Lessons Learnt #4 - Setting Yourself On Fire Doesn't Impress Girls

Nor does getting off with other blokes. Or a swift head butt. All of which I have performed in the hopeless pursuit of coitus at some point during the last three years.

The head butt was actually head butts plural, and were it not for a protective layer of beanie, could have resulted in hard time rather than column inches. Worse for wear leaning against a corner of the student's union during the fag end of a Friday night, a beautiful apparition in a blue dress floated towards me smiling. As the drum and bass reached a crescendo, she opened her mouth and said something to me I couldn’t hear - hopefully 'can I buy you a drink on the way to the dance floor?', but more than likely ‘oh my God, do you need a doctor?’.

Either way, my reaction was to undo twenty years of mastering the human working envelope by planting one on her. Amazingly, I got away with that common assault but when she appeared to laugh it off and say something else I couldn’t hear - well, I did it again, didn’t I, causing her to abruptly turn on her heels and storm out of my pathetic life forever.

Kissing my handsome though heavily bearded friend Callum was not the liberating sexual experience it perhaps ought to have been. We were in effect banging our skulls together over the same pretty 2nd year student for whom we hoped to demonstrate our bisexual nonchalance: an image that actually describes the moment quite accurately.

On the wave of a ‘truth or dare?’ type conversation boys start to get girls to do something they can’t get them to do through charm, we puckered up, lent in and thought of England. The resulting clash must have had all the self-assured sexual rhythm of Man’s First Wank, because once we’d pulled apart, pretty 2nd year and her pretty friends had pretty much fucked off.

Setting myself on fire was my punishment for never learning to juggle. Crashing back to someone’s flat after a night out, I found myself in the improbable scenario of being alone, on a bed, with two auburn haired Medical students. As one did a drunken crab on the floor, the conversation turned fruitfully towards party tricks. Probably imaging an exotic menage-a-trois that would no doubt have terrified me into impotency anyway, I declared I was able to light matches off my teeth. Not exactly Darren Brown territory, but you can only work with what you’ve got.

Naturally, the chemical head of the match clung to my bottom lip like a nervous toddler in a supermarket, setting it, and me, temporarily on fire. Having raced into their bathroom to put myself out, I soon stood over the sink, the blister on my mouth sulking to the size of a golf ball as quickly as my pride - and the menage-a-trois – ran off down the plug hole.

If only I had known at these moments that girls simply don’t want a blind drunk, circus trick-performing sex-adventurer - or if they do, then at the very least they want one that’s successful.

Anxiety No. 1175... Flatulence

Flatulence was God’s way of reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously. If Hamlet were to fart at the end of Act III Scene I, we’d be too busy sniggering to care if he was to be or not to be.

Flatulence is an excellent way of gauging intimacy between people. While a couple who have been together for a long time will be happy to fart into one another thighs while spooning, giggle and then fall gently asleep, a couple lying in bed after a one night stand will have to tip-toe to the bathroom and then flush the toilet loudly in order to fully ‘let rip’.

Along with semen, snot and holiday snaps, flatulence is something you don’t mind when it’s your own but would be loathed to witness coming from someone else. This excludes young men, for whom communal farting is important in replacing the acts of sharing feelings and offering one another emotional support.

Flatulence is like a beer in the summer time: it can be a source of great happiness, but you’ll try and send it back immediately if it’s too warm.

Anxiety No. 1174... Dancing

Dancing is like getting your photograph taken: you’re usually pissed when it happens, and the sooner you get over the fact that you’re going to look stupid the more fun you have doing it. Good dancers dance from the hips, bad dancers dance from the shoulders. At formal occasions, these two categories are often referred to as ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’.

Dancing is very much like singing in that we all secretly convince ourselves we’re good at it when we’re alone, but are instantly mortified to be caught at it unawares. Both are an act of happiness that are likely to get on other people’s tits: just like whistling, laughing manically and designing lingerie.

The drunker you get, the bolder the dance move you attempt, starting with the humble hip- twist hand-wave right the way up (or down) to the body-pumping break-dance. Of course, the enlightened soul knows that the only thing it takes to be a good dancer is to enjoy yourself. Naturally, this is not applicable to any family members above the age of twenty-five.

Fortunately, dancing is only one small part of the human mating ritual. Unfortunately, standing next to a set of speakers in a dark night-club it’s the only one that really matters - having money, charm or a fantastic myspace page won’t get you anywhere.

Taxi!

Theory Two - TheBuyNowPayLater Generation

‘What? So I can actually reduce all my debts into one lump sum AND pay it back much quicker?’ squeaks the man on the television screen.

‘Yes you can!’ sings the girl in the oddly spacious call-centre. ‘Just call this number now!’.

For the lucky few, probably sat in some over-priced flat in Jesmond, this is nail-file tele. Not I. I belong to the growing number of us whose ears prick in vague arousal at the sound of such sweet lulling promises. Make no mistake - the man on the screen may be thin on top, but the secondary audience cowering behind him has a slanty fringe and his arse hanging out. It’s us, boys and girls. It’s the buynowpaylatergeneration.

A while ago I was asked to be Godfather to my friends little boy. As the great day approached, it occurred to me that wearing my old school uniform and a ‘smart coat’ would be shockingly inadequate. And so, without a ‘tuppence to my name, I set out to acquire a two-piece, multi-purpose suit. Here’s what happened.

I asked Marks & Sparks if they’d let me take a suit away and pay for it in instalments. Ten pound a month, say, for the rest of my life. No problem. All I’d have to do, they said, was get a M&S Credit Card and pay it back bit by bit! I shimmered a sudden maroon. It wouldn’t work. I already have two of those, I mumbled, and they’re both very upset with me as it is…

One credit check later, I had a suit, a shirt, a tie, thirty pounds worth of brie and oat-fed organic Parma ham and a well over a grand left in credit. Turns out, my existing debt didn’t make it harder to get into more at all. Turns out, it was a major freakin' turn on. So they hung the crisp new suit in a complimentary bag, handed it to the boy without a penny to his name and turned him loose. And now I owe those smooth bastards a Frank-Lampard goal-bonus of a sum.

We’re the generation that believes we have a divine right to material wealth. If our parents can’t or won’t buy it for us, there are plenty of surrogate families prepared to stump up the loose change for us. Only MasterCard, Visa and American Express don’t want a phone call at the weekends and a graduation photo for their walls in return. They want our souls. And for the next two decades at least, they’re going to be sharing mine like a broken prostitute.

Hello, Debt Busters…?

Anxiety No. 1173... Swearing

Swearing is like shagging: you learn about it from your mates, and the first time you realise your parents do it leaves you shocked and irreversibly closer to adulthood.

Though often criticised, swear words have a subtle quality that evades most of our language: it is difficult to explain the difference between a ‘dick-head’, a ‘wanker’ and a ‘prick’, but we all instinctively know which one to describe people as when the time comes.

In the far-east, swearing usually contains references to goats, cows or other livestock. This is perhaps due to the importance of agriculture in economically deprived societies. In Latin America, swearing typically alludes to your Mother, Mother’s Mother, or other family member. This may be down to the importance of family in a culture in which multi-generational households are commonplace. In Britain, swearing tends to focus on penises, breasts or backsides. This is probably because we’re all so shite in bed.

Time softens swear words into antiquity so that they go from demons to national treasures: examples include ‘bloody’, ‘bollock’, and Ronnie Biggs.

Lessons Learnt #3 - Getting Into A Fight Isn't Easy

At the ripe old age of twenty-three, there are certain experiences a man expects to have already had.

He should have already converted six beers into twelve sicks in three hours like some kind of roadie-Jesus, and long since fumbled his way into a girls smalls for three inglorious minutes before shuddering himself into a ball of embarrassed shame.

In short, he should have endured the bitter-sweet rites of passage which have existed in some form since the earliest civilisations - although for Spartans, apparently, this involved fighting a sabre-toothed tiger or surviving six nights in the wild, both of which you’d imagine to be beyond today’s crop of emo-goths.

But there is one such yard-mark of manhood that is beginning more and more to seem as if it might elude many of today’s young men forever: the good old punch up.

If we are to discount school-yard bust-ups involving only a headlock waltzed to the drone of ‘FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT.’ emanating from pupils gathered from every corner of the field, and the hysterical ‘stare offs’ that occur between two men across the din of a nightclub when one perceives the other to have bumped into them with insufficient grace, then your columnist’s taste of ‘action’ amounts to precisely nada.

The closest I ever came was waiting for the cloak room in Nottingham Rock City after a rather intense Bloc Party concert. So tightly packed was the meagre hallway of the great venue that I and all the other sweaty, coatless fools were swarming with all the discipline of a fat midriff jiving to ‘Crazy In Love’… no one knew where to go or who was next, which is what brought about my almost-fight.

I made a surge forward for the desk and felt a voice on my neck.

‘Oi, I’m next mate!’ the enemy spat.

‘Are ya fuck – I’ve been here for ages!’ I snarled in return.

‘You wanker!’

‘Fuck you!’

We glared at one another, faces almost touching, teeth beared… problem was, due to the density of the crowd, neither of us could actually move our arms, which were pinned to our sides, nor move from the spot where we were standing, meaning we could only of sway slightly with the throb of the crowd.

After an angry exchange, only two things can happen – one of you either shoves or throws a punch at the other, or you disperse muttering to yourself, never to lock eyes again. Unfortunately for me and my equally weedy, side-partened buddy, neither was an option. Instead we had to just glare ahead, standing side by side like two bowling pins, impotents fixed glumly together as the world carried on.

After a minute or two, I looked at him, and he at me.

‘I’m actually not really hard enough to follow that up, mate.’ He said with what would have been a shrug.

‘Nah, nor am I. You go first.’ I replied, sucking in my stomach and nodding him past.

Outside in the cool night air we shared a hug, wished each other good night and went our separate ways with our nonplussed pals, all forgiven and nothing but warmth in our hearts.

Hence it seems with every passing year less and less likely that I’ll ever make that final step towards being a man and actually get lamped by somebody. And I'll be positively screwed if that sabre-toothed tiger ever shows up.

Anxiety No. 1173... Public Transport

Public transport falls into the following categories: planes, buses and taxis. Trains are public, but only occasionally used for transport. The rest of the time they are an excuse to eye-ball electronic notice boards and make irate phone calls to loved ones you suddenly feel you may never see again.

Airports are like book-ends on either side of your holiday that let you know when your allocated slot of fun is to begin and when it must come to an end. As everybody is operating in a different time zone, the rules of time do not apply in airports. That is why children sleep while adults scream and cry, and every single person’s bag is ‘always the last one out’.

Buses would be pleasant if it wasn’t for the fact you have to share them with other people. The earlier the bus you get, the weirder the other people are. As with all public transport, giving up your seat for an elderly passenger is correct etiquette. Unlike all other public transport, it is not etiquette for the driver to wait for the elderly to sit before they pull away. Despite this bad-mannered disposition, no one has ever left a bus without thanking the driver for all that they have done for them.

Taxis represent the pinnacle of public transport, because you public can dictate exactly where they go. They are also the only mode of public transport that will happily wait for you at a cash machine. Taxi drivers all seem like odd characters, because most of them are so tired of making small talk that they are deliberately eccentric.

Some of the most interesting conversations with taxi drivers can be instigated by asking them whether of not they can ‘relate’ to the character of Travis Bickel.

Theory One - The Facebook Generation

Hey relax - we’ve all been there.



By ‘there’ of course I mean hunched over a computer screen in a spasm of social anxiety, feverently scanning for evidence that we’re loved, liked, or even just invited. If checking your facebook and myspace accounts were like eating a piece of fruit, I’d nail my 5-a-day by lunchtime.

Since we’re the first generation to take for granted the presence of mass global communications in our life’s, some would have it that we are the internetgeneration. Rubbish. Every cardiac-courting company exec to every thick-rimmed twitching caretaker in adult-land can email bad jokes to their friends and source decent beastiality with just as much efficiency as us. No, it’s the social networking phenomenon that defines us. We are the facebookgeneration.

Ever had a ‘grand-slam’? That’s when you log in to myspace and find you have one of each – a ‘friend added’, ‘new message’ and ‘new comment’ all at once. It’s like hoping for a decent haircut and realising when you stand up they’ve given you a new set of threads, some cool designer stubble and three inches on your dick as well. Of course it could turn out that the new friend is some awful band, the new message from an automated cam-whore and the comment an advert for some night you can’t afford to go to. In other words, the threads could be too small, the stubble could be ginger and your cock could still be way below the British average (5.6 inches).

Still, one major achievement of the facebookgeneration is to have consolidated all those unique school-yard methods of letting someone know you fancy them - hair-pulling, name-calling, dead-arms – into a simple ‘poke button’. Hours otherwise wasted on posturing and goading reduced to a single mouse click, so we can all get on with the simple sex sum much quicker (proximity + alcohol).

Social networking websites also allow us to indulge our private fetish for post-break-up self-torture. The online equivalent to slashing your arm with a compass, checking your ex’s profile page for any shred of evidence that they have dared move on is surely a staple of modern young heart-break.

One positive thought is that it might just be the thing that keeps us all together. That in a vague, shopping-catalogue type of way at least, we will all be in touch forever, poking one another with our cyber-walking sticks and listing our health complaints under ‘interests’…

Anxiety No. 1172... Public ToiletsPublic Toilets

Public toilets are an arena in which you feel like a Man or a Mouse – depending on how much alcohol you’ve had to drink. The first decision that must be made is whether to use the urinal, or the cubicle. The former takes a Man, the latter, a Mouse.

The Man will invariably sigh, glance down to aim, then look straight ahead. A pale enamel square will be studied as intently as a rabid dog if another Man is standing by the same spot. The Mouse may feel a loss of pride for having opted for the cubicle, and will compensate for such with a token nose-blowing. This lets the Men outside know that he is there for the tissue, not the privacy.

First-class public toilets are generally reserved for the disabled and, luckily, are almost always free. You get cushioned seats, a full roll of toilet paper and an extra foot of leg space. There’s even a red chord to pull if you get stuck.

Public toilets are the only places outside of pornography where it is perfectly legal for large groups of men to handle their genitals in front of one another.

Lessons Learnt #2 - Students Are Modern Day Lepers

I’ve never belonged to a minority, and in moments of absurd self-pity have bemoaned the fact. Being a white, middle-class male living in Britain doesn’t really leave you with much of an axe to grind.

As a teenager, looking for a purpose for my angst, I’d day dream about being part of a civil rights movement, or a victim of an oppressive political force that needed over-throwing. It’s only now after the angst has burst and settled, letting the happiness inside out, that I’ve realised what my true claim to discrimination is: being a student.

Only a few nights ago I attended a house party hosted by a group of voluntary nurses from over seas living across our road who had filled their house with, astonishingly, several middle age men.

The arrival of three young stallions like us put their back ups immediately. Hands flew to bald patches in self conscious jerks. Bottles of foreign lager were swigged menacingly. Wedding rings were twirled bitterly inside pockets.

Most of all, voices were raised.

‘I take it you’re a student then?’ asked one, with a playful cup of my shoulder. And there it was. He’d deduced from the longish haircut and the multicoloured laces exactly what I was, and there was no disguising it. I was made to feel a flicker a shame for being part of something I love. I seethed.

‘Why don’t you get a job?’ he ventured, in the semi-serious tones of the booze-boosted coward.
Now along with writing this column, I actually have three jobs. Library assistant, off-license monkey, and mobile climbing wall instructor. Oh yes. I told Mr. Regrets exactly this – neglecting, off course, to mention that I don’t hold them all at the same time, rather rotate with the seasons – and was met with a chorus of jeers, leaving me to drink from my bottle of wine (which also attracted derision) reflecting on my impotent and growing rage.

Being a student attracts sneers and jeers, which is why we stick together in crowds and why asking is ‘you do any student discount?’ feels like holding your limp dick in your hands and saying to stranger ‘but I can’t get it to work!’. People who belong to a generation that denied them the opportunity to study, or worse, a brain that let them down, resent our extensions of our youth, our free time, our joy. They think it’s easy to do what we do because is adds up to less in hours, and hours is the currency by which the fully employed measure their hardship.

Back to the party. The entire time as these men goaded me, one of the nurses whose house we were standing in stood quietly at the back, in the conversation but only listening. She was French, and beautiful, and romantic and bored. She had eyes shaped like almonds in a shade of perfect mahogany. When the third and final question shot over at me from Mr. Regret, I looked into those eyes and didn’t flinch. ‘So what the hell you going to be with an English degree then? A fucking English teacher?!’. Nothing wrong with that I said, but no: ‘I’m going to be a famous writer’.

The men erupted with laughter, leaning on each other for support, tears rolling down their weary faces. But I ignored them and kept my eyes on the girl.

She smiled.

One hour later, as we sat exchanging tender kisses on the sofa, marvelling at our beauty and revelling in our youth, lost in a beautiful dream made possible by believing the future might still yet be a wonderful place, the men sloped off one by one, all hope of young, female company gone.

Being a student may make us into a type of social leper: one where we’re looked down on more through jealously than disgust. But who cares.

It felt good to engage in some non-violent protest, and finally grind that axe.

Anxiety No. 1171... Text Messaging

Text messaging is useful for two things: arranging where to meet your friends, and keeping in touch with people that you can’t be bothered to actually talk to.

It is the worst possible method of having a serious argument with a loved one. Along with MSN Messenger, text message is the platform from which we conduct all of our most important heart-to-hearts. It is also where we have most of our arguments with loved ones.

When you’re writing an angry text message, you tend to run over the letter limit. This results in your recipient receiving half of it straight away and half of it two days later at the cost of an extra ten pence. Trying to shorten your message requires going back over it, removing the ‘g’s from ‘ing’s and changing all the ‘to’s and ‘too’s to ‘2’s. Twice.

After you’ve sent a text message, you immediately refer to your ‘sent’ box to re-read what you have said. After a moments lament, you read their text messages in chronological order from your ‘inbox’. You then re-read theirs and your own in the exact order that they were sent.

The winner of a text message argument is usually the one who first understands that the most offensive, cutting and poignant text message they can send is no text message at all.

Lessons Learnt #1 - Rebellion In Your Twenties Means Joining In

I was one of those teenagers who was always trying to say something about himself without really knowing what it was.

By the clothes I wore, the music I listened to and by the stench of stale fag smoke I dragged behind me late into lessons like dull grey and yellow badge of honour. While most teenagers got on with figuring out who they were quietly, I played out the whole process in ripped jeans and misappropriated movie quotes for the whole world to ignore.

The pride of my wardrobe was a red Che Guevara t-shirt (bought, incidentally, in Topman): you know the stencilled one, where he’s looking off into the distance all proud and serious, a bit like Mufasa in The Lion King when he’s trying to tell Simba about everything the light touches. My knowledge of Che Guevara was limited to knowing he was, for some reason, someone somebody with my vague sense of social idealism could connect with.

And then it happened. My handsome, bearded friend Callum - who knew about all sorts of things - asked me squarely, in front of the beautiful Victoria Gare, whom I longed for at the time’ as a whining dog in a passing car longs for the beach, "what exactly do you even know about that bloke on your shirt, Sam?"

Though it was a hurtful and sneaky way of winning the girl I had earmarked for marriage, Callum had done me a huge favour. I went out indignantly and learnt everything I could about the Cuban revolution, climaxing two years later when I went there for my gap year. Even as I stared over Che Guevara’s grave in Santa Clara, thousands of miles from home and two years later I wondered: am I still just trying to prove the bastard wrong...?

Fast-forward five years. What university has taught me about rebellion is what reading relentlessly about Che should have: that being a rebel is about doing, acting and getting involved.

Not smoking spliffs in the rain in some woods just to defy the people charged with giving you an education.
Not going around writing ‘Know Your Enemy’, ‘Fuck You I Won’t Do You Tell Me’ or ‘Take The Power Back’ in black marker pen on school gates and public walls.
Not always being late, or thinking everything was lame, and certainly not listening to Slipknot loud enough to annoy everyone (oh yes…).

The best bits of university for me (besides all the sex and free money) has been getting involved: in societies, institutions like the student paper, individual projects you can start and find support for if you ask for it. The rebels I know have used this final hurrah of childhood to put on their own plays, start their own clubs, contribute art and writing where it’s asked for, join in raising money for RAG week and helped the scared new recruits in Freshers' Week get settled in.

Che Guevara guided eight men through the Siesta Maestro mountain range, survived the fascist onslaught and set up a Guerrilla Radio station high in the mountains. He communicated with the locals by tapping into their mainstream interest in radio, won them over, liberated their country.

Despite the teenage day dreams, I now know I’ll never come close to doing any of that. But it feels good at least to take heed of Che’s proactive approach to the world, do more then just complain and loaf, and write incidental bollock like this for you, every week.

Hello

Welcome to my blog page. On here, I'll be posting what I like to call 'musings on modernity' - confessional tales from a typical 2008 23-year-old who sometimes finds it all a bit much.

Enjoy.