Men without Women Part II
by Joseph Ridgwell
It was another hot Saturday night and Dan was round Jakey’s place, drinking beer. Jake lived in a small apartment in the heart of the city and was Dan’s best friend, in fact his only friend.
Outside they could hear the disembodied voices of weekend revellers, and even some tinny music emanating from a nearby bar,
‘Shit, it’s that cock-sucking pop shit again!’ exclaimed Dan somewhat irritably.
Jake cocked his head to one side,
‘Yeah, you’re right, Cher, and unless the DJ has some sort of brain malfunction next up will be Shania Twain’s Man, I feel like a Woman, rapidly followed by Britney’s Hit Me Baby One More Time, or vice versa.’
Dan took a philosophical swig from his beer, ‘Well, at least he’s reliable.’
Jake nodded sagely at that.
For a while the two friends sat in silence, drinking steadily, and chain-smoking,
‘You know what Jake?’ Said Dan eventually.
‘What?’
‘I don’t think I can take it anymore.’
Jake shot his friend a worried glance, ‘You don’t mean?’
Dan cracked open another tall one, ‘No, nothing like that, I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I was referring to the job.’
Jake looked puzzled, ‘The job?’
‘Yeah, the cock-sucking, ball-breaking, motherfucking job!’
‘Easy geez.’
Dan leered at his friend over his beer can, ‘I mean is it just my job, or is everyone you work with insane too?’
Jake thought about his employment situation, customer service officer in a large insurance company, ‘Well, I wouldn’t say they were insane, but some are definitely cunts.’
Dan sighed deeply, ‘You know, I move from one section to another, but all I find is the same thing. People inventing work, making things more difficult than they actually are, or just acting plain nuts.’
‘But Dan, you have to remember that you work for the Government, it’s not like that in the real world.’
Although Dan didn’t deny this, he wasn’t convinced, ‘Maybe, maybe not, but I get the sneaking suspicion that in any big organisation nobody knows what the fuck they are doing.’
Jake raised his beer, ‘So how comes it’s not chaos out there?’
‘Have you looked out there?’
Jake cracked up at that one, but as Dan continued ranting, he suddenly cut his friend short and cupped a hand behind his ear, ‘D’ya hear that?’
Dan stopped mid-rant, ‘Oh shit, Shania fucking Twain!’
A couple of hours later the two friends were good and boozy.
‘You know what?’ slurred Dan, after staring at a wall for an extended period.
Jake looked up from his beer and blinked his eyes a few times, ‘What?’
‘The Australian aborigines had the right idea.’
‘Huh?’
‘Fuck work, progress, industry, written records conquests, wars. Just find a simple and satisfactory way of living and stick to it.’
‘Er?’
‘Think about it. No nine to frigging five, no office politics, no consuming shit that we don’t even want anyway, no packed into trains like cattle, no traffic jams, none of that modern city life hell, which is what it is.’
Jake realised his friend had gone on another of his inspired rants and sat up, ‘Are you sure it was so good living a stone-age existence?’
‘Yeah I am. Where has putting a man on the moon got us? Fucking nowhere, that’s where, pointless nothingness. Let’s examine the facts. They say that aborigines are the most primitive people on earth, but I say it’s the opposite. Think how advanced it is to avoid reaping destruction on the planet by means of industrial pollution, or nuclear bombs? Shit, after an initial period of inevitable environmental destruction those dudes lived in harmony with the land for thousands of years. They knew how to look after it and survive in an inhospitable environment.
‘But they didn’t have beer,’ protested Jake.
Dan eyeballed his can of wife-beater, ‘Ok, that’s a negative, but what you don’t have you don’t miss.’
‘But you drink every single day.’
‘True, but only because modern living drives the sensitive man to drink. You have to understand that civilised man is forced to do work which is mostly meaningless, and very, very dull. This is why they are plagued with stress, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.’
‘Ok, I agree with that, but there’s no way we can turn the clock back Dan.’
‘Yes we can, we can do whatever we want if we possess the will. We won’t, but we could if we wanted to. Man is basically a hunter and that’s what we should be doing.’
‘What, hunting?’
‘Yep, Getting out there in the wilderness, spear and bow in hand.’
‘I don’t think we’d be very successful Dan.’
‘Nope, we wouldn’t, but eventually we would, and think how grateful the successive generations would be?
‘Are you sure they’d be grateful?’
‘Of course they would, we’d be made saints, hero’s, and given enough time probably revered as some type of God.’
‘I think you’re getting a bit carried away Dan. I mean, we’d have to live in tee-pee’s without central heating, modern medicine, or any of the other creature comforts we have come to enjoy and rely on?’
‘Superfluous shit, we’d live off the fat of the land!’
‘Shit, I’m with ya Dan, but it sounds a little hippified and hopelessly unrealistic.’
Dan got up and fetched two cans of beer from the fridge, handed one to Jake, and then slumped into his chair somewhat dejectedly,
‘Shit, you’re right. Aboriginal culture has nothing to offer the modern world apart from some odd painting styles, interesting musical sounds like the digeridoo, and some lovely myths about the dream time.’
Jake took a reflective sip from his can, ‘So modern man is doomed to live a boring life and then die.’
‘Never a truer word said Jakey, never a truer word said.’
Suddenly Jake appeared distracted, ‘And guess what?’
‘What?’
‘Can you hear that?’
Dan stopped talking and listened up, ‘Oh, fuck, Britney!’