Carcass

Loser seeks super model (w/ slight self esteem issues). Must have own car. No time wasters, please.

And that’s how it started. That awkwardly phrased, questionably arch, classified ad. In a real newspaper - made of paper that people actually sought out and held in their hands and read. This quaint analogue dinosaur used to be a weekly occurence in the predigital age.

Things were slower then. You would ring up and place your ad - each word cost more money - and wait for it to come out in print a week later. A week of sniggering and smiling with anticipation.

It was Gary’s idea. Gary - the guy who couldn’t tell you a story without snorting with laughter and ruining the telling. The guy who was so desperate to make his mark on the world (whatever the fuck that means scoffed one of the deathmetal, philosophy guys) that he would humiliate himself at every turn. Also known as Dragonspear, he was the one of the group who lived in this joint that we had conned our way into. Rents were cheaper back then. Not that they paid it very often. The landlord made more money selling them speed and blackmarket veterinary medicine, usually for horses.

There were, I don’t know, six or seven at the core of whatever the fuck this place was and about thirty hangers on. Everyone had nicknames like they were in some kind of crack squad or Viking-fantasy-wank film. Names like The AlChemist, Flaxon, Dr X, Meatmarket, Hack, SexHammer, WingLord and Trident. Frank’s nickname kept changing as he had no commitment to anything. He just kinda flip flopped and looked lost which attracted a certain type of I-can-save-you chick. Yeah, whatever. So at various times he was Flipflop, Never-say-no, Frankenstool, Wang, Easy and Pillow Boy. Like, who cares, right?

He did. They all did. They all cared too much - no matter what kind of louche pose they adopted. Every nickname was a defence against the rest off the world,, like it was a verbal superhero costume. And they had no way of knowing that this - this time - was as good as it was ever going to get. But that’s the same with everyone, right?

These clowns weren’t a crack squad of anything. Apart from Meatmarket’s bum-crack, which was on show pretty much 24/7. They played Dungeons and Dragons and The Cone-alympics (a seriously dangerous bong-hit game that put both The AlChemist and Hack in hospital). They were so soft-core that everyone - and I mean every single one of them - wanted to be The Iceman until they outlawed it as it caused too many house meetings. Plus, when Hector mentioned that The Iceman was basically as gay as fruit punch, everybody lost interest.

Hector was the only one without a nickname. He didn’t want one and he certainly didn’t need one. He had body hair, and a fuck-off thousand yard stare. He acted like he didn’t give a shit and the chicks loved it. Everyone in the house admired him and hated him at the same time.

But it’s not like they were living in a house. It was actually an old butchers shop. The chief appeal being that they could hose that fucker out once a week. Just push everything to the front and hose down the tiles. Easy! Disgusting! Funny! (Funny and easy always trumps disgusting)

The ironic thing is that many years later, their residence was turned into a hipster joint serving pulled pork and shots - dressed up as a butcher shop. And every night they would hose it out. It was such an acid flashback. Crazy, right?

Anyhoo, it had tiles and metal hooks and metal benches. Which made it ideal for parties. So simple. Just get in some slabs of beer a few bottles of El Toro (the cheapest tequila in the world), a few pizzas, some disco biscuits and a tray of The Chemist’s home made acid. Turn on the mirror ball and the purple light. Pump up Born Slippy and they were fucking set.

Except for the fact that they had no women. Well, there was the emo chick who was so fragile and brittle that nobody dared to mess with her. There were other women hanging around at odd times, but none they knew how to “connect” with (”Connect” being a euphemism for unlocking the code that delivers wet panties and gasping wanton lust. It all looked like Cantonese to us - except for Flaxon who was Cantonese). They were usually earnest, angry feminists or hot-button pro-lifers with bigger hard-ons than the boys had. They had so much energy for arguing and little appetite for play.

There was a time when the lads seemed to be doing okay, chickwise. And that time was with the Fibonacci Sisters.

They weren’t sisters (they were cousins) and their names definitely weren’t Fibonacci. It was some unpronouncable Sicilian concoction and they were supposedly majoring in some kind of mathematics degree (they never went to lectures, they never passed, sucks to be them). Some wise acre concocted the name for them.

They were fun to be around. They were always carrying some pouch of a new party drug, a garb-bag of filthy jokes and an appetite for dancing. And they were hot. Not so-so, settle-for-anything, geek hot. But proper hot. Brown, creamy skin. Athletic thighs. Jelly mould tits. Lips like jumping castles. A double-trouble hubba-hubba package of juiciness that left a trail of this undescribable musky scent. It smelt like musk, and honey, and skin, and how-you-would-imagine-a-harem-to-smell, and sex and the beach and… Oh Christ!

What the fuck - I hear you thinking - were they hanging round a bunch of gormless tools for?

They were smart. They were sapiosexual. They had had enough of knuckleheads. They also loved to write - and read - poetry. Which meant, being the suckers that they were, they got to listen to a lot of shit poetry. And so they did. Weeks and weeks of crap pronouncements such as;

“My reflection is only an amalgamation of my own pain”

“To be loved is to build a sand castle of dreams on the beach of your soul”

Frank and co stupidly thought that they would get some kind of credit for listening to this crud. Smart guys, eh?

One day they realized that they had been had. They were the “nice guys”. The friends. The good old reliable pals. Those lovely titles that emasculate men and offer no hope of anything but the sad-smile of friendship.

The Fibonnacci Sisters went off with the orange-skinned, muscle-bound, humourless thunder fuck named Micky. The boys put in all the hard work, the jokes, the listening to their shit poetry. Being empathetic. Being all-round NICE GUYS. While the sisters were secretly getting it from this steaming cockmunch with his hot car,white pants and backwards cap and probably his mammoth firehose cock - riotously rich with angry purple veins.

For months afterward, they would get stoned and torture themselves thinking about Micky’s draft-stopper cock and our two lust objects.

Have I painted an appropriately sad-sack picture here?

Anyhoo, the house was having a kind of pre, warm up, before the main event party. After all, the next day it would be 2000 and Y2K was going to wipe everything out. Which could be a bummer on the night - what with all the fireworks exploding into the freefalling planes, buildings imploding, pacemakers corrupting, and a whole lot of cyber chaos. The geeks were so gleefully sure of impending doom that they were having a precautionary test party. had

Which is where the classified ad came in. They were all trying different things to get the chicks in and none of them were working that much. In the past, Frank and co had hosted feminist work shops, or provided “safe” places for people to emote, or put out cheese platters to attract women. “Cheese is like heroin to women,” said Jizz in a rarer moment of clarity.

Dragonspear came up with the idea for the ad. Which was, quite frankly, a huge surprise for everybody since he was clearly on the spectrum and was as autistic as fuck. But something about the Micky experience had set off something in his highly intelligent noggin. Everyone were arguing about the desperate lack of femininity when he stood up and said, “clearly, we have been trying too hard. We have to wear the disconnected aura of the louche”.

And with that, he crafted the ad. There was much merriment amongst the wizards and lords for days. Until two days after the paper came out, there was a knock at the door.

When I opened it, a woman - a real soft, slightly vulnerable, slightly mocking woman - stepped into the bong smoke.

It was Barbara… and she smelt way better than the Fibonaccci Sisters.

One of the crack squad snorted like he’d been punched in his fast food pillow of a stomach.