Getting Laid is Not Like Getting Measles

Yesterday morning I sat in a greasy spoon and ate an omelette for breakfast, while reading the Guardian. Of course I read the Guardian. It affirms what I already know to be true, which is excellent. It was nice to embody a cliché. I’ve started doing it more of late, because it struck me not long ago that embodying clichés is an excellent way to get laid. I suspect the fact that approximately 13 minutes of our conversation focused on the sexual phenomenon of “fanny farts” (referred to as such throughout) was slightly less appealing to any eavesdropper/onlooker.

I did utter one amazing sentence during this exchange though, which (and I recognise I am biased) is the sort of sentence that has caused people to fall in love with me in the past. Actively constructing sentences so witty that they cause someone to have sex with me has become an obsession lately, mainly because I have very little else to offer a potential mate.

In other news, I’ve started to view “getting laid” as an appropriate way to spend my time, something that took a bit longer for me to recognise than most people I know. I like that I’ve ceased to value displays of authenticity in favour of valuing mediocre sex. It makes me feel much more normal. It’s good to belong.

The problem with Trying To Get Laid is that I often feel like I’m parodying myself. I feel like Jim Carrey must feel in the films where he’s trying to be the Jim Carrey morons want him to be. I have no idea why Mr. Carrey insists on doing this, since a) he is already massively wealthy, and b) the people who want him to act in this manner are morons. Nevertheless, my goals are no more noble. My goal is unfulfilling intimacy, sometimes with morons, which is either more depressing, less demeaning, or both.

The motivation behind caricaturing myself is that I know that no-one is going to fall in love with my strange facial bone-structure. In profile, my head looks like one off a Roman coin, and not in a good way. I look permanently “rough” and “tired”, even after a week of 10-hour sleeps. With this in mind, I construct opinions and devise witty exchanges in an attempt to garner affection, which is exactly what I am expected to do, and the only option available to me if I want to avoid being single forever. Despite the obvious advantages of such a state, this does nothing to mitigate the fact that never being in love again will result in me being judged an abject failure by everyone I’ve ever known.

I’m not sure exactly when I started treating “getting laid” in the same way as “getting a job” or “getting fit” (ie something I actively devote time and effort to), as opposed to “getting measles” or “getting laid off” (ie things which happen to you over which you have little or no control), but it’s kind of a big deal. I mean, it’s not actually a big deal, like a global famine or Nicki Minaj’s shoe collection, but for me it’s a big deal.

It’s kind of a big deal because I am extremely lazy. Given the choice between a mediocre outcome for little effort, or a good outcome for marginally more, I will opt for the former every time. This in no way makes me unique, but it does cause problems. It is one of the reasons I dread the thought of “growing up” in any meaningful sense, because you are expected to choose the latter for the good of people who depend on you. That is some scary shit.

I think actively pursuing something, anything has become important because, until this June, I was “in education”, officially speaking, and had a goal, namely to finish the shit out of a degree. Now, though, I don’t have any discernible goal, just a bunch of dynamite anecdotes (including one about an elephant spraying semen at an old woman) and some letters after my name that mean almost nothing. I think this is why I feel the need to pursue elbowy, sweaty encounters with mildly attractive twenty-somethings. Validation is a mighty powerful drug.

“Oh, Jon,” you’re saying. “Look what you’ve done. You’ve equated having sex with being in love.” I know I have. I’m okay with that, even if it makes me preposterously shallow and emotionally inadequate. A friend of mine recently had a crisis that revolved around the prospect of his girlfriend putting on weight. He felt bad that he would feel compelled to leave somebody he truly loved on account of an expanding pair of love handles. I understood his position entirely, because I am a borderline sociopath and because I reject society’s separation of love and lust. And not in a hedonistic, ironic, “Ooh, love is bullshit,” Morrissey-chorus way. In a sincere, “I honestly can’t work out the difference,” emotional wreck trying to function in a society he barely understands way. The differentiation makes no sense to me. Perhaps I’m insane.

At least eight people have asked me if I believe in ‘love at first sight’, presumably because I’m the sort of person who has an opinion on stuff like that. I have told every single one, emphatically, that I do. I think this is at least 21% of the problem. “I wanna know what love is,” said Foreigner, continuing, “I want you to show me.” I’ll get back to him once I work it out for myself.

Blaming the Cuts is Myopic

There’s been much made of the social reasons riots kicked off across England, including perceived police racism, joblessness and a more general sense of disaffection in the areas trouble was found. There have been a queue of politicians and media types asking whether the cuts are to blame. The answer is both yes and no, but blaming cuts is simplistic and myopic.

The youth of areas such as Tottenham, Salford and West Bromwich do feel let down by the Coalition’s decisions to drastically reduce EMA, and also to get rid of the Future Jobs Fund, and communities with already high unemployment are struggling to cope as the economy staggers onwards, with high inflation impacting those on fixed incomes. These things have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, along with local government and charity cuts just filtering through.

But that isn’t the whole story. Labour has its part to answer, too. Misuse of stop-and-search laws has alienated black and Asian communities. Black men are “over nine times more likely” to be searched than their white counterparts, and unemployment remained stubbornly high in these places even during the boom years under Labour. These are people largely abandoned by all major parties, even if the Tories have taken it a step further.

The police have complained loudly that concerns about human rights were impeding their ability to stop the riots. Given that the initial disturbance was triggered by police shooting dead a young man, I’m surprised they didn’t just use the force of sheer irony to blast the assembled crowds away. For the Met, its credibility dragged through the mud of late over phonehacking and bribery allegations, this has been a godsend. A facebook page in support of the Met now has almost a million likes, in a spillover of the ‘Our Brave Boys’ mentality, as far as I can see.

Finally, in the interest of taking looking back further in search of the disaffected youth’s root cause, allow me to close with this quote from fifth-century BC philosopher Socrates:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.