[REDACTED] is back by popular demand with a scathing review of Brisbane’s finest. In celebration of the Great South East’s finest weeklong festivities (dagwood dogs, strawberry sundaes, and swine-flu), [REDACTED] compares the trash you date to the tooth decay you find in Ekka showbags.
It’s August, and as far as I’m concerned we all deserve a Victorian Cross for making it this far — except, of course, Victorians. Retroactively speaking, it’s the time of the year when we should be less concerned with Crisafulli curbing your mum’s need for speed and more concerned with picking up gastro from the petri dish that is the RNA Showgrounds. That’s right. It’s Ekka time peoples!
As I longingly await my cease and desist against 2026 to process, I’ve been steeping my thoughts in the nostalgia of the one time of year where Brisbane is superior to any other state capital. Thanks to maturity and stress receptors, my Ekka days are well and truly over. However, in an effort to revive its relevancy, I have decided to consolidate one of my old favourite pastimes with one of my new favourite pastimes: shit-canning men, xx.
Men are much like Ekka showbags: there are the good, the bad, and the ugly out there. Consequently, my dissection of the not-so-dichotomous relationship between novelty exhibition landfill and the male species has been categorised below (for your pleasure).
The Bertie Beetle Bag
This is the guy Hinge’s off-kilter ‘most compatible’ algorithm suggests for you. This individual’s modus operandi for attracting the opposite sex is unsolicited dick and fish pics. A photograph of a stranger’s penile shaft perched on the rim of a sharehouse basin aside, nothing stimulates a lady’s oestrogen production quite like a bloke in a dinghy holding up an illegally sized flathead.
In the wise words of John Waters, ”If you go home with someone and they don’t have books, DON’T FUCK ‘EM.” In this instance, never have truer words been said. This guy’s idea of literature is his cousin’s second-hand Zoo Magazine collection, stored in a rotted rattan basket by the toilet and saturated in a sticky film of cum and Glen 20. You ask him if he’s ever heard of Toni Morrison and he replies, “Yeah, I’ve read one or two by that bloke, aye.”
This bloke’s taste palette begins and ends with meat, three veg, and chocolate Ice Magic on vanilla ice cream. He deems the Shingle Inn at Chermside too exxy and believes Jatz crackers, twiggy sticks (halved) and cubed cheese are the height of outer-suburban class.
He will argue til blue in the balls that WWE is real and that the gender pay gap is not. States proudly that he isn’t a homophobe; his body language walking past the line-up for the Beat Megaclub suggests otherwise. He’s already planning your barren property block in Caboolture as we speak. The property will eventually house a pitbull, which he’ll refer to as his ‘fur-baby’ — a fur-baby limited to an enclosed run of 4m x 8m/24 hrs a day, whose aggression will be blamed on “the neighbour’s shithead kid being too loud” in their above-ground pool.
Accompanying the five chocolates that taste like lead-drenched drywall, this Bertie Beetle Bag includes:
- Gumtree ‘free, pick-up only’ negotiations
- four chaotic revs in a suburban street from his Nissan Skyline
- a 40 cm ‘Bloke’s Advice’ bumper sticker
- a 15-pack black ice car scent with the intent to be hung all at once (plastic on, please).
The Cadbury Dairy Milk Super Bag
You meet this guy at The Regatta. He’ll be nursing an espresso martini in his navy chinos, white Ralph Lauren buttondown, and brown RMs (with belt to match, duh). His opening line is: “I went to Boys’ Grammar”. No name, no identity — just his place of formative education. Not to mention he can’t bring up the University of Queensland without reminding you it’s in St Lucia. Endearing for some; red flag factory for most.
He manages to reject the otherwise bogan ‘yeah the boys’ culture while simultaneously carrying out its ethos. Coked-up long weekends at Noosa laced with the abuse of prescription meds and hashtags on social media are what get this guy through his 7-am-to-9-pm job in Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St.
Thanks to his devilish mix of liberal views (veiled with a left-leaning political masquerade) and daddy’s medical background, he’s an expert on all things abortion, mental health and inner north-eastern suburbs.
*Queue iconic “What’s your aspiration in life?”*
Well, he’s glad you asked. The three-year, five-year, and ten-year plans are mapped out as follows …
Three-year plan: Piccolo coffees and open home hopping in his Alfa Romeo with the on-and-off-again girlfriend his dad tolerates, brother thinks is hot, and mum reckons is at the peak of her fertility *wink wink*.
Five-year plan: Justifying his workaholism and mental breakdown with a BMW iX3.
Ten-year plan: Married, two kids, one French bulldog. Living in Albion (not to be mistaken for Ascot) in a house whose greatest resale asset is the ducted aircon.
In addition to the okay-but-nothing-to-write-home-about chocolate assortment, the Cadbury Dairy Milk Super Bag includes:
- a born-on-the-hill/die-on-the-hill energy
- a 2016 Bridge to Brisbane tee worn unironically
- bi-yearly Japan ski trips
- an Italian twang when ordering a margherita pizza from a white, blank-faced waiter.
The Hubba Bubba Bag
There is no mutually exclusive relationship greater than that of men who are emotionally stable and have acquired the art of timely ejaculation. The two simply cannot exist at once.
Helen Keller (??)
Lord knows you didn’t induce third-degree razor burns on your majora AND minora labial folds to be pumped six times then collapsed on top of like a Koala Mattress. This is the guy you invest more time in your bathroom than in his bedroom for. Coupling a stringent hair-removal cream with a five-bladed men’s razor directly onto your vertical smile to impress a boy who has more OnlyFans subscriptions than you’ve had hot breakfasts ain’t fruitful grounds for anything other than disappointment. Alas, he keeps you coming back for more. Why? Fuck, I don’t know, ask Sigmund Freud.
On top of this guy thinking laser treatments grow on trees, he looks at you like he’s having a stroke when you ask him to wear a rubber. “Ah, thought you said you were on the pill?!” Yes sir, I am. I might be protected from toting a foetus, but I ain’t protected from what you could be toting beneath your foreskin — capisce! This dialogue is as far as ‘getting to know each other’ goes — verbally, that is. Before you know it, all four of your limbs are being thrashed around like an air puppet plugging cars along the M1.
The only thing more limited than the foreplay is his knowledge of female anatomy. PSA: it’s a clitoris, not an Instant Scratch-It!!! You can barely gain a rhythm, let alone pleasure, before his breathing turns from borderline emphysema to a muffled ‘I’m close’. Between the sweat, masticated nipples, and frantic friction already stimulating tomorrow’s ingrown, him finishing in less than four minutes is the miserable realisation that the above wasn’t worth any of it.
He’ll assume the flaccid spooning position, oozing non-committal ambience, and all the while exuding just enough TLC to rope you back in time and time again (goddamnit!). This will take the form of a halfhearted back rub and telling you that that one was up there in his top three (lucky you). Luckily, this charade is short-lived as he’ll bluntly tell you to leave as he and his roommate have a 5 am F46 session in the morning. Half dressed and feeling less than blessed, he’ll hurry you along by even offering to pay for your Uber, “Yeah, there’s one like three minutes away, want me to book it?” Chivalry isn’t dead: it’s been hung, drawn, quartered, and Nutri-Bulleted by this cunt.
Fast forward to late afternoon the following Friday and queue a Snapchat DM along the lines of, “Hey haha, sorry. Been off the grid, work’s so hectic!! How’s your week been? Any plans this evening?” Alarm bells aside, he did say you had a tight pussy … As it is written, so it shall be: BACK BACK BACK AGAIN!!!
Paired with this artificially flavoured show(douche)bag of oral claustrophobia, you will find:
- a king-sized bed sans fitted sheet
- step-daddy issues
- a 3.98 Uber rating (many thanks to the lovely ladies doing God’s ‘morning after’ work)
- and, just to nit-pick, untreated grout bordering the now piss-coloured tiling in his bathroom.
The Confectionary Maxi Sour Family Bag
This guy is witty, humble, tolerant, and mysteriously rugged. THE WHOLE PACKAGE. The downfall? ME. I can’t write anything more about this kind of guy as I can’t even get close enough to one, and for those of you who can — kindly blow it out your ass.
Alongside the various spine-tingling, mouth-watering treats you’ll find in this bag, you’ll also find my self-worth, scalped.
IN CONCLUSION, if you find yourself offended — GOOD. It is the duty that I have thrust upon myself: to offend and to challenge. As Deborah Levy says, “You’ve chosen to live in the societal story which offers symbolic protection,” and that’s a you problem, hunny.
But don’t worry lads, I’m sitting here writing this alongside my chemical imbalances and insecurities, having a gay (but nervous, always nervous) old time. Hopefully I will one day have the honour to be read for filth as I have so graciously done for the men of Brisbane. I would pay good monies to be compared to sweet, vapid, gimcrack trash. Because darling, if you can’t hate yourself, how in the hell you gonna hate somebody else? Now let the Sideshow Alley music play!
Featured image: everyone gets lighter by Ugo Rondinone, 2019, Kunsthalle Helsinki, 2019 Photo © Angel Gil
Leave a Reply