Daddy Dearest by Paul Southern Page A

there are pretty girls. For them, there is a very steep learning curve. They know they’re going to get overlooked so find their compensation elsewhere, usually in something tragic like nursing or social services. Checkouts usually have their fair share of them, particularly the lower end stores like Aldi and Kwik Save, though it never strikes me that these girls are bothered in quite the same way. They have, I think, come to realise the great consolation for all women looking for a man - and just a quick scan of the shelf stackers and managers in their shops bears me out on this - that no matter how ugly a woman is, or thinks she is, there are far more ugly men in the world whose desperation is greater, who would bite their toes off for a sight of a real, ugly, flesh and blood girl in their bed, or in the store room. I know because I count myself among their number. Not that I understand why they would want a man in the first place - we are such apes - or why you’re seen as sad if you don’t have someone, but there you go.
    I often wondered what my little girl would turn into when she was older. She’d already shown signs of simpering vanity and started picking up red lipsticks in shops. She’d got that from her mother, along with the fascination for big earrings. I didn’t really know what to say. It made her look like a tart. I told her it looked silly and she told me she thought it looked nice and that she was going to wear it all the time when she was older. I didn’t want her to do that but I think I was fighting a losing battle. I didn’t know what I wanted her to be - other than happy. I wanted to tell her none of the stuff she was going to worry about would matter, but that wouldn’t do any good, either. I guess she was going to be one of the reasonable girls - so far as I could tell, she looked more like her mother than me, which was only a good thing, and would spend her day poring over teen magazines with eighteen-year-old boys in them; she’d probably already started wishing she was that age. I suppose all fathers say this but, to me, she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Even if it wasn’t true, it wouldn’t have stopped me believing it.
    I watched a programme once about a father who managed his daughter’s modelling career. He attended shoots, nude or not, and accompanied her everywhere. He said he’d never trust another man to look after her, and neither would she. I thought he was sick watching her, staring at her photographs. He just couldn’t let go. Now, I have some sympathy. I look at nineteen-year-old girls who could well be my daughter and have no trouble at all staring at their photographs. I wank over them all the time - the pictures, that is; I had trouble getting a nineteen-year-old when I was nineteen - and am well aware that it’s someone’s daughter, someone like me, someone with an ex-wife and kid of their own. I try not to pass judgement at all. Of course, such talk for me is hypothetical. My daughter is no longer with me. I can’t let go, either.
     
    I took my place on the sofa and the counsellor returned to her seat. She’d done her best to counter my look of shock, and started sifting through papers on her desk to make us both feel better. I wondered whether I’d need to bite any toes off to have a chance with her. Not that I’d want to; short people fascinate me in a circus freak show kind of way, not carnally. But I wonder what it must be like. Many years ago, I had a Mexican friend who spent his time hanging round a troupe of female, Mexican dwarves. He said he was a film director and wanted to make a film about them. He said he had the lot of them, singly and collectively, and it was the best sex of his life. I asked him how come and he said it made him feel big, like he was one of those guys in porn films. Maybe I should have tried it.
    When my ex-wife came in, it was quite some relief. She hadn’t slept, I think. I recognised the look in her face. She