight face while giving you a lift home in a blanket, with a verbal to lay off the Viagra and go on holiday to Sweden. But you’re right not to want to break up a perfectly dull marriage. It’s not that serious. It’s not as if he suggested bridge, or restoring classic caravans. The answer is, introduce him to your nearest art school as a model. He can be naked alone and observed. And you could take up sketching, and thus join in while remaining clothed. Indeed, you sound like someone who might take to bohemian headscarves, smocks, lumpy jewellery and cannabis. And you can’t be any worse at art than he is at being a pervert.
Dear Mr Gill,
My husband has a degenerative, incurable illness. We’re both young, under 30. We met at school and have been together since GCSE geography. Now he wants to die and he wants me to help him and assumes I will because we love each other. He says I won’t get into trouble with the police, and courts are sympathetic to spouses who assist in suicides – particularly after Terry Pratchett – and anyway I have no ulterior motive. He’s saying goodbye to all his friends and making arrangements for the big day: drugs, suffocation and Billie Holiday. He’s happier than he’s been for ages. The thing is, I do have an ulterior motive. I’m sleeping with his younger brother. And have been for years. In fact, I was on the point of leaving when he got diagnosed, but then I couldn’t. I’ve just discovered I’m pregnant and obviously it can’t be my husband’s. Oh, and there’s one other thing. It doesn’t really matter but my husband’s father has a title. If he dies it will pass to his brother. And he’ll inherit a great deal of land. I do think killing him is the best option. I have no problems either way, morally.
Jocasta, London SW3
Congratulations. Hats off. Respect. You can be in this business for years without getting a problem that impressively screwed up. Where did you all go to school? Webster’s Academy of Jacobean Tragedy? OK, here’s the thing: you’re completely fucked. No, really. Game over. There is just one teeny, forlorn chink of hope, an outside, 100–1 chance. So here is your mission, if you choose to accept it. First you’ve got to tell the husband that he’s going to be a father. Explain the immaculate conception by telling him you judiciously had some of the hereditary custard frozen, way back, just in case. And you’ve secretly been having IVF. You didn’t tell him because you didn’t want him to be disappointed if it didn’t work. So he has to stay alive to see his son. You have to square the brother, carrot and stick. First, keep shagging him, which shouldn’t be a hardship. But tell him if he says anything you’ll deny it and no one will believe him because he’s a younger son, and no one ever believes younger sons. So this way you keep everything, including someone else’s good name. But, and there is a but, the child will grow to be an amoral, manipulative, sensual monster. The two of you will be well-suited until you get old and the last thing you’ll see is his beautiful smile as he gently but firmly holds a pillow embroidered with the family crest over your face.
Sir,
I’ve just left uni and have got a lot of job interviews lined up. City, industry, etc. I’m really clever. My CV’s impressive. I’m sure I could do most jobs better than most people but I’m shit at interviews. When someone asks me what my chief fault is, I have an uncontrollable desire to say, “I smile when listening to idiots.” And then smile.
Gareth, via Facebook
OK, Gareth. First, remember this is all about the job. It’s not just about your job. It’s all to do with the jobs of the people who are interviewing you. Being on a recruitment panel represents a lot of stress and an opportunity for people in offices. They get to show off or get shown up. There will be one boss-person and then two underling suits, who will be trying to outdo each other. What they’re looking for is someone who makes them look good, and who won’t be a threat. So the trick to interviews is not the dos, but the three don’ts. Don’t flirt, don’t be too keen and don’t be too clever. Remember, the job will always go to the third best candidate. First and second best will be championed by the competing courtiers. The boss will say, “Is there anyone we can all agree on?” And that’ll be third best. Which is never going to be you, is it? Because the other thing is, you’re a twat. A proper, whiny, pompous, self-justifying twat. I hope The Big Issue thing works out for you.
AA,
My girlfriend’s just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It’s such a downer. Can I dump her?
Chinua, by email
Yeah, course you can. Hey, you didn’t sign up for a mentalist, did you? Don’t feel bad. No reason why you both should. She’ll probably be better off on her own. She can concentrate on lightening the fuck up. I wouldn’t risk a face-to-face. Might make her worse: the begging, the what-did-I-do-wrong sobbing, the suicide threats. Just text her. “Sorry, babe, not working out for me. Moving on. Cheer up. LOL.”
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
It’s our one-month anniversary and I’m taking my girlfriend to Paris for the weekend. I want to give her some nice underwear for the occasion. I don’t know where to start.
Tom, Putney
Jesus. She’s already wearing your bollocks as earrings. No man in the history of shagging has ever remembered or acknowledged a one-month anniversary. Look, Tom, these are the rules for lingerie: don’t. Simple as. Your job is getting it off, not adding to it. That’s all you’ve got to remember. Never, ever, give underwear. You don’t know her size. Her friends will lie about her size. She’ll lie about her size. Take an old bra into Agent Provocateur and the shop assistant will lie about her size. Just going, “Oh, about a handful”, isn’t enough. Men and women see completely different things when they look at bras and knickers. No woman who doesn’t keep tenners in her garter belt has ever worn red underwear. Men put on their Berlusconi heads when they step through the door of Victoria’s Secret. Women grow instantly frigid when presented with a bra and thong set. What they see is a whole night of humiliation and logistical and ergonomic problems. Any man who could choose aesthetic, sensual underwear in the correct size is not the sort of man they’d want to wear it for. Here’s what you need to know about erotic presents and Paris: give her a riding crop. Unless she’s got a horse. If she’s already got a horse it’s not an erotic present, it’s a cheap gift.
Dear Adrian,
I’m just starting at a Southern uni. No one from my family, school or estate in the North East has ever been to university. I can handle the work. I get on with the other students. I’m not teased or bullied. I’m popular and everyone likes my accent. It’s all cool except I really can’t handle the dressing up. Why are middle-class, privately educated Southern kids so childishly obsessed with fancy dress? Every Friday night the town and campus looks like a cross between a hen night and MGM’s backlot. The streets are littered with vomiting bunnies and discarded togas. Every event comes with some embarrassing instruction to dress up as your favourite sin or an animal with the first letter of your name. Or there are instructions on what to arrive as, and then find your blind date who’ll be dressed as Wilma to your Fred, or Courtney to your Kurt. I’ve just had another one from my tutor that says, “Dress: smart-casual”. What the fuck is “smart-casual”? Come as an oxymoron?
Clive, by email
Clive, you’ve stepped into the pantyhose of class, the last codpiece of the English class system. Everything else – the Empire, the deference, the big house, the cosy snobbery and a gardener with only one name – has been taken away from them. All that’s left are tarts and vicars parties. And if you want to feel really out of place, turn up as a vicar. All posh English boys want to dress up as women. They can’t see a balloon without sticking it up their jumpers. If you want to separate the public schoolboys from the comprehensive ones, just put them in a room with a wig. The reasons for this are many, deep and distressing. Don’t go there. On a fundamental level, the class system was always about fancy dress. A hierarchy of funny hats, ribbons, chains, breeches, riding, shooting, Henley and judges. It’s been pointed out (by badly dressed Americans) that the English ruling class has clothes instead of character. Their whole lives are spent dressing up to be someone else. When they say clothes maketh the man, they mean it literally. They have kit to be brave in, kit to be clever in, kit to be romantic in and pyjamas with flies that don’t work for rudimentary sex. Your best bet is to play to the stereotype. Have a couple of default costumes: a Jarrow marcher; a coal miner; or Rodney Bewes from The Likely Lads. As for smart-casual, no one knows what it means. It’s the garment version of “How are you?” or “I’ll give you a ring.” An empty instruction, a request without emphasis or meaning. It’s just there to stop people phoning up all week asking, “How should I dress for your drinks party?” It means, not a dressing gown or the robes for the Order of the Garter. And in your case, I think the Rodney Bewes outfit will be fine.
AA,
I have a large penis. We’re not talking above average. I mean huge. Thick and long. And white. A really, really big white penis.
Anonymous, by email
On your shoulders?
Hi,
My name’s Gerald. I’ve been in analysis for seven years, but my shrink’s away on her summer holidays and I really need someone to talk to. You look a bit like her and you also look a bit like my dad. I’ve had a sort of OK week. I think I’m dealing with the passive-aggressive stuff, though I did have this moment, an encounter – not so much an encounter, just like a passing thing, not important really – with this woman in a car park at Tesco. She was old, well not old, older than me. But nice-looking in a sort of seen-better-days way. I helped her load the shopping into the back of her car. It was a VW. I still get these pangs of irrational fear around German cars. Then she offered me a probiotic yoghurt as a thank-you. Fucking hell! What’s that all about? I was filled with rage. What did she mean? I mean really mean? Did she see me as a child, a helpful boy with undescended testicles, not a real man? Do I need my bowels opened? It brought up issues about penis length, cleanliness and my terror of sphincters. I mean, she could have given me a banana. She had a bunch. So there was that, which I think I dealt with quite well. The yoghurt gave me wind. The bitch next door, with the cat, the one whose bedroom I can see into and had the minor obsession with, well, it’s been pissing in my garden. The cat, not Laura. I actually caught it spraying the Japanese Maple where I put my dad’s ashes and the posthumous letter I wrote him. This seems over-loaded with significance. Bitch. Pussy. Dad. Writing. Canadian national symbol . . . [The rest of this letter can be read on helpmyanalystisonholidayandihavenoonetotalkto.com]
The thing with analysis, Gerald – I’m assuming Gerald isn’t your real name; Gerald hasn’t been anyone’s real name since the war – is that analysis is a good thing. Self-knowledge is a good thing. A karmic manicure is a good thing. Here’s the other thing: people who need analysis but haven’t had any can be really fun to be around, because they’re nuts. People who have had analysis can be really fun to be around because they’re not nuts. It’s the people in analysis that are fucking insufferable. They have half the understanding, which is like knowing half the rules of chess. You’re no fun to play with. So while you’re in analysis, that’s a decade when no one’s going to want to know you, particularly your mother. And by the way, she’s not on holiday, she’s moved.
Uncle D,
What’s your position on pornography?
Ava, by email
Complaining about pornography is like moaning about the weather, though more fun, with better graphics. We are just surrounded by it. It’s bottomless, topless and endless. It’s also very repetitive. Very, very, very repetitive. So I don’t have a position on porn. I’m assuming this is a sniggering pun and you’re not called Ava. You’re probably Gerald. And you’re 14 and your penis looks like the handlebar grips on a midwife’s Riley. What the nuanced social observer, the postmodern moral philosopher has in place of a position is more a voyeuristic, hand on chin, quizzically smiling anthropological interest in particular sorts of pornography. If you are in doubt of what that is, there is a helpful index to the left-hand side of most porn sites. You can choose which ones to take umbrage at. Racial stereotypes for instance. Black men, big cocks. Japanese girls, white socks. Fake lesbian exploitation. Unshaven German creampie Milf compilation. Porn is no longer either/or. It’s sometimes and somethings. But don’t let anyone tell you that what you need is to be more open to porn, Gerald. Don’t ever get lulled into sharing it or watching it with your girlfriend (when you get one) as some sort of foreplay. This is disgusting and unnatural. Porn has to be solitary, singular, secret and, above all, embarrassing. Nothing ruins pornography like someone else cranking one out saying, “Can’t we fast forward through this bit? Oh, and the midget’s got a willy just like yours.”
Mr Gill,
I’ve got this boyfriend, and on the face of it he ticks every box, some of them more than once. He’s good-looking, solvent, with an indoor, sitting-down job. He’s got a car that’s insured, which is as rare as morris dancers round here. My family love him, and so do I. It’s all lush, until he opens his bleeding mouth. He’s got this accent. He sounds posh. Like off Downton Abbey, or some black and white film. Normally I can handle it because he’s polite and funny. It’s just in bed, his voice does me in. You really can’t talk dirty and sound sexy with a posh accent. It’s like being rogered by a comedy butler or a magistrate. I can’t take it seriously. Every time he says, “Here I come ready or not.” Or, “Good Lord, brill top bollocks, Miss.” Or, “Steady the bus!” (he says that quite a lot), I go off the whole thing. I’m writing to you because I assume you’re posh. How do any of you actually breed? How can you get a throb-on for some bird who sounds like Princess Anne saying stuff like, “Do you have a reservation?”
Cher, by instant message
Ah, Tracy. Do you mind if I call you Tracy? I know it’s not your name, but you’re all Tracys to us. Of course, you’re completely right. Received pronunciation, BBC English, or “posh”, is good for many things: ordering thousands of oiks to almost certain death; governing an empire with not much more than five drunken Scotsmen and a cricket bat. It’s brilliant for memorial services, patronising foreigners, children and horses and, bizarrely, poetry. But God in His wisdom gives and He takes away. Even though He obviously has the same accent as your boyfriend, He has deemed it the most preposterous voice when naked. When all is said and done, or done then said, it is the accent of understatement. And if engaged in the beast with 20 toes and a single desire, you really don’t want understatement, or to sound phlegmatically sophisticated. No one wants to hear, “Whenever you’re ready old girl” as a soundtrack to the vinegar strokes. My suggestion is to shove a pillow in his mouth. It will remind him of school. Or wear earphones playing Get Carter. Of course, if you’re serious about the chap then work up some ruse to get him fired, get one of your mates to nick his car and insist he moves in with you. In a couple of months he’ll sound like your bruvas. We are not born with this accent. We achieve it. It’s part of our training. Take away the perks and the position and we lose the accent. Anyway, in our heads we all sound just like you. Out loud we may be saying, “I say! Tally-ho!” In our heads it sounds like, “Eat cock snot, bitch.”
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
I’m short.
Leon, by email
Lie down.
Dear AA,
I had one girlfriend at uni. We were each other’s first loves, and inseparable. It was really intense. We went on to live together for a year. I thought we’d probably start a family, but out of the blue (or so it seemed to me) she left me for another woman, saying she’d always sort of known she was gay. I was utterly gutted and de-nutted and I had a bad couple of years. But I met someone else and we married and have a nice life together. I never completely lost touch with my old girlfriend; we’ve remained friends, though not close. She and her partner (the same one) want to start a family, and she’s asked me to be the donor. I can’t say I wasn’t surprised, but I’ve thought about it and I think I should: they’re in a stable relationship, there wouldn’t be any financial commitment from me and it would be a way of saying there’s no hard feelings and I’d like to help. My problem is: how do I tell my wife? We don’t have any children.
Ahmed, Bushey
No hard feelings, Ahmed? No hard feelings? This whole letter is written in the pale ink of hard feelings, on thin-skinned notepaper. The envelope is stuck down with bitter bile. It’s stamped with regret. To say there are no hard feelings, only shows that you have the sensitivity of an angle grinder. OK, you’re not over it. No one ever gets over being dumped. You learn to live with it. You grow a scab and then a tough lump that you stroke occasionally. You spend a couple of hundred words talking about your ex, you mention the wife in passing and the fact that she’s childless as a postscript. I’m assuming you haven’t bred because there’s a blockage. And it’s hers not yours. I’m assuming the honest reason you want to donate your tadpoles to the dyke bitch who broke your Bambi heart is because you want the revenge hump, even if it’s just with a syringe. So, leaving aside the obvious answer – which is “No!! Not conceivably, you dense fuckwit!!” – these are the options. One: don’t say anything to the wife, slip the ex her shot of man fat purchased from a stranger found in the waiting room of your local STD clinic, preferably a bloke who’s chromatically very different from you. This is the revenge option. It will give you an instant, huge sense of release, a lightness of being. You will feel like you have been given an extra lung and the steel band has been removed from around your head. It will last for half an hour. And then you will feel sad and guilty for the rest of your life. But guilty sadness might be easier than the fawning anger you’re weighed down with at the moment. Then there is the option of Solomon: you say yes to the ex but with conditions. You give her two shots, one for her, one for her partner. It’s a twofer deal. They both get pregnant. They keep one child. You and your wife adopt the other.
Fun fact: there’s a lot of inventive thinking going on about human insemination at the moment. What you might call in-the-box thinking. One entrepreneur is opening an online sperm boutique. He’s looking to make attractive cocktails of shot juice for ladies who want children but not the whingeing demands of exhausting infants – so, no fathers. He’s putting together collegiate shots, collections of mixed jiz with a common theme. So you might get a football team’s spunk, the whole of Man U in an Actimel bottle, or, if you’re on a budget, Norwich. You could have the cast of West Side Story. Or, when the sprog asks who its dad is, you could say the faculty of the London School of Economics, or the Household Cavalry Sovereign’s Escort. He’s thinking of taking commissions for bespoke screws. The oddest request was from a professional Swedish lady who’s after the collective DNA of London’s zookeepers.
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
I’ve got a bent cock. Really bent. Like a right angle. What shall I do?
Rupert, Oxford
Go fuck yourself.
Dear Adrian,
I love my wife. We’ve been married 10 years, got two great kids, she’s a brilliant mum, makes our house a wonderful home, is funny, popular, and supportive. We share lots of interests. I can’t imagine my life without her. But she’s a minger. I don’t fancy her. Not at all. I’m not sure I ever did; you know, we were young, I was drunk. She’s an awkward shape and ugly – but only on the outside. It’s a terrible thing. I really can’t shag her. So I’ve been pretending I’ve got erectile dysfunction. Don’t laugh. Of course she’s really understanding and tells me not to worry. But most of the time I’m bent over with an angry diamond cutter. I’m horribly horny and wanking like a choirboy. This has gone on for a year now. But I think it’s coming to a head, and not in a good way. I’ve seen on the family computer that she’s ordered a load of Viagra. It’s my birthday in a month and I’m sure this is going to be my treat, along with the Victoria’s Secret thong, the chocolate lube and the Leona Lewis CD. What am I going to do? I’m desperate. Please don’t suggest makeovers, or surgery or party frocks. It would just make her look even more like Grayson Perry. I know this all sounds funny but I’m really sad. I love my wife with all my heart, and I could never ever countenance an affair.
Graham, by email
Graham, you’ve learnt a very useful and character-building lesson. All men occasionally wonder what it would be like to be a woman. Well, now you know. What you so touchingly describe is exactly how most married women feel about their husbands, though without the good-with-kids-good-around-the-house supportive bit. All women sooner or later end up married to an unshaggable bloke, and you don’t even pretend to make an effort. When was the last time you bought a new pair of pants? You think only Italians and ladyboys clip their nose hair. Take off your clothes, Graham. Get naked. Look in the mirror. See what your wife sees. Now get a stiffy. Most people marry into their league. Pretty people marry other pretty people. Munter meets munter. It’s your genes – they’re looking for a good fit. They want staying power, not a transient surprise result. Five doesn’t go into 10. The only couples who move from the Endsleigh League into the Championship are the very rich or deranged. So if your wife is an awkward shape, and ugly, chances are, so are you. But being a man you’ll imagine this doesn’t matter. Well, wake up and smell the bellend, Graham. You have choices. The Mr Rochester: a bit drastic, having to blind yourself. Try turning the lights out. Or just man up. Take a blue pill, do the business and be grateful. And when it comes round to her birthday, tell her you’ve got a surprise. Get her really drunk, slip her a roofie and have the naked bird of your fantasy choice tattooed on her back. When she comes round, tell her that you’d suggested a dolphin on her ankle but she insisted. It’s not ideal, but it should see you through till the annoying urges go away.
Uncle,
I’m going to spend the night with my first girlfriend. She’s given me a written list of what we’re going to do: takeaway pizza, bottle of cider, The X Factor, petting on the sofa, and up to bed for sex. She says she expects full reciprocal oral sex. I’ve been researching it on the internet, but I’m confused. It looks horrible. Can you help?
Oliver, by email
OK, get a pomegranate. Cut a v-shaped slice out of it. Put your hands behind your back and eat the seeds without using your teeth. For the full Sensurround effect, push a teaspoon of warm lard up each nostril.
Dear Uncle,
I’m 17 and beginning to show signs of male-pattern baldness. My mates call me Wills. I laugh it off and pretend I don’t care, but I do. It’s so unfair. It saps my confidence. I laugh at men with comb-overs, but I’m beginning to brush my hair forward and wear little hats. Please, please tell me something useful, and don’t mention Yul Brynner. My stepmum and all her friends always say, “Look at Yul Brynner!” I’ve no idea who he is.
Francis, by email
Yul Brynner, 1920–1985. Film actor who pretended to be a Mongol. Was in fact a Swiss-Russian gypsy, most famous for being bald. He is a terrible eggsample of a man whose life was defined by what he wasn’t: hairy. Baldness is a bugger, because it’s obvious and it’s obviously not that serious. It’s not going to kill you. It’s only follicle-deep. Loads of people are bald, and it’s what’s in your head that’s more important than what’s on it, etc., etc. But we all know it is important. I’ve just asked five girls under 30 if they minded bald men. Four of them said it was a deal-breaker. The fifth said she didn’t mind, but between you and me she’s a bit of a spoon-faced dog. So there you have it. Best to learn this lesson early. Everyone in the world would rather have lots of hair on themselves and their partners than none at all. And you’ll get no sympathy. Being bald isn’t like being ethnic or disabled. Everyone can and will make jokes about it and expect you to laugh good-naturedly, which you will. You will also buy all the lotions, drops, creams and patent cures that you know are humiliating rip-offs. You will spend years looking in mirrors, flicking your fingers through your spindly temples. You will try a ponytail on holiday. And finally you will have implants that look like a dollhouse’s Italian garden. You’ll marry a girl who pretends not to mind your pate because you pretend not to mind her facial warts. Toughen up. There’s still 40 years to go before the inescapable slip into Bruce Forsyth’s syrup. Oh, the other thing that Yul Brynner was famous for was having a humongous cock. His head looked like his bell-end, only smaller. I’m guessing this isn’t your compensation.
Mr Gill,
I’m marrying my long-term girlfriend next summer and already there’s a major family row. Sara comes from a Pakistani family. While she’s pretty much agnostic (no veil, bit of drink and blow, lots of sex, no pork), her family are quite old-fashioned and observant. They’ve always been very hospitable to me. I get on with her brothers, and her mum’s really nice because I don’t see mine much. In the house they’re traditional, which I like. I’m Irish. My parents are divorced. My mum lives in Australia. The thing is my dad is a transvestite called Petra. Sara and she get on really well. They talk about shoes and make-up, they go out for drinks and to see her Shirley Bassey karaoke. Sara’s family wants to have a dinner at their house for my family. It’s important to them. The thing is, men and women eat separately. They all know about my dad and say he’s welcome. She says she shouldn’t be welcome, she should sit in the room with the women and children, and that not being treated as a second-class woman is an infringement of her human rights, and discrimination. And anyway, she says, she’s already bought a burka. Sara says she’s got a point and if it’s that important to Dad, then her family should just accept it as being part of living in a Western godless society. On the other hand I think that Dad should stop being such a big girl’s blouse about it, man up and put on a suit for the evening, if only for my sake. Sara and I are having a running row. When I try to point out the irony of an Irish lapsed Catholic bloke defending a Muslim man, and a Pakistani lapsed Muslim sticking up for an old Paddy hod-carrier in a sparkly frock, she says this is serious, because it’s a test of my behaviour and fundamental understanding of women. What if our son wants to dress up as Britney Spears, like his granddad? Sort this out.
Dermot, London
First, good question. OK, here’s the answer. Tell your dad that of course she must come as Petra, but what they’d really like is if she could do her act, so why doesn’t she take a course in belly dancing and come and do the Dance of the Seven Veils for the men? They’ll love it (who wouldn’t?), Sara is placated because you’re encouraging your father’s transgender self-determination, her family will think that your lot are as mad as the Middle East with heatstroke – but then they think that anyway – and they’ll be touched at the cultural effort that Petra’s made. And of course you’ll probably be mortified with embarrassment, but then you’re used to that, aren’t you? And like you said, it’s only for one night. So that’s sorted. But Sara does have a point. What would you do if your son wanted to dress up like Alice in Alice in Wonderland? I sense that you’re not quite as culturally cool as you’d like us to think. You’re happiest when everyone agrees not to believe anything very much or very strongly. It’s nice when everything is relative and polite and disposable. I expect the thing you like most about Sara’s family is that they have a strong set of values. Make a list of everyone you wouldn’t sit down at dinner with out of principle. If it’s shorter than the list of your friends or if there’s no one on it at all, you need to do a lot of thinking, a lot of manning up, a lot of big-girl’s-blouse work before you get married.
Sir,
My girlfriend has a really angry vagina. The rest of her is kind and gentle and really into me. From the waist up she couldn’t be more loving. But her front bottom hates me. Sometimes I catch it scowling, giving me the evils. Have you noticed they follow you round the room with a death stare? I’ve mentioned it to the girlfriend. She just laughs and says why don’t we kiss and make up? I did but it just lay there without even making an effort. And then it whispered to me that I was a twat-hating prick and it was going to suffocate me in the night. So I said, “Did you hear that?” And the girlfriend just gave me a weird smile and said I was so funny. So now I’ve noticed things are going missing. A cuff link. Some malaria pills. A chess set. And I know it’s that lippy minge.
Steve, by email
You’re right. So few men really look at vaginas. They’ve all got their own personalities. The good, the bad and the ugly. You need to be very careful. Never turn your back on a psycho clunge. When good beaver goes bad it’s usually because they’ve been abused in the past, let down, laughed at. Lots of vaginas just nag. What time do you call this? You’re drunk again. What do you think I am, a hotel? Clean up after yourself! You need to show the little lady hole you can be trusted. You’re not like all the others.
Dear Mr Gill,
I don’t read your magazine. I’m writing to you because I found it in my son’s room. And I thought, rather desperately, that you might have some insight into the state of mind of your customers. Frankly I’m at the end of my tether. My boy Percival is a complete stranger to me. He doesn’t appear to share a single one of my or his mother’s values. It is as if our whole lives were a weathervane for him to set his face against. I feel like the anti-life. I can’t understand how we can have had him in our care for 16 years yet so completely failed to inculcate a single civilised cultural or humane value in him. Percival regards us with an unveiled contempt. Barely utters a polite sentence. He would rather sit alone in the rain than share a meal with his mother and me. I sound angry, and I suppose I am. But really, I’m sad. He was such a beautiful little boy, such a joy for both of us. I had so many hopes and dreams for him. We were going to accomplish so much together. I miss him.
William, Gloucestershire
William. Come closer. Closer! Put your ear to the page. Hear that? That’s the Esquire pity orchestra playing 100 sobbing violins. You bring up children and everything is for them: the house, the holidays. You put in the time and the money, you worry and you work, you stand on the touchline and you keep your fingers crossed, all for them. And then suddenly they hit puberty and it’s all about you. Oh, the lack of gratitude, the undeserved contempt, the smelly ugliness of it all. It’s as if you’d lovingly spent a decade and a half building an Airfix model of yourself only to find the picture on the box was a lie. Really, it was Sid Vicious. The point here is he’s right and you’re wrong. When he shouts that he didn’t ask to be born, and you shout back that he didn’t ask to finish the milk or take the car or throw a party or call his mother a cunt either, then he’s right and you’re petty. What you really mind and fear is that he’s passing you by. Everything you think and stand for and believe will fade away. Everything he thinks and believes and stands for will grow brighter and louder until it takes over your world. What you choose to do now is going to set the tone and the consequences of the rest of his life. You can go on like you are and he may turn up for the odd Christmas and your funeral. Or you can seriously and humbly try to find out what it is he wants. What he aspires to. What he hopes for. And if you can do that without sneering or knowing better or saying, “That’s not music. Whatever happened to melody?” Or, “Why don’t any of you pull your trousers up?” Or, “If she were my daughter, I’d die of shame,” then you could still do stuff together. Share things. But they need to be his things. His dreams, not yours. Yours are fading to black. You remember a beautiful boy. He remembers a smiling, proud dad. Who kicked a ball. And was pleased to see him. And didn’t say, “Don’t talk like that in front of your mother.” The Librarian of Hull said that parents fuck you up. Of course, being childless himself he didn’t go on to point out that it was nothing like as much as kids fuck up their parents.
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
I’ve got an itchy arse. Really itchy. Sometimes it’s like an ant’s Olympics up there. Should I do something about it?
Julian, New York
You bet. Get an aardvark digit up there and do the starfish samba. Surf that itch. Here’s the thing with the arse itch. It can have any number of causes. But they’re unimportant. What matters is that the itch that dare not speak its name is one of the greatest pleasures in life. An effervescent ring is the fundamental joy of being a man. It is the back door to endorphins, a secret cave of shuddering relief. Few simple pleasures are as blissfully rewarding as getting down and dirty with the little boy’s itch. Followed by that intense guilty stab of pain. And then the long moments of reverie, secretly smelling your fingernail. That’s the good stuff, man. You get your haemorrhoids frozen, or the dhobi itch cortizoned, what are you left with? A sewage outlet. Where’s the fun in that? The Emma Freuds are one of the few diseases where the cure is worse than the condition.
Mr AA,
I keep having this weird dream that I’m giving my boss a blowjob. It’s really graphic. I wake up with a massive hard-on. In real life we get on fine. I admire him. We play squash in our lunch hour. But nothing pervy. Do you think that I’m subconsciously gay, or just ambitious? Should I be worried?
Geoff, Manchester
I don’t know, Geoff. Should you be? If your boss were a woman and you had a dream about going down on her, would it be a problem? Would you still be ambitious? Would you have written a letter asking if you should be worried? Why is the possibility you might be gay any more disturbing than the possibility you might be straight? When you bought this magazine, did your hand just slip off Vogue? The simplest way to find out if you’re gay is to get stuck in. Have a go. Ask your boss if he fancies a gobble after squash. And if you do it more than twice, chances are you’re both gay. Congratulations. Life’s looking up. You just got regular sex, a better wardrobe, and probably the key to the executive washroom.
Sir,
What’s with guy nipples? Like, what’s the point?
Yusuf, by email
