Paul Bestwick was no hipster, there was no man bun wound to breaking point on his skull. Icons of metrosexuality he could not abide. He was not the guy in this photo, not at all.
There was an old, love-hate tattoo on his knuckles but the inkmaster was only learning at the time and left the “e” off the “hate”. His tattoo was unique in the western world. Locally he was known as the love-hat man.
That one bad tattoo did not put him off body art, in fact, he had covered so much of his torso, naked he looked fully clothed, which he always found handy for practical jokes.
A friend once ribbed him, “Man, you only need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.” This sort of humor he couldn’t always understand because the friend was just stating fact.
Deep in Paul’s reptilian brain core (evolutionarily speaking) he sometimes wondered if this same friend was putting him down. This thought was quickly snuffed by the memory of the compliment his friend paid him a few days earlier.
Paul, you’re a true renaissance man, buddy, like Mickey Donovan, in Joe Donovan.
Jon Voight plays Mickey Donovan in the series. Paul loved Mickey, so being compared to him, could never be a putdown, not ever.
The friend looked exactly like Louis Theroux: tall, glasses and international in manner. Sometimes, Paul thought he was Louis. Though he was more like a dark Louis, a creepy Louis, even. He gave Paul good advice and that’s what mattered.
Paul’s girl, Mandy worked as a lap-dancer at the nearby Henry’s Love Quotient. It was well-paid employment and left Paul free to pursue his creative interests: Porn and Nascars.
Louis suggested to Paul that he was something of a feminist, by allowing his girl to go out and earn a living, while he stayed at home and tended the house. He first had to carefully explain the difference to Paul between being effeminate and being a feminist.
It may have been something of an exaggeration to say he tended house, but he did move the beer fridge around the back yard on a daily basis to stop the grass dying under it.
Once he got the gist of it's meaning Paul felt a little internal glow at his modernity, as pointed to by Louis, in being both a renaissance man and a feminist.
When Mandy told Paul two lesbian girls had moved in next door, Paul felt an immediate rush of blood to his genitals. His favorite porn site was called “girl on girl”.
Mandy said she’d heard the girls doing it, in their backyard. Paul saw this as an opportunity for a free show, very close to home.
Paul had a little bunghole he could remove in the fence. He waited till he heard the girls’ lusty cries, then invaded their privacy with his voyeur's eyes and, at first, he was aroused but quickly became disturbed.
The dildo frolicking was painful to watch; there was something missing. He replaced the bung hole and left them to it.
He told Louis about his experience, who responded, thoughtfully:
“The secret of male power has always been in his sexual potency. But look at you now; the Dildo’s chopped your balls off.”
Paul didn’t understand all of it, but he did get the part about the chopping. It wasn’t Paul’s way to dig into his own sexual motivation. He left that for men like Louis. Rather for Paul, the answer lay in headphones: if the girls were to threaten his genital mojo potency again, he’d just play Tom Waits, while doing his daily beer fridge moving routine, the pragmatic approach.
