Escapism

I slung my suit jacket over the dining table and began undressing. Most media jobs don’t involve wearing a suit, but our office lives and dies by the beliefs of the older generations. Fucking 70s work ethics. I seemed to be the only person in there that had to take work home with them, everyone else clocked in, logged on and fucked off home at 5:30. I couldn’t just produce my writing to that deadline. When inspiration struck, it didn’t give a shit about the ‘working day’.

Today was no different, I’d tried to scrape the words together for an article entitled ‘The Modern Man’, some vague idea that had been forming at the back of my mind for some time. But ultimately I’d got nowhere with it. I felt observed and scrutinised in that office. A heavy weight attached the chain-like tie around my neck. Apparently January 20th was ‘National Fetish Day’, and, as my editor kept reminding me, I had to produce something by the end of the week to coincide with this.

Lazy journalism is awash all over the internet in 2017. Websites and publishers care more about hits and ad revenues than actual content. They treat their audience with a distain that almost says ‘I know you clicked on this out of pure boredom – probably while taking a shit’. It’s not why I got into the profession. And yet on that night I began producing my laziest piece of work to date. It might just have happened to change my life. Maybe even saved it?

I slouched in to my office chair, began googling ‘fetish’ in the hope of finding something quick and easy to plagiarise. Keep the work wolves at bay tomorrow. Stumbling across the all too familiar top 10s, top 17s, 5 things you didn’t know type nonsense, my idea formed. A quick easy list ‘common fetishes that aren’t actually that unusual’. Easy. Then I’ll go buy food and veg out in front of the TV. I was simply going to copy a few of their results, change the order, and add a few words. Done.

I placed a few of the weirder fetishes in the top ranks – apparently adult babies are a thing now, so is tentacle porn and strapons. I began filling out the others entries with some more obvious vanilla choices: feet worship, leather, rubber, role play, crossdressing.