Captain Swing

As regular readers will know, Monday night is Flying night; Tuesday night is Bouncing. Ian, who seems to be congenitally incapable of remembering which is which, has recently decided to bypass the problem by merging the two terms, and now refers to all such activities as flouncing.

Ha ha fucking ha.

At the end of last week's flying session, I was up on the cradle practicing the basic catching motion, when the devastatingly gorgeous catcher boy from the advanced group The Optimists (who'll be performing, among other acts, at the Circus Space's Try Out Cabaret this coming Saturday) offered to hang from my hands to give me practice with the weight of another person. I've done this before with sylph-like women, but this guy is a chiselled hunk who must weigh significantly more than I do; naturally I leapt at the chance.

He climbs the rope, takes my hands and pikes up into a static position I can't just now remember the name of, then says: "Try to swing me. It may be a bit difficult at first..."

Uh. Right. I'm hanging from my knees and toes trying not only to hold onto maybe 80 kilos of dead weight but also get both of us swinging back and forth using only my quads and, btw, trying not to faint from gazing straight down at his lovely body. Well, I did my best, though with a bit of bend at the waist that apparently was all wrong. Once the swing got going he unfolded into it and added his rather more powerful musculature to the process, and it was quite fun and educational and also (though please nobody tell him this) rather erotic, with the crippling agony just a trifling side issue.

It was all over too soon.

Then he introduced himself: it turns out that his name is Matt. Which also happens to be the name of my other major lust object at Circus Space, who teaches acrobatics (and is pretty obviously gay, unlike Mr Catcher Man; the time he got me to try holding up his weight by sitting in front of him with my arms up while he pushed down on them, which just happened to place his crotch right in my face, will always be a happy memory; as will the time he threatened to put me over his knee if I didn't stop "just throwing your body around"). Matt. Sigh.

I went to a big school, with hundreds of students in each year. But throughout my childhood and teenage years I met almost no-one called Matthew. I really thought I had an uncommon name. These days we seem to be every-fucking-where. I encounter more Matts than Johns or Harrys or Pauls. Even people I know as something else turn out really to be called Matthew when you quiz them a bit closer. What the fuck? When did this happen? When did we take over the world?

Soon everyone will be called Matt, and we'll be able to do away with names altogether. Never again will we face that "I know the face but I can't remember the name" situation. Life will be so much easier.

If your name is not currently Matthew, you might want to start thinking about changing it by deed poll. Trust me, it'll be safer in the long term.

And while you're at it, learn to flounce. Resistance is futile.
Posted by matt at January 20, 2004 01:44 AM