I took my date today to the controversial and mainly rubbish Saatchi gallery, to look at controversial and rubbish art-works that would challenge everything we believed and make us aware of just how humdrum our humdrum lives are.
There is actually quite a lot of stuff that isn't too rubbish or even all that controversial in there and it's a good place to go on a date if you want to have a good laugh. And if your date doesn't find some of the stuff funny and tries to be all earnest about it, then you know they are an idiot and so you don't have to see them again. But if they just laugh at everything and refuse to give it a chance and just say "All art is shit" then you also know they are an idiot and you don't have to see them again. Unless you are an idiot as well, in either of these two directions, and match the opinions of your date, in which case you are made for each other and can go off and have idiot children together.
Luckily my date laughed at the funny things, mocked the pretentious things in a witty way and appreciated the things that were actually good.
So we had a nice time.
We were the same kind of idiot.
One of the pieces, by the Chapman brothers is a load of child mannequins, all fused together, with genitals for noses or mouths or in their bodies. Some of the cock nosed children are sucking the cock noses of other cock-nosed children. It's very controversial and mainly rubbish, but with something somehow saving it from just being total rubbish. I commented that probably the worst thing that it would be possible to do when with someone that you didn't know on a first date at the Saatchi Gallery would be to point at the cock-nosed children, sucking each other's cock noses and say, "That's exactly what I am into sexually. People with cock noses sucking each other's cock noses. It's the only way I can get off."
Unless of course your date also happened to be into that, in which case it would mean it was a marriage made in Heaven. And if that was the only way you could get off it would probably be best to be up front about it from the start. It would help stop more embarrassment later on.
And if your date looked really shocked and disgusted you could probably dig your way out of it by saying "Only with other consenting cock-nosed adults though. Not cock-nosed kids. I'm not sick."
I wished I could steal the piece and take it to Hammersmith under the cloak of night and install it where the Pesticle statue is at the moment. That would get people talking. Or maybe buy a house in Drumnadrochit and put it in my front garden. Only shrunk down and in turquoise, with all the genitals replaced with fig leaves.
Actually that would be quite a good controversial and rubbish art work to create. If Mr Saatchi is reading this, if you bung me twenty grand I will knock one up for you.
The best thing in the gallery, which is really worth seeing, is the room which is almost entirely filled with a pool of oil. It is so calm and tranquil and it smells amazing. Only one person is allowed into the room at a time and you are warned that if you put your hands or clothes near the oil then that's your own look-out. It is very tempting to touch it though. In fact part of me wanted to jump in like some kind of Kenneth Williams from off of the end of Carry On Screaming. Afterwards I would have to be cleaned by concerned naturalists, like a seagull that's got caught up in the aftermath of a tanker accident. They would gently clean my matted hair (and feathers) with little brushes and keep me in a special little sanctuary until I had recovered and was able to be released back into the wild.
I didn't tell my date, but in actual fact that is what I am into sexually. That's the only way I can get off. The cock-nose thing had just been my jokey way of testing her. From her reaction I gauged that telling her about my secret wish for her to treat me like a filthy sea-bird would not go down well. So I kept it to myself. One day I will find the lock for my key. But not today.
The room changed your mood and made you think, in a way that some men hanging from a tree with their genitals cut off failed to do, by trying too hard. I especially liked the open door in the corner of the room, which gave the impression that the oil went on through the building. also the windows were not blacked out which meant you could see the world outside as well. Which somehow gave it all an odd perspective. I could have stayed in there for a while.
But later on one of the young attendants in the gallery told me that a doctor had told him that prolonged exposure to the oil (just smelling it, not even jumping into it and shouting "Frying tonight!") could cause cancer and possibly blindness. He wasn't too impressed with that. He wants to work in graphic design and selfishly wants to keep his eyes working. I said to him that I thought that the piece was so great that it was worth the death and blindness of a few attendants. The pleasure that it gives would outweigh the harm that it might cause. He didn't seem to agree.
The philistine.
There was no way I was going to ask him if he wanted to clean oil off my clammy wings.
