Man. Aged 13, 21, 33, 45, 50, 65, 82, 101. Seeks love. In the form of a woman. Not to perpetuate DNA. Or share romantic weekends in cities that don’t exist. Or mutually affirm our existence by idealizing one another. Nor to coexist in financial servitude. Nor to partner up for the sake of easing the misery. Nor to hope that love will come later. Nor to play verbal ping-pong over nothing. Nor to grow together or complete each other. Nor to negate each other through infantile nay-saying. With that said, hello there.

Man has no prospects. Man has no ambition (beyond writing passable sentences). Man has little sense of responsibility (taxes get paid, nourishing meals get made). Man often groan. For no good reason. Man lucifugous. Man like to explore orifices. Maybe man crave cave?

Man not all useless. Man’s friend J exploits his manly attributes by putting him to work at her summerhouse. Man digs holes, paints walls, mows grass. J rewards man by bringing him food and drink. Man feels good as sweat cascades off him and cracks open beer.

Man very tired. Man’s brain hurts. His eyes ache. From disbelief. Man find people very strange. Man find world baffling, perplexing, mystifying. Man sick and tired of it. Man prefer to watch good film instead. Man can watch anything so long as the flame flickers or the picture moves. Man loves watching moving things.

Man has cock. Obviously man has never put it in a sock. Man has no social media presence. Because it is not the right place for man. Man likes to go to toilet every morning. Man feels like he is seated upon his rightful throne. Man can tell a lot by examining the form and consistency of his stool. Man has a picture of Jesus overlooking his toilet. Man sometimes wonder if picture magically help produce good-quality shit. Man concur with Mircea Eliade that we are all homo religiosus to some extent.

Cock sometimes functions as magic wand by transmogrifying the appearance of women. Man very tired of being shafted by biology. Man seeks emancipation from his fettered state. Man knows this will never happen. Man too lazy to transcend himself through meditation. Instead man resorts to self-medication. Man shoddy product of post-industrial Western civilization. Worse: man Made in Britain.

Man seeks love in form of woman. Man not picky. On second thoughts, man is pathologically critical. Man wants woman who embodies all women. Man is living in la-la-land.

Man first fell in love at the age of eight. Man was precocious that way. Man has been bewitched at supermarket checkouts, entranced on public transport, smitten in hospitals. But much time has passed and man has haemorrhaged belief.

Man still believes love is the only way to be better: to overcome ourselves. But man no longer believes in spatial metaphors unless they include the word ‘down’. Man is frustrated by people’s fragmentedness. Man likes people who can emotionally and intellectually embody a good dictionary. Man likes people who verbally go all the way. Man thinks that about sums it up.

Man will go about his day now. The highlight of which will be his weekly trip to the supermarket. Man will encounter many women during his quest to get the provisions in. Many of the women will be superficially attractive and accoutred in clothes that knowingly tell a story, the gist of which is “I am successful in my life.” Man finds such stories dull and dead-end.

Man go now (man never was good at saying goodbye). It is lightly snowing outside. Man likes snow. The way it obliterates difference. The way it fleetingly unifies things. Snow was the backdrop to when man fell in love many years ago. It feels like something out of a Goethe novel now but it was one of the most beautiful experiences of man’s life. Man is proud of that love. It persists to this day, albeit in the diluted form of long-distance friendship. Most loves are internecine: they end up refuting themselves. Man finds that tragic and revealing. Man shut up now.