Musk Man

In the seventies you would meet Musk Man at a bar. You would take him home and offer him tequila – put on Annie’s Song. Dance. He smelled of sweat (because of the polyester shirts) and musk (as it was his scene). The lovemaking was wild and hairy. Musk Man would spit out hairs days after, as would you.

But then… one evening Musk Man was depressed. It was not his scene anymore. Something had evolved… inside him. A sorrow. The music became bleak. He travelled to ruins of lost civilisations. You saw the black and white photos accompanying his long letters: He would stand beside old, overgrown stones.

And then one day you would not meet him at bars anymore. Only punk rockers, kids with atomic nightmares – girls with bras. They were all hairless. Evil seeped into the world again via the children.

It had been a short respite.

And then you met Musk Man at a music festival in Canada last Friday. He played bass in a sludge band. There was no hair on the top of his head – but down his neck and everywhere else there was plenty. His smell was stronger than ever. He stood there with his red bass among youngsters, and was happy to see you.

“We were wrong,” he said. “the tragedy was never that man is evil, but that we are so loving and caring. It was always our scene. The river never stopped flowing.”