Le Cock: My Struggle.

I’m reading ‘The International Literary Phenomenon’, Some Rain Must Fall: My Struggle, Book 5, by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Cliché after cliché so it would be fair to say, even though he’s an international literary phenomenon, I’m not a fan. His girlfriend is always beaming when she smiles, sometimes her body beams, but that’s not a cliché, just repetitive. But I try to be fair. Obviously, there’s an element of jealousy that someone so mediocre could become so successful. Let me explain, and give an example, Karl Ove is nineteen and he decides that now is finally the time. He has bought some ‘artistic’ book and is now going to go to the toilet and have a wank, at the Writer’s School he attends. ‘Liar, Liar, Pants on fire,’ I found myself saying. No I didn’t. I just made that up, because it sounded good.  Nineteen. Fuck off. But in the interest of veracity and fairness I interviewed my own cock.

            This isn’t as easy as it sound. My cock and I have had our ups and downs. A trial separation. Then my cock moved to Biarritz, ostensibly for the surfing and the pounding waves. We talked on the phone, but he insisted upon being called Le Cock, which I found ridiculous, but he always did have a mind of his own. I rarely see him for long now. He can be moody and withdrawn and retreat into his own shell. Biarritz has a wild coastline and is built precariously on that type of rock nobody remembers the name of and looks as if it might tip into the sea at any moment, but is rock solid. A faded version of genteel grandeur, summers for the wealthy and the parasitical European aristocracy, it’s just the sort of place where my cock would set up home. In the belle époque of camper vans and shoeless surfers with Hermes bags, my cock sported a slanting beret on his head, and held court.

            ‘I’ve had a bit of a hard time,’ says my cock, ‘been down on my luck’. His eye looks me right in the eyes. I order for both of us from the set menu and we have crabs for lunch. The waiter obviously knows Le Cock quite well and says a word or two to him in that nasal French twang.  

‘That’s a cliché,’ I say to the waiter, even though I don’t speak a word of French, which is another cliché. I’m half way to writing an international bestseller.

            It’s a bit of an oxymoron, an intelligent cock, or even Le Cock, especially since I don’t know what oxymoron means, but it is true that my cock has lacked the higher education and the finer things in life. But Le Cock had devoted so much of his youth to wanking that he had little time for anything else.  He managed to motivate and inspire in equal measure, and at one time it looked as if Le Cock was going to make it and become a professional wanker.  I put it to him that Knausgaard was not a wanker but a liar.

            ‘Oui, Oui’ say Le Cock. ‘Only a pervert would start wanking at nineteen.’

            ‘Aye,’ I say.  ‘If my memory is as good as Knausgaard you started wanking quite young.’

            ‘Well,’ says Le Cock, perking up a bit, ‘if Malcolm Gladwell is right you’ve got to put the hours in. 10 000 hours sitting in the toilet. About 200 000 hours waiting to get into the toilet. Then, of course, there was none of this internet. The best you could hope for was a picture of a hairy fanny that you’d found waterlogged outside in a skip. Penthouse and Playboy. Those were the boys. All natural stuff. None of this artificial stuff downloaded straight into your eyeballs. We had to work at it. Sex education was a picture of an egg. Fuck off. Who’d want to have a wank looking at a picture of an egg?’

            Le Cock gets upset and his attention span dwindles. He starts eyeing a wee blonde thing sitting at the next table eating some kind of seafood that looks and smells vinegary and awful. You can see her tanned breasts, if you look closely, as Le Cock does.

            ‘What are you looking at?’ I say, trying to get the rise out of him.   

            ‘Fuck off,’ he says. ‘If it wasn’t for your God being everywhere, always following us about, peeking in and seeing what we were up to, we could have got on just fine. You wanted to get married when you were eleven so you could feel Ann Gallagher’s tit and not feel guilty. You blew it.’   

            ‘I wouldn’t put it that way, because it’s ambiguous.’

            ‘Scared yer a poof, yah wanker. Let’s face it, you used me,’ says Le Cock. ‘Yeh, couldnae get up on the dance floor without me and a good bead in yeh. Yer all bent out of shape.’

            ‘Look, we could get back together, reconciliation?’   

      Le Cock spits as he laughs. ‘Fuck off, yer too old. Even with Viagra. I’m looking for someone younger, someone with a bit more hands-on experience. Someone with a bit of oomph.’

‘Yer right, as always,’ I say. ‘What about this Knausgaard? The International Literary Phenomenon.’

‘Who’s that? Och, he’s a fucking wanker. Takes one to know one, and I should know.’

Le Cock always has the last word.