The Lair

People generally like mementoes of places that they visit. It’s true. A generation earlier, this memento would have taken the form of some ghastly ceramic ornament to adorn some glass walled cabinet. Someone I know swears by fridge magnets. Me? I just buy tshirts. Not to pack them up in a drawer and keep them around, of course. I generally buy them and wear them. No, not the drawers, the tshirts. Ostensibly, by the time the tshirt is hacked up and ready to throw away (so my optimistic reasoning goes), it’s time to visit that place again. No, I haven’t revisited most of the places I’ve been, but I can always hope, right?

But I have this friend, whom I shall name Fred. Fred has an even odder idea of mementoes. When he visits these fair shores, our boy Fred buys himself a copy of the Playboy magazine and takes it home. What he does with those magazines once he reaches home is unknown, but I’m desperately trying to dispell the mental imagery of mattresses, hand lotion and tissues from my mind as I type this.

Not that there’s anything wrong with secreting Playboy mags under mattresses and indeed err.. secreting things into tissues, of course. I’m just not sure I want to imagine Fred doing any of that. No offense, Frederick old chap.

The problem with Fred’s most recent visit, however, is that he forgot to buy his Playboy mag. This is (unsurprisingly, perhaps) where I come into the picture. I’d say centerfold but the thoughts of myself in any centerfold isn’t an image I particularly want to imagine either, so I presume this goes in triplicate for the rest of you lot. Right, so picture. Me. Playboy.

“Buy porn”, you’d ask yourself. Assuming you think Hugh Hefner’s publication is pornography, of course. (I don’t, but we’re just splitting some shaven pubic hairs, to be honest. To most people of a certain conservative bent, nekkid wumminz = porn. I’ll go along with this definition for now). The problem for me is that I’m spectacularly ill-prepared for this sort of thing. My faintest memories of conducting an actual pornography related transaction involved my teen years, the basement of some dodgy shopping shopping mall in Borella and some seedy video joint. Nothing before, sheltered innocent that I am. Nothing after. Because you see, the internet happened shortly after and porn started coming into flooding into a cathode ray tube conveniently nearby.

When Fred asked me if I could find the mag for him, none of this reservation showed (I think). Instead, I offered him the fruits of the advancing underground movement in literature. Basically, the Playboy mag (and lots of other fine publications of that ilk, actually) are now scanned into electronic form for downloading – should a punter so choose. I happen to know of places where such electronic stashes can be found, and thus my immediate first step was to offer Fred the issue he desired, in a nice, easy to read PDF form.

Obviously, he politely refused. One of those hidebound (I want to touch it, feel it. I want the smooth glossy smell of … paper) conservatives, this man. He wanted the real deal. The sort that you need to go into magazine stalls for. Oh well. Added complication: he wanted last month’s edition. Because, you know – he was in town last month. And last issue featured the delectable Kim Kardashian. Any newsagent will have it, he said optimistically.

Newsagent? Oh. Where they sell newspapers. Oh, those foldy things made from paper. Right.

So today, I launched myself into a known newsagent. It’s a grocery store/newsagent/off license/heaven knows what else sorta shop. I’ve been in there for a beer run at some point in the not too distant past, I recall.

Browsed the racks of magazines, watched closely by a BigBrotherish CCTV camera. Nutz = check. Mags with random other Page 3 females on covers? Check. Playboy? Hmmm. Apparently not. Oh, right. Nestled next to copies of Linux Format, go figure. Win.
(That’s probably good sales practice, if a tad stereotyped. Everyone knows that those Loonix hippies are basement dwellers in dire need of nekkid wummin pictures, right?).

Wait. January edition. I don’t see Kim on the cover. Damn it.

Quick flip through the stack of Playboy mags. No dice. Damn. So this is going to require conversation. With real people. Aaargh.

Plod over to a counter where an elderly bloke was lounging around twiddling thumbs and generally looking not so busy. I wasn’t feeling upto sidling up and whispering about my need for magazines with pictures of nekkind wumminzes.

“Excuse me. Would you happen to have any Playboy mags from December“.
Silence.
More silence.
At this point, I’m wondering if my accent is indecipherable and if I should switch to Yorkish. (Not that I know how to speak Yorkish, but dropping a few leading consonants and rounding a few vowels here and there has served me well in the past).

“Playboy *mumble* rack o’er thar.” *points with a finger roughly in the direction of Cornwall* (which is more or less in the direction opposite to the mags).

“Umm. yeah. But I actually want the December issue.”

MOAR silence. Apparent aura of puzzlement radiates from the man. I get the impression he wants to scratch his head in puzzlement. Or maybe he’s just indifferent to Fred’s needs and desires, the callous bastard.

“Nowt”

(Ah. Yorkish. I know this one! Not that it took a lot of guessing, anyway) “Oh ok. Thanks very much then”

“Got Nutz?”, he added helpfully as I was turning away.

No. Nutz ain’t gonna gnash it. The search goes on.