On Loving Your Monkey

I haven't been talking very much lately about Quasi-Mojo (indeed given that the site was named after him, I've really given him a proverbial 'short shrift' quite unforgivably since the start) and perhaps there will be more on our misadventures in future posts; but in the absence of any great glut of quasi-mojo stories, I'd like to make some reference to a couple of stories that my attention was indirectly drawn to by a fellow blogger during my perusal of the blogosphere.

I've been pretty intimate with my monkey, and I'm aware that some people think that this is a bit weird. At times I have believed them and tried to supress our bond but now I have found a new and purer conviction that it is entirely natural as I have discovered (as you will discover now) that I am at least not the only person in the world who loves their monkey in a way that others consider less than wholesome.

Consider my friend Namita who lives happily with her monkey-son in India:


Monkey-Momma 

The full story is here on BBC.

Now admittedly I am as conservative as the next person about how long a 'son' should be breastfed for, and the figure of 5 years does look a little suspicious to me. I consulted Quasi-Mojo on the matter and he told me that this would be unlikely to happen in a natural as opposed to surrogate mother/monkey relationship, and that it probably persists on a more (shudder) sexual, than nutritional level. I'd also like to emphasise that I have no such relationship with my monkey (ours being more fraternal in nature) but the overall point I'd like to leave you with today is that freak though I am, I am neither the only one nor am I the biggest one.

It appears that interest among the ape-community in human mammaries is not confined to this monkey and the conclusion by one exPERT that a gorilla wants to see nipples has caused what will no doubt be a costly cufuffle (tweak here for the full story)

An excerpt from the story reads, "...Patterson would interpret hand movements by Koko as a demand to see exposed human nipples. She warned Alperin and Keller [who have since been fired] that their employment with the foundation would suffer, the suit says, if they "did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish.""

Hmmm. I wonder if they were men would the evil zoo-people have made them get boob-jobs to keep the gorilla happy?

Quasi-Mojo agrees that female breasts are aesthetically pleasing to him, but he also pointed out that a lava lamp would generally keep his attention longer.

Q-M isn't exactly computer savvy but I suppose if anyone out there thinks they have a set that could rival a lava lamp, you could send it to me via email and I'll pass it on and let you know.

"On your own head..."

Despite the fact that my law exams are looming, I am still accepting invitations for partying, thrill seeking, bungee-jumping, unnecessary cosmetic surgery, and lunch from inconsiderate friends who (being aware that my powers to exercise my will and refuse such invites are always zero) should try and live their whacky extreme lives without me during these tense months.

I accepted two such invitations last weekend and though I knew my time could be more productively spent in study, and as such though the phrase ‘on your own head be it,’ may have passed through my increasingly over-burdened mind, I had no inkling of how shudderingly apt such a phrase would prove to be to the consequences of these fraught attempts to cling on to something resembling a social life.

Friday was a birthday party in the most agreeable surroundings of the Morrison (lah-di-dah ) Hotel and was an occasion which was so much fun, that even the disaster of wearing a similar shirt to the man who will one day be known as Jones CJ (for the non-legal among you, that stands for ‘Court Jester’ by the way), did not detract in any significant way from the delightfulness of my evening.

In fact I wasn’t even that put out to find that on returning to my patient bike with its gazelle-like grace, that some drunkard had decided to use it as a urinal, directing the subject matter of his (one presumes it was a male of the species) self-relief to the centre of my helmet. I merely got on with things as one does, wiped down my bike a little and decided to cycle home sans helmet, leaving it dangling from my handlebars in the wind like the publicly-displayed soiled sheets more common to the generation of Huckleberry Finn and his ilk.

Saturday’s main event was a stag party that started early in the afternoon (/hangover) with some drinks and some music because the honored stag is the lead singer-songwriter/guitarist in a rock band. It was an event which was to make me feel with more pointed sadness than ever before that I spent my youth in a military marching band for delinquents and orphans playing the clarinet and not rocking out in a rotating foursome tortured by personality clashes and artistic differences, singing Nirvana covers with squeaky high-pitched unbroken voices. But well, I've made my bed (with military precision) and now I'll just have to try and deny that it's a clarinet under the covers and maintain I'm just happy to see you.

Compounding the shame of my wasted childhood and resulting lack of a socially acceptable party-piece, was a feint, but no doubt ever-present, odour which may have been as much in my head as emanating from it; but nonetheless had every reason to be there. For you see Laurel and Hardy were not comedians. No, no, they told it like it was. People really do forget that their helmet has been drunkenly pee-ed on when they are late for a stag party, and the beery pee really does have a tendency to gather in a pool between the main helmet-bit and the plastic cover around it, and the laws of physics do allow for the beery pee to remain where it is until the helmet is on one’s head only then to trickle down the left side of one’s face in a graphic reminder that while you may from time to time think you’re number one, you are mistaken. The number one is in fact laughing its way through your girly long hair and all the way down to your chin.

Now, I can make it a double-truth when, if my exam results are less-than-impressive and my parents ask why I didn’t perform like they expected I would, I can look them straight in the eyes and say, “Mum, Dad, I thought you would have figured it out by now given the hours I keep, but you haven't and I can’t hide it from you any longer: I'M JUST A PISS-HEAD.”

MTV: HIV, FYI

What I’ve come to expect from MTV ‘UK & Ireland,’ as it is nominally known, is American pimping, raiding, smashing stuff, self-inflicted pain, cosmetic surgery, blurred-out nipples, conspicuous and ridiculous wealth, Paris Hilton’s nauseating arrogance, incessant ads for telephone ring-tones, the obligatory Irish ‘howaya’ guy, aberrations of the word ‘news’, and variations on all of the above.

So I was taken a little by surprise to see an understated program that involved some normal (and not ‘TV-normal’) Americans sitting around answering questions in succession about how HIV has impacted on their lives.

There was no presenter and there were no tears. There were no statements of defiance. There was no self-indulgent condemnation about how ignorantly people treat them on learning of their infection. There was no soppy Oprah music or montages of these people in their beautiful homes or having blood tests or playing frisbee with their children. There was no passionate desire to educate the youth of America. No sponsored walks. No celebrity-sponsored funds. No admonition of political or church leaders. There was no talk of cures or plans for the future or bright-sides, or how broken family relationships were mended in the light of the tragedy. They were just given very simple questions and they answered them in turn, and occasionally asked each other to clarify or talk a bit more about a part of their of their story. Answers were short and to the point. It was distinctly (by what I am given to understand) un-American and (certainly) un-MTV.

Coincidentally, I got the results of some tests this week that were taken as a matter of procedure and I was found to be HIV and Hepatitis C negative. I had never seriously thought that the results would be any different, and I had no plans to go and get tested on my own initiative (to be honest I wouldn’t know where to start) but it was not unthinkable that they could have been.

I’ve done foolish things. Even despite that, I’ve had a lot of injections over the years, and I work in an Emergency Department that sees its fair share of Dublin’s lowest down-and-outs and drug addicts. I mean like I say, chances of having picked up a virus were highly remote but it was still reassuring to see it written down on an official letter, and in a way I can’t really fully account for, it felt very good to get the result. But interestingly, it doesn’t ‘put my mind at ease’ on the contrary it puts my mind on alert. I take the risk more seriously now, even though I still resent being assaulted by all the shock-tactic ads about it when I use a college toilet that makes me feel on the one hand like I’m not having as much sex as everybody else, and on the other that having sex would be the most terrifying ordeal I could put myself through.

Trying to make sex scary like that is not particularly helpful in my opinion. Treating your partner as a highly infectious conduit of lethal germs is not really the way we want to be going, I don’t think. Incidentally, there are also ads which use the ‘fear’ of pregnancy as an inducement to get people to rubber-up, which I think is a pretty thoughtless addition to the already discernible stigma that can attach to unplanned pregnancy. It’s also entirely unnecessary. Everyone knows what condoms are for – a simple reminder would suffice in my opinion. On that note, I know what I’d choose if I were offered a choice of a serious venereal disease and a child. An unexpected pregnancy is a biggy alright, but its one of the better bad things that could happen to a person.

Legal footnote:

Contraceptives became legal in Ireland (though very restrictively so) after the case of McGee V Attorney General in 1974 which was the result of Mrs. McGee having her spermicidal jelly seized by customs officers. I’m not certain what the legal situation was with condoms, but from reading of Walsh J’s Supreme Court judgment, it appears that there was a blanket ban on all forms of contraception up to that point when it was found inconsistent with the right to (particularly marital) privacy guaranteed by the constitution. Norris V Attorney General in 1977 (high court) and 1984 (supreme court) almost succeeded in the repeal of criminal laws against consensual anal sex, on the same logic, but his appeal failed as it was held that the legislature was entitled to limit the exercise that right on the grounds (inter alia) of the Christian nature of the nation and the fact that it would be injurious to the institution of marriage and public health. In 1989, the courts were finally obliged by the European Court of Human Rights, to repeal the law.

The Kylie Blog

I made no secret of the great excitement with which I received the news that I was to get a free ticket (thank you, thank you, thank you) to the Kylie Minogue, ‘Showgirl – The Greatest Hits Tour’ Concert and, despite being acutely aware of the odium that such a scenario was likely to attract from the majority (and I think it turned out to be overwhelming majority) of my (not even principally male) peers, I went ahead unabashed and unashamed, made my feelings and intentions widely known, only to be pleasantly surprised that largely the type of reaction with which my statements were met was in fact even more vituperative than I ever expected or hoped.

You see, I seem to quite enjoy people feeling a certain abhorrence to me from time to time, but what I enjoy even more, is occasions like this when I can put my hand on my heart (as Kylie herself has told us to do) and know that I can't be convinced that I am not (at least nearly) entirely correct. But the real real pleasure is changing the minds of others (though I openly admit that this has not happened yet and is unlikely to happen with this blog - but hey, it's worth a try) and opening their eyes to the fact that all along they have always, and always will, LOVE KYLIE MINOGUE.

There is a lot of Kylie-hate out there. And it’s hilarious! But more to the point, it’s misguided and wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Furthermore, I believe Kylie-haters are in denial because they are afraid to face up to the truth. Not merely the truth about Kylie, but the truth about life.

I love Kylie in every way imaginable (that doesn’t involve buying any of her records or merchandise, or for a long time approving of her catchy, sweet and romantic duet with Jason Donovan (‘Especially for you’) - for personal reasons). And because I’m such a self-assured (and perhaps in some ways naively cocky) man, I’m not going to be brow-beaten by the opinions of otherwise reasonable people with good taste and average or greater intelligence.

But perhaps I should explain the genesis of my deep and unshakable love. As a very young child, I was exposed to what remains for me, Kylie’s most important work. Songs like: ‘I should be so lucky,’ ‘Put your hand on your heart’ and the less successful but heart-rending, ‘Je ne sais pas pour quoi’ and of course, ‘Locomotion’. These four songs combine to depict the purest most perplexing emotions that face young people in their romantic and social lives. ‘I should be so lucky’ begins the journey of romance as we all do, in the realm of fantasy and idealism, unaware of how unattractive and unlikely to succeed in romance that we are. ‘Put your hand on your heart (and tell me that we’re through)’ continues this theme of dashed hopes of happiness by depicting that moment when the person you devoted yourself to manages to transform your great love to a temporary but unforgettable hate of self, other (this one lasts longer) and the entire world (except for chocolate). We then come to the clincher with ‘Je ne sais pas pour quoi’: the inevitable realization that you are powerless against your foolhardy misguided affections, that the person who dumped you and cheated on you is your slim but only chance at anything resembling happiness and you are so confused and bewildered that there’s nothing left for you to do but to suck it up and resort to speaking French. ‘Locomotion’ is actually a song about escapism where you try to not think about what a shambles your entire life is (“A dance that’s so easy to do, it even makes you happy
when you’re feeling blue”) and the peer pressure that lead you there against your better judgment (I know you’ll get to like it if you give it a chance now(c’mon baby do the loco-motion)). Now all this may very well have a cheesey pop coating, but it’s it got a raw emotional centre. As a six or seven year old boy, what Kylie had done for me was to express my unconscious fears and foreshadow the romantic tragedy I was most likely to face in my future in a way that was… well, as the song goes, ‘as easy as learning you’re ‘a,’ ‘b,’ ‘c’s.

So I think that alot of people just don't expressly appreciate Kylie because they are afraid to face up to these harsh life lessons. But I also must confess that yes, even I doubted her at times.

Perhaps the main reason (among many) I felt a strong repulsion to ‘Especially for you’, was that it seemed anathema to Kylie’s otherwise consistent message and betrayed the depth of her perception about the phenomenon love in her other hits. But last Saturday night, I realized that the actually does follow in the sequence of disappointment and denial, shows how we pick ourselves up and go ahead and willfully make the same mistakes all over again. It also leaves us with the unforgettable warning that if we are not careful, we could end up with Jason Donovan. Why couldn't I see this before? I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Kylie.

Admittedly her newer stuff doesn’t excite me as much as the old stuff (I was positively ecstatic about the burlesque version of Locomotion and actually nearly jumped out of my seat when ‘I should be so lucky’ just burst out of nowhere – though admittedly part of me couldn’t but help think that there was something wrong with seeing a crowd moshing to this song), but I think it’s all pretty good shit, and would be among my favourite musical catalysts that have lead to my attempting to dance in the drunken uncoordinated jerky way I like to do sometimes when I forget that while I’ll not remember it in the morning, it’s a horrific sight that’s etched on everyone else’s minds forever. Well, ok, maybe the new stuff does excite me, but just not quite to the same philosophical depth as the old stuff.

Anyway, there were 7 discernible themes to the show which I will term as follows:

1. Showgirl (high class)
2. Freaky 80s
3. The Ballet sequence
4. What goes on in the hunky (pick a sport) team’s dressing room (the female fantasy + shower scene)
5. Kylie over (well ‘in’ more so than ‘over’) the moon
6. Showgirl (burlesque house ala Folies Bergere)
7. The encore

Abandoning all efforts to sound straight (which were admittedly slight to begin with), it has to be said that the male dancers were far more impressive than the female dancers in every respect. They used their feathers with much more grace in the opening sequence, one guy stole the entire show in the ballet sequence, and (from a purely objective non-sexual-preference point of view) the dressing room sequence was much sexier than the Burlesque house.

Though Kylie did do bits from her famous duets (not the Robbie Williams one interestingly), none of her partners cameod, and though ‘In Denial’ with Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, fitted perfectly in the ballet sequence, ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ (duet with Nick Cave) appeared (albeit briefly) rather unexpectedly and disconcertedly in the Boy’s Dressing Room bit. Classic song though. Now I didn’t realistically think that any of them would, but it’s nice to hope that they might. What I can be thankful for though is that Donovan didn’t show up, but what is a little disconcerting is that he is now doing with his career what I hope to one day do in mine: pretend to be a lawyer.

What is kinda funny about Kylie’s songs in general is that I think we all know more of them than we would reaslise or ever admit to knowing (& liking?). First of all, I’m pretty sure most of my anti-Kylie readers will recognise all (or vice versa: all will know most) of the following lyrics from 8 Kylie songs and what’s more, see if you don’t know (despite yourself) what the next few words are:

1. ’cause baby when I heard you/ For the first time I knew/ We were…
2. Slow down and dance with me/ Yeah, slow/ Skip a beat…
3. I just can’t get you out of my head/ Boy your…
4. It’s in your eyes/ I can tell what your thinking/ My heart is sinking too/ It’s no surprise/ I’ve been watching you lately…
5. I’m dreaming/ You fell in love with me/ Like I’m in love with you/But…
6. Everybody’s doin’ a brand new dance now…
7. You kiss me, I’m falling/ It’s your name I’m calling/ You touch me, I want you…
8. I’m breakin’ it down/ I’m not the same

Go on, try and tell me that there isn't a little Kylie in all of us... that not even a little bit of you doesn’t love Kylie... that she's not spinning around in your VERY SOUL!

0.01%

The sun came out in Dublin, and to celebrate I had 3 lunches (followed by ice-cream) and flitted the day away swinging from social-branch to social-branch in the company of a series of people who I like to call friends (being the body of individuals who have not managed to renounce me by emigration or restraining order) and did not do so much as a pinch of work.

However, it was after my audacious slackery that things really became interesting. I arrived home in the evening to find that Pops was home, tending to his bonsai trees (Mr.-Miagui-style) and was entirely ignoring the racket that was being kicked up on the roof of the shed as Quasi-Mojo chopped and round-housed at magpies that were trying to eat the bread thereon (Karate-Kid-style).

We soon decided (myself and Pops) to take a walk along the seafront and find a place to have a bit of dinner. Against my better judgment I invited the monkey, but thankfully he shrugged with annoyance and said “Yoga?” indicating that this was what he considered his current activity to be, and that I was distinctly inconsiderate for interrupting.

[Pause narrative to mention interesting almost Seinfeld-esque (?) moment we had not far from the house as follows]

Pops: Oh hang on, I better go to the cash machine to pick up a few bob.
Buckley (Jnr.): Oh me too… I’m bobless.
Pops: ‘Bobless’ eh?
Buckley: Yeah, Bob is alright, but sometimes I just need a bit of ‘me’ time, you know? …but then again… I suppose… [Buckley struggles]
Pops: Yeah, after all… he is your uncle! [Oh there it is!]

[Moment concluded]

It’s rare enough for a father and son to just go out and have dinner together of an evening and devote, what was at the time planned to be, two hours to one another’s company. But today, was a rare and special day, and two hours actually became six – coffee and night-caps all in.

Now even though one may have a very good relationship with one’s Pop, I’m sure most agreeable sons would still feel that they nonetheless rarely ‘really talk’ (as they say) with their father. I feel this way anyway, and I wholeheartedly believe that there are very very good reasons for this to be the case 99.99% of the time. This evening however proved itself to be within the infinitesimal remainder.

I can’t begin to describe how great this was for me, so I suppose I’ll just start in the middle. I somehow ended up discussing with him the essentials of my entire love-life for the past four years; barely pausing to remind myself that this was, after all, my father (who was married at my age, and whose loins I would not long after be the fruit of) that I was talking to. I told him about girlfriends he never knew I had, and ones he did know I had but didn’t care much for and said as much. I spoke with candour about what each relationship had meant to me, how my reasoning, approach and expectations had developed and matured and at times blew up in my face. I even surprised myself, and among other things, realised how grateful I was for everything I had learned from my first experiences love – painful though they (inevitably) were. He asked questions with a genuine interest, understanding and insight that I wouldn’t have even expected from my closest contemporaries. Let me tell you folks, this might make a dull read, but it was BIG STUFF.

We spoke for the first time about that dark time I referred to in a recent blog (not that he reads this thing – that reference was for your benefit) and he spoke about how he thought I was done-for too (emotional dimensions were skirted over to keep the momentum of conversation going; breaking-down over dinner is just rude, you know?). He told me that thing that every son thinks he is passively aware of but wouldn’t for a second admit he’s at all concerned about either way, but is touched to hear nonetheless: the simple, unelucidated, no-frame-of-reference-necessary-or-possible fact that he’s proud of me.

And there’s more. He told me about things that were going on in his life when I was growing up that I had never understood or appreciated at the time. I’ve never had such an insight into the man. It felt really good. We were communicating as equals. No-one held anything back. If this were the wonder years and I were Fred Savage, a line something like “At that moment we either stopped being father and son, or suddenly became more father and son than we ever were,” would have been suspiciously ignored by the characters as the camera pulled out and the shot fades into the dark night.

Now you may have come to expect more from Buckley than such mush when you log into this blog, and if this the case, for your despondency I’m afraid I offer no apology or redress but I will thank you for sticking with me thus far. Much as I didn’t realise it until recently, there’s more of ‘me’ in this blog than I had appreciated, and what you have just read, my friends and neighbours, for what it is worth, is (give or take) what happened me today.

…And I’m glad to share it with you.