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
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