1. Liable to be from divorced, stressy parents. Unhappy.
2. Fiercely intelligent. Love to read specialist adult books, do anything school related independently, and pepper conversations with adult concepts and social commentary. Tech wizards, bordering on nerdy that can parent their parents. Occasional penchant for making their own breakfast and overall an outstanding example of the American school system/ internet generation though somewhat lacking in emotional life skills.
Like that semi-autistic kid at school you secretly ached to kick.
3. Constantly playing main roles in upcoming class plays, productions, science or sporting galas, that coincide with important work, relationship, life or global events .
4. Being taught baseball by their father. They suck at it. Increasingly play soccer at school.
5. When stressed they tell their long suffering, divorced parent that they hate them. Then slam the door. But they don’t really mean it. They lie in bed a long time.
6. ALWAYS keep a diary, usually hidden. Sketchbooks with dark drawings and eyes.
7. Liable to be kidnapped. Cry a lot. Love and hate their mothers. Investigative of eerie sounds.
8. Older kids eye-rollingly hate their little siblings, and often have to parent them in certain forced situations, like breakfast or the school run. Older kids are rebels, younger ones nerds.
9. School is like the prison system, fraught with hidden codes, treatises, tribes, hierarchies, subtleties and constrictions, but for dwarves. Plus pimples, body shaming, fashion police, class systems, race politics, sex, drugs, social media and braces. Like everything in general society actually.
The Monsters
1. Will attack public transport, preferably train carriages or streetcars. Despite wrecking the vehicles, smashing glass and crushing metal, everyone inside will miraculously survive. The vehicle ends the ordeal the right way up again.
2. Will head ‘to the Eastern seaboard’ and attack only crowded city centres at rush hour – notably, exclusively, New York.
3. Aliens only ever seem to converge on Earth for our resources, despite there being a billion billion other planetary and solar resources out there.
(Truth is they’re here for the one thing Earth has that a very rare few other places have – biodiversity. And to protect this rare natural resource from its doom-makers. You heard it here first).
3. When catching up, they only approach slowly, sinisterly after their prey. When finally cornering the quarry, they will circle, drool and drag out the situation while the victim ekes out a sudden escape route, weapon or rescuer.
4. Multiple heat seeking weapons that take down concrete and create craters 100 feet across are easily dodged, badly targeted or result in firecracker bangs that inflict minimal damage on organic flesh. Armour piercing volleys of bullets are ephemeral nuisances at the worst.
5. Buildings can be easily climbed with no fear of a single layer wall, roof or floor giving way or engineering an entire catastrophic collapse.
6. In a constant state of mid-growl/ roar. Never anything else on the visage. If human you cannot do this (I mean who outside the Presidential race does that??), so a deadpan covering of the face will be needed, preferably an impossibly inky and hard to shake shadow that manifests itself over your head in any given situation, angle or hour of the day. Or twisted, child-like mask, always handy.
5. Oh, and all human monsters tell all before a kill.
1. You are slightly underweight, have long hair and wear tight clothes that highlight your cleavage, no matter the weather, occasion or your age.
2. She who runs, falls.
3. If you’re a teenage cheerleader you are vapid, bullying, cliquey, mean, calculating, incipient, evil and pant-wettingly hot. And likely blonde. Since the noughties you have token ethnic cheerleader besties, or may just as likely be brunette to you know, mix things up all crazy! You will likely fail in later life.
4. Older females no matter how isolated, incipient and characterless always have a sassy, straight-talking, popular, younger-than-her-years and ever-loyal bestie. -In short everything the other lacks, who will fathomlessly and unfathomably prove the main character worthy of screentime by dint of association. Who will die to protect them, usually via dangerous scenarios for getting information, that only gets uncovered after their sacrifice.
6. All aunties are cool.
7. Never age. You will always be a decorative object of sexual desire no matter what age, what standing or who you’re married to. Even billionaire CEO’s who also happen to be young and former supermodels, like Amber Valetta, will be game for bumblingly fat tax accountants like Kevin James. Or obese, myopic, animal-talking professors.
7. You scream and cry when frightened.
8. Strongly investigative of strange noises and dark situations in the house/ woods/ haunted castle littered with body parts, while loudly announcing your presence. You can pinpoint your location at all times by repetitively croaking for Frank? FRANKKK?? Fr-aa-nk? while still in the same room. Or waveringly: ‘Quit it Frank, this ain’t funny’ and ‘Cmawn guys’ ten minutes after several glimpses of hairy claws, unearthly skittering and the timbre of sharpened bench tools. You never say ‘Fuck it’ and just walk out. Unhappy face.
9. Liable to trip, slide, break ankles, drop torches or walk loudly into inanimate objects at the most inopportune times. Easily kidnapped, ransomed and leading the man into a trap – either that or killed off entirely.
10. Your mothers are nightmares, and the main source of income for psychodopediatrists the nation over. They love you and hate you. You love them and hate them. And their mothers were loving and hating to them. And you will be equally loving and hating to your daughter. And your daughter will be the same to her step-daughter. And her step-daughter will be loving and hating and loving again to her stepmother’s mother in turn, which is you.
And all you want to do is to stop eating ice cream and get a man. And all your mother wants to do is for you to stop eating ice cream and get a man. And all her mother wanted to do oh just fuck it fuck everything that moves bitch.
11. You cry a lot. In heavy make up. And drink. Even when not frightened. You have bad days and good days. Mostly bad days. It all gets too much behind the smile.
10. You take slow, langorous sexy showers with your eyes closed. You never wait for it to heat up, just step in and turn the water on, facing the nozzle with your fake lashes clamped the entire time. You do not fart or burp, or douche away; no one does this. Me time is still sexy time.
11. You only ever talk about men. You only ever talk to other women about men. If ever you talk about another woman, it’s about your passive aggressive Super narcissto-mum who talks about men. Unless you’re in Sweden.
12. You being in any field of vision alone, in any room, at any moment is a sad, poignant moment. Unless you’re in the car or kitchen (well cmawn, someone’s gotta buy the food, make the food, taxi the kids, clothe the kids, garden the garden, make picnic doilies, dress the church, keep young and fit and work the local social expectation spectrum!). Sad-poignant-moment makes you stare off into the distance with blue skies and steely spirit. That’s where Blue Steel came from.
13. You cry a lot.
Men
Liable to be divorced.
Strong, misunderstood. Brooding.
Good looking women follow you around.
You like plaid.
5. If you play American football you are vapid, bullying, cliquey, mean and incipient. You are not intelligent enough to be calculating but substitute with brute force and whooping air fists. Will likely fail in later life. Become the baseball cap wearing, stubbly wifebeater, who drinks beer in front of tvs and has a thick Southern drawl.
5. If you find yourself the Police Commissioner/ boss you become very shouty, chain smoking and ball breaking, actively obstructing any vital investigation due to the rule-book but can often come through in the end, despite your psychopathic hissy fits. You cater to the Mayor, who is corrupt and a bastard.
6. If you find yourself a corrupt official, or someone with very very powerful government links, make sure you pass all confidential, highly sensitive information in dossiers or identical briefcases. Just make sure you do it in crowded public places where there are endless opportunities for extreme zoom and black & white camera angles, preferably open air – a park bench in New York, a ceremonial axis in Washington DC, or seated right by the big plate glass windows in any restaurant.
Do the same whenever meeting your incriminating long time lover you are cheating on your wife of thirty years with (make sure you kiss publicly at some Parisian style cafe, tickle each other’s faces and run laughingly into taxis). Always wear a trench coat.
6. If you are gay you’re loud, sassy and endearingly obnoxious. And highly strung. Mmmhmmm. You tells it how it is, with humour and sparkling eye movements. You pepper sentences with ‘girlfriend’ and ‘bitch’and can be found perched on stools in tight suits or jeans. You only ever go out to banging bars and nightclubs for cocktails. If you are big you wear it tight. Gay women do not exist.
7. All teenage men – no , in fact all men- are obsessed with sex and how to get it. You are in awe of beautiful, skimpily dressed women constantly surrounding you, who may foray into giving you a cuddle in all shapes, forms and situations, possibly leading to a pity fuck. You think and talk loudly about this in a totally obsessive, stalkerish but socially acceptable kinda way. It is your underlying raison d’etre to everything.
8. All men, no matter what age, class, social standing or looks is able to attract stunning, intelligent, kind, loyal women. Cuddles! Nudity! Eyes Wide Shut handjobs! She will likely be working at a city hospital, usually a top surgeon or doting doctor who specialises in gunshot wounds for ethnic minority children who she’ll get emotionally involved with. See Women.
9. Your bestie isn’t good looking and may not even be rich or powerful but is just BA-RIMMING with personality – exuding humour, intelligence (or at least kookiness), charm, loyalty and heart with every step and one-liner. Like Ted without the fur. Your bestie can even be the President (I mean how kookie would that be! Yeah!!!). Or Black (OMG yeah! Yeah!!!) Your every dream come true. He may even cuddle you in a dark moment.
10. All American men say ‘I love you, man’ all the time to their friends, especially at the end of every convo, meet or night out, in a completely, non-homo, non gay, unthreatening, definitely no, not gay , not schoolyard circle jerk, not wet biscuit, not drunken night at the lake, not prison system, not watching porn then having your magic moment just as it switches shot to the guy, not trapped together in a lift with Madonna music playing and it’s gettin hot in here so hot so hot I wanna take my clothes off way, no.
To recap:
Gender appropriate(d) roles
Women: Secretaries, receptionists, assistants, nurses, retail staff, pool babes, beach babes, frat house party babes, teenage party babes, bar babes, Goth bar babes, ski-season-I’m-out-of-my-figure-hiding-ski-suit-now-and-drunk-at-the-bar-in-tight-knits babes, NYC-is-like-so-cool cafe babes, waiting in line at the laundrette babes, line dancing babes, seal wrangling babes, scientist babes, the globally recognised authority on Childhood Neural and Hypothalamic disorder babes, protagonist’s middle aged wife babes, mother babes, grandmother babes, undiscovered tribe babes, dead body babes, strippers, dead strippers. Exorcism victims. Waiting staff in any bar or diner, cooks (not to be confused with chefs). Love interest roles.
Men: CEO’s, firefighters, police chiefs, army chiefs, billionaires, stock brokers, unicorn start-up wizards, wizards, writers, hipsters, spies, henchmen, bouncers, truckers, ranchers, cowboys, construction crew, builders, electricians, engineers, geeks, techies, washing machine repairmen, surgeons (unless you specialise in the Ethnic Child Gunshot Wounds Dept), skateboarders, parkour enthusiasts – pretty much any urban sports enthusiast, the person at the head of any table, chefs. Exorcists. Gays. Serial Killers.
1. All Black folk be talkin like they from the ghetto. Even if they’re a stockbroker, an office manager, cop, priest, mayor or judge. Man, whatchoosayin?
2. If you’re a Black man you shoot the hoop on your time off. You are kool n the gang with your White buddy. In a family friendly, Neighbourhood Watch friendly, approachably middle class yet gangsterly kinda way. Like LL Cool Jay in Deep Blue Sea.
You’re funny, likely musical. Likely had a career as America’s most famous Black comedian du jour, that one job that made you approachable to White folk.
3. If you’re a Black woman, you’re sassy. Empowered. Endearingly obnoxious – you tells it how it is, as you are the salt o’ the earth easy to anger, easy to laugh. You are big but you wear it tight, and take no prisoners nor shy from anything Heeelll No! A lot of the time you are angry, you’ve had to be this way to defend yourself in thug society. You are not shy, retiring or ever, ever quiet.
4. Every Black church is the heart of the working class community, evangelical and full of shafts of morning light, uplifting music, and clapping. The preacher will be fiery and impassioned, as will be the be-hatted congregation who will sing, shout and nod their rather stupid exhortations throughout the service. There will be several middle aged women fanning themselves and mhhhmmming.
5. If you’re an older Black woman with a serious expression, there are many, many opportunities to become a High Court judge. Approximately 85% of all judges in America are made up of older, Black women with serious expressions as a sign of what a progressive, fair and egalitarian society that country harbours. You will be firm but fair, and liable to call all lawyers up to the bench to give stern admonishments to over your serious glasses.
6. If you’re British there are many, many opportunities to become an evil, globally dominating villain of the highest order. Or a butler. If you’re not insufferably posh (first choice), you can settle for being Cockney. This is the closest to foreign you will ever see.
7. All spies are White, 30 something, fit and 99% male with a token female who is a real ballbreaker. Also STRIKINGLY good looking, made up, manicured and well dressed the entire time she’s jumping rooftops, like a supermodel striding around on a corporate shoot. For some reason they blend seamlessly into any crowd, however foreign, and will not be looked at by anyone ever. All spies spend most of their time running around shooting stuff (East European shaven headed thugs mostly, which most men from that part of the world are), attending gala events (transformed!), getting involved in spectacular car chases, with minimal office work, shopping, going to the loo, queueing for a latte, getting their cat de-wormed, or dayjobs. They do not keep a low profile at all.
8. All muggers are stupid, pale Wasp men in their late Twenties who bear striking resemblances to LA waiting staff, but with dark leather jackets/ hoody, hobo hat and needing a shave. They will often have the tables turned on them.
9. All people with dark hair, at some later stage in the story, will reveal themselves to actually be Jewish, usually by namedropping Bar Mitzvahs, bagels, schmucks, or their super Jewish, neurotic parents. Chances are they are also loud, sassy and endearingly obnoxious as Black women. But more highly strung. -They are people too. Like if they didn’t announce their religion you woulda carried on thinking how lovely they were haa!
10. Ethnic minorities do not cry. Given the opportunity, they are stoic. Though really it’s just they never reach that stage of character development in their lives and loves (unless you’re single in NYC, ridiculously skyscraper-owningly rich, powerful, handsome, well groomed, funny, inventive, kind, educated, strong, rich, did I mention rich? Like billionaire rich, ripped, fatherly and heart-rendingly widowed enough to court Waspy new secretary in town, Dakota Johnson).
11. All maids are lovely Mexican women who can barely string a sentence together in English. They work hard and look after several impoverished families back in Latin America, for which their low paid job is a lifeline for the entire favela, and 75% of the Mexican economy that’s not drug related. As a loving, kind and surrogate mother they brought up generations of neglected yet sweet rich kids who dumped them on gaining their inheritance. They are all resoundingly, frailly illegal. Live in a cupboard (or possibly the stairs at night -no one really knows) with a crucifix on the wall.
12. LA is riven with Latino gang members who wear slick hair, 90s plaid, do their top buttons up, and sport bandanas like Notorious B.I.G. Their quasi-Mexican accents are as thick as yo mamacita’s guacamole. They prefer knives to guns. Those are for Black people. Statistically they are the least represented on-screen race per capita to their real time population, more so than even the semi-mythical East Asians.
13. Italian Americans have lovely, huge nouveaux riches families and are adoring to their kids, despite their murderous mafia links. One of these ‘family friends’ will be obese and thuggish; and they will all talk with the Italian East coast accent ( not to be confused with the pan Jewish East coast accent, or New Jerseyitians). The long suffering wives wear a lot of gold, peroxide and have big hair, and can be just as ruthless despite their feminine charms. Not to be confused with Jewish princesses.
Actually fuck, it Jews, Italians and New Jerseyudlians are one and the same. They just change surnames on set.
14. Native Americans are middle aged, wise, long haired and monosyllabic. They live on reservations or national parks and often sport cowboy hats paired with clinking jewelry, beads and totems as constant reminders of their timeless, majestic, pre-modern culture that your collective forefathers truly fucked to the tune of 98.7% of their missing gene pool. They tend to drive vintage trucks and have guns they use for manly stuff, especially when they switch to horseridin’ (they’re all hunters and trackers).
They do not catch trains or hang out in cyberspace, schools, libraries, malls, cities, gyms, Chinese restaurants, nail bars, playgrounds, hair salons, comedy clubs, theatres, sports clubs or bars. They prefer to buy their alcohol and drink it copiously at the trailer park or on the range. They are all male.
15. East Europeans. Women are pale, blonde, blue-eyed gun-toting Slavs, cold, beautiful and casually evil. They will sleep with you for money, perhaps sell their child. Men are dark, shaven-headed, yet unshaved, chain-smoking, gun-toting Gipsies. -Whether you’re a henchman or an oligarch you’re the same side of Dodge city. They have yet to register a personality among them, being sociopaths yet lacking the narcissism. Children are on an autism spectrum.
It’s always cold. There is no music where the sun does not shine. And Vodka, lots of it.
16. Asians don’t really exist. Except as news reporters; or waiting staff.
16b. South Asians, despite being the world’s biggest ethnicity, really don’t exist.
To recap:
Race appropriate(d) roleplay.
White folk: Spies, office workers, bartenders, truckers, pilots, captains, muggers, parking attendants, waiting staff, shop assistants, artists, art students, subjects of art, ballerinas, ex-pats (not to be confused with ‘immigrants’), travelers, firefighters, surgeons, mountaineers (not to be confused with Sherpas, ‘locals’, or guides who do the same thing), ice skaters, ice hockey players, skiers, snowboarders- pretty much anything cold related
…swimmers, lifeguards, divers, pool babes – pretty much anything water related, farmers/ ranchers, cowboys, Mounties, line-dancers, woodcutters, hunters, hippies, eco-warriors, extreme sports enthusiasts, – hell, pretty much anything outdoors related.
…Europeans, American tourists, academia, hipsters, nerds, rock enthusiasts, Goths/ emos, toll booth operators, Icelandic fishermen. Serial killers. Vampires. Ghosts. Werewolves. Dinner party guests involving pent up, over-the-hill upper middle class people, in melodramas with endless discussion, trying hard to be funny and blasé by talking about sex.
East Europeans: henchmen, oligarchs, thugs, prostitutes, sociopaths, spies, cruel women.
Black folk: Hip hop/ rap, R n B artists, musicians, gang members, basketballers, anything else just so long it’s not academic/ science / tech / finance/ rural / outdoors / er, water / or art related. Judges (see 5. Black women).
Mixed race: Hip hop/ rap, R n B artists, gang members, techs, nerds, occasional hipsters -the more approachable side of what it is to being Black (read: sports, music and crime). If you’re Black you can be a rapper, if you’re mixed race you might even be a poet.
Latinos: Maids, gang members, policemen (California only). US/Mexico border control, border crossers, cross dressers. Mexican prostitutes. Drug lords. Token cowboys.
East Asians: You are not in the army, you are not in the arts, you are not in academia, you are not in entertainment, you are not outdoorsy. You are not bar staff, surf instructing, cheer leading, basketball playin’ or any sport in general. You like business school, medicine, tech or nerdy stuff and news presenting. You do not hang out in bars, have family picnics, wait in post office queues, operate toll booths or any random activity that you do (but don’t – I mean do). You are peripheral.
Arabs and Middle Easterners: Terrorists. Misunderstood terrorists. Understandable terrorists. Innocent civilians terrifically terrorised by terrorists. You do not hang out in bars, have family picnics, wait in post office queues, operate toll booths, or any random activity that you do (but don’t – I mean do). Terrorists.
South Asians: Sorry, who are you again?
South East Asians: Sandra! Can you show these nice people where the coffee machine and cookies are?
450 million Burmese/ Indonesians/ Malays/ Filipinos – Wait, no. What???
We know how it is, the world. We know because we saw it on our screen with our very own eyes. So many rich, talented people can’t be wrong.
Places
1. Every student halls and Frat house is like ONE BIG PARTY DUDE. All the time. It will be a miasma of smoke, flying balloons (water, helium), bikinis, graffiti, underwear, flying bog roll, pillow fights, skateboarding, running, shouting and jumping day and night. Like, totally.
2. Every teenager’s party will be in a big house with a banging/ RnB DJ, a pool that a screaming blonde will be jumping into that very second, a big crowd (token minorities and everything!), lots of outdoor lights and free beer kegs. Upstairs in secluded rooms couples will be enjoying drunken, teen sex, with mixed results.
3. Outdoor pools are exclusively populated by young bikini-clad titty models with lavishing curves, big hair and clicking heels swinging to some loud hiphop or dubstep. And normal, flabby men who are obviously on the same level (such as Dave from Accounts), just much more covered up.
4. Every nightclub in the States has more of the same – big haired strippers with clunky stilletos, cascading locks, and forgetting their dress in a slow mo of hair swinging podium epilepsy (must be all those flashing lights). Overweight or well – normal – women don’t exist.
5. Behind every second door in a hospital is a drifting clothes hangar full of lab coats. All beds, even empty ones, have clip boards with patient details at the end of them that anyone can understand. There may be a lone policeman dozing off in the corridor.
6. At every hospital reception sits an overweight Black woman who will steadfastly deny anyone access to highly sensitive, confidential patient records. However, she is also liable to turn the screen towards this complete stranger, wink or nod conspiratorially, then move her chair away.
7. Metro systems are clogged with people on either side of the escalators. Dumpy people are very likely to be upended into complex retail displays by charging criminals. A train will ALWAYS be drawing up at a station at any given time. Assailants almost always choose not to board it. If they do (there will always be more than one), they start at either end and work toward the middle. A chase ensues in which they never, ever catch their trapped target.
8. Every city in Asia is drenched in neon, steam, chattering crowds, street stalls and rain. There are no other ethnicities.
9. Every city in Europe is chock full of pavement cafes, cobbles, Italian scooters, UNESCO World Heritage Sites and classy restaurants. Unless it’s Eastern Europe at which point it’s commie blocks and cold, all sunless skies over poverty. There are no other ethnicities.
10. Every American city centre is riddled with fuel laden container trucks slowly crossing through intersections at any one time, or trundling slowly, dangerously along elevated highways. Bright yellow school buses full of primary age kids also feature heavily on any given stretch, even if it’s to the airport.
12. Every American city centre is riddled with alleyways off busy civilised streets, full of stray rubbish, chain link fences, steam outlets and occasional bums (each of whom are white, bearded, wear fingerless gloves, long coats, woolly hats and in pouncing, shouty stupor). Every – and I mean EVERY – fire escape has a dumpster below, that’s been left wide open.
13. All forests, coastal areas, bridges, isolated farmsteads, new houses, and hilltop mansions have patchy or nonexistent phone reception. Civilised peoples remark on it to each other all the time like IT’S NOT THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD, the freaks.
14. Large mansions hold Victorian furnishings, heavy furniture, creepy dolls and sombre paintings of former residents. 20W lighting is needed throughout the day via dozens of lamps where windows don’t suffice, such as southern California. Attics harbour old photographs and disturbing toys. Residents and staff are monosyllabic, serious, buttoned up and speak like they’re in the 1800s, despite being teens during the 90s.
15. All basements are dank, badly lit, rammed with junk and shelving, and have those trap doors that open out to the garden. There is always a random rake/ spade leaning outside, with a wooden handle.
15. All forests are riddled with sudden drops and unseen gullies, that act like leaf litter slides to new, instantly untraceable areas of the woods. They are also liberally peppered with rushing rivers that edge into spectacular single drop waterfalls.
16. All caves or cave-like interiors hold unique subterranean ecosystems made up of sudden flurries of screeching bats, squawking birds (crows mostly), or loudly flapping, crazed pigeons that do that stupid pigeon hum but earsplittingly so.
17. NASA HQ in Houston has a massive control room full of computers and one really big screen, like a cinema perpetually showing architectural drafts and complex graphs. Staffed by bespectacled engineers, IT people and scientists in white shirts and discarded ties as time goes on. They like to whoop and clap and hi-five each other every time anything goes right, after days of silent, brooding tension. You might even see confetti. When things go wrong, a young female intern will stand there and cry, staring at the screen.
18. The Southern states are full of trailer parks, poverty, simmering racism and religious hypocrisy. Everyone has a porch and rocking chair, an unlocked screen door and guns leaning on the side or next to the mounted deer head. It is always high summer and sweaty. Spanish moss cloaks all.
19. California is perpetually sunny, sprawly and upbeat. Its highways are traffic-laden and dotted with convertibles, blondes, sunglasses and palm trees. Venice Beach is full of dudes and dudettes on wheels, while the LA skyline always has a setting sun by it through the smog and a 70s soundtrack. Frisco is wooden, White and Chinese. Everyone everwhere is in showbiz, or clammering for it by being fake.
20. New York is perpetually under attack by dark forces, tsunamis, or aliens. Or lawyers. It’s totally amazing to wear your suit to drinks, unless you’re a woman, whereby you will have to pack your cocktail dresses to work everyday. Everyone is like SO full of personality and character and coolness and wiredness and the city is just like SO stunning and it’s SO like Friends with singles roof parties and twinkly lights (token minorities and everything!), and people just can’t stop gushing loudly about how amazeballs they all are for moving there and making it even more fucking amazeballs. One of their mates will be stupidly /secretly rich and they don’t care for it, coz that’s New Yawk! Yeah! Streetlife and central heating and everything!
You know you want it.
21. All drivers in America keep their keys cunningly hidden above the visor mirror/ sun shield. No one, just no one knows anyone else does this.
22. Everyone lives in big family houses of fake clapperboard, with gardens and cars, loaded with toys and posters in the kids rooms, endless expensive junk in the garage and basements, huge flatscreens, occasional pools and big suburban plots with manicured lawns out front. As per rule, it is highly unlocked at all times. Every teenage daughter will have a roof and pipe/ tree/ robust climbing plant below her window.
23. Everyone everywhere is upper middle class, even deceptively so. Like when your wise-talkin sister will pick up the phone one day in a suit from her spotless FTSE 500 boardroom, or your humble, funny bestie actually works in a high end law firm somewhere, or is a surgeon (and possibly the President). Everyone knows a surgeon.
24. …Unless you’re ‘ethnic’ and somewhere highrise, whereby you live in a crowded tenement with mixed race kids playing in the foyer. Every so often a terrified criminal or chase victim will hammer desperately at your door which obviously makes no one want to to open it – unless you’re an old Black lady with spacky glasses. Who is easily barged past for a window leading to a metal fire escape, with -you guessed it! -those open dumpsters below.
This apartment is oft next door to covert drugs factories, that if you poke your telescopic camera into are populated by lounging Blacks/ Blatinos/ token-White-guys-with braids. These are gang members centred around a huge, dingy sofa perpetually watching tv (occasionally gaming) in a haze of smoke, snacking and quick talkin’ lazy jibes.
So what is it about our daily existence that brings us down? Yes, you, face down in the porridge, only 8 in the morning but already thinking of slitting your wrists to emo grunge, except that you don’t have time to end it all as you have to Go To Werkkk. Then putting your makeup on, after rather than before, rod straight while the other bus wankers watch -and why not? Why can’t we go around the daily commute looking like the Joker on a pub crawl? Why can’t we just lie down and go to sleep when we want, where we want? Does it actually cause harm? No.
However, we’re meant to be:
good looking (tick)
Nice (tick)
Educated (tick)
Clever (tick)
Rich (tick)
Successful (tick)
Respected (tick)
Popular (tick)
Loved (tick)
Stylish (tick)
Funny (tick)
Well travelled (tick)
Happy (tick)
And the life and soul of dinner parties (tick)
People are meant to dance at your funeral because it’s like, a celebration of your life. Innit. And you don’t want people to be sad at your passing. They want to remember you for all your glorious thingings.
– No, actually fuck dinner parties. You’re now the life and soul of transvestite all-nighters on boats. N shit. On fire. And fuck nice. You got Edge, baby.
We’ve heard it all before: falling down the stairs is an uphill battle. Life is an untrammeled disaster, just remember to sing while you’re in the lifeboats. If life gives you lemons make a fucking lemon grenade for your window twitching, wife swapping neighbour.
All this points to the social construct, The Man, the social media representations we send out like invites. The irritating, exasperatingly heedful force of expectation. Yada yada yada; we’ve got all that to juggle with. Cow, listen, rebel, don’t rebel. Fuck it. Don’t fuck it.
Then throw along family too. That endless source of amusement, camaraderie, and Christmas arguments. People we once touched. They have a whole set of expectation alongside, nuanced with finer colours, to resurface at opportune times when you’re least armed. Those childhood memories, worries, yearnings, realisations and occasionally shared dreams that forge our daily identity. Appearing as intrusive thoughts whether you’re midway chatting up the hottie from Accounts, or drumming one’s head on the bus window as you slumber the petit mort of the overworked and oversexed.
We’re meant to love them. We’re meant to honour them. We’re meant to forgive them. And they’re meant to reciprocate – but even if they don’t we should be gliding about like a motherfucking sunbeam of forgiveness and charity anyway. Oh how they tease!
But bear in mind the lesson from China. Once one of the most suicidally prone societies, sharing Goth music right up there with South Korea and Japan, but who embarked on a 400 million strong sojourn to the coast, with its seagulls and Nike factories. Tens of millions of families divided and sacrificed, to send money back to the impoverished interior, and lost childhoods exacerbated by the two child rule. Making stark photo ops as they flooded the transport networks every New Year to tearfully reunite in their homesteads.
Yet this wrenching of a generation away from the family unit resulted in a phenomenon – a rapidly falling suicide rate. Is this a giant, nationwide flood of crocodile tears? Well no, those are indeed heartfelt longings, with the concept of family the cornerstone of the world’s oldest surviving civilisation. And there’s a whole generation of angst-ridden kids missing their parents, that’s baiting society these days into questioning its sacrificial soul.
But it appears the pressure is undeniably lessened, that love is also all too often cloaked with expectation.
And why this East Asian triumvirate (the former China, Japan and South Korea) that so often tops the leagues in people topping themselves? Yes life is hard, there’s a lot of pressure to succeed, and they don’t take a lot of holidays – but then neither do any of the Developing World, who often don’t have the luxury of choice, and work multiple times more.
Well East Asia, thanks to mister Buddha and mister Confucius, operates on a ‘shame society’, whereas we in the West (thank you Abrahamic religion) operate on a ‘guilt society’. The difference is that ultimately we can, if one so chooses, forgive ourselves, or at least work towards that. On a shame based society you have to work the wider community in order to attain that forgiveness – and it’s much harder to convince an entire town to do something than one person (yourself).
I mean seriously, good luck with that next time you suck at becoming a film star – here you listen to self loathing music and do more lines on your tea break to get over it, while over there you do the same but apologising the whole time to your family, friends, dealer and maybe customers. For your lisp and gammy hand coz hey, Joaquin Phoenix managed to pull it off. Just sayin.
Hence why people in the mysterious, toy-making East kill themselves more over imagined failures, or being a ‘burden’ on their family and loved ones, especially those who are mentally ill to start off with. How dark.
Suicide is improving now in Japan, despite Hollywood and Youtubers’ attempts to cash in on the Suicide Forest, or all things creepy and long haired that come out of mirrors. Things best forgotten that stand by the bed at night and wait. And wait.
Yet are best ignored. As in China, people are starting to find themselves by turning over, and paying less attention to social or familial diktaat.
They say we’re not lone animals like tigers. We’re not herding animals like cows. But we’re not single family unit animals either. If you look at our kingdom of primates, the other monkeys and apes tend to function in groups of families – lets say, 15-25 individuals.
Think a hamlet where everyone knows each other. A large extended family where a child being brought up can run to her aunties and uncles as surrogates when Mum’s menopausal and Dad’s on the shots. Equally where you can let the little shit go wild with her cousins as you have your chocolate, fag and binge-watch.
So I’m not saying families are bad. But absence makes the heart grow fond, especially if you’re one of those rare, rare souls whose family didn’t step out of an Ikea catalogue. And the lack of domineering parents, judgmental aunties and uncles, and frankly trashy in-laws does lend a certain grace to finding oneself. Like a bell that chimes for itself alone. Get that out of the way – or at least at Facebook arms distance- and you only have to deal with The Man.
But what a Man that is. Squatting there like a vastly overweight, pinstriped mound of Hedge Fund Manager, displaying his Type A balls to everyone his Eames chair can swivel too. There is something fundamentally wrong with society.
Look back at the chimps again. On one side of the vast, sweeping Congo, second only to the Amazon as a giant riverine system, and uncrossable to those without a pirogue, live the Chimpanzees. They may seem cute, but they also mirror man’s failings and intrigues. Despite being affectionate, tender and individual, complete with personality types and functions, they also hunt, declare war on each other, form cliques, remember grudges, bully, cannibalise, rape and murder.
This is a patriarchal society ruled by the old men – and don’t forget for all that cuteness Bubbles was 5-8x stronger than your average human (hence why Jacko tried multiple times to leave him behind at McDonalds Kids Parties). One 4ft ape named Suzette in Bronx Zoo even wrenched 1,260 lbs in a rage, one handed. That’s a lot of damage one can inflict – so we shouldn’t judge them too harshly. Chimps are pretty much a race of Supermen, who like eating grubs and throwing their shit. Angrily when coerced – that can knock you out if lumpy.
So compared to humans Chimps are actually a glowing example of self control and not having wiped each other out a long time back, whenever Sandra stole the termite twig and you got a bit cross and tore her arm off.
But look on the other side of the river and there another species operates – the Bonobos. Vegetarian, peace-loving and non-murderous, non-cantankerous. Why don’t we hear more about these svelte little creatures? Why are the chimps the ones to have garnered all the Goodall fame over the years?
Well, the Bonobos spend every waking hour humping each other and playing with themselves for wont of anything better to do. Point your National Geographic lens on this side and you’ll likely see practices that would make a German orgy blush on Gimpstrasse.
Kids on the back of the parents getting bored with the same ride. Group sex. Group wanking sessions. Male on male, female on female. Male on Female on Male on Male. Kid on Kid. Incest. Food. Sticks. The proliferate and inventive usage of tools so endemic to our Family.
There haven’t been any reported cases of necrophilia yet (leave that to the penguins, who are likely to hump anything that trips or bends down to tie its little penguin laces), though I wouldn’t put it past the hairy blighters.
The difference: these folks are matriarchal. I know I’d miss bacon and all that, but I know which side of the river I’d be batt(y)ing for.
There are only a handful of matriarchal societies left in the world, one or two in Africa and one or two in Asia, and it’s interesting to note they also operate in polygamous love. Lets go back to China, great denizen of the mist-laden, cough-inducing East.
The Musuo people hold regular village dances in the ancestral halls of their forest. In the West we call this Tindr. Lets say you’re a fit young man resplendent in your tribal colours and totemic tassles, with a dab hand at skipping to the beat. Since you can jump higher than the average red blooded jungle hunk, or at least lose charmingly, you might catch they eye (and finger) of a certain lady. If she likes you, she’ll tickle your palm as you dance.
This is secret sign language for : “hey hot-stuff I need you bad. Come to my place at night after mum’s gone to bed and I’ll open my window for you to creep inside and we can then make sweet loving. Bring root vegetables and your Insta handle.”
Congra-tu-laaations! You’ve just become a ‘walking husband’. In the West we call this a fistpumping motherfucking RE-SULT.
So okay, so far so monogamous. But the thing is the lady in question can have as many walking husbands as she pleases. And if one reads between the lines, you can be the walking husband of as many esteemed ladies of the Fragrant Nocturnal Emission Chambers as you can get.
If you happen to have a child with one of these women, you are not considered the father, merely the sperm donor, or if it makes you feel better, sweetie, the ‘birth-father’. The woman will be that child’s mother, her brother will be that child’s father. Luckily for the Musuo, Chinese minorities are exempt from the one/two child rule, so a brother is almost always present in a family. If they’re not fuck it, the kid’ll live.
So there you have it. Give the reins to a woman (no, really -get the fuck off) and sex becomes no longer something to possess for either gender, and decorate with one’s social status. There are less rules and stricture, less possessiveness. I know here in the West we all went through the Sexual Revolution in the Twentieth Century, but still a revolution based on a linear frame, as always.
We went from God > Arranged Marriage > Children > Love of God > Whips and Bondage in the Middle Ages
to Arranged Marriage > Romance > Children > Love of God > LOVE after the Enlightenment
to Handkerchief Dropping > semi-arranged Marriage > Romance > Children > LOVE in the Nineteenth Century
to Romance > Sex > Love > Marriage > Children > Wifeswap Parties > Whips and Bondage in the 1960s Sexual Revolution.
Today we’re morphing towards that slight tweaking thanks to hook up apps, and already rampant in the gay community: Sex > Wifeswap Parties > Open Relationships > Romance > Love > Marriage.
The way the matriarchal societies work is take any of those concepts you like, just get rid of the: >
Oh, if only it could mow the lawn too…
But let’s harken back to reality. The Musuo are currently inundated with sex tourists from China and beyond due to their increasingly publicised reputation for polygamy. Also the ready availability of sexually open females – a dearth in polite, yet barely masked patriarchal societies the world over.
They however, do NOT share that vision of being part of a shining El Dorado to the creepy, fidgetty old men who can’t make eye contact or the gung-ho, braying backpackers who turn up with prophylactic arrays on their mountains. And it would be obtuse to portray matriarchal societies as any less warmongering or hierarchical ( for example the Musuo operated a slave society until the Chinese outlawed it, and the language is still skewed to have female words meaning greater and male words as lesser).
But it’s interesting to see how a society plays out a different version of reality, modernity and the daily commute with women at the helm. Go south of the Tassili n’Adjer into Libya and Algeria, and see the Arab men who cover their faces (meekly nibbling at their food behind the cloth) while the women are unsheathed, and who hold the gold by inheriting matrilineally.
Anyway, I digress. I don’t think I’ve actually solved what’s wrong with our lives, just went on on one about sex and monkeys. But I think germs and war and interminably having to Werkkk come into it somewhere. Anyhoo, delete your family speed-call. Kill the president and put a woman there, any woman; Sandra from HR will do. Avoid chimpanzees.
Put off your death, switch the emo music off and put on your tie.
DISCLAIMER
Ignore what I said about people dancing on my grave. I want everyone unhappy. National day of mourning; maybe a parade. Distraught people launching themselves at my coffin, like in Mafia movies.
supermouseblog 