Pent-Up · 25 July 2001
Do you believe in loathe at first sight?
I don’t – it would contradict my gently affectionate nature – although sometimes I get twinges; little rumblings at the base of my skull; primal, tribal urges that bing-bong around the adrenal glands, causing nearly imperceptible teeth-gritting and fist-clenching.
I saw a happy couple today. They held hands and fondled apples and leaned over each other in the produce section, aglow with the electricity between them (you’ll agree that public affection can be irritating – especially when met with certain moods – but it isn’t automatically loathsome behaviour; as opposed, say, to wearing inescapable cologne or conspicuous body piercings). I hated these two – I’m talking boiling ire here – for their terrible, horrible, disgusting good looks.
You know the type: health oozing from every pore; thick, lustrous hair that falls effortlessly into place with each careless tousle; clear-eyed, smoothly-complected, long-legged, full-lipped, muscle-toned; with gravity-defying secondary sexual characteristics and clothes that hang just so; clothes that shift over contours like water coursing over stone. He was an olive-skinned reject from Italian Vogue ca. 1995, all black ringlets, chiselled features and piercing gaze; she was the sort of statuesque, porcelain redhead that Nicole Kidman chooses to be now and again. God I hated the dominant genes coursing through them: genes that draw all the best stuff right into their laps. And they move in packs! They see each other across crowded rooms and smile demurely – yes, I’m one too. Arm-in-arm they go into tony clothing stores confident that everything will look good in the changing room mirror; that the cards aren’t anywhere near maxed (maxed? what’s that?). Through late nights they gorge on booze, cocaine and chocolate while fawning servers wait ready just outside the glow of their regal fabulousness, climbing into crafted German cars to drive back to lushly appointed homes copied swatch and pillar from spreads in the worst magazines of all; and the sex! JESUS FUCK imagine the sex! Twin, interlocking firehoses of pure unfiltered sexuality trained at each other; everything pointing up all the time; everything waxed, toned, smooth, rigid, drenched; and it’s off to ‘work’ in the morning, earning a fortune to move money from slot A to slot B, thinking outside the box, scheming like revolutionaries, moving laterally, playing up, climbing, climbing, climbing.
Hang on, that wasn’t me – that was the guy beside me. I was looking at the organic tropical fruit, quietly singing
I like bananas
Cause they don’t have bones
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