Distasteful

As has been my habit of late, I scootered down to Food For Me on Saturday morning, there to spend an hour or two reading the newspaper and high-end magazines over coffee and croissants. I arrived a little earlier than usual, and thus happened to witness the owners of the porn shop next door opening their establishment.


To get an accurate picture of these proprietors, imagine two centrefold models, one of each gender. Now take away the beauty, glamour, fitness, youth, attitude and attention to personal grooming. They were both middle-aged, morbidly obese, and dressed entirely in shapeless fleece garments. They were about as sexy as Betty Friedan with the flu. And gout.


Frankly, if that's where pornography takes you, please sign me up for some Bible study and pictures of young women wearing more clothes than an arctic explorer.


Later in the morning I was browsing in a junk shop. I mentioned to the owner that I was looking for an old leather couch, and he gestured with ironic faux-pride at the single largest thing in the store. It was an enormous L-shaped sectional sofa covered in tufted polyester tigerskin-print fabric, so overstuffed that it bulged like the Michelin Man after a six hour session at a yum cha restaurant.


Owner: What do you think of this?

Me: I think it makes me question the existence of a merciful God.

Owner: Oh come on, this is a great couch! Just think of what you could do with it!

Me: Such as?

Owner: Well, er... you could use it in a porn film!

Me: I don't make a lot of porn. Not enough to justify buying a $1,400 couch, anyway.

Owner: Or if you owned a brothel...

Me: Nope.

Owner: Or you could just give your parents a really big scare!

Me: I have far less expensive ways to scare my parents than buying a second-hand Harvey Norman fake tigerskin couch.


Instead, I just bought a groovy 1960s plate for $5. As I left the owner called out to me.


Owner: Are you sure you won't reconsider the couch?

Me: I'm sure. But if I see Anna Nicole Smith, I'll send her your way.

Owner: Thanks!