Pluck your eyebrows, reduce your calorie intake, choose the more expensive moisturisers, hold in that fart until the elevator empties, let your boss take you out for lunch but wear better shoes and don’t give an inch, download that song your friend said was a good soundtrack for sex, theme your iPhone and leave it on your desk unlocked so people will notice that you are an individual, BOING! an ex-colleague wrote on your wall.
Know what you want before you want it, let your Friday night choice of drink speak for you, you don’t self-tan — you run/swim/hang out at the beach, don’t eat the second sushi roll because you can already feel your stomach pushing against your designer underwear, book in for laser hair removal, but not on Yoga Tuesdays, carry a book of poetry by E. E. Cummings in your gym bag, tell your friends via Facebook that you’re having a good time with so-and-so doing such-and-such and that it’s the best time you’ve ever had on a thingamajig, pout for photos (you might get tagged), keep an incense candle in the bathroom on top of your pile of New Yorkers from the 1990s, have an opinion but be judicious, make plans but keep busy, arrive in a taxi when it matters, make it your business to know something about that thing that’s in right now, if you didn’t do it, you have a friend who’s done it, stay in the radius, is that your reflection in the shop window? BOING! a street poet from Brooklyn added you on Twitter. Remember: when asked about your weekend, your weekend was ‘awesome’, when asked by your hairdresser, it was ‘fucking awesome’; holiday in Bali, but during off-season when there are less ‘plebs’, people do want an update about which flavour of coffee you bought in the transit lounge, keep a motivational quote from the Dalai Lama on a Post-it next to your desk, skip a main meal, strive to live your life better everyday… and pay off your damn credit card bill! You enjoyed that line of coke, but you’ve had better. Did you iron that t-shirt? Find a bucket list and start at the bottom and work sideways until you and everyone else forget that you had a bucket list. That’s a photo of you dancing! When invited to do so, make some moves, but casual like, recommend that band that’s been trending in the last 10 minutes, keep your pubic hair as rolled as a Wimbledon court. Don’t admit eating alone — same goes for movies, shopping, drinking alcohol, trips to the CBD and any activity on any night on the weekend. Whatever it is, you’ve done it before or want to do it, pretend to like sports, it’s easy if you try, poke fun at the guy they poke fun of and remember to floss, remember to floss, at parties be the one who turns the sound dock up to eleven, NEVER arrive on time, big sunnies, big buckles, swipe scroll pinch zoom the next big thing you’ve already heard of, have an exhalation face (tobacco is expensive), aim high, stay low, spend large, you deserve it.
Do all that.
Be a man.
Illustrated Shorts 