Observations in the central north of central Perth. Key of P sharp. All rights reserved.

The other day I saw a well fed man with a pure white well-brushed ponytail. His head was round and kind of looked like a rolled roast that has been soaked for several hours in cheap wine. His pudgy fingers were strangled by a couple of rings. A couple of times I saw him remove the hair tie from his mane, shake the pony tail out and then retie tighter. I'm not sure if he felt that by cranking up a few levels of tightness he'd get some sort of facelift effect. He really paid that ponytail a lot of attention. He was stroking it and tossing it side to side. He was really proud of it.

His girlfriend didn't seem to have the same affection for it. She didn't seem to have any interest in him either. She was quiet and seemed to look off into the distance perhaps embarrassed by "Tony's" constant tail tugging. It was almost as if he was a 15 year old boy at home alone with a K-Mart underwear catalogue. He felt no shame and continued to pleasure himself quite eagerly.

Remember in the early 90's a ponytail was seen to be the marker of a successful yuppie? Like a SAAB convertible and a ponytail were the pinnacle of wankerness. The ponytail has somehow shifted its position in the world and is now really only the property of fuzzy teenage metalheads and a few perverse individuals. It's completely understandable. This guy looked like the kind of man who would happily drink the juice from a jar of pickled onions and proudly tell potential girlfriends it was his famous French soup. The kind of man that softens butter in the hairy folds of his favourite undies. The kind of man that borrows a toothbrush and calls dogs "sexy". The kind of man that would lick the soles of his shoes clean and sell them as "new with tags" on ebay and then tell his brother that business is booming. The kind of man that would shake John Howard's hand.

Ponytails. Actually, maybe just this specific ponytail. I'm not sure.