The jock conversation

JOCK BOYS

Infrequently I get a nasty itch in the area around my jock, and my preferred way around it? I thoroughly scratch and rub against the area until I am rewarded with a sensation of mild pain, pleasure and relief. Typically this is no different from scratching or rubbing any other area of my skin’s surface that feels irritated or inflamed. The sweet relief and closure, of catering to a real good itch is just priceless.

Nevertheless I wouldn’t be caught dead scratching my privates in public, and by public I mean having anyone around who isn’t clinically bat blind. It wouldn’t matter how intense the itch, I only scratch my member in private. But that’s probably just another of the insecurities in my head playing out ‘cause I have seen a lot of normal folks scratch their down parts right out in public.

So what makes my jock itch? Even sometimes itch so bad I could swear I have been attacked by a colony of ants’ right inside my underpants. Like I said before it doesn’t happen all the time but when it does happen and I ‘m fortunate to have a room all to myself, I take my fingers down to my penis area and scratch-scratch until it starts to feel real good and then I stop, bring my fingers back up to my nose and sniff-sniff and seriously wonder why it smells funny.

I can also swear (to a benign deity) that me running my fingers across my nostrils afterwards is a completely involuntary action as I don’t quite follow my actions through until I smell something funny. At this point the itch stops being such a big deal and I bother instead about the smell. Why does it smell like spit left out to dry on a spot? Compulsively I start to go over my personal hygiene; I remember to bath once a day-twice when it’s really hot, I use an under pant a day- this is one is not so true especially when I’m on the road-and so in the end I may not be the filthiest guy out there.

So why does my jock smell? Who else has a smelly jock? I am asking because I don’t know and I don’t know because no one talks about smelly jocks. Two guys would talk and listen to just about everything except have the conversation about each other’s privates (you see straight men can be the biggest victims of their own homophobia). Well I went along and did some research and I am told pheromones, sweat, and good bacteria (some bad ones too) and yes good old dirt are responsible for the smell. All of which are as natural and normal as the colour of the human eyes.

Still I struggle to accept the fact that a normal jock has its peculiar smell. Hygiene plays a big part but it would smell for sure. Well I don’t mind that it smells If only it smelt like a lavender grass field, my favourite bath soap or well just like the rest of my skin.

A few other things about my jock upset me. Like I get a little deflated each time I have to groom and rid myself of pubic hair. The whole damn business seems to my mind so backward and prosaic for the 21^st century. All that smart science flying around today should have taken men folk past scooping their testicles in one hand, Gillette blade in another, legs spread apart as we repeatedly struggle to get the job done with minimal self-inflicted injury.

I wonder if my sexual parts are considered a distant second to that of a woman, since it’s the female biology that gets all the care and attention. I also wonder if that’s because their parts smell a lot better or worse than mine to justify all the free press it gets to the near exclusion of all else. Woefully enough, for all the talk about it, I still have no idea how a ladies tushie smells, not ‘cause I don’t want to, I just haven’t been offered any to smell and I think it’s rude to ask, since I am not your everyday perv. But then I have no doubt that that it’s perfectly okay to talk about lady parts. “Vagina monologues” and dialogues are a steady feature of our urban conversation. Pictures and images of the v-jay-jay are high up there in the order of aesthetics and enjoy the acceptance of the average international currency, even if the sight and mention of the penis as we all know remains the height of obscenity and everything vulgar. If this is some kind of reverse discrimination, it’s the most powerful yet.

Is anyone surprised that for centuries now there has been a whole industry catering to women’s intimate femininity and it continues to grow in complexity and variety, offering them so much to take care of where it matters most. Aside the latex condom (with its very notorious reputation) grudgingly introduced sometimes in the late 1940’s, there has been no dedicated product to preen, pamper or gratify the penis.

One very interesting theory holds that the military industrial complex has conspired to halt and reverse the rise of the metrosexual male. However true this may be, I have recently realized that I can at least have the jock conversation with myself and even conscript as many who have been stirred by the love for their jock to do likewise.

Crazy Musings

THE LAST DAYS OF COMMON SENSE

Beside the fact that its unrepentantly common place, plentiful and by implication of a diminished value–which is Just as it should be–common sense is of little or no use to mankind in today’s world.

Common sense, AKA conventional wisdom, AKA popular opinion should however not completely be ridiculed or scoffed at, having previously served humanity so dutifully and extensively, but I say it’s perfectly okay if it be thrown out to the dogs or the Bonobo Monkey or to zombies. And no, not ‘thrown out’ to be discarded like a woman’s monthly rag, used and fetid with our noses turned up, but graciously bequeathed or handed down -with or without a dose of condescension to any of our closest quad pedal kin who I expect should find it extremely useful in the interim.

Common sense probably had its first very public humiliation when huge ships made with all kind of metals stayed afloat on water instead of dutifully sinking as expected. It was thereafter thrown under the bus, but then somehow managed to survive, when the wright brothers went up the sky and did not instantly fall to the ground. Common sense then finally lost all of its respect, in the first quarter of the twentieth century when folks began to question everything and anything with extremely irritating fervour, sometimes just for the hell of it. Nothing was spared this intrusion. It sometimes became quite nasty and distasteful but they got away with most of it, in effect providing plenty of interesting results, overturning time honoured logic on its head and forever upsetting several established orders.

Today, Several decades later, common sense has remained with us and has quite strangely continued to thrive amongst the offspring of the Wright brothers, Charles Barbage and Nikola Tesla the relationship though has not been without some disruptive patterns and even complete disaffection. Such that despite stinking up our noses every now and again, grumpy old common sense continues to live with us, just because it gave us so many of our most treasured intangibles, like language, culture, art and of course our beloved religions and everything else that comes with it, especially peace and progress.

But I say again, common sense should be thrown out once and for all. In its place we can easily embrace “nonsense”, which is certainly a lot less pretentious and patronizing as its predecessor. For common sense, where ever and when ever it is used, is anything but common – its frontiers to this day remain rigidly defined and closely guarded by a mafia like cabal.

The future reign of nonsense, AKA thinking outside the box, AKA paradigm shift, promises to hold out its arms to all. Every idea would be welcome to the party if it’s comfortable with dancing or sharing the floor with a big question mark.

When you are upwardly mobile

THOSE WHO TRAVEL
Traveling is the hallmark of the upwardly mobile. This is easy to appreciate as you simply can’t travel if you are not mobile. Yeah correct, but this is not exactly true, as not all who travel are mobile or moving upwardly. In truth you don’t always need to own a car or be successful to do some traveling. Commercial traveling services come in handy in this regard. It is an often used option by both the haves and the have not’s. It’s the perfect option for those who can’t drive, don’t own a car, or simply can’t find the way by themselves.
Commercial travel, especially by road has really come a long way in Nigeria and no I don’t mean the condition of the roads which have gone from bad to worse but the quality of the vehicles available for use. We have gone a full 180 degrees from the punishing slow mammy wagons of the Sir Louis Ojukwu era to the relative luxury of fast moving air conditioned MarcoPolo’s and Toyota Hiace buses that tempt many a driver to take to the sky.
Either by road or air, constant junketing is supposed to be the feature lifestyle of the rich and successful; business moguls, CEOs, celebrity artistes, top politicians, and everyone in between. And for the rest of us, we really just can’t help feeling successful and progressive every time we make that odd trip out of town now and again. The feeling, for those who have experienced it, is a good one, strong and contagious, it soon as has everyone living up to it (even if momentarily) just like we have seen the rich and successful do.
At the motor parks-as the larger majority who do their travelling by road can testify-the mood is unmistakable, the vibrant bustle of life, vivid and hopeful is shared (however unequally) by everyone. Well-dressed passengers, sometimes accompanied by friends and/or family get busy with travel arrangements and last minute preparations all of it accompanied by a fair amount of bargaining over price and hankering over sitting arrangements.
By size Nigeria is a large country and a journey by road is only significant if you travel a couple hundred kilometers crossing through several states and lasting an average of five hours. This is obviously a very long time for anyone to remain glued to a seat. Every experienced traveler puts this into consideration and comes prepared for it one way or the other. Some travelers make a point to board the vehicles with empty stomachs so they don’t have to worry about emptying their bowels in the middle of the journey. Womenfolk seem to be strong adherents of this rule and a number of them can be found scurrying around like rodents seeking for a spot to pee one last time just before takeoff. It’s sometimes the last chance to answer nature’s call as some drivers never make any stop over’s in the course of the journey.
At the other end of the spectrum however are those travelers who board the vehicles with their bellies stuffed to the tip and forever remain on the lookout for something to eat as the journey progresses, believing that there is nothing worse than being stuck for hours in a fast moving metal cage with nothing to eat and drink. In the end they are inconsolable if the driver doesn’t think it necessary to stop over at a restaurant. On some occasions they get a chance to hit back at the stubborn drivers if he runs out of fuel and turns into a petrol station. Here they waste no time in scampering out of the vehicle in search of something to eat and drink. However following closely on their heels are the avoid-eating-while-you-travel passengers seeking for the best spot to void their overactive bowels.
In the absence of our aperiodic fuel shortages, such stop over’s at petrol stations are usually short and sharp. The driver angered by the behavior of his ill-mannered and delinquent passengers blasts his horn, revs his engine severely, threatening to leave behind whoever delays any further. The accompanying moments are a frenzied exchange of items between hawkers and passengers, passengers and drivers. In the midst of these many an experienced traveler would never forgo the ritual of buying souvenirs for loved ones as the intensity of welcome on arrival is relative to the size of the package in hand.
But the drivers are human too and when the journey is really long no one needs to urge them before they pull out of the highway and head not into a typical road side restaurant but into one of the mushrooming high end eateries that are becoming a growing middleclass culture. Usually these places have a pact with the driver that guarantees him free meals in exchange for a bus full of hungry and weary passengers. In some of those eateries’ a plate of food sells for #1,500 or more. Which is by all means way, way above the average in a nation with its’ minimum wage set at #18,000.

Thank you Abdulmuttalab

OUR TIME TO SHINE
The story of Umar Farouk Abdulmutalab had been a good four days old before it reached my ears and even then the details I got were sketchy and incomplete which effectively made my ears itch for more. Somehow in the middle of the Christmas revelry, I had been totally left behind in the trend of events. In the end I had the feeling of having lost out in the never ending chase to be the “first to know” for me it was a painful defeat, too difficult to accept. I could even taste a growing bitterness in my guts.
The scraps of news that initially got to me did not quite tell the story as vividly as it deserved but it was clear that at the Centre of it was a Nigerian man who had gotten America to stand still, even if momentarily. The man in question, Abdulmutalab and I were age mates and I just had to envy his new status of worldwide fame and recognition, so my animosity towards the story could only grow worse and it did.
I thereafter determined to contain my appetite and not show too much interest in what must be the juiciest story of year since Obama’s inauguration. A week after when at last I was content that I had shown enough outward disdain for the hottest story in town. I grabbed the remote control and switched channels to the, you guessed it, CNN. When it came to narrating bad news, no one could do it any better.
Farouk’s story still dominated most of the reports and I listened for several minutes after which three major details stood out:
1). A young black man named Farouk had travelled to America- the land of the free. He had previously even been to Britain and a number of other countries. This for me was a part fulfilment of the dream of every young Nigerian. I just had to envy this guy.
2). while in America he had dutifully paid for a plane ticket and he boarded a local flight from the airport in Detroit. This I believe was the wise thing to do for anyone who had the money and wanted to avoid the infamous holiday traffic which had been made worse by a very bad winter.
3). On that flight, Farouk had with him a small package containing potentially explosive materials. What did he need it for? My guess is, in the spirit of the yuletide he had probably meant to treat his co-passengers to a magnificent display of fireworks in mid-flight.Howplayful of him
It turned out all of the passengers didn’t like his prank. I think Farouk should have warned them a little earlier. And then didn’t Farouk realize that if the firework display went out of control the explosives could seriously hurt himself and several co-passengers, or worse spell doom for more than a few citizens on the ground below. And then come to think of it, could that be what Farouk actually meant to do? Spell doom for several American citizens? Well as I continued to listen, the news actually went on to say just that. It declared young Abdulmutalab a bad guy who had meant to blow up himself and the rest of the plane. He was subsequently pronounced a terrorist, and an extremist with suspected links to Al-Qaida. Once America had said this, the rest of the world promptly gathered to pour condemnation on Abdulmutalab’s action. Nigeria Farouk’s home nation which liked to copy and copy wrongly quickly joined in the condemnations, rushing out with a strongly worded official press statement denouncing Abdulmutalab and denying Nigeria’s involvement in his actions.
This was however too late our country could not with mere words erase the connection between Farouk and his motherland. It is clear to everyone now that our government officials should have first considered the matter deeply before gushing and when eventually they choose to break their silence they should have talked tough. Loud and tough. In anycase all of our placatory press statements did not stop America from considering Nigeria a security threat.
Information minister in her press statement should have said; yes Abdulmutalab is a terrorist, born of Nigerian parents who are also terrorists. The nation is proud of him and we have our reasons. Cryptic talk of that kind is what I wish she closed her address with, it was sure to generate unprecedented interest in Nigerian affairs from all around the world.
To my mind, denouncing Abdulmutalab like we did was like throwing away a golden moment in time. Never before had Nigeria attracted so much international attention as it did after Umar Farouk’s failed terror attempt. Not even our double gold in the Atlanta 1996 Olympics could get the whole world talking about us all at once. Typically Nigerian social commentators are quick to describe any news making event or persons with Nigerian connections however remote as “bringing glory to the country” so that anything from the inconsequential and sporadic flashes of brilliance by Nigerian born performers especially sport persons and artistes, to the genius of a sprinkling of professionals in the diaspora is lumped up as bringing glory to the country. However no one person had brought as much international attention or glory if you like as Mr. Abdulmutalab.
And who says we as a country would be shooting ourselves in the foot by hailing Abdulmutalab’s actions–ruining our prospects of attracting foreign investments, free spending tourists or international aid. On the contrary our new status as a country that supports terrorism would jump start the number of Oyinbos begging to visit Nigeria and here is how.
To begin, our airports will be flooded by the pressmen and crew of every major news station from around the world seeking for exclusive interviews or breaking news item. This shall closely be followed by along list of international and regional peace negotiators recognized and unknown, UN delegates and their blue beret officers, busy bodies, Oxfam reps, UNICEF, foreign affair analysts, diplomats and then more pressmen. The sheer amount of visiting journalists hanging around and praying for the worst to happen so they can report somethingwould more than make up for any foreseeable short fall in foreign earnings.
Every one of them reporters UN delegates and all would have to lodge in hotels, use taxi cabs, eat, drink, and fornicate, all things “tourist like” they would probably even buy souvenirs’. Bringing untold amounts of the much needed American dollar. The truth is war tourism is an emerging branch of the global travel business that we cannot afford to ignore.
The beauty of it is that all of these would come to be without Nigeria wasting a kobo in the name of hosting some international nondescript sporting event or the other that always fails to hold the interest of Nigerian and foreigners alike. By pretending to be a terrorist nation, we would enjoy the status and respect accorded to an oil rich nation at war with America (think Iran) and still sit back and relax with the confidence that we would not wake up one morning to the sound of nuclear bombs dropping overhead courtesy of the almighty America because our bluff would be similar to the thrusting of an index finger into another’s face by an aggressive co-wife before the commencement of a big fight. The rule state that; her mate, no matter how strong can only reply with only a more vigorous thrusting and wait until the aggressor throws the first real slap. Which in our case, we shall forever deny America. And thus we shall remain at peace with ourselves, secured, happy and enjoying the new prosperity of war tourism.
As it turned out a few days after Farouk’s incident the story took on a new twist. American intelligence officers had come up with what in their opinion is the list of terrorist and Para-terrorist nations. Nigeria unsurprisingly was on that list. This announcement was immediately followed by several protests and appeals from the Nigerian people and government calling for a removal of our name from the dreaded list. All of the snivelling and grovelling were so unnecessary as it again failed to yield any results.
Instead of whimpering like babies we should have reacted like a sensible independent nation state. What does it to come up with a list? Our own list. They put us on a list we put them on a list. With certain differences though. To start with ours shall be a secret but purposeless list of any ten countries with America at the top of it. The other nine countries would however remain top secret. The title and purpose of the list would likewise remain undisclosed. This sort of move is bound to generate untold excitement amongst world leaders and the international community.
We remember how bitter our sitting president felt about being snubbed by G-20 summit. This was our chance to get back at them. Leaders of almost industrialized nations would be nervously coming around to seek private audience with our president, to ask the dreaded question “is my country on your list?” and all of them would have to join a long waiting list to see the ailing Baba-go-slow.
Putting the US in our so called secret list would certainly push them into overdrive and keep them preoccupied and obsessed about Nigeria thus increasing our international popularity. America’s dirty habit of paying too much attention to the flimsy affairs of other nation has always been to its own detriment. This has been used to great advantage by Cuba and Vietnam in the past and presently by Iran and North Korea.
Now you may begin t wonder why then has the Nigerian people and government have collectively decided to abandon Abdulmutalab to American G.Is, well for one the gains to be derived from supporting his actions are not immediate and patience is not one of our strong points around here, thus we consider only the short term effects of Abdulmutalab’s actions which have already made it difficult for us to procure visas or easily get past airport security. It has probably made a few in the diasporaunemployable in security sensitive organizations. Abdulmutalab’s actions no doubt has brought great distress upon us all but I think the most unforgiveable part of all these is that he very nearly exploded the myth that it is typically un-Nigerian to dream, like really big dreams, plan and execute them, thus causing our government great embarrassment in the process.
Now how is the government going to explain why it can’t think of a creative approach to solving the power issue and reaching 6000mw remains a pipe dream, or why the ASUU issue has never really been resolved in the real sense. And for the citizens how would they explain how they came to be stuck with such bad government, and then personally how was I going to explain the fact that I never get to finish my writing on schedule. Abdulmutalab has exposed us all and it would be hard to forgive him. We don’t forget that way.