Shit Gets Normal


2015-03-16 11.04.54

You’ve seen Hot Fuzz right? If not, go away and watch it because, if nothing else, it’ll give you some insight into my childhood in a very dull rural village. Anyway, one of the allusions in the film is to a moment in Bad Boys II where one of the characters goes, “Shit just got real!” It’s a cool moment that’s made cooler for not having the rest of that car-crash of a film to screw it up (possibly the most painfully bad Will Smith comedy since “The Pursuit of Happyness”). It’s four words that bring home a terrifying, visceral realisation, that whatever mental barriers we normally put in place, sometimes things matter, sometimes things break through this fourth wall to slap you across the face. This isn’t a blog post about that (sorry to tease), this is a post about shit getting normal.

I recently had an old university friend get in touch. We were close once (I may have had teensy bit of a crush at one point) but time, career, relationships and temperament led to us taking rather different paths. He knows that I’m kinky after a rather awkward conversation in a pub and, after not seeing each other for a year or so we’ve been trying to arrange a meet up.
“I can’t do next week, I’m in Berlin for a rope conference” I texted.
“I don’t even want to know what that means.” he replied.

This took me aback rather, not because I thought that deep down he wanted to know, but that in the grand scheme of my kink life, Eurix is, to my mind, pretty vanilla. I mean, yes, ok, it is a week of near constant rope and, yes, alright, some sexy shenanigans have a tendency to happen and, yes, alright, it was at Eurix last year that I first ended up asking myself the question “how many people need to be having sex in a room for it to count as an orgy” but, you now, on the whole it’s pretty tame stuff right. Right?

That’s the real shock moment, not when shit gets real, but when shit gets mundane, when shit gets normal.