Another alternative lifestyle

Do you ever get the feeling that real excitement has passed you by? I do, each time I read short articles at the bottom of newspaper pages.

Every little titbit opens my eyes to possibilities so tragically missed over a long life and reminds me yet again that one shouldn’t impose one’s own – or indeed any other – standards on others.

Alas, my cognitive ability not being what it used to be, I often feel like a straggler on the march of progress. No sooner had I learned, marked and inwardly digested the newfangled acronym, LGTBQIA2S+, than new demands are being imposed on my learning capacity.

This morning, for example, I read a tiny article implicitly emphasising the need for more initials to be introduced into the lexicon of alternative lifestyles.

Apparently an Australian chap paid two men to help him enact an amorous fantasy. The men were hired to break into his house at knifepoint, tie him up and stroke his, presumably naked, body with a broom. Oh well, different strokes for different folks, as Americans say.

I don’t know how widespread this practice is in Australia and elsewhere. I suspect not very. Nevertheless it deserves its place inside the ring fence protecting all alternative lifestyles against attacks launched by fossilised troglodytes (like I used to be before I accepted the moral validity of every conceivable set of initials).

First, it needs its own nomenclature, ideally made up of initials that will then easily go before -phobia. For the time being, let’s settle on KEBB (Knife Entry Broom Body).

I plan to start a worldwide campaign against kebbophobia, defined as finding anything wrong whatsoever with this alternative lifestyle. In the meantime, however, the first recorded case of KEBB went awry.

The KEBB workers got the wrong house and therefore the wrong man. The house-owner mistook them for his friends, opened the door and was treated to the sight of two knives and, supposedly, a broom.

The article left it unclear how far the mix-up went. Did the intruders fulfil their contract by stripping the house-owner naked, tying him up and brushing him with a broom? Or did they realise their mistake and stop mid-stroke?

Evidently there were no hard feelings, at least not at first. The house-owner accepted the intruders’ apologies, shook their hands and saw them out. However, given time to ponder the situation, he reconsidered. As a result the KEBB workers ended up in court, charged with intimidation.

Now, to quote Pope Francis’s pronouncement on another set of initials, who am I to judge? As a matter of fact, who are those Aussie judges to judge? Yes, those KEBB workers made an inadvertent mistake, that much is clear.

Yet consequently another man was introduced to the alternative KEBB lifestyle, if perhaps initially against his will. Surely that can’t be a bad thing?

Are we witnessing judicial kebbophobia unfolding before our very eyes? If so, I hope we’ll all rise against it. Why, I even have a name for a campaign of protest: New Broom. Let’s keep both our minds and our houses wide-open, sweeping prejudices aside.