La costumbre de ser hombre

I often fantasise of being a habitual man, almost an automaton. I dream of being compelled,
constrained to my work well beyond the extremes of autism.
Breakfast at 7:30, tea at seventeenhundred hours and bedtime before anything of significance is granted
broadcast on the telly. Ironed shirts, matching socks, clean, crisp underwear.
Truth is I’m a time-waster; I drag myself through the day in search of any form of self-destructive
distraction.
My father claims this will make me into a bum; for once, in my life, I feel I’m in a position not to
disappoint him. I moor on this as I drink a Coca-Cola the factitious wealth of student ambition has
assured me. Wholeheartedly I enjoy the products of companies which are openly evil; I recall, not
without foolish pride, the indulgement of a Smarties McFlurry on the streets of Edinburgh during the
G8 protests.
I respect those who quietly refrain from such transactions on moral grounds but cannot bring myself to
follow their example; I see nothing moral in the acquisition of a soft drink.
In fact my moral views, lack and distortion of them has, more than once, caused my interlocutor to flee
in disgust in a fashion that was once flattering; now it bores me tremendously.
The most outlandish, original thing a non-conformist can do is conform. I refuse and there is no greater
merit in this than there is in the conformism of a conformist. In vero, there are today pre-set patterns of
rebellion which follow the same structures and imply the same costs of the very trends they abhor.
Hence I refrain from the purchase of the £54.99 punk, fair-trade, pre-torn, pre-worn jeans dressing
casually in casually attained, apparel. yet this is not anti-anti-conformism neither is it a rebellion to the
rebellion; this is laziness with a taste of genuine, unglamorous noncurance.
Some of you may still regard this as not without a certain level of decadent poetry. The following
diagram should confute such fallacious views:

- my face
- unclean, un-ironed shirt, a relic of misguided attempts at elegance
- offensively green sweater, tediously middle-aged and of unknown provenience
- GAP Sale trousers with useless knee-pockets
- large, obnoxious and white American Tourist trainers

My nose is bigger than in the drawing and flatter; this probably the only way in which I am similar to
Mike Tyson. Said nose is beseeched by a florid, resident population of black-spots which are
structurally essential to the appendix’s existence; were the black-spots to be removed, the nose would
collapse and be no more.
This would probably kill me as I detest breathing through my mouth.
I should probably stop being amusing at my own expense for a new lecture is about to begin… well,
actually it has already begun. There is nothing worse than arriving early: “momenti d’immeritata
solitudine” as Stefano Benni would have it; if only I were a notorious writer, then, not only could I
arrive rudely late, but I could also make conceited, witty remarks about the fools awaiting me. And of
course they would clap and cheer and give me money.
They probably wouldn’t. The Medical Biology Lecturer definitely won’t.
He didn’t. This has been an unexpected whilst crippling blow to my finances. I owe roughly £1500 to
those kindly irresponsible people at Scotland’s Royal Bank; Royal because there is another one which
is not because it is, in fact, a Halifax. They can’t call it that here because, in Scots “Halifax” means
“when your sister walks, I can hear clapping from her vulva”.
I take the opportunity to claim, based on no scientific or academic basis, that Scots is not a language; it
is a dialect.
A wonderfully tartan-clad ox-woman told * that it is indeed a language for there are very large
dictionaries enlisting the separate parts which make up the indecipherable patter mouthed at us by
Scottish folk.
I can think of three reasons for this.
Number one: English words have been borrowed and spelled so they sound as the Scottish (mis)
pronounce them.
Number two: terms have been made up in a global conspiracy for Scottish independence, and
nationalistic Scots are instructed, when faced with the neologism, to nod knowingly and say “Aye,
aye”.
Number three: five very thick pages.

a.ritroso