I Wanna Be Like You, Part 1
The Editor had returned from hospital, and was busy trying to stamp his inimitable mark on the forthcoming issue of the magazine.
“Oh, you’re back,” I said cheerily. “Still, at least you’ll know to wear a helmet in future, eh?”
“Read this,” said the Editor, proffering a copy of London’s free-est morning newspaper, the Metro.
“Oh,” I said. I read the page he was indicating. It was entirely typical of the ‘urban lifestyle / relationships’ pap I’d come to expect from that quarter, and very depressing fare; some woman, not even in London, had set up a swinger’s club to which they had taken the remarkable step of applying an admissions policy: one had to be youngish, and dress smartly, and have at least a HND-level qualification, or a company car in silver, or hair, or the ability to eat with a knife and fork, or something. It reeked of low-grade snobbery and provincial restaurants with lots of blonde wood, so I thew the paper back, after scanning it quickly. “Really puts the sub back into urban, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Well, quite,” said the Editor. “But you know that readers love this kind of thing, though. Give them something with a bit of twitching-curtain value and they just lap it up. STOP LAUGHING.”
“Yes,” I said, wiping away a tear or two. “Everyone’s doing it, apparently. Sex. Woo. This is quite a revelation to me. Look, I know that since the whole Sadie Frost debacle that partner-swapping’s very much the hot topic amongst the middle classes right now, but does this mean we really need to involve ourselves with it?”
“No need for sarcasm,” the Editor said, gingerly rubbing his bandages. “Anyway, you’ll have an ideal opportunity to find out about it, because I’m sending you to one. Next week, in fact.”
“You’ve what?” I said, veins bulging at my temples. “I…I…”
“You’re always waving your unflappable, seen-it-all-before urban sophisticate shtick around. You seem just the person for the job. After all, if Russell Brand can do it…” The Editor smiled sweetly.
“I…I’m a respectable man!” I said, without any real conviction.
“Come on” said the Editor. “You don’t have to do anything after all. Just get the Facts. And you get to keep your job.”
“Um,” I said.
“There’ll be free drink, probably,” he added.
“OK, OK,” I snarled. After all, how bad could it be? I mean, I might have to spend an unconscionable amount of time in close, sweaty proximity to a crowd of people with whom I had nothing in common and who were working themselves up into a frothing rut; but in those respects it couldn’t be substantially worse, or even different, to spending two hours in the Bishopsgate Pitcher & Piano.
“There’s something else, by the way. I’ve already made up your, er, application, but I had to make you part of a couple, you see, so…”
“What have you done?” I howled in despair.
Jungle VIP
“Well, look at it this way,” said Fenella. “There’ll be free drink, probably.”
“Yes, that argument’s already been presented to me,” I said. We were rattling along the Circle Line on the way to the…to the thing. Ugh.
“Having said that, no-one’s even getting a conversation out of me for anything less than a Chateau d’Yquem,” she continued. “This evening, anyway.”
“It’s just so predictable,” I whined. “As if the only way to inject a bit of sophistication is to insist on everyone going business-formal. Isn’t it slightly depressing that someone’s fantasy sounds a bit like a middle-management conference in a Travelodge?”
“Desire and clothing interact in complex ways,” said Fenella, with the patronising air of the true fashion writer. “I…”
“Not now!” I glared at her.
She shrugged. “I have to say, I do find the fascination of the media with this kind of thing a bit…well…puerile. I mean, it assumes that people still don’t have that much knowledge of the whole, um, discourse of the erotic,” – I glared again at this sudden outbreak of Communications College-level theorising – “whereas the average educated person has a fair bit of literacy…”
“Cliteracy, in fact,” I said, without much enthusiasm “Brilliant. It’s all a real load of toss, isn’t it? People enjoy transgressing largely notional boundaries. It’s hardly newspaper-worthy.”
“Well…I suppose you might say that the comparative normality of all this nowadays makes it worth commenting on. If you say that the attraction of this activity comes purely from the sense of transgressing social customs and mores, where does that leave you when the activity becomes itself mainstream? When transgression is itself a social more?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Perhaps you’d just go to on to new extremes. You might end up as a, a…a mores murderer. Ahah!”
“That pun works better on the page,” said Fenella, glumly. We both stared into space for a minute, a certain sense of something unspoken, yet troubling, hanging in the air between us.
“Fuck!” I shrieked. “These people may be naked! Aargh!”
Will we survive the experience? All is revealed next issue