It’s an age of skin fades and genital maintenance. If you don’t agree, they label you less than a man. But that’s okay because I’ve never been a man and never will. Every day, I’m bombarded with adverts telling me I should be trimming my balls and shampooing them with carefully selected products. Not only that but spraying them with special scents because if I don’t, I don’t value myself or the woman I love. They’ll make a business out of everything. Every inch of our bodies weighed like meat at a market. The one where the little piggies got pickled. I’ve been cutting my own hair for over a decade. This, they tell me, is a dreadful thing indeed. A skin fade, they declare, shows an air of decadence. Yet whenever I see some kid with a skin fade, I see a little Nazi, moulded in the shape of his one-bollocked creator. Little fuckers should be shot. I’m a loner looking in at an alien society—an ant outside of the nest. I was once like them, but those days are gone like they never existed at all. Perhaps I’m just getting old, or I’ve always been old. Either way, this game of charades holds little interest. It’s only for those who seek whatever distractions they can to convince themselves they’re more than someone else’s sex toys in a game that’s not theirs to play.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US