Trigger Warning

OK, It seems that I officially have a 'Trigger'

I think that's the right word - I've been seeing the phrase 'Trigger Warning' used to label blogs and suchlike that have things like traumatic scenes or violence towards animals, children, women, the dispossessed, the poor, the huddled masses, immigrants - Any sort of 'group' really being portrayed as a victim for one reason or another that can cause feelings of anger or trauma in the reader. Maybe it's because of something you yourself went through, or someone close to you, or someone you've read about... Even if it's someone that doesn't exist and you've made them up in your head just so you can hang your righteous indignation on them like the last coathook at choir practice, doesn't matter, they're all valid: trigger.

Seems simple enough - You read something that gets your goat - you don't like it - you sound off about it and feel much better. It doesn't matter who you upset, you feel better and that's all that matters.

Except, no, it's actually not. It's not OK to spazz out and direct some stream of vilifying bollocks at someone who was simply voicing their opinion just because they used a word that you didn't like (Yes I'm oversimplifying it intentionally, I do that, do try and keep up) They didn't know... And to a point, it's not their problem. Maybe they've had a really crappy day, maybe something's happened to them recently and everything fell into place and it became obvious to them that it was [insert thing that happens to be your trigger]'s fault.

Who's fault is it?

Well, no-one's actually - maybe at the outside it could be argued that it's yours for being 'triggerable' I don't know, that seems unkind when you think about it - But life's often like that isn't it? We all like to think that we're special little snowflakes, all touched by the hand of the maker, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. But we're really not - We're each about 2lbs (1Kg) of pinky-grey snot in a bone-box being carried around in a meat-suit controlled by a frankly unbelievable set of low-voltage electrical impulses that has no reason or right to work at all.

And yet we're still upset by The Daily Mail?

Before this veers off into the long, dry grass of existentialism, let's steer it back on the road towards something much more interesting and valid:

Me...

Because it was me that we were talking about - And this is still my Blog. What is my trigger you ask? Well, you probably don't ask, you've probably wandered off to catch a Pokemon and walked into a tree by now, but let's imagine someone is still listening.. reading... whatever... My trigger is 'Men'

Not 'men', the male of the species, owners of 'outie' reproductive organs, hunters, gatherers, wearers of polished shoes and tight, white, briefs and beard growers. But 'Men' with the horns and the pitchforks and the having everything that they do given to them on a platter, the ones who are threateningly tall, or scarily muscled or malevolently tattooed or in positions of power that have been provided solely so that they can look down upon everyone that isn't them and laugh and laugh and laugh, the obvious pedophiles, the members of 'clubs' that have ties.

You know, the ones that are usually stuck at the end of a sentence like, 'But that wouldn't have happened if I was a man. You get me?'

Men are the root of a lot of the world's evils, I'm not denying that in the slightest, significantly more rapists and murderers and despots and pedophiles and terrorists are men than are women in this day and age - I'm totally fine with that... Wait, no, I'm not totally fine with that in the slightest, it's a terrible thing to have to say about your own gender - But I'm fine with people saying it - because, ostensibly, it's true. If you dig deep enough into 99% of the worlds problems, you'll find an overweight middle-aged bloke pointing and saying 'I did that, comrade.'

I'll pause here to mention that's it's dead easy to say 'But what about Angela Merkel?' or 'I think you're forgetting Magdalena Solis!' but try and bear in mind that I said 'More', and not 'All'... 

And that brings me back around to my actual trigger - It's where the word 'Men' is taken to convey 'All men', whether it's meant that way or not. You can infer from what is said that the speaker, or the writer or whatever means that Men are murderers, Men are pedophiles, Men surf through their lives on a magical silver serving dish being permanently fellated by innumerable slaves whilst ignoring the more widespread female burden.

And I'm sure that some are, and I'm sure that some do...

But not all.

It's never all.

As the Superhero said to the Stripper

I must stop using the phrase Super-Hero, as we established a few weeks ago, my made-up superpower - The ability to stop time - can only be used for evil, at least, as far as I can think of things to do with it.

Technically, I'm a Super-Villain, and as my Daughter reminded me, Villains get the best clothes.

So the time is here, pull up a bat-winged chair, that one over there upholstered in the suspiciously beige leather with the faint tattoos on it should still be warm, top up your skull shaped goblet with 'Claret' and I'll tell you the story of the origin of The Chimping Dandy.

Our story begins in the small West-Midlands hamlet of Birmingham, in a bar - as all the best stories do, I mean, I've yet to be enthralled by a story that begins 'The best thing about where we were was that there was free beetroot'. There were a number of us, and we were approaching that stage of drunken-ness just before the 'Hold my beer and watch this' casualty-fest.

It was a stag night, so it wasn't going to end well, we had no illusions about that - In fact, one of the guests was the bride to be's ex-husband - And was, after a number of drinks 'Loaded for bear'. The sensible thing to have done at this point would have been to go somewhere and get a meal, so that we could sit down for a while, get our breath back, sober up slightly, and line our stomachs with unfeasibly spicey food. What we actually did was to find another bar, and have another drink. We repeated this downwards spiral a number of times up (and then back down) Broad Street.

Then someone uttered the magic question 'is it Naked Lady Time?' In fairness, this had always been a planned part of the evening, to the point where the groom to be, had been stitched up like a kipper by his fiancee in that she had pre-arranged for him to be man-handled (well, woman-handled) by a selection of young(ish) ladies on the stage, on a throne, with shaving cream.

After a final beer, we adjourned to either The Rocket Club, or Legs Eleven - I forget which, and for the purposes of this story, it matters not - Both of them are establishments where semi-pulchritudinous ladies will remove 95% of their clothes for a small monetary consideration. For those who have never been to one of these establishments (or those that have told their partners this at least) I will describe the scene. The main area was a large, darkened room, decorated in early 'Poundshop Transvestite Christmas'. There was a central stage area, populated by a single chair, complete with handcuffs. This in turn was surrounded by a selection of booths with banquette seating for ten or so people each.

There were three types of people in the room:

Punters - Men (almost exclusively) who had come to prove their superiority over women by remaining clothed whilst the women got naked.

Strippers - Girls who had come to prove their superiority over men, by charging them £10 to watch them get slowly undressed over a three minute period.

Security - Huge (and I can't state that enough) gentlemen, usually of afro-carribean descent, who's aim in life was simply to enforce the rule that the punters and the strippers never got closer than 2" away from each other.

Like so many of my stories, some description of the clothing worn by the group may assist in your suspension of disbelief. The brief had been 'Smart to smart-casual' mainly to enable us to enter any of the myriad drinking establishments with a minimum of fuss. I had bought a new suit for the occasion, and it was silver - Now, I don't mean that it was shiney silk, at the time I was neither that rich, nor mental enough to believe a silk suit would survive the evening, no - it was made of finest rayon/polyester mix, jaquard printed to look like the sort of pattern you see under a leaky car on a rainy day. Yes, it was about 300% more vulgar than you're currently thinking that it was.

Anyway, the evening progressed much as you would expect, every few minutes a young lady would wander into our booth and say 'Dance?' Now, nine times out of ten, one of the other guys would say 'Yes' and gyrating would ensue. I am not saying that I didn't say yes myself because I was some kind of saint, or that I felt guilty to be looking at another naked lady whilst I had a wife waiting for me at home, it was purely because watching the guy next to me get a dance was free.

Now, this seemingly hadn't gone un-noticed by some members of staff and I was approached by what I can only assume, was one of the 'senior' girls - I'd seen a couple of the other girls talking to her and pointing at our group and she had seemed to have been offering advice to them.

"Hello," she said and sat down next to me.

"Hey!" I replied, in what I hoped was an off-hand, but inoffensive way.

"Don't we have anyone you like the look of?"

"Ah!, no, I see, Maybe later, I'm still making notes."

"Notes?"

I looked around furtively, hushed my voice and said, "Look, don't tell anyone, but we're doing research for a new show on Bravo" (For those unaware, Bravo was a channel that produced 'lads' programming - it's now mutated into Dave, which just shows Top Gear repeats)

"A new show? What's it about?"

"Well, we're going to visit various strip clubs around the country, but we're going to be filming an anchor segment from one place, like a base, every week, we're still trying to decide where to use"

"Oh, I did wonder." She replied, looking me up and down.

"What did you wonder?"

"Well, we don't get many people in here dressed like that - We figured that you were 'somebody', but none of the girls recognised you. Would you be filming the girls too?"

"Well, that would be up to the management, obviously, but I was wanting to include a couple in the title sequence, we'd have to see how it went. We'd have to audition obviously"

The young lady then stood up, and without monetary assistance, proceeded to audition, for two songs. She then sat down, waved at one of the security staff and mouthed the words 'On my break' to him. He nodded with the slow surety of a Norwegian glacier and continued scanning the room for distance infractions - A drink appeared on the table in front of her, and seeing my rasied eyebrows she said;

"Don't worry, it's already paid for. You must have seen some stuff"

"Sorry?"

"Doing programs like that, is it all the same kind of 'adult' shows?"

"Yeah, mainly... Swinging, Dogging, Chimping, that kind of thing."

"Chimping? I've never heard of that. Do I want to know?"

I leaned in close, keeping the regulation 2" distance of course, and explained it to her. The look of revulsion on her face started a change in me at the subatomic level, I could feel my time-bending abilities throbbing into life, I felt empowered, and I knew that things would never be the same again.

By proving to a jaded stripper, that there were still things in this world that could disgust even her, I had become...

The Chimping Dandy!