Unformed youth

    My employer has hired a new colleague. He's in his early twenties, very enthusiastic, very good at what he does and in the way of young blokes everywhere, unintentionally rather entertaining in his utterances.
    In particular he's something of a follower of the more achingly-cool parts of contemporary popular music. He's fond of tossing genres into his conversation, many of which have a "post-" prefix. Post is evidently further ahead of the crowd. "Post-rock", "post-hardcore", "post-indie". My boss and I joined in with a conversation earnestly discussing post-country and post-folk. Our young friend twigged that we might be less-than-serious when we arrived at the Postman Pat theme.
    My office is a rather blokey environment. Jokes about drinking, womanising and the exploits therein contained abound. I can handle it, I do bloke rather well, but sometimes my limits are reached. This morning he came out with a classic: that it was a perfectly acceptable piece of private enterprise for any girl to embark on a career as a webcam stripper. What could I do but wholeheartedly agree and add that the converse was also true, a lad such as himself would not be objectified or exploited in any way as a webcam stripper by his newfound popularity with his online gay customers. Surprisingly he didn't share this point of view.
    Back when I was his age I was firmly in the closet. Spending a while with my new colleague is in a way a chance to peer down memory lane, I know I must have been just as immature as all early-twenties blokes are back then. I just hope I wasn't quite that unformed. I don't think so.
    My new employer's office is a much more civilised affair. I must be very careful to tone down the bloke act, it has become such a habit at work.