by AA Gill
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
My girlfriend wants me to wear a T-shirt that says, “This is what a feminist looks like,” and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram it. And I feel uncomfortable about it. It’s not that I disagree with the politics, I’m just not what a feminist looks like. I’m what a 24-year-old Nigerian graphic designer who spends too much time in the gym looks like. She says that it’s cool and it would reflect well on her and, anyway, what’s the big deal? Don’t I want to support her and don’t I think that women’s suffrage is worth wearing a T-shirt for, and I expect her to cook and wash my boxers and suck my cock like some Victorian indentured maid, and all she’s asking is that I support her and other women, not least my sister and mother, and possibly our daughter, if she ever decides to have sex with me again, by wearing a fucking T-shirt for two minutes? And what’s the point of spending all that time in the gym if I can’t wear a T-shirt for the girls? And then she said, you know, as a black man, I should identify with the struggle. And then, I admit, I lost it a bit and said, “Really? You wear a T-shirt that says ‘black is beautiful’ and hope that people don’t think you are some fantasist beeyatch”, and that’s when it started to get really nasty. So what do you think, Unc?
John, Alderley Edge
OK, John. I asked my daughter whether a man could be a feminist, and she got quite angry. “Daddy, how long have you been my father? And you still have to ask that. Of course you can be a feminist. You should be a feminist. And if you’re not a feminist, I’m not going to take any more allowance off you. What you can’t be is a woman – you don’t know what it’s like to be a woman so you can’t share the pain, the humiliation, the fear, the fucking rage, but you can be on our side without being a sad, pussy-whipped wanker because you want the best for me, and you are proud of what I achieve. And if anyone paid me less than the other waiter, you’d come and close their restaurant down.”
“You’re not a waiter. You’d make a terrible waiter. You’d tell people ‘not to have that’ and not to look at their phones while eating.”
“That’s not the point, Dad. The point is you are a feminist because you have a daughter who’s a feminist, and I am not going to have a paternalistic father.”
“Well, hold on . . .”
“Don’t correct my grammar. You know what I mean. So write back and tell the doofus not to wear the T-shirt.”
“Really, I thought you were going to say he should wear the T-shirt.”
“Of course not. Political and social justice is one thing; reducing them to selfies is pathetic. Reducing what Emily Davison did, what the force-fed suffragettes did, what Andrea Dworkin and Germaine Greer wrote, to a fucking silly slogan on a T-shirt, is hideous and counterproductive. And, anyway, the whole semiology of T-shirts is bad: Third World sweatshops; wet T-shirt competitions; pressure on women to be skinny and look sexy for men. No. Equal pay, representation and safety on the street is never going to be won by T-shirts, and the effort that this diverts detracts from the real, serious business of making the world equitable and fair.”
“OK, so he shouldn’t wear the T-shirt?”
“No, but he should cook her dinner, wash her knickers and suck her cock, and then let her roll over and go to sleep afterwards.”
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
I know you’ve touched on this before but I think your answers have been flippant. I’m in real need of some serious advice – I’m desperate. I’ve never been this desperate before. I didn’t know this could happen. I didn’t know you could feel like this. I’ve never been so utterly, utterly hopelessly unhappy. I don’t know what to do. I’ve always known what to do: I’m very capable and optimistic and sensible and proactive and gregarious. I’m kind and realistic. And now I’m broken and helpless, and self-pitying, and mortally poleaxed by misery; reduced and incapacitated by pessimism. I can’t bear company or people. I don’t want friends. I can’t talk, I can’t think or plan or care about anything except my all-consuming sadness and loss. Sophie doesn’t love me any more. She did; now she doesn’t. I’m dumped, cast aside without hope of reprieve or reconciliation. She doesn’t want to see me or talk to me until I no longer love her. Please, please.
Adam, via email
I’ve often thought that the one tangible clue that there might possibly be a God is the emotional Ebola of loving someone who no longer loves you. It is a feeling that is out of all proportion to almost every other human experience that doesn’t involve a premature death. And there seems to be no particular Darwinian evolutionary reason for it. Why would we need to have this in our emotional repertoire? It can’t be an aid to monogamy because the people who leave and fuck around don’t get it. It is the punishment of the true, the innocent, the constant and the loving. Mind you, I don’t know what’s in it for God, either. I’ve been dumped by people I was utterly besotted with twice in my life. I don’t know how I got through it but I read constantly, obsessively, like a 14-year-old girl with a slight frown and frizzy hair who had just discovered Jane Austen. But I only read funny books. In one case, all of Evelyn Waugh and, in the other, a great deal of PG Wodehouse. I’m not sure they did much more than mark time and keep me off parapets but, in retrospect, I think they had some solace in them. There is no cure for a broken heart. There is no secret, no training, no opiate for the soul, but the older I get, the more I believe in the emotional balm of art – books, music, painting. There is no convincing Darwinian explanation for creativity or genius, except that it can describe the internal tsunamis of the human condition. And in explaining, soothes, mitigates and finally uplifts. There is nothing anyone can say to you face-to-face that will make you feel better but, from a page or a stage or a canvas, they can. Why should we care about beauty at all? It serves little purpose, except as a gown and a bandage for love.
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
I like clothes, I like to look nice. I’ve a favourite jacket and a jumper I’m sentimental about, but they’re just clothes. You know what I mean? In the end, they’re only the wrapping the important stuff comes in. I don’t want to spend a fortune on them. In fact, I don’t want to spend anything. Buying shirts is so far down my bucket list of things to spend cash on, it doesn’t register. I look smart, clean and comfortable. I’m cool in summer and warm in winter.
The thing is, my dad complains that I don’t have the right clothes to visit my grandma or go to my cousin’s wedding. And he had a fit when he saw me going for a job interview in the clothes that I wear to do everything else. I said that they only wanted me to talk on the phone, not to look like James Bond, but he wasn’t having it. Why do you lot – old people – all insist on having a dressing-up box to do different shit in? A suit for drinking tea. A tie to meet a bank manager. It’s weird. And, while we’re at it, what’s with all the clothes in men’s magazines? Are there really blokes who look at the pages of stuff and think, “Ooh, I must spend my Saturday searching for just the right mid-length spring scarf in this season’s must-have maroon”?
Dylan, via email
Yes, Dylan, there are. But let’s step away from the absurdity of contemporary fashion, to strip your question down to its boxer shorts. When I was probably about your age, my dad – who actually thought very like you, hated wearing a tie and would have liked to have worn corduroy wherever possible all his life, and would much rather be warm than stylish – went to China, then still a closed communist country under Mao Zedong, coming to the end of the Cultural Revolution. He brought me back a Mao suit – blue cotton, a baggy safari jacket with four flat pockets, a ghillie collar, single-breasted, and chino trousers with a matching cap. It was the collective uniform of a billion Chinese of both sexes. It came in either blue for everyone or green for the military. And the answer to your question is yes, it was practical, cheap and it made everyone look the same on the outside and spared them the bourgeois worries of fashion, style, avarice and jealousy; they were never underdressed, always appropriate, it was a reminder that everyone is equal, and that wh
at was important is what they did, said and thought.
I wore mine once, and cut quite a dash in Notting Hill Gate in the mid-Seventies. I looked like I was going to a fancy dress party, or playing in a movie. People pointed and laughed, and asked where I got it. Exactly the opposite of what Mao had wanted. It wasn’t an expression of unity, but singularity, a statement of otherness. I never wore it again, choosing to look different in the same way as everyone else. But it was an irony with a lesson in the power of what you dismissively call fashion and I pretentiously call aesthetics. Personal adornment is the only cultural form that everybody in the world takes part in.
Even if you take the Clarkson line that if it covers your genitals, it’s fine, that’s a statement. Indeed, Jeremy opting out of fashion has made his look as recognisable and in-your-face as Grayson Perry’s. You don’t have a choice about fashion or aesthetics – you’re in it, whether you like it or not. So you then have to decide, do you want to be good or naff at it? The truth about Mao’s suits was that they didn’t relieve you of the insecurity and vanity of surface things, calibrate the intellect and the character, they demanded that everyone had the same character and thought the same pocket platitudes. Removing variety in dress doesn’t uncover variety of personality. The biggest, most avaricious, style-conscious fashion victims in the world are now the Chinese. So don’t assume that you alone can rise above fashion. It really isn’t a good look.
And as for the tiresomeness of having to dress differently for different situations, just get over it. You wouldn’t like it if your mother had turned up at your graduation in her wedding dress, explaining that it had cost her so much she thought she should get it out more often, and if it was all right for one then why not for all special occasions? Of all the myriad and voluminous ways that a parent can embarrass their children, dress is the easiest and the most cripplingly effective. There are a very limited number of potential occasions where you should have the appropriate clothes:
– Obviously, you need a black tie: every man at some point in his life will have to wear black tie and, when choosing a suit, think, “Could my father or my grandfather wear this?” And if the answer is no, then you shouldn’t either: black tie should be ageless. And learn to tie a bow – it’s not difficult and there’s no excuse for either a clip-on or the hideous Hollywood straight tie. You do, though, need a straight black tie for funerals. Everyone has to go to a funeral at some time and you need to be dark and sombre, and in a black tie. Wearing a football scarf because he’d have appreciated it, or a Hawaiian shirt because he loved a laugh is not the point. Funerals are about respect for the bereaved, not a punch line for the dead.
– You need something smart that isn’t a suit. That probably means a blazer, the most versatile piece of clothing ever invented.
– And you need a white shirt – not expensive, not fancy, just ironed. A white shirt is the ultimate result dress, the most seductive thing a man can wear. It’s our equivalent of high heels and stockings. Every message a white shirt gives out is positive. It’s unflashy but romantic.
– Advice to men about dressing tends to be formal but every man needs to have a good fancy dress. The rules are “wit rather than guffaws”, “amusing is better than hilarious” – laughing with you, not at you. And nothing that’s made out of polyester: you become a sweaty static-magnet. Nothing with a carnival head. And nothing you couldn’t hail a taxi in at four in the morning.
– And a dressing gown, every man needs a good dressing gown. Not necessarily like Noël Coward but something that doesn’t look like a DNA encyclopedia or evidence from a crime scene. Nothing above the knee, and nothing with dragons, eagles or Chinese writing on it. Oh, and not plucked from the Bangkok Four Seasons or a health club. It should be attractive enough for a date to wear it the next morning without gagging, laughing or regretting.
– Remember that clothes can never make you something you’re not: they don’t fool anyone but they do let people know who you think you are. Nature gave you your look and there’s only a limited amount you can do about that, but what you wear is the skin you choose for yourself. More importantly than what it tells others, it reminds you of who you can be.
Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,
I’ve read that the “girl on top” position is the most likely to break a chap’s willy. Who knew you could break a cock? And that getting your todger fractured is one of the most painful things to happen to a penis? Leaving aside the obvious humiliation of having it gawped at by masses of medical students and sniggering nurses who’ve never seen a bust one before, there’s the awkward and equally painful operation that I understand is often unsuccessful and can lead to permanent erectile dysfunction and a willy like a small hockey stick, which is more use for unblocking sinks than being the wand of pleasure. And I expect it’ll look weird in Speedos. I only ask because my boyfriend, well, my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, has been sticking his in all sorts of unsavoury places, and has given me a repellent and humiliating disease. And I’m considering giving him something to remember me by. So what do you suggest the best way to break his penis would be?
Deirdre, via email
An interesting question, Deirdre. And I’m not sure this is the best place to come to ask it. But you’re quite right: “cowgirl”, as it’s known by porn stars and sex therapists, is the position most likely to result in a fractured willy. “Doggy” or “ewe” (if you’re Welsh) is the second most winky wonky-damaging. However, it’s rare, only accounting for one break in every gazillion knee-tremblers. So you, or rather he, is more likely to smash his sausage falling out of bed than actually slipping it up you. However, the most common cause for a bust penis is guilt and shame. In some Muslim countries, a visible erection is a terrible embarrassment and boys are taught how to detumesce in emergencies. I think this may be your best option in the disfigurement of the errant hard-on. I’m told that old mullahs suggest grabbing the base of the pee-pee in one fist while firmly grasping the bell end with the other, and sharply pulling it down at right angles. You should hear a distinct cracking noise, followed by a long, high-pitched scream. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, as an adviser on a men’s magazine, that this is grievous bodily harm and could lead to a criminal prosecution. Also, a man with a broken knob is unlikely to be reasonable in his reactions. But I expect you’ve already thought about all that and might consider something a little less fundamental. The one thing worse than a broken cock is a broken heart. And worse than a broken heart is a crushed ego. So why don’t you shag his dad, assigning the acid-piss crotch-rot that he gave to you to his parents? And then send them all a note on Facebook. Only a suggestion.
Dear AA,
Ricky has been my best mate since our first day at junior school. He was being bitten by another boy and crying like a cat in a kennel. So I thumped the kid and got sent to the headmistress, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. That first encounter turned out to be the template for our friendship. Ricky is, frankly, hopeless – always in trouble, he’s clumsy, he’s fat, he’s forgetful. All-round useless. But he’s also brilliant – he’s really funny. I spend my life getting him out of scrapes, defending him and giving him somewhere to kip. But he makes me laugh like no one else. He’s got a heart of gold and really cares for me. He’d take a bullet for me. I feel really bad writing this but he’s become a problem. We do everything together. We’re out every weekend. We’re known everywhere as Dicky and Ricky, and the truth is, he wouldn’t be that popular if it wasn’t for me. He’s a fair old liability and he’s become a cock-blocker. We’re both 18 now and I’d like to move on and go out with girls or at least be able to chat someone up without having to find a munter for Rick. I feel so disloyal saying this. I want him to be my best mate forever. If I get married, he’ll be my best man. If I have kids, he can be a godfather to all of them. I just can’t be responsible for his social life any more, and I can’t have him putting the mockers on mine. How do I handle this?
Richard, Hull
> You don’t, Richard. All those years ago in the playground, you saved Ricky’s life as surely as if you dived into a river and dragged him out. Everything he became afterwards was down to you. Save a man’s life and you’re responsible for that life. Ricky is a perfect sidekick – out of gratitude and friendship, he has remained a fat six-year-old for you – being funny, always showing you off in a good light by comparison to him. You could grow up to be a handsome, confident young man because another boy laid down his youth to give you that poise, confidence and élan. What Ricky did for you is one of the most touching and generous actions of selfless friendship. Who do you think really saved whom in that playground?
Dear Uncle,
Dick and I have been best mates all our lives. We do everything together. He’s handsome, fit, athletic and suave, and I’m a bit of a joker and on the chubby side. And I’ve been happy to be like that for years. The thing is, now I realise I’m gay. And I don’t know how to tell him. He’ll think I’m coming on to him – he’s a bit vain. But I’m really not – he’s not my type. How can I break it to him that I can’t spend every Friday and Saturday watching him pick up slappers in our filthy local? I’ve secretly started having sex with another guy we were at school with. He bit me on our first day. He says it was unresolved lust. Dick’s going to be really hurt, bless him. But, anyway, I’d still like him to be my best man.