Zips. I am really fucking fed up with zips. There was a time when they’d never get stuck. They were reliable. Smooth. You’d plug the male into the female, exert a little downward pressure with the right hand, catch the lever on the slider with your left and pull in an upwards motion. Znnnnnnggggg. There was a quietly satisfying sound. And yet you didn’t think about it too much, because – well, because you took it for granted…

It wasn’t that it felt good. It felt natural. The zip would slide up beautifully until you stopped. Half-way up, to just above your solar plexus? Slide. Fine. All the way if it was your fly? Done! Zips worked.
Doesn’t it seem strange to be able to make such a bald statement, so full of innocence and youthful optimism. Zips worked. But that, my friends, was before zip Armageddon. That was before zips started to fuck up. Routinely. All the time.
You try to zip up your coat. No matter how sweetly you cajole the yoke it won’t go up. You push and pull, lean your head back and forward in case the tilt matters but the result is the same. It’s fucked. But it’s the only coat you have with you. And now it’s raining outside. And there’s a wind that’d batter you and go through like a 6 foot 6 mugger on steroids in dire need of a shot. You’ve had no breakfast. And sure as hell you didn’t pack sandwiches. And it’s halfway through your lunchtime already. And the nearest restaurant is half a mile away. But the fucking zip still won’t go up. Aaaaaargh!
It used to be you put a zip on something, you took on the responsibility of ensuring that it wouldn’t let people down. There was no point to a zip if it didn’t slide sweetly. That was the zip code and you knew it. A jacket with a zip that didn’t work wasn’t worth the denim it was made with. And as for a pair of trousers with a fly zip that wouldn’t close – unthinkable. Somehow, somewhere, along the way over the past few years that contract was rendered null and void. What had seemed like an essential truth about human life, and a bulwark against everything chaotic and unreliable in the modern world, was shattered.
Some people blame the demise of the reliable zip on 1968 and the effects of the student revolution. Everything went to hell in a handcart after that – or so the theory goes. Previously there had been an order to things. People knew their place. Teenagers did what they were told. So did women. And zips? They had a job to do and they did it and without complaining too. It was an open and shut case. The role of a zip was to go up and down as required. Or across if there was a pocket involved. And they were happy to do it for fifty years on the trot. No pension at the end of it either.
But when they got the smell of the tear gas in Paris they started to get ideas above their station. It may have taken a while – apparently zips exist in a somewhat different time-space continuum – but the word eventually went out among zips that the time was ripe for change. They never said anything. But once things started to go awry with zips, you could imagine what they were thinking. “I’ll go up when I want to and down when I want to.” “I’m not here to take orders from a jumped up bourgeois prick like you.” “Stop, you’re hurting me!” “Look, we’re going to have to negotiate before I agree to budge up or down.” “I don’t care if you just want to take your trousers off, I’m not co-operating. It’s not as if there’s anything in it for me.” “There are times when I just want to sit here and do nothing and have a bit of space to myself without anyone fiddling with me!”
But I don’t think it’s fair to blame the zips. They too are victims of the stresses and pressures of modern life. The constant frantic need to produce more and more. Intense automation. Faster turn-around times. The drive among manufacturers to increase profitability. Built-in obsolescence. Disposability. The idea that if it fails you can always just buy another one.
Which is why I am calling on Brian Cowen to take action on The Zip Question immediately he is installed as Taoiseach of this country. We are dealing with a major national crisis, one that is sapping morale and ruining our prospects for further economic growth. A lousy public transport system? Who cares? A Dickensian health service? Good enough for us. Draconian anti-drink laws? We’ll fucking swallow anything.
It’s different with zips. Zip failure can wreck lives. Zip failure can leave us feeling desperate, lonely and depressed. And it’s happening all the time, every hour of every day, even to the luckiest and most sophisticated among us. The cost in human terms is impossible to quantify, as the following example illustrates…
There you are in the final stages of a successful seduction scene. You’re back in her room. The lights are low. The music is playing. The kissing and holding and stroking and whispering have been done. She has a pencil-thin long dress on that will have to come off before the real action starts. She knows it. You know it. And you sense that the moment has come to execute the manoeuvre. What glories await you once the zip has travelled the two and a half feet down from her neck to just below her waist! In your mind’s eye you can see the dress in a pool on the floor. And you are in seventh heaven merely imagining the magnificent vista its successful disposal will unveil…
You move carefully to the zip, conscious of not wanting to break the spell. The music thrums on sensually. Gently holding the other side for maximum smoothness you pull gingerly downwards. Nothing happens. You dance a little bit more, caress her back and then try, you hope imperceptibly, again. It won’t budge. The two mating rows of interlocking coil elements in the zip love each other too much to part? You know the feeling. “Go around behind me to do it,” she whispers and your heart soars. Everything is going to be OK. She’s in on this too. You slip around take a closer look and slide gently. Fuck. It won’t move. You start to do something that seems more like tugging. It… won’t… come… down.
“I just need to take a closer look,” you say, startling the room it comes out so much louder than you meant it to. You squint and pull hard. Now it really feels jammed. “I hope you haven’t snagged it,” she says, a hint of accusation in her voice. You try pulling up and then down. You’re getting an ugly looking indentation in your index finger from the effort.
If there was any hope that the dress would come up and over her head with the zip unreleased you’d be bold enough to suggest that, but there is no way that the wonderfully figure-hugging waist will go either down over her voluptuous hips or up past her magnificently ample, and now heaving breasts. The zip is the key. You pull down really hard on it now but it doesn’t shift. Your sexual ardour may have cooled but your desperation is mounting. Was that the sound of something ripping?
You squint again and do a quick up-down jiggle, and jerk really hard towards the floor, in the hope that you can force it beyond whatever the blockage is. She can feel the pull and drag through every inch of her perfect body. “This dress cost me 2,000 euro,” she squeals. “Don’t wreck it. What have you done to the zip? Now I think you’ve torn it!” Jesus, that was the sound of something giving. Her sanity, perhaps…
She’s beginning to sob in frustration. At you. At your clumsiness. What is she doing in her bedroom with an oaf who can’t even manage to pull a fucking zip down?
She throws a major wobbly. The night is ruined. The dress will not lie on the floor like a talisman of your sexual triumph. Your romp has come to a premature end. The fact that the malfunctioning zip may have saved you from a lifetime of having to deal with outrageous tantrums is no consolation. It feels like a mere zip stood between you and access all areas to the finest piece of ass you ever laid eyes on – and the zip won.
This is what we have to put up with nowadays.
So believe me, it is crucial to the smooth functioning of society that zips do what they’re supposed to do. In terms of the importance of this issue to the future prosperity of the country, one further example will suffice.
You put on a tight pair of jeans because you want to look very cool. You go out to work. Halfway through the morning, someone tells you that your zip is down. You pull it shut. An hour later the same thing. What the fuck is wrong? You close it. And forget. You’re meeting a potential client for lunch. She’s a bit of a sweetheart but this one is really about business. There’s a three hundred grand deal in the offing. You need to secure it to guarantee your monthly commission. But your hopes are high. She’s as good as said that it’s a goer.
You have to stand around for a while before being ushered to your table. You get the feeling that she is looking at you a bit strangely. You laugh your way through lunch, leaning back expansively at the big moments to illustrate the story you’re spinning. It’s your standard routine and it usually works a treat. But she seems a little cold and distant. Embarrassed even. You stand up to pay the bill, reach into your pocket and the jeans don’t feel as tight as they should. You look down. There’s a gaping hole where your fly used to be. You zip it up as adroitly as you can. Should you say something? Or might that risk making it worse? Can you now afford to shake her hand with the one you just pulled your zip up with? Did she notice your swift corrective action? You’re sure she did.
Why are you sweating? Shit, it’s pouring down, worse than if you were stuck in a sauna and the door wouldn’t open. Inwardly you are screaming: fuck that fucking zip! You say your goodbyes with as much dignity as you can muster but she doesn’t seem interested in a peck on the cheek. When you get back to the office there’s an email in already that tells you no deal. Her budget has suddenly dried up.
No commission. Not enough money to go out and spend like a loolah. The bars suffer. The shops suffer. Well, actually, the bars are OK – they’re essential – but you can’t make your mortgage repayment. You are a foreclosure waiting to happen. A sub-prime bum heading for skid row, where you came from. It is you who will be the tipping point for national meltdown. All because of a zip that refused to stay up.
And so Brian Cowen I urge you: it is essential that this is made the top priority of your new regime – to ensure that the people of this country get the zips that we deserve, zips that we can rely on, zips that won’t let us down in a crisis. And especially that won’t let us down when we’re trying to get inside someone’s knickers.
Now that’s the way we can restore our competitive edge…