What was that thing I just fell off?

Oh. It was a wagon.

It’s fucking Fallout’s fault. A few months ago, I saw a compilation of Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics on sale for five pounds. Five pounds, for heck’s sake. That’s basically 0.25 handjobs without the self-loathing and friction burns. How could one resist.

I’d never played any of these titles before and was already feeling the hype of the upcoming Fallout 3, so I wasted no time in buying the games. And then promptly spent the next five months not playing them, because I had suddenly decided to give up gaming forever. For a while, life was good. My fabulous literary articles made me the talk of the town; I was quite the eligible card in the London season, with many a doe-eyed beauty hanging sleepily from my arm. My monocle was sick. Then, without warning, my creative inspiration ran dry, and before you could say “hypocrite”, I was once again hunched before the old flickering screen, spittle flecking my lips, myriad empty dinner bowls festering like porcelain toadstools in the corners of my room. I thought I had quit for good, but something pulled me back in. Something inarguable and utterly inescapable.

And that thing was groin punching.

This is the reason games exist.

Let me elaborate. Fallout is a brilliant RPG set in a post-apocalyptic future, where tired oxen drag caravans made of cloth-covered car skeletons, and the only remaining unit of currency is the bottle cap. The game’s atmosphere is unequalled, but that’s not the thing that hooked me. It’s the targeting system, which allows you to select exactly which of your enemy’s body parts you want to make all hurty. This taps into a deep human need. You know the need I mean. When you’ve woken at 6 AM with the dread of the day already clinging to your limbs; when you’ve slumped into work rain-drenched and broken, and spent the next eight hours getting pooped on by a consortium of morons; when you’ve staggered two miles home with the wind pushed up against your face like a redneck with a grudge, and there’s nothing in the house but beans; when all this happens every damn day, only one thing will make you feel better at the end of it.

Hitting someone really hard in the dick.

…or the udder, if your boss happens to be a) a radioactive mutant two-headed cow, and b) an asshole.

I still consider myself to be a non-gamer, despite the fact that I am about fifteen hours into Fallout with no sign of stopping.  I’m actually finding this to be a positive experience, firstly since I was hitherto unaware of how great I am at living a lie, but also because this highly localised physical violence has given me a new sense of joi de vivre. Come on. You’ve played Fallout. Tell me you sat through your first successful crotch attack without feeling a thrill of affirmation; a sudden epiphany that there are no limits to this universe, nor your potency within it. And for those of you who haven’t played the game yet, let me ask you a question: have you ever clenched your fist, stared at a rat’s junk and dreamed? Well, dream no more, child. Dream no more.

This experience has opened my mind, and for the first time I find myself truly caring about the history of dick-hitting. How did our older, wiser ancestors practice the Art, and can we learn anything from their techniques? Tragically the internet lets us down, with not even a Geocities page devoted to archaic groinal combat. Undaunted, I have decided to create the first entry myself, in the hope that other Crotch Historians will continue in my footsteps.

The Crotch Punch (history of)

Chapter 1: The Bourbon-Lancy cave paintings

A visitor to rural France in search of history could do worse than visit Bourbon-Lancy. This ancient spa town, situated far South of Paris, contains a beautifully preserved Mediaeval walled district that has changed little over the past seven hundred years. Impressive, certainly; yet this gulf of time shrinks to a gnat’s wing when one ventures into the nearby caves, and views the treasures contained therein.

Carved by water from the native limestone, the Bourbon-Lancy Caves were havens for Mesolithic man, who used them as places of ritual and celebration rather than habitation, preferring a more nomadic existence. The soil reveals animal bones (possibly sacrifices), shaped semi-precious gems, and stone tools of primitive yet effective design. But the greatest trove by far is the collection of paintings on the walls of these caves. Sheltered from the elements, these pictorial histories have endured for tens of thousands of years and, Lord willing, will last tens of thousands more.

The imagery is surprisingly delicate, composed of flowing line-drawn figures full of kinetic beauty. In one picture, characters are seen attacking a bison, spears arcing from their bodies in subtly observed parabolas. Other scenes are more intimate: families clustered around a hearth; dogs fighting for scraps; a baby suckling at its mother’s breast.

The most instructive of these images, known to historians as B-L/7, provides a vital clue to the trials of hierarchy in this primitive society. One figure, presumably male, is engaged in a dramatic act of movement, thrusting powerfully with his fist at a second figure, who attempts to dodge. Another illustration follows (possibly the first recorded instance of the comic book format) in which the fist lands a solid blow on the opponent’s upper thigh / lower torso area. Anthropologists believe that the penis and testicles are the target of this assault. In the final “frame” of the series, the victorious figure squats over the head of the loser as he lies in a supine position, and then appears to lower his pelvis onto the figure’s face. What he is doing in this picture is not known. It is, however, clear that a move for social dominance has been attempted and has met with success; at least until the victor receives a crotch punch of his own. Such is the peril of primacy.

Bourbon-Lancy. A place of beauty, mystery, and cockviolence.

What strikes the viewer most is the poignant beauty of this scene. Unlike today’s ugly and functional representations of scrotal assault, these paintings have an emotional directness that belies the supposed primitive nature of their society. One feels a profound sense of continuity; for all our technological advancement, today’s modern crotches are still punched in the same way as those of our ancestors. One wonders how a Mesolithic man would feel, were he to awake miraculously in this era, if you immediately struck him very hard in his glans and / or nutsacks, and then dangled your balls over his face.

Comforted, I should wager.

By the way, I’ve still quit gaming. I’m just a non-gamer who happens to be playing Fallout right now. Anyone arguing with this will receive a special type of physical retaliation; one that has e’er been dear to my heart.

It rhymes with “Scotch Lunch”.

Filed under: Games