‘Mum, have you ever been cock-blocked?’ asked my 19-year-old daughter on a recent visit home from university.
‘Mum, have you ever been cock-blocked?’ asked my 19-year-old daughter on a recent visit home from university. ‘Because it’s driving me crazy and I just don’t know how to deal with it. I thought you might have some good tips.’
I instinctively felt that this was probably one of those defining mother and daughter bonding moments that required a confident yes or no answer.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I replied. ‘Or if I have, I think I probably didn’t enjoy it that much and have forgotten all about it.’
Tilly was looking at me with a mixture of both envy and disbelief.
‘So you’re telling me that even before you met Dad, no one has ever tried to pull that move on you? Whoa Mama. Respect.’
It was at this point in the conversation that I started to panic. I thought I could code-break her university vernacular with ease, and assumed cock-blocking was probably an extreme form of self-defence — or else some weird sexual practice I was far too straight to have ever experienced. I was wrong and I now knew exactly how the Sam Baldwin character in Sleepless in Seattle must have felt. Poor Sam. Sam had no clue what tiramisu was and eventually had to swallow his pride and ask his friend to explain, ‘because one day a woman is gonna want me to do it to her, and I’m not gonna know what it is.’ Like Sam, I was out of my depth.
‘Remind me what the “blocking” manoeuvre is?’ I asked, trying to mask my total ignorance.
‘You know — basically a cock-block is when someone stands in your way of getting near a guy you like. A cock-blocker behaves like that either because they’re jealous or because they’re being over- protective. And women do it too — it’s not just men.’
‘So they’re all interfering jerks that try and act like a human shield against people that don’t necessarily need or want protection,’ I said with sudden clarity, confident we were both reading off the same page.
‘You’ve sort of got it,’ sighed Tilly. ‘But I wouldn’t advise you to use it.’
But one of the joys of being introduced to new words or phrases is that once understood they beg to be shared with a wider audience. Bling used to be exclusive to hip-hop rappers and related solely to their jewels. Now it’s an adjective used to describe anything that’s remotely vulgar or flashy. It’s a word that works. I think both cock-block and cock-blocker deserve to go mainstream too. They’re words that manage to pack a powerful punch and articulate pent-up frustration. To be cock-blocked sounds more aggressive than being passively thwarted; and I believe vocalising these words and filling them with testosterone-charged emotion will have a strangely liberating effect.
This government has effectively managed to cock-block us all. It’s time we took control and blocked back. Trust me, it’s an act that can sometimes get results. I must have cock-blocked tenaciously when I was younger. My blocking paid off. I got to marry Tilly’s father.