Run, don't Wank

--How old are you?

--21

--Oh sorry, it's just your face. You look like a 17-year-old.

"Could it be true?" I wondered, shuffling out the same old shop. I mean, perhaps I never went away and am in fact still 17... But then all records conspire to maintain the illusion, so who am I to argue? Best 'go with the flow' and take that extravagant holiday as given, real.

Instead of throwing up spurious doubts I decided to advance a programme of training, a remedy for our juvenile predicament. "A disciplined routine of energy conservation and allocation" --this is what the coach I employed to guide us on the course proposed. She was elegant, if spinsterish; ageless, if hard.

"What has in other lads aged them in you went down the drain. We are going to have to channel those mis-spent energy sources into ironing creases onto an otherwise infantile face, sprouting stubble and burning baby fat; in the process hairs on your head might fizzle out and croak their last curl, but hairs elsewhere may then strike out dark claws. You will become, if you follow my programme, King of The Man Beasts."

I was at first wary of the zeal she showed in pursuing my development, my maturation, but I began to consider her rather bombastic pronouncements a part of the prodding, the stick that would knock me into shape. Her eccentric and almost primordial world-view served to clear the distractions I would otherwise have faced, and I soon learned to echo her beliefs, whether sincerely or not.

"If all the bits and bobs swirling around now are made of the same stuff as bits and bobs ever were made of, then whatever we do simply moves some stuff from one state to another. Run off that pie!"

Around the field futile I went, grinding against the fat in my joints, the succulent clogging swine-fat buffeting her commands, slowing me down. Doesn't every good pig deserve bacon? --I whined, trotting around the field limply. She prodded on.

"STUDIES have shown that each stride as you run charges up the seminal glands through the force of friction storing enough energy to produce a single sperm. Keep running and you could spread it on thick, more gruel for the crucible [one of her more obscure yet distinctly unpleasant euphemisms]...or you can save your beans for man beast powers. Galvanised, replenished, you will shine from every pore like Olympian Zeus."

And so I followed her harsh system of running around fields, saving my beans, until one day when, one day that is...

--do you want to see my ID?

--No sir, that'll be OK, we don't want any trouble...Nanjpreet, call the police, it's a monster!

--I am King of The Man Beasts, my beans will buy all your beer.

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