A shy and sneaking lustmole

A German magazine, years ago, once described me as 'a shy and sneaking lust mole'. The German word is lustmolch, and you really feel the sensuality of the semi-blind mole as he pushes through his hot, sandy tunnels. Perhaps a more accurate picture, though, would be of a mole sitting over iced chai with various Japanese or semi-Japanese women, ex- or potential girlfriends, being a good listener, framing questions about cultural differences, memorising the names of his conversation partner's sisters and ex-lovers, and wondering, in a timid sort of way, what his conversation partner would be like in bed. Our mole loves women, and, given the choice, spends his time 'amongst women only'. Sex, though welcome, is not an essential component of the experience. The man who loves women loves them whether they go to bed with him or not. He might string out a seduction for years, knowing that, physically, it will go nowhere, savoring the unresolved tension as a musician savours an unresolved chord, admiring his conversation partner's resistance as a military strategist admires his enemy's lines of fortification and defense. (In fact, you might even say that these unresolved games are his favourite. For it seems to him that nothing is more erotic than limits. It is not the leg that arouses, but the exact position of the hem against it. It is not the body that is erotic, but limits and boundaries and frontiers, and the games we play with them.) In the end, our mole is just someone who likes to talk and flirt and listen.

Into his mole-tunnel, dovecot sort of existence (where it's basically just him strutting around turtle-doves or nosing through moist soil) bursts... not just a man, but a man's man. Spending time with Gavin McInnes makes me realize how different our personal styles are. Gavin is a certain kind of 'chaotic homosocial entrepreneur'. He's a hip capitalist, a rambunctuous rockist, a male bonder, a business-Belushi. You might hate him (many of you apparently do), but people like me need people like him. Intuitive, adventurous, impatient, outrageous culturepreneurs like Alan McGee and Malcolm McClaren are people who make things happen; people who make the difference between someone like me having the ivory tower existence of an academic or poet or scholar, and our becoming known, making money and living large. But it's not just personal ambition which interests me. This type, the chaotic-intuitive-capitalist-male-bonding businessman, goes way beyond the call of duty. He is not just selling advertising. He has an agenda, a calling, a style that the creative people he attracts and rallies can adapt their styles to. Now, I never really fitted into Creation Records' style just as I will never really fit Vice style. But it's important to me to know that, in both cases, these organisations, like them or not, helped set the tone of their respective decades.

As a shy and sneaking lustmole mostly concerned with quieter, more oblique things, my relations with these big, obnoxious, likeable, charismatic, galvanising figures have always been problematical. And in the end their chaotic-managerial Midas touch has usually worked for others and not for me. I am not Oasis, and I am not Ryan McGinley. I will not contribute to the style any decade is remembered for, though I might be present in several, scratching away underground, a semi-permanent lustmolch.



I feel like galvanic Gavin was making bonding overtures to me this week, and that's the closest you get in hip chaotic capitalism to a job interview. And I feel like I failed every test. I failed the party test, and I failed the loyalty test, and I failed the drinking test, and I failed the homosocial bonding test. I failed to get stociously drunk and do something so outrageous that the Tokyo police would have to intervene, and we'd have a funny story to tell Terry Richardson. Our last conversation (Gavin leaves Sunday) was after a surreal Vice reception at the very grand and staid Canadian Embassy in Minato-ku. It went something like this:

Gavin: Momus, you left without me noticing.
Momus: Yeah, I snuck out. I'm back home now.
Gavin: The party's just starting. There's going to be a big orange explosion of partyness now...
Momus: I'm home and I'm fixing something to eat.
Gavin: Wasn't I being a good host?
Momus: Oh, you were being a great host. I just didn't like that band [Vice signings Death From Above] much. [Showing his cards, exaggerating for effect.] You have to understand that I hate two things. I hate rock music and I hate America. I liked the string quartet, though. I kind of like uptight things. I wish that people would sit around being uptight, doing tea ceremony or something.
Gavin: Oh, I have a lot of sympathy for that stuff too.
Momus: What's happening tomorrow?
Gavin: Tomorrow I'm getting a guided tour of the Japanese sex industry. You should come.

But the next day Gavin didn't call. I'm sort of glad. Although I think the Japanese sex industry is the best in the world, and must be a fascinating thing to get a guided tour of (the sex industry here represents 1% of GDP, the same size as the Japanese defense industry -- that's a long tour), I sort of prefer sitting in cafes with real girls, memorising the names of their sisters. I'm in this tunnel, and I don't know where it's going, but the warm sand feels really good against my snout.