You may remember a while a go I entered a competition the Edge radio station’s “Forbidden Fiction” competition and won $500 with my story “The Sexiest Thing a Man Can Do” – a tounge-in-cheek take on the Fifty Shades of Gray franchise.

Well, with the movie adaption of the book being released a week or two ago, the Edge had another competition to win tickets to the premiere and I couldn’t resist having another go. I didn’t win, but still think my entry is worth sharing.

Don’t worry – It’s only NSFW if you have a dirty mind 😉

So here you go:

When they had started work at The Edge, Jay-Jay, Mike & Dom had been told their boss, Mr Wratt was a strict disciplinarian who always got what he wanted. Over time they had developed a close bond and a mutual affection had grown between them. He had even allowed them to call him by his first name – Leon.
But today things had gotten just too dirty. The Morning Madhouse trio had been very naughty and had to be punished.
Their sodden clothes lay discarded in the corner of the studio, leaving them wearing only their underwear.
Dom sat tied to his chair by microphone leads; his shirt had been rolled up and tied across his mouth, gagging him.
Jay-Jay stood next to him, her fingers pinching and twisting, her hands rubbing up and down furiously through layers of whipped cream and chocolate sauce.
Opposite her, Mike grasped a shaft so thick and stiff it required a double-handed grip. He was thrusting it backwards and forwards with reckless abandon. With each stroke it made a moist sucking sound, eliciting a muffled, gleeful giggle from Dom.
The studio windows had started to fog up when the door burst open and Leon’s chiselled form strode in, inspecting the debauched scene.
“Jay-Jay – have you finished cleaning the control desk?”
“Yes, Mr Wratt!”
“Mike – how is the carpet shampooing coming along?”
“Almost done, sir!
“Mfftphhtdfft!” grunted Dom from under his gag.
“Don’t you even bloody start, Dominic!” Growled Leon
“Having a frappuccino fight live on air was your stupid idea in the first place! Now you’ll just have to sit there and think about what you’ve done while your colleagues clean up your mess!
Jay-Jay and Mike both leered at him.
“This would make an awesome book” Thought Dom
“Fifty Shades of an Idiot!”

Our daughter’s latest instilation: “Aftermath of Corn & Tuna for Tea”

It’s something we haven’t heard of in a while, but after surveying the aftermath of a recent “Baby in Frame” feeding time I was reminded of just how popular “child prodigies” used to be a while ago.

Little “Sebastian” or “Juniper” (they always seemed to have quite ‘alternative’ names – I guess “Jack” and “Jill” were too busy playing with their Lego, My Little Pony, or off somewhere “fetching water”) would just happen to have an incident involving pots of paint and a canvas / wall / pet hamster and lo and behold: It. Was. Art!

And not just your regular

“Hey Mum, look what I painted!”
“A horsey, that’s nice dear!”
“No, Mum, It’s Dad, you and me!”
“Oh..” art

This stuff was somehow worth THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS and featured in flash art galleries alongside dirty sheets and primate impressionists.

Quite often these midget magnum opuses seemed to resemble minimalist impressions of Jackson Pollock or the like – to you and I random squiggles on a page that literally did look like a toddler painted them because, well, one did!

After a brief flare of popularity, like many artists, their light and work faded into obscurity, never to be seen or heard from again.

The “child prodigy” phenomena equally faded into obscurity. Possibly because artistic tastes changed, maybe because we’ve all become a bit jaded and cautious of such fads these days, or perhaps because with “reality” television and the world wide web, every pint-sized Jackson, Frida and Leonardo can have their work viewed from anywhere at any time taking a bit of the mystique out of it.

I can’t help but wonder how a child art prodigy promoter would cope with the modern world’s more cynical outlook on life. If one was to knock on our door, I imagine the conversation would go something like this:

“I see your baby was using quite earthy tones – were they influenced by Monet’s earlier works?
“Nope, that’s just poop”
“Oh. What about those gorgeous, verdant greens?”
“That’s poop too. She had a thing for kiwifruit, peas and broccoli that week”
“And the watercolours are…?”
“She was really thirsty that week too…”
“Ah…”
“Yup.”

There may yet be hope for our budding baby artist, though. The other week “Baby in Frame” had a big dinner of pasta and tomato sauce. We wiped her face afterwards and this was the resulting imprint on the face cloth:

I wonder if that’s how Dick Frizzell got started…